What are the problems caused by climate change.?

Question

What are the problems caused by climate change.?

Answer 1

Any problems are actually caused by the results of the actions of volcanos and tectonic movement.

The islands referred to by another answer, are actually sinking, due to the tectonic plate they are on sliding under the plate next to it.

EDIT. I suppose the REAL problem, is that there art so many politicians who believe, that it is stuffing up the Worlds major economies with unnecessary taxes!

Answer 2

To actually answer your question rather than offer another errant diatribe., it all depends on what kind of change and to what degree. Global warming, like now if carried to an extreme will cause extreme conditions like a rise in sea levels due to expansion of the seas and the melting of the Antarctic ice cap.Also agriculture will follow the appropriate conditions.

We are currently in an ice age, but in a sort of intermission period, but if it were to worsen, agriculture would follow the best geographic path to the best conditions. We humans have adapted to all types of climate extremes throughout our long history and prehistory on Earth and will do so again.

.Climate and weather are different things

Answer 3

Many problems result from climate change. However, our climate is constantly changing so these "problems" really aren't problems at all as long as Earth as a system can adapt to these changes.



But anyway, man-made global warming is such a scam. So the same people who established the EPA and developed the global-warming/greenhousegas theory are the same people who suppressed the electric vehicle and solar technology advances as they pushed oil?

Answer 4

Well the climate has always been changing. So you should be able to do a little history research and see what kind of problem we have had in the pase. You should also make note of the benifits too.

Answer 5

The real climate change danger is that we are due for another ice-age. Some would argue it has already begun but the general science points to it occuring sometime in the next 100-200 years.

The threat from this is that food will become scarce in our already overpopulated planet and that a lot of regions that people live in will become simply too cold to sustain life, or at least human life.



So contrary to the misbelief that we are going to die from alleged global warming, the real threat is the cold. Even if we were warming the planet, which all 'credible' actual science says we are not, we need all the warming we can get. History shows that a warm planet is a healthy planet that sees massive increases in populations of humans, other animals and even plant life.



If anyone here wishes to dispute this I will gladly debate you on the issue, particularly if you are one of those "the news and school text books said humans are killing the planet so it must be true" idiots.



EDIT @ Big Gryph

None of what you have said can be directly, or even indirectly, related to any human activity. That is assuming what you said is true, which most of it isn't. Recent studies have shown that sea level rise has decelerated over the last 20 years, that is that the increases are becoming less not more, even though nations such as China are going through massive industrialisation. You are also getting cause and effect confused in regards to drought. Lack of rain causes increased temperature not the other way around, it is simple physics.



EDIT @ Jeff mostly, but some others as well:

First of all, rattling off scientific terms does not make your argument scientific, nor does it make your argument true. An argument based on a false premise is never true. The 'general science' that I was referring to with the ice-age point is that the Earth's climate works in cycles and according to these cycles we are already overdue to be in an ice-age. That is general science. I was NOT saying that it was consensus science, being of consensus does not make something true. Need I remind you that the consensus in the past was that the world was flat or that the sun orbited the Earth?



As for your rambling about more Co2 and absorption etc, there have been multiple times in our planet's history where there have been significant;y higher amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere yet temperatures have been far lower. Again ice-ages are an example. The lack of both plant life and free ocean space means less CO2 is absorbed out of the atmosphere. Therefore CO2 is not a primary, or even a significant, contributor to global warming. Furthermore, humans are only responsible for less than 1% of all greenhouse gasses (follow my source directions). The majority of greenhouse gas is naturally occurring water vapour.



As for your argument that my physics was wrong, allow me to give you a basic physics lesson. A large proportion of the sun's energy is used as evaporation, when there is little to no water due to no rainfall then all of that energy is converted into heat. Ergo, no rain means warmer temperature and not the other way around.

Answer 6

Jeff, I gave you a thumbs down because the "possible" problems caused by AGW sound exactly the same as what has occured over the span of human existance, you put great detail in the first part of your "answer" yet when you get to the part of answering the question you add this to the end "and so on are also a major possibility". Plus it's also a major possibility that you gave big gryph a big thumbs up for his alarmist answer.

Answer 7

Climate change is becoming an ever more important issue in our lives. We have come to realise that the modern ways of man place a enormous amount of stress on the Earth that nature simply can not handle. Some of the climatic problems that are developing today, such as global warming, ozone depletion and El Nino, will have severe effects on reef ecosystems all around the world. Large increases in the volumes of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are already apparent. At current rates of change, carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere will double.Another threat to marine ecosystems is the increase in ultraviolet radiation (UV) penetrating the atmosphere. This is a separate issue to the Enhanced Greenhouse Effect, but comes about due to the destruction of the ozone layer by greenhouse gases. Ozone is important in the high atmosphere to absorb UV radiation, and gases such as CFC's (which are entirely man-made) destroy it. UV radiation is harmful to many animals and plants, and one of the most important effects of increased UV is the inhibition of photosynthesis in plants and algae. Phytoplankton in the ocean may decrease in productivity, and this means that less energy is entering the food chain at the primary level, affecting the entire oceanic ecosystem. Another effect of increased UV is a possible change in the community structure of marine communities as they react to decreased production from plants, and animals resistant to UV replace more sensitive animals and plants.

