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[Josephus]

"Fucked" as in shifting ecosystems (we could probably deal with that) and increase in violent weather, actually. The earth isn't going to burn up, but it will most likely hit Carboniferous-era warmth, which is bad. Naturally, the earth has done this many times before, but we're actually partly responsible for this one (GOD DAMN YOU, INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION!) so mitigating the effects would be a good idea, especially with the potential economic impact.

[Shades]

If you mean the runaway warming effect - i.e. turning the planet into another Venus - then I'd be very sceptical. It's not like Earth hasn't underwent warming periods before. We're still living in an Ice Age after all.

I agree that it unlikely we will enter a 'runaway' effect, but the fact the planet will inevitably recover doesn't really help us much if we have to spend a few hundred years under conditions we can't survive.

[Il Palazzo]

So you reckon that there's bound to be some catastrophic outcome to melting the ice caps?
Why would it cause mankind's extinction? I don't recall there being some mass extinction periods in prehistory, associated with warmer periods on the planet.(but I'm not terribly well informed on the subject, so feel free to correct me)

[Josephus]

So you reckon that there's bound to be some catastrophic outcome to melting the ice caps?
Why would it cause mankind's extinction? I don't recall there being some mass extinction periods in prehistory, associated with warmer periods on the planet.(but I'm not terribly well informed on the subject, so feel free to correct me)

I dunno, man. A few degrees in average increase would be intolerable, because of the alteration of the weather patterns, the death of the ocean algae causing a horrid chain extinction underwater, so on and so forth.

[Il Palazzo]

Are those assumption based on something tangible?

[Josephus]

Yes. But don't ask me for sources. Ask Shades or something. My source is one of my friends, who is a Physics professor somewhere you've never heard of. I wouldn't know, I'm an historian, not an ecologist.

Oh, there's also an inherent problem with the Polar Ice caps melting. It won't cause a flood anymore than the ice cubes in your glass melting cause your water to spill. But all that dumping of fresh water into the ocean could possibly fuck up salinity and kill the gulf stream or something like that.

[Il Palazzo]

It won't cause a flood anymore than the ice cubes in your glass melting cause your water to spill.

That only applies to those parts of the ice caps which are already in water. There's a lot sitting over land, you know.
Still, that's hardly a Waterworld scenario.

Anyway, my point is, there's an assumption in your reasoning that the ecosystem somehow wouldn't adapt to the changing situation. So the weather patterns change. So the Gulf Stream gets boned. But it's not like somebody is going to flip the switch and a sudden change will catch all god's creatures unawares.
One species will not like the change, the other will love it.

[Josephus]

The ecosystem can't "adapt" to a change. It's essentially made up of the total of everything else. So if there's a mass die-out, the ecosystem won't have adapted; you just have a new ecosystem with less creatures, which will all adapt to fit whatever niches were emptied by the die-out.

What I'm saying is, the ecosystem doesn't adapt, the creatures within it does. And this is a matter of self-preservation, because majority of mankind is not capable of adjusting to that level of change.

[Jopax]

The thing is, the Gulf stream is mainly responsible for our climate, that is, it keeps it running and stable and it's there to ensure stable temperatures.If that collapses temperatures go haywire, the equator region increases in temperature while the north and south decrease, violent storms will form more frequently.And while not all life will go extinct it will be so shaken that it will take hundreds of years to recover if not more for the more sensitive creatures, humans should be able to survive if we don't go to war over the last resource rich areas that are actually suitable for us.

[Il Palazzo]

The ecosystem can't "adapt" to a change. It's essentially made up of the total of everything else. So if there's a mass die-out, the ecosystem won't have adapted; you just have a new ecosystem with less creatures, which will all adapt to fit whatever niches were emptied by the die-out.

What I'm saying is, the ecosystem doesn't adapt, the creatures within it does. And this is a matter of self-preservation, because majority of mankind is not capable of adjusting to that level of change.

I'm not going to discuss the proper definition of ecosystem, I might've used it improperly, I don't know. What I meant, was that some species might die-out, or nearly so, but others will take up the freed up niche.
However, I do not see how would that affect humanity. We might no longer be able to plant barley in UK, but it's hardly a case for Brits going extinct.

The thing is, the Gulf stream is mainly responsible for our climate, that is, it keeps it running and stable and it's there to ensure stable temperatures.If that collapses temperatures go haywire, the equator region increases in temperature while the north and south decrease.

Wouldn't that restart ice caps forming?
Besides, how does the Gulf Stream keep the climate stable? I thought it simply heats up the northern Europe, which otherwise would be much less habitable.

[Josephus]

Oh, I dunno, maybe the fact that we need to eat might be a problem?

[Jopax]

The effects would not be noticeable immediatly, but what the stream does is, it takes the warm water from the gulf and the american eastern coast, goes with it up to the north pole where the water cools and drops down into a colder stream that runs down the western african coast, near the south pole, over to the pacific and cools the entire southeast Asia as it heats up going into the indian ocean only to return to the gulf trough the atlantic
Here's a map to better ilustrate it:


Of course the process is very long i belive up to a thousand years, but when this crashes it really screws up the whole temperature balance.

[Il Palazzo]

It's all nice and dandy, but what's with the presumption that some other stream pattern will not arise instead? You don't just expect the oceans to break down in tears and boycott all further attempts at moving hot water?

@Josephus: yes, I understand that. But again, what makes you think that the overall(global) food production will decline? So you'll have muskoxes and yak herds in UK, instead of cows - but you'll also be able to farm e.g. in northern Canada.

disclaimer: the above statement is purely figurative. I do not pretend to know what sort of farming/herding will get enabled where. The point, however, is that it's very one sided view to assume that the temprature increase will only reduce the food production output.

I can easily visualize the political situation in the world changing considerably, but mankind going extinct, or civilization collapse is just too much.

[Jopax]

Again, it might recover but it will take an extremley long amount of time, and during that time while the earth as a whole seeks a new balance we will some of the most destructive forces of nature at work, and seeing as it takes around 1000 years for one full cycle i cannot imagine how long it would take for a new one to emerge.

On a note of producing food and ecosystems, we really don't know what would happen if one spieces simply dies out, it would disrupt the balance completley, and if it's an important spieces then even more, and it would probably take a long time for another one to take it's place since i doubt that the animal kingdom has spare spieces just waiting to pop in as soon as something dies it.And what's worse if something really important died it could trigger a chain reaction that would probbably decimate the animal kingdom, the only thigs left alive would be people. rats. roaches and whatever we saved for ourselves as a source of food

[Josephus]

@Josephus: yes, I understand that. But again, what makes you think that the overall(global) food production will decline? So you'll have muskoxes and yak herds in UK, instead of cows - but you'll also be able to farm e.g. in northern Canada.

disclaimer: the above statement is purely figurative. I do not pretend to know what sort of farming/herding will get enabled where. The point, however, is that it's very one sided view to assume that the temprature increase will only reduce the food production output.

I can easily visualize the political situation in the world changing considerably, but mankind going extinct, or civilization collapse is just too much.

Like I said, when the algae die, the fish die, the fish that eat those fish die, and so on.

And, you first-world centric man, there are large populations of people that subsist mainly on fish. The world is not as white as you would like to imagine (I'm not implying racism, I'm just implying ethnocentrism. Which is similar, but less inflammatory.)