Wow I find it ironic to see you quoting the IPCC - guess you believe at least part of the 'questionable science'
The sea level is hardly the major concern if their predictions of climate change are at least partially true.
But we have been here before - the increased CO2 will help our crops and we will all be happy, right?
Only time will tell for sure we still have choices and we will be judged by history.
I quoted the IPCC because I consider them to be extremely exaggerated, and thus would prove my point all the more...but since some people on this board appreciate Authority instead of Logic, the object of my argument being one of those, I thought it would be all the more relevant.
"Only time will tell..." what a fallacious argument! (see
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#future) Known as "Argument to the Future", with an implied "Argument by Selective Observation" (see
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html#selective), this argument allows you to have your cake and eat it too!
See, I don't deny that at some point in the future, the climate will be warmer, but I also believe that the climate will be cooler... even that we will enter another ice age at some point with the northern half of the US under thousands of feet of ice...
All you really need to know is:
- at times in our past, CO
2 levels have been higher than they are today.
- at times in our past, temperatures have been warmer than today.
- we were not the cause of either.
- the "world" is still here, and still vibrantly full of ever-adapting/evolving life.
- This will be true regardless of what we do.
- Humans are no different from any other agent of natural selection, be it volcano, ice age, comets, continental drift, precession, solar activity, disease, drought, invasive species, etc.
- There is nothing to say that any particular climate is "the best", "the most worth preserving", "the ideal", "the way it should be", etc. Thus trying to preserve a certain climate is pointless, and probably based on some sort of emotional attachment as opposed to logical reasoning.