Answer 8

Here is a link which tells all about the problems and benefits of global warming.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-positives-negatives-intermediate.htm



As you can see, the problems outweigh the benefits.



Hob







First of all, if that were what general science said, that is what 95% of scientists would be saying.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-scientific-consensus-intermediate.htm



Second, when the Earth is in its cooling stage, it takes 100,000 years to cool down by 10 degrees.

http://www.global-greenhouse-warming.com/images/VostokTempC02.jpg



That is 0.01 degrees C per century. Are we supposed to be afraid of 0.02 degrees C of cooling in 200 years? Most thermometers can not even measure such a small amount of cooling.

Answer 9

There is no man-made Climate Change.



Watch and Learn.



The Great Global Warming Swindle

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaTJJCPYhlk



Global Warming Doomsday Called Off

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3309910462407994295#



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Answer 10

there are lots of problems caused by climate change.

1. Melting of ice bergs and mountains

2. rise in sea level

3. Tsunami

4. land slides and floods

5. High temperature and surrounding

6. decreasing in water resources and water points

7. unusual climates, bad weathers

8. uncontrolled health situations all around

Answer 11

Climate change is real and it is with us now regardless of what deniers like hob may think. Climate change is expected to raise temps gradually, It will actually produce temp extremes which will include blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, excessive rain along global warming.



The Maldives has already felt the brunt of rising seas and have considered buying land in India or Australia and moving their country. Other island nations are at risk of rising seas causing salinity of drinking water and destruction of coastal agriculture and fruit production.



State of Climate...http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/

Answer 12

Hob: People who are knowledgeable of climate change do not think we are all going to die due to global warming. It is not a 'popular belief', as you put it, in the scientific community. If you want credible actual science that shows we are warming the planet let me provide it for you.



First there is a difference between solar and terrestrial radiation based on temperature. The Sun emits shortwave radiation, or radiation shorter than 4 microns, while the Earth emits radiation above 4 microns known as longwave radiation. Certain gases, known as greenhouse gases, have the ability to absorb and re-radiate specific frequencies of radiation based on their absorption frequency. To see what frequencies various greenhouse gases absorb at we can go to http://spectralcalc.com/spectral_browser/db_intensity.php and look it up ourselves by doing the following.



1. Select 'Group by Molecule' if it is not already selected.

2. Select the following in 'Spectral Range': Units - wavenumber, Lower limit - 400cm^-1, Upper limit - 1400cm^-1 (This is the approximate area for the black body radiation curve of the Earth)

3. Select the following in 'Options': 'scale by atmospheric abundance', Atmosphere - standard, Scale - linear, Symbols - sticks

4. From the select menu under 'Species' select the following gases: H2O, CO2, O3, CH4, N2O (These are the five most prominent greenhouse gases.)



After you hit the plot button you can see that the major absorption band associated with CO2 is centered at 667cm^-1. To find out what would occur if atmospheric CO2 increases we can look at an online university textbook - http://forecast.uchicago.edu/archer.ch4.greenhouse_gases.pdf - and scroll down to figure 4-5 near the bottom. We see that the band associated with CO2 absorption gets wider not deeper. From this knowledge we can look at measurements of specific frequencies to see what is the actually causing the current warming.



http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/JCLI4204.1



Page 3987: Graphs depicting measurements of outbound radiation at specific wavelengths. The left side of the graph shows the measurements that are attributed to one half of the band associated with CO2 absorption.



Page 3990. Graphs depicting changes in outbound radiation between the three data sets and their statistical significance.



From this we see most of the warming is due to CO2. Next we have to find out where that CO2 is coming from. We know that the atmosphere is currently increasing at a rate of 2ppm/year on average as measured at Moana Loa.



http://scrippsco2.ucsd.edu/data/in_situ_co2/monthly_mlo.csv



1ppm is equal to 2.13 billion tons of carbon. To convert this into CO2 and include the oxygen molecules we multiply this by 3.664. 1ppm is roughly equivalent to 7.8 billion tonnes of CO2. Therefor 2ppm is roughly equivalent to 15.6 billion tonnes of CO2. This is what the atmosphere is increasing by.



http://cdiac.ornl.gov/pns/convert.html#3



Next we look at estimates of human emissions. These numbers are just from cement manufacturing and fossil fuel burning. In 2009 we saw a fall in emissions, at just over 30 billion tonnes, due to a declining economy.



http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v3/n12/full/ngeo1022.html



Since then emissions have increased to over 33.5 billion tonnes annually.



http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/emis/perlim_2009_2010_estimates.html



We are responsible for the increase in CO2 which is the main cause of the current warming. Also you seem to be questioning whether water vapour is a greenhouse gas. Warmer air parcels have the ability to hold more water vapour. Perhaps you need to study up more on the water cycle because 'based on physics' you are wrong.



The problems associated with climate change include increased flooding due to greater rainfall in some areas of the world while others will see increased heatwaves and drought, both are not good for agriculture or fresh water resources. Weather shifts, changing storm tracks, increased wind speeds, and so on are also a major possibility.



Edit: And for those that give me a thumbs down I'd like you to post an explanation of why.