"Global warming", "climate change" nice subtleties, too subtle by several orders of magnitude. Nice does not make right. I propose GLOBAL HEATING instead.
I am not confusing warming and heating. Verily, warming is something innocent that happens by the fire, as the gentle flames caress the glowing logs, and one feels cuddly below the nice greenhouse blanket. So far planetary warmth has gone up by less than one degree over the 3,000 year baseline. So it's all very nice. It seems indeed possible that, as some have suggested, anthropogenic Neolithic methane production prevented a fall into a glaciation.
But it is going to change. It's going to be 4 degrees Celsius by 2099. Some models have that by 2050. I personally believe that we are one big methane belching away, from a multi-degree HEATING that could occur within a few years. It will not be nice. Most of the planet would be devastated (See New Scientist of early March 2009).
Semantics matter. Warming is a change, heating a death threat. It's the later we are facing.
Now, of course, as I explained a few years ago, the Equipartition of Energy Theorem says that heating will be roughly only one-third of the problem. Great tragic and dramatic changes will engulf the planet, such as changed currents, droughts, desertification, great storms, sea level rise... Pretty soon only the polar areas will be inhabitable.
Patrice Ayme
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