Revi wrote:The middle of the road scenarios on climate change are scary enough. I think it will take longer to get to a new stable state, but we will get to a world at 5 or even 6 degrees. That means we'll have rendered the planet uninhabitable. I don't think it will happen until the end of the century, but that's actually in the lifetime of a child born now. Nature has a way of readjusting at another steady state. We have benefitted from a relatively stable climate for the past 10,000 years or so. Now it's going to change, and change quickly. Not as quickly as Dr. McPherson suggests, but in terms of adaptation, we may have to change everything.
What is it that causes you to believe a 6C global change is fatal to life, especially given that for most of the history of the planet the global average temperature was 8C above where we sit today, conservatively speaking. The overwhelmingly vast portion of that climate change is the melting of the poles and the attendant reduction in albedo in summer in those regions. Much of the rest is a simple 2C average increase in night time temperatures in the temperate regions.
Just because Maine will have a climate much like modern Florida does not mean eve5rything living in Maine is doomed to overnight death. In point of fact I have visited Florida and the last thing I would ever call it is 'lifeless'! Hot, steamy, muggy, covered in insects and fungi and molds with rampant year around growth of many plants. i would say all those things about Florida in the current era, but never lifeless. It is the epitome of life covered.