We're going to die of heart disease or cancer, just like everyone else. Sure, some people will be tragically taken by weather-related events, but they will still pale in comparison to heart disease and cancer.
It wouldn't be crazy to hear some politician talking incessantly about heart disease and cancer, yet we would probably think them to be crazy.
We don't like to talk about things actually likely to happen to us, because that would require confronting our real vulnerabilities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oil pan 4
The earth is in a constant state of change.
For the planet to not be warming or cooling would be unnatural.
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The faster the rate of change, the more disruptive it is to the inhabitants. Adaptation is a process that takes time, and when the time frame is accelerated, it puts more pressure on creatures to make the requisite changes.
The problem isn't that the climate changes, it's that it changes quickly relative to geologic time frames.
Still, it doesn't seem that humanity will suffer so much given that these "rapid" changes still take several human generations to manifest problems. As I said, nobody is going to wake up tomorrow with seas being a foot higher.
Seas have risen about a foot over the last 100 years, and people that old don't report how terrible that transition was, or how climate change was the most difficult thing they had to contend with. In the next 100 years seas are predicted to rise about a foot too. Any predictions on what people will be recounting as the most difficult things they have lived through?