= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
Greenland and Antarctica have enormous inertia. Ice takes a long time to melt - and antarctic ice is an average of 2 kilometres thick - it will probably take tens of thousands of years to melt it. So change is unlikely to be particularly rapid.
I am not advocating particulaly rapid change. Extended change may well be even more inconvenient, of course. It is quite possible that we should try and get climate change over with as soon as possible - to avoid lengthy disruptive changes.
A warmer planet will have more and better farming opportunities, and will sustainably support more people. It is the arid ice-age climate with its deserts and permafrost that is hostile to living systems. Today we have to construct greenhouses artificially to grow plants for food. If we can just end this horrifying ice ige, the whole planet will become our greenhouse.
I think we can hold off worrying about the next glacial period until we're considerably more than 12,000 years in to it.
There is no good reason to think that. The last few interglaicials were only around 10,000 years long. The end of this one may well be overdue.
= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d){kind=logo}
No. The important thing is to get away from the cliff edge that represents reglaciation. That is the catastrophe which we most urgently need to avoid. Staying near to the edge of the "reglaciation" cliff is a really bad option for humanity and the rest of the planet. That way, potentially billions may die in a reglaciation catastrophe. Safety considerations are one of the main reasons for wanting to further warm the planet up.
We should not hang around on the edge of the "reglaciation" cliff, waiting for technology to develop. Nor should we engage in ridiculous schemes intended to cool the planet down. We should just walk away from the cliff - and probably go as quickly as conveniently possible before the ground crumbles beneath our feet. The longer we dilly-dally around, the bigger our chances of going over the edge.
This does not seem very complicated to me. Reglaciation looms as a clear and present danger. We must do our very best to go in the opposite direction. We can debate how fast we can safely run, how far away is a safe distance, etc - but run we absoultely must.
The Milankovic forcing is small. Even in the unforced case we would probably miss the next trigger and have 50 Ka of peace and quiet. Now we're well past the threshhold. Find something else to worry about, please, like ocean acidification, coastal flooding, rapid regional climate shifts, and ecosystem disruption for instance.