Tuesday, May 18, 2010

Too hot to handle

I have a question for all the global warming deniers: Where are the billions of humans that populate the planet going to live when vast areas become uninhabitable?
Climate change could make much of the world too hot for human habitation within just three centuries, research released Tuesday showed.
Scientists from Australia's University of New South Wales and Purdue University in the United States found that rising temperatures in some places could mean humans would be unable to adapt or survive.
"It would begin to occur with global-mean warming of about seven degrees Celsius (13 Fahrenheit), calling the habitability of some regions into question," the researchers said in a paper.
"With 11-12 degrees Celsius warming, such regions would spread to encompass the majority of the human population as currently distributed."
Researcher Professor Steven Sherwood said there was no chance of the earth heating up to seven degrees this century, but there was a serious risk that the continued burning of fossil fuels could create the problem by 2300.
"And under realistic scenarios out to 2300, we may be faced with temperature increases of 12 degrees (Celsius) or even more," Professor Tony McMichael said.
"If this happens, our current worries about sea level rise, occasional heatwaves and bushfires, biodiversity loss and agricultural difficulties will pale into insignificance beside a major threat -- as much as half the currently inhabited globe may simply become too hot for people to live there."
And since there is simply no way that we are going to stop burning fossil fuels for at least several decades, if not a few centuries, this study clearly becomes very important and troublesome.
So, deniers out there, I’m listening.

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