Quote (Santara @ 26 Jan 2017 02:00)
Submerged island nations =/= "end all human existence." Hyperbole much?
The end is a bit more complex than that.
One hypothesis are frozen methane tundra in Syberia to melt and released into the air all at once. Tripling the effects of global warming in a few weeks.
Another comes with the extinction of key animals creating a domino effect. Like bees, that are needed to fertilize plants. Bees die, flowers die, animals that eat those fruits die.
Another is ppl are now living in areas where there is fresh drinking water. Climate change would mean large shortages of drinking water, ppl would die and start an immigration flow like we've never seen before.
Fish life might not be able to cope with the rising sea temperature (we still know so little about the sea), yet we do expect mass extinctions there.
Basically what ever is gonna happen with continued global warming, the costs to compensate for the effects are far greater afterwards, than fixing it now.
You'll most likely see within a few decades that richer countries will be able to mostly cope with the global warming, while the more poorer countries will destabilize.
That is why I made a comment about the reach of ones empathy. It's not about the health of your children, but the children around the world in your lifetime.
Your grandchildren will have a different life, how is also unsure.. However I do believe it would not be much better with a much warmer earth.
For me it goes a bit further than this though. It's not only the O2 in the air that has a limitation of how much we can consume of it. It's about every natural resource we have.
We have become consumer crazy, and in order to cope, we cut down every tree we can find, we drill oil in every natural reserve there is.
We're destroying all the beauty the world has to offer, in order to have a new smartphone, every year.