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Originally Posted by Textcritic
For the record, I do not doubt that the planet is warming, I only question whether or not this is catastrophic. As I understand it, the world has been subject to a long history of periods of fluctuating temperatures; warming and colling ad nauseum. Is it possible that because we are transitioning from a "cool" period of the earth's history for the first time since the invention of science we are alarmed by it?
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I read a book a few months ago
(this one) and (with a little fear of getting the summary quite wrong) I believe it said something like this: We've had good or even perfect climate for 10 or 12 thousand years (since the end of an ice age) and in that time us hoomans developed agriculture and reaped all the benefits that came with that development (ie "everything"). In all the time before that we couldn't do the farming thing because the climate was wrong. For 10 thousand years though it's been right we'd be screwed/non-existent if this set of climate circumstances didn't come about.
But the climate range for all the fun stuff we enjoy is pretty small. I won't pretend to remember the numbers he used to explain for me the layman how it works but I'll try to convey his message by using the numbers 48-52.
If the "temperature" stays between 48 and 52 then we can keep going hunky dory. If it were to drop to 47.9 or rise to 52.1 then we are out of the little safety zone that we've enjoyed for a long time. It's in our best interests to do what we can to keep it between 48 and 52. It doesn't sound like a big deal if we rise just one or two degrees, but it's a very small window so it is a big deal.
Bah, I know how simplistic that looks but it made sense to me.
There is also a great bit about what happened to the people from Easter Island.