Eli5 what happens to the earth when we are not in an interglacial period caused by an ice age like we are currently in? How hot does the earth get? What happens to the seasons? What happens to humanity?
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This is the Goldilocks zone so the earth is midway through either a cooling cycle or heating cycle, judging by the recent push for cleaner energy I’d say it’s warming that is being exacerbated by our use of fossil fuels (by how much is the contention)
How hot does it get ? That’s a difficult question to answer because there are many variables at play from the Solar cycle, to the Earth’s position relative to the Sun, and then activity on the Earth such as volcanic activity. A decent volcanic eruption eclipses the pollution put out by humans sometimes immensely. Ignoring/without going too deep into the planetary disturbances …..in 800-1200AD the Earth was in a period of warming and in that period we were growing grapes as far north as Manchester, those temperatures were 1-2 degrees warmer than the norm and resulted in bountiful crops.
Conversely in the 1600s we had a mini iceage and parts of the North Sea froze over and there is a good possibility that the warming we are experiencing now is nothing but the tail end of that colder period and the planet returning to its previous warming state.
TLDR : it could get a few degrees hotter but then again it could get a few degrees cooler , nobody really knows.
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