The End of the World Animation

The apocalyptic mood seems to grow each time the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases a new section of its climate change report. Climate hysteria appears to be more contagious than a flu epidemic. “We only have 13 years left to save the earth,” screamed a recent front-page headline in the German tabloid Bild. “If mankind is unable to stop the greenhouse effect by the year 2020, it will bring about its own demise — and a horribly tortured one at that.”

Young girls sit on a pier at the beach of Lake Constance during sunset in late April in Langenargen, Germany. April was unusually warm in Germany, prompting speculation the hot weather was due to climate change.
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Young girls sit on a pier at the beach of Lake Constance during sunset in late April in Langenargen, Germany. April was unusually warm in Germany, prompting speculation the hot weather was due to climate change.
But how bad is climate change really? Will global warming trigger plagues of Biblical proportions? Can we look forward to endless droughts and catastrophic floods?

Or will Arrhenius end up being right after all? Could rising temperatures lead to higher crop yields and more tourism in many places? In other words, is humanity actually creating new paradises?

The truth is probably somewhere between these two extremes. Climate change will undoubtedly have losers — but it will also have winners. There will be a reshuffling of climate zones on earth. And there is something else that we can already say with certainty: The end of the world isn’t coming any time soon.

Largely unnoticed by the public, climate researchers are currently embroiled in their own struggle over who owns the truth. While some have always seen themselves as environmental activists aiming to shake humanity out of its complacency, others argue for a calmer and more rational approach to the unavoidable.

One member of the levelheaded camp is Hans von Storch, 57, a prominent climate researcher who is director of the Institute for Coastal Research at the GKSS Research Center in Geesthacht in northern Germany. “We have to take away people’s fear of climate change,” Storch told DER SPIEGEL in a recent interview. “Unfortunately many scientists see themselves too much as priests whose job it is to preach moralistic sermons to people.”

Keeping a cool head is a good idea because, for one thing, we can no longer completely prevent climate change. No matter how much governments try to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, it will only be possible to limit the rise in global temperatures to about 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. But even this moderate warming would likely have far fewer apocalyptic consequences than many a prophet of doom would have us believe.

For one thing, the more paleontologists and geologists study the history of the earth’s climate, the more clearly do they recognize just how much temperatures have fluctuated in both directions in the past. Even major fluctuations appear to be completely natural phenomena.

Additionally, some environmentalists doubt that the large-scale extinction of animals and plants some have predicted will in fact come about. “A warmer climate helps promote species diversity,” says Munich zoologist Josef Reichholf.

Also, more detailed simulations have allowed climate researchers to paint a considerably less dire picture than in the past — gone is the talk of giant storms, the melting of the Antarctic ice shield and flooding of major cities.

Improved regionalized models also show that climate change can bring not only drawbacks, but also significant benefits, especially in northern regions of the world where it has been too cold and uncomfortable for human activity to flourish in the past. However it is still a taboo to express this idea in public.

For example, countries like Canada and Russia can look forward to better harvests and a blossoming tourism industry, and the only distress the Scandinavians will face is the guilty conscience that could come with benefiting from global warming.

Source: www.youtube.com, www.spiegel.de