Quote:Original post by Eelco
if you wouldnt have deleted the part of my post where i adressed that, i wouldnt have to retype it now, but never mind, let me word it more clearly:
-this planet has been non-sterile from an estimated 4billion years ago up till now
-at the dawn of life, its safe to say there was no organic carbon stored underground
-hence, life must be possible even if we were to release all stored carbon
-we will only be able to release a quite small fraction of it in an economically viable manner
-so it is reasonable to assume the climate after release of all economically accesible carbon is somewhere between what its now and what it is estimated to have been like in the far past.
-assuming the worst, that might suck quite badly for us, but were quite a versatile species: people can live from the desert to antarica now, theyll be able to live on antartica then no matter what happens. actually i wouldnt be surprised if a not too big shift to warmer global climate would increase the capacity of this planet to support life rather than decrease it. afaik its an established fact that the amount of biomass/m^2 has been much higher in the warmer past.
I didn't think I was refuting the other portions of your post, but after review, it appears that I was.
In regard to your reformulation, at the dawn of life it's safe to say there was no organic carbon stored above ground either - at least as far as organic carbon is a by-product of life. Perhaps that observation is a matter of semantics, that is, to put it another way, organic chemistry should be renamed carbon chemistry to indicate that life need not be present in order for carbon based chemical reactions to occur. I don't think the question should be whether life would still be possible with the release of all stored carbon, but whether complex forms of life would still be possible. What good would it be for us if the only life that could live on the surface of the earth was bacteria?
The assertion that only a small fraction of the stored carbon can be released seems to me intended to downplay the issue. It doesn't address the fact that we are releasing more of it than the biota can reabsorb and this is upsetting the balance. It does not serve us well to reproduce the global environment of 20 million years ago. That isn't the environment that we have evolved in, so yes, it would suck quite badly for us. And while we are very adaptable, the conditions may be so extreme that we can't make the adjustment quickly enough.
People live in Antartica now, but not in a way sustained by that environment. All of their material needs have to be shipped in. Take away ships and airplanes and the antartica is not inhabitable. People do live in deserts, but they don't thrive in them. They live on the edge or near water sources. Raise the temperature to the point where all the water evaporates and deserts will pretty much become off limits to us.
As I wrote before, there is a great likelihood that change will be geometric rather than linear. We may reach the threshold that leads to a runaway greehouse effect that transforms the Earth into something more like Venus. That would seriously impact, in a negative way, the capacity of the planet to support life - especially complex life forms. And the fact that biomass density was greater in the past, doesn't tell us anything about the transitions between the conditions that made that possible and those that led to our evolution. Turning the "carbon clock" back 20 million years in the space of 100 years may be so disruptive that no complex life forms could survive. For more on this, see
Methane Catastrophe.
So to take it back to my original response, it's not at all clear that only a select few will suffer from global climate change. If the threshold of a runaway greenhouse effect is reached, the vast majority will suffer - and maybe a select few won't, that is, the Waltons of the world as per my earlier posts on that subject. I would rather the Waltons of the world bore more of the burden in responding to global climate change, but I think that everyone has some burden to bear in all this - even people scratching for their next meal.
Quote:Original post by Eelco
i was more thinking of something people would embrace willingly. i know, im a lazy bastard.
I meant that as a joke. Personally, the wide spread return to using horses would be bad for me as I am terribly allergic to them. Fortunately for me, it's very easy to avoid horses these days. I just stay away from rodeos, circuses and other equestrian forms of entertainment.
"I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes." - the Laughing Man
