Climate change and all that

[SaxyJag]

If sea levels are rising, why are we in so much danger of droughts? And why do some people tell us we're on the brink of another ice age when others tell us that average temperatures are rising?

And whatever people tell us about the damage we're doing to the earth, surely it will heal itself over time, albeit that could be millions of years, just as it has already, over millions of years.

[heathfield]

Droughts? - because rainfall patterns across the world are changing. Rising temperatures combined with increased atmospheric pollution (dust and smoke particles) are preventing normal rainfall cycles from forming. And all over the world, humans are extracting underground water faster than it's being replenished by nature. Ice Age? - because rising sea levels and temperatures bring about changes to winds and ocean currents that some computer models show could eventually result in a big freeze-up. Sure, the world might heal itself - but there might be very few humans left when it happens, if any.

[jake-the-peg]

The "brink of an ice age" stuff was quite a few years ago and as I recall it wasn't based on any real data other than the interval between ice ages.

What we're seeing now is a real change in the climate - there are still a few people who don't believe it's man made, but it's hard to argue with vanishing glaciers and shrinking ice sheets.

I'm sure the Earth would heal itself but that process is likely to involve the removal of the cause.

That would be us then.

[qapmoc]

Surely it does not matter what is causing global warming, if the climate is changing (and it is where I live) then anything we humans can do do try to act in the direction of reducing the changes has got to be a good thing.
You are right about the Earth though, it has been here a long time and has had periods where it was frozen solid from pole to pole and then other periods of global warming so strong that there was no ice on the surface at all, but through all that the Earth and it ecosystems managed to keep going as it will do this time also, the problem is that our agricultural systems are balanced on a knife edge these days and the terrible overpopulation of the world is only just within the ability of the land to feed us. It would take only a very small long term reduction in food output due to climate change to condemn Billions of people to starvation and challenge the remainder of the civilised world to remain civilised with less resources than we are used to.