Justus For All

Christian Science Monitor

Global warming appears to be pushing vast reservoirs of ice on Greenland and Antarctica toward a significant, long-term meltdown. The world may have as little as a decade to take the steps to avoid this scenario.Those are the implications of new studies that looked to climate history for clues about how the planet’s major ice sheets might respond to human-triggered climate change.

Already, temperatures in the Arctic are close to those that thawed much of Greenland’s ice cap some 130,000 years ago, when the planet last enjoyed a balmy respite from continent-covering glaciers, say the studies’ authors.By 2100, spring and summer temperatures in the Arctic could reach levels that trigger an unstoppable repeat performance, they say. Over several centuries, the melt could raise sea levels by as much as 20 feet, submerging major cities worldwide as well as chains of islands, such as the present-day Bahamas.

he US would lose the lower quarter of Florida, southern Louisiana up to Baton Rouge, and North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The ocean would even flood a significant patch of California’s Central Valley, lapping at the front porches of Sacramento.

It is not entirely clear to me that having Greenland and Antartica free of ice isn’t worth losing part of Florida and the Bahamas for.   Of course, I don’t live in a place that would be flooded.

This bit here is interesting as well:

And the team’s assumption that the amount of carbon dioxide would triple by 2100, although moderate among climate forecasts, is not a done deal. It depends on how quickly industrial and developing countries adopt low-emission technologies and take long-term steps to reduce greenhouse gases.

…

From there, the team used the climate model to estimate the warming that could occur by 2130 if CO2 emissions rose by 1 percent per year. In the pantheon of emissions scenarios, this represents a moderate one, he holds. But it’s enough to triple CO2 concentrations by 2100

Perhaps I am over optomistic, but I would be quite surprised if CO2 emmission increase every year for the next 100 years.  I expect that in 20 or 30 years we will have energy sources that we don’t have now.  The history of energy development has been moving from high carbon fuels to lower carbon fuels without any stimulus from environmental concerns.  I imagine that this trend will accellerate.  Higher energy requirements have partially offset these gains, but I expect that the positive trends will continue.  

Global Warming is something to study seriously, but I think too much alarmism over it is unwarranted.   As I have mentioned previously, I want to get to a point where humans have control over global climate and we can terraform earth as we desire.  That is a long term goal of course.  One hundred years doesn’t seem unreasonable however.