Which would be worse for the planet and for human beings: global warming or global cooling?

Question

Which would be worse for the planet and for human beings: global warming or global cooling?

Answer 1

Question is kinda moot, with global warming we will eventually get both - global warming would melt the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flush cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north which will halt the "Great Conveyor Belt " which is the movement in our oceans such as the gulf stream that is powered by the warm and cold differences in temperature and differences in salinity we now have. When a critical threshold is reached, the climate will suddenly switch to an ice age as the Great Conveyor Belt is only thing between comfortable summers and a permanent ice age for Europe and the eastern coast of North America.

Answer 2

both, we either burn up or we freze

Answer 3

Warmth is far better for life than the cold is.

We should enjoy the warmth while it;s here.

Answer 4

globing cooling,because no plants would grow and the animals that relied on the plants would die, there would be less oxygen,nitrogen,and carbon because plants produce roughly 70% of those gases. Most of the soil would be eroded because no plants to hold in the soil.

Answer 5

Given the fact humanity began in Africa its probably fair to say evolution has geared us to being more of a hot climate animal then a cold one. We are not a naked ape for nothing you know, fur be bad in Africa...

As for the planet, Im sure earth doesnt really care either way. She has already seen at least 1 Ice age and life does exist in desert regions.

All that can be safely said is that either global warming or global cooling will result in a radical change in the life forms inhabiting earth. It will not end life on earth however, but may end OUR occupation of it.

Africa although hot is far from a desert. Humanity does not live well in desert regions. Same is true for the cold so a siginficant change in either direction will result in heavy loss of human life due to the inability of the habitat to sustain us.

We are awesome at adapting the environment to suit ourselves but really S****y at adapting ourselves to suit the environment. We may end up building sand huts or igloos to house ourselves, but farming will be impossible.

Bottom line... Global warming / cooling

Humans - BAAD either way.

Globe - Radical facelift, Nothing intolerable.

Answer 6

Global Cooling, contrary to popular belief. In the Medieval Warm Period, when temperatures were about 0.3 degees C higher than it is today, people had enough to eat, and grapes grew in Nova Scotia and Northern England. When temperatures started to cool down, people didn't have enough to eat and their malnourished bodies couldn't fight off the Black Death.

Answer 7

I would say Global Cooling as most things live and grow 70 degrees or above. We have global cooling now, read here http://www.dailytech.com/Temperature+Mon...

Looks like we might have a little Ice Age...

Answer 8

The temperature has always gone up & down ,so it is no inportance. Most cases the numbers has nothing to do with the accuracy of the thermoneters.

Answer 9

Depends on where you live.

In the 1200s if you asked the Brits or Vikings you'd get one answer, but if you asked the Kenyans or the Anasazi you'd get another.

But sharp is just wrong - it's been warmer than it is today, and what he says will happen isn't what happened.   Rather, what's starting to happen now (strong La Nina, drought in American Southwest and East Africa, wetter North Atlantic) is what happened, though on a larger scale (which would seem to indicate if not a warmer climate than at least a sustained climate at about the present temperatures).

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

EDIT - Bob's right if the statement he makes is qualified: 2 degrees either way would cause terrible problems FOR SOME, JUST LIKE IT HAS IN THE PAST.

And this building of a remarkable socioeconomic system, I agree - since we went to a market-oriented economy in the late middle ages - i.e., since the second half of the LIA and the beginning stages of the present warming.

But a lot of the negative effect of changes in the climate upon us is a function of our responses to the way the climate happened to be a generation ago.    Had we been wealthier and able to afford mini-mansions in the 1930s, we wouldn't have put them in the Southwest because it was so dry then.   And we might not have built so many dams out there either if we'd known it was only going to get drier, causing more droughts.

The climate has always changed in multi-century cycles - the Brits, Vikings, Anasazi and Kenyans would have each given different answers during the 900s or the 1400s than they would have given in the 1100s and 1200s.

This is the second coming of the MWP, and we probably affect it on some level through CO2 and aerosols, and the question is how much - are we the gin, the vermouth, or the olive.    I agree with Dana, Bob et al that it's physically impossible for us to have zero effect - CO2 does trap heat.  But I disagree with them as to whether we're the gin and definitely I disagree with their concept of it being 99-1 odds that that's the case.

I say the way to determine our effect is to look at the extent to which this time is different from last time, consider whether in respect to all other factors we have the same situation now as then, and consider whether there are any otherwise unexplained material differences between what's happening 120 years into this warming cycle versus what happened 120 years into the last one.

So far we've repeated history but we're somewhere between right on schedule and a quarter century ahead of schedule.

I.e., we're the olive.

Can I PROVE that?  No.  Nor can any of you prove the opposite, or anything in between.   And that's why in a free society this just doesn't add up to a justification of government intrusion upon individual freedoms.

But if we want to discuss the science of it, accepting the uncertainties, then I think this approach of comparing this time to last time - which of course requires admitting that there was a last time, which Bob might do but which Al Gore does not do.

Answer 10

You can read about the Wolfe Minimum where 25 million died around 1280-1350 (when the earth's population was only hundreds of millions) :

http://home.earthlink.net/~ponderthemaun...

It was the cold that killed with food shortages and very little sun exposure for health (vitamin D)  - not the 'Bubonic plague'.

Food supplies and humans thrive in heat.

With only one very small sun spot - the solar cycle 24 has not truly begun as predicted!

http://www.spaceweather.com/

Answer 11

Actually, 2 degrees either way would cause terrible problems.  Our intensive agriculture would be devastated either way, and our massive coastal development would be very damaged by 2 degrees of warming.  We won't all die, but life could get very unpleasant.  We're no longer nomads who can pack our tents and move.

"We humans have built a remarkable socioeconomic system during perhaps the only time when it could be built, when climate was sufficiently stable to allow us to develop the agricultural infrastructure required to maintain an advanced society.

Answer 12

global warming would be worse of course because duh stuff is gonna be warming up loser but with global cooling (i wish that was occuring) all you had to do was wear jackets

Answer 13

global cooling would be a lot harder to deal with as we'd lose most if not all crops so food would be hard to come by

Answer 14

"The Planet" could give a rat's behind about whether it is warmer or colder - it's a rock.

People, on the other hand, will have to adapt or die, just as every creature that has ever tried to replicate DNA over long periods on this unpredictable rock has.

Answer 15

It doesn't matter cause they both would run up my energy bill. I say lets burn, it's easier to grow food in the sun.