Basically, I never understood why (or rather how) a global increase of 1.5° (Celsius) can have as big an impact on the world as it does. How is that seemingly small increase melting the poles so much so that the coastline of many countries in the world might even be pushed back?
In: 1
If it was just a flat 1.5 degree increase everywhere, it wouldn’t be THAT big of a deal. A lot of ocean stuff and bugs are highly sensitive, coral would be pretty screwed.
But it’s not just a flat rate. 1.5 is the average. Some places are a lot hotter, some places are actually cooler. Because weather patterns shift.
Small changes in the average can cause climate change. You know how Seattle and London are rainy? Or how Europe is temperate despite being so far north? Or how California has forests? All that is because of predominant weather patterns. The wind typically blows the wet air from the ocean over Seattle where the mountains squeeze it out. Warm ocean currants flow up to Europe. But with temperatures changing, those norms shift. California dies out, Texas gets freezes, Canada has really hot summers. Hurricanes are just another Tuesday in Japan, but they’re a big deal in NYC.
Because we’re not used to it. People, cities, plants, animals, bugs. Everything. Wheat country is a specific region and if it gets too wet or too hot, it better to grow different crops. Except the farmers in that area have all the stuff to farm wheat, not use it as ranch-land. Some places will actually become better farmland. They were previously too dry or whatever, but that changes and now they could grow better crops. Except there’s no grain elevators, tractor dealerships, farm and feed, rail lines, or whatever else goes into agriculture. Cities need to invest a whoooooole lotta money prepping for the storms of tomorrow rather than hoping everything is going to stay the same. And that’s expensive. But not as expensive as being devastated by things you’re not prepared for.
Birds can truly just go somewhere else. They’ve been through world-wide cataclysms and mass extinction before. They’re the dinosaurs that lived. And deer and such can probably follow the food. But it takes an ant a really long time to hike to a different biome. And forget about the migration speed of a forest. It depends on how far their branches reach and how fast a tree can grow. Temperatures have changed a lot in the past, but never this fast. The speed of the change is beyond anything any species has evolved to deal with. Possibly excepting birds. But when they got selected for that ability, everything else on the planet went through a mass extinction.
Latest Answers