Regarding global warming-When was the global temperature "just right"?
Asked by
josie (
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August 3rd, 2011
Global warming implies everything is getting, well, too warm.
That means that at a particular moment in the past the global temperature was not too warm (not too cold either) but “just right”.
When was that? What was the temperature back when it was “just right”?
I’ll put this in Social, since there may not be agreement on the precise time.
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6 Answers
I think it was between the time in the ‘70’s when Carl Sagan testified before Congress about the impending Ice Age and Al Gore’s recent bullshit.
My guess is it was the day Tom Cruise was jumping on Oprah’s couch.People were just too fascinated to notice that it was 75F, sunny,with no chance of rain.
;)
There was never any such thing as an objective “just right”. That doesn’t mean that we would want the climate to shift to such an extent that species go extinct, leading to lower diversity, or to higher diversity of species that are better adapted to the new climate. So, if the climate becomes hotter, we could have no polar bears or snow leopards, and 82 new cockroach species… for which the new climate would be “just right”.
For humans, the climate has been “just right” as long as we’ve existed. And we might adapt physically or technologically to a different climate, so it’s still “just right” for us – we have before. But humans like things to remain the same, as much as possible, for as long as possible. We like having the same species around; we don’t like letting them disappear, because we can’t bring them back. And we don’t know for sure that we can adapt to a big climate change if one occurs too quickly, or what havoc that might wreck on our comfortable lifestyles.
I don’t think it was so much a question of “just right” as “varying both ways” and “in balance”. The patterns should have a rise and fall.
Right now we’re only seeing the rise in recent years, and to record levels, so that’s the cause for concern. When will it stop? What’s too hot? What are the possible causes?
Just right in terms of recent climate, might be expresseed as “just right” in terms of limited variability. We’ve had a relatively climatically stable period over the last 10,000 years. During which time agriculture developed in much of the world. But anything which approximates the mean global climate of the last 1000 or 500 years, or around 1900 ( as suggested above) will be far more consistent with the requirements of the ecosystems we in turn rely on, current civilization, and infrustruction than the projected climate in 2100, in the absence of limiting greenhouse gas emissions.
Right after we dipped our toes in & gave that little shake of satisfaction.
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