“O.K. show me your working. ”
There is no argument about the fact that currently we are in cold
period in terms of last 10 million years. Or this period we in is an
ice age. And interglacial period we are in is not exceptional compared
to others in the past millions of years. And wild claims about being warmest in last two thousand years, or thousand years, or 500 years, includes this obvious fact.
Or no says it’s the warmest in last million years, or that
it’s the warmest it’s ever been on earth.
Ergo: everyone knows in terms
long history of earth, this is a cold period. Though everyone means all people with any understanding in the subject and/or aren’t apparently mentally unbalanced [such as Ted Turner].
Or we got glacier ice all over the place. And having all this ice which mostly less than 2 million year old, is blazing sign that says, “You are in a ice age period”.
So being too hot is not “the problem”.
What could be a problem is the ice could melt. And this reasonably possible because it has happened before [within the last 10 million years or this cold period- the ice is mostly less than 2 million years old].
So it certainly isn’t impossible that all glacier ice could melt at some time during the interglacial period. And if you believe that there a new element- human causing global warming, this seem more likely, or a given.
But we are in period of global warming- meaning during last ten thousand or so, we generally in a warming trend, though could argue that
the latter four thousand until the present has been getting cooler. So in last few thousand year, we have not been in a “bull market” in in regards to the last 10 thousand years trend of warming- rather it’s been a “market correction”. But it could reasonable to say that in last century or so *could be* the beginning of a bull market perhaps lasting centuries.
Or seems we have hit the bottom of centuries long “market correction”.
So we are in recovery, and perhaps in a bull market. And a large amount of existing ice could melt, and large amount of ice added during the Little Ice Age has melted. And the question is how quickly could this happen and how quickly could sea level rise occur as result of such melting.
During the period of modern human, or during the time since what is called human civilization, began- or having some village easily exceed 1000 population and be permanent [lastly centuries]. Or when humans
developed farming. It has a period which has had global rise of sea level
rising meters per year, but if one only include say human civilization from say ancient Greek period, it has been less than 1 meter per century.
So if we had 1 meter rise in sea level in a century, that might interesting, but isn’t really a problem for humans or other life. Whereas
2 meter rise of higher within a century would exceed what later human civilizations have had to deal with- it’s a public policy headline.
So a 2 meter rise in sea level is not the “end of the world”, but one could rightly say it’s not what we have been accustomed to in the “modern world”.
Few including the ICCP regard a rise of more than 1 meter in next century as likely- though it can’t ruled out completely. Or best available
evidence is sea level rise will be less than 1 meter rise.
It’s charitable to say it’s difficult to predict one century into the future,
it’s foolish in regards to most public policy include events beyond 50 years into the future.
But one could wonder about centuries in the future, and one might be correct to guess it is possibly that we could have more than 1 meter rise per century within the next 500 years.
And we could have space aliens visiting us within 500 years.
And one probably would not be regarded as too off the wall to guess that humans could living on different planets within 500 years. Or we might develop fusion as energy source for powerplants, and many unexpected thing could occur.
Having such far distant ideas of what may occur in centuries in the future, probably necessity for policy makers to be aware of- because it allows one to able to think better about the policy issues which are actually relevant and is way of being capable of making decisions. It’s probably not as important as understanding history. but it’s good to know history and be aware of the possible future.