Global Warming: How dire is the situation, or how much is it overhyped?

[Lafiel]

xstonexcold316x said:

Lafiel said:
all the various indicators we have point to global warming happening and to affecting us (as a species) a lot in the future, but there still is a chance for this warming leading to the next ice age

the warming is expected to negatively influence the termohaline circulation, which we see as the main driving force of the gulf stream - if the gulf stream gets weaker and doesn't reach up as far to the north anymore the whole norther hemnisphere will see a drastic cooling leading to an ice age

as a geologist I'm pretty curious if global warming results in a hot house climate or if it ends this interglacial we are living in

Very Interesting.. So which outcome would think would be more probable? And is it already slowing? because the Artic is shrinking i believe? or How would this process work?

well, considering the status quo of this age is a cycle of ~90,000 years of glacial periods with ~15,000 years of interglacials (by the way our interglacial started roughly 15,000 years ago) between them and has been going on for about 30 million years now(quarternary glaciation) with many many different CO2/CH4 concentration variations and temperature spikes of similar or bigger proportions than we see nowadays, I think the more probable outcome is the climate reverting to a glacial period

it's not uncommon for the temperature to actually spike up right before entering the next glacial

the main hypothesis for that resulting in a cooling is that fresh water from melting arctic ice/greenland ice shield might weaken the thermohaline circulation as it's very much dependend on "heavy salty and cool water" sinking down in the arctic ocean,  while fresh water isn't as heavy and can't sink as fast or might even not sink at all, which means the gulf stream (which is a warm surface stream) weakens as there is nothing to "pull" it

alternatively a very new hypothesis is that a higher general water level from missing arctic ice/glacial ice leads to the Bering Strait in the pacific ocean to widen by a lot meaning cool water streams might leak out and influence the (barely explored) pacific ocean streams in a way to initialise that drastic cooling which leads to a glacial