(October 7, 2015 at 11:49 pm)Aractus Wrote: 400,000 years is quite recent history. Humans have been alive and well throughout most if not all of that time. Your graph shows that temperatures in human history have been between 2-4 degrees warmer than present in the past.
I don't think the comparison here is apt. Small bands of hunter-gatherers can shift food sources and relocate without too much turbulence. But nowadays, with a highly developed civilization and billions of people reliant on agribusiness (which is in the reliant on a small group of staple crops which are highly specialized and therefore more vulnerable to environmental flux) means that should a 2-4*F rise occur, it could potentially be catastrophic.
This isn't considering the fact that huge numbers of people who live on coastlines would be displaced by a rise in ocean level. This also doesn't consider the oceanic acidification that would result from an atmospheric rise in CO2.
