On Tuesday, 11 August 2015 19:59:08 UTC+1, John Hall wrote:
In message , Nick Gardner
writes
Every time I hear somebody say that it is going to be a disaster if the
world warms more than say, 2C it makes me think of the Eocene Optimal.

The one that sticks out is oceanic acidification. During the Eocene the
world was warm right to the Arctic Circle and temperate diciduous
forests grew in the Artic and on Antarctic. The CO2 levels have been
estimated to be around 700 to 900 ppm and some estimates have put that
figure as high as 2000 ppm. Yet the seas were tropical over most of the
globe with coral reefs in far greater abundance than now. The world
must have been a more beautiful place with no areas frozen/ice bound
for many months every year, or as in the case of Antartic - practically
life-less.

The Arctic regions have a beauty of their own IMO. Also there must be
more diversity of environments now than there was in the Eocene, and
arguably that's a good thing.

I suspect that we could manage to cope with a rise in mean global
temperature of 2 or 3 degrees if it wasn't for the effect it would have
on sea-level. A high proportion of the world's population lives in
low-lying areas, and many of our biggest cities are coastal ones. If
much of the Greenland ice sheet should melt we are likely to be in big
trouble, and should the East Antarctic ice sheet ever melt it would be
catastrophic.
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The problem with any warming is that it won't be uniform - some areas could possibly warm far more than 2C. If these areas were in Africa the effect on crop production could be catastrophic.

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