Question: how many more years can our atmosphere cope with the global warning we cause everyday?

Ian Cade answered on 17 Nov 2014:

The atmosphere would be fine with any composition, any amount of CO2 or temperature…

… However, the living things on the Earth including humans do require fairly specific conditions. In fact humans are particularly sensitive to even fairly modest changes.

Why is this?

We tend to concentrate on low lying land close to the sea (so even a 1-2 metre increase in sea level , associated with a few degrees of warming, would have a very significant impact.)

We rely on quite a small number of crop plants who’s productivity is likely to change given changes in climate.

Changes in climate will also affect disease patterns.

These effects are likely to cause large-scale migrations of people (away from whatever problems global warming has caused) and this will tend to increase the number of wars and conflicts, and all the misery that comes with them.

But to put this in context, ‘modern humans’ have existed for around 50000 years and survived the coldest part of the last glacial period about 18000 years ago. At this time temperatures were a good deal cooler and sea levels were over 100m lower than today – you could walk from Dover to Calais and the Thames was a tributary to the Rhine river.

The present global warming is definitely unusual (in the sense that it is man-made and happening very fast) and should be reduced or stopped if possible. However, it is certainly a no greater warming than humans have already survived. But, that being said, while humans are likely to be fine in the long run, ‘modern civilization’ hasn’t been tested in this way before.