Um, it’s more complex than you might like.
A international climate panel, the IPCC, issued a statement that there is a 90% chance that the warming we are seeing (the warming is pretty much accepted as real) is caused by human activity, like dumping into the atmosphere.
See this site:http://www.ipcc.ch/
So we have a
Part A: is there a very recent warming trend – yes. IMO.
Part B: did humans do it (implication being humans can undo it)? less certainty, the IPCC says a 90% chance humans did it.
And there is a more slippery Part C:
What will happen? – the answer here is that any answer you see is at least partial speculation by experts or maybe something derived from a model. While speculation from a climate expert is absolutely better than what you & I can come up with, it is very far from established scientific fact.
For example:
While rising sea levels will do exactly what is described, see the policymaker’s document, the extent of the possible rise (based on the assumption that things stay warm) is hard to forecast well. The IPCC provides uncertainty guidance for policymakers to allow them to get a handle on the policymaker’s document contents, and assess the threats they perceive.
The difference between a sea level rise of 6″ versus 2 feet (as a contrived example), is the displacement of extra millions of people living in low-lying areas near the sea – parts of Florida, or New York City, for example. And loss of infrastructure a long with it. In theory.
So – bottom line – it’s as much political as scientific, and I think if humans caused it we are in deep doo-doo. Human governments that fix things other humans broke have a horrible track record. Humans fixing things they did not break also has a bad rep. It’s a lose-lose thing IMO.
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