What we hope to have shown from this web site is that
climate change is real, and there is a human contribution to recent
change. Continuation of trends as indicated by sophisticated (but still
imperfect) climate models would place many aspects of our life on earth
in jeopardy. Rising sea level would displace millions of people, mostly
the poorest people of Asia and Africa. Poorly understood ecosystem responses
to rising temperatures may threaten not only the ecosystem itself, but
more pragmatically its value to us as our food source. We may see a
rise in frequency and severity of dangerous storms, and a broader geographical
distribution of disease-carrying insects.
The Earth and its ecosystem is an extremely complex system, and scientists
don’t pretend to be able to model all possible aspects of climate
change. Nevertheless, it is clear that climate change has the potential
to play a major role on human behavior over the next century. Even if
all human activities that contribute to global change were stopped today,
change would continue as the present surplus of greenhouse gases in
the atmosphere will remain for centuries. We don’t yet understand
the climate system well enough to “reverse-engineer” the
climate to a state that best suits humanity (even if we could all agree
on what that state is). We require better knowledge of the climate system
and ecological responses to climate change. It is reasonable to treat
this on the same level as foreign aid and military preparedness, as
rapid changes in resource availability (especially fresh water, and
food) will further strain relationships between peoples.
Recent discoveries of rapid transitions in past climate make it imperative
that we accelerate research of climate change. Society can deal with
slow trends in climate, occurring over the many thousands of years that
are characteristic of ice age cycles. But decade-to-century changes,
i.e., those that occur on the time scales of a human lifetime and the
ability of societies to evolve, are potentially catastrophic.
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