Is there any hope for earth?

It’s important to keep climate change in perspective, and to this end it’s best to get your information from first hand sources as opposed to the media.

All too often the media apply their own slant when reporting on the issue of climate change. Some claim it’s not happening, that it’s beneficial to humanity, that the climates are out of control, that there’s no hope for the planet.

We know the planet is warming, it would be foolish to pretend otherwise. But this needs to be kept in context. As a very rough rule of thumb, for each 200 miles you travel toward the Equator it gets 1°C warmer. In recent decades global warming has been the equivalent of everyone moving 40 miles closer to the Equator. Over the course of the next 100 years it’s likely to be the equivalent of moving a further 100 to 150 miles closer.

Moving a couple of hundred miles south (or north if you’re in the southern hemisphere) isn’t going to have that much of an effect on you. It will be a bit warmer, the weather will be slightly different, the coming and going of the seasons will vary by a few days and there will be some changes in the fauna and flora; but by and large things will be pretty similar to what they are now.

The problems arise for those people who are already living a marginal existence due to the prevailing climatic conditions - those that are already susceptible to droughts, floods, heatwaves, famines, water shortages, temperature dependent diseases etc. For these people, even a small climatic shift could have serious consequences.

By and large such conditions exist in Asia and Africa, it’s here that the effects of climate change are already being felt and it’s here that the future changes will impact the hardest. Those of us living in more moderate climate zones and / or who have the resources to mitigate against the effects of a changing climate, will see the least effects. For many people, they’ll live their entire lives without suffering any negative consequences.

As for colonising space… This is something that may happen but not for a very long time. Our nearest neighbour in the solar system that could potentially provide a base for humans is Mars. This averages some 78 million kilometres form Earth and at the moment is totally incapable of supporting humans.

It would require a minimum of 50 to 100 years of terraforming before it even began to be habitable. The cost of this would be phenomenal.

Even getting people to Mars would be prohibitively expensive. If we could develop space flight that was as cheap as driving an economical car (50 miles per gallon), the cost of relocating the population to Mars would be the equivalent of about 100 years global GDP (7 quadrillion dollars). Mars is also smaller than Earth, if we all moved there the population density would be triple that on Earth.

Beyond our solar system, the next nearest planet that might exist and might be capable of supporting human life would be one orbiting Proxima Centauri, this is 42 trillion kilometres away and would take the Space Shuttle almost 200,000 years to reach.

Unless someone comes up with space and time travel then for now we’re going to have to make do with the planet we’ve got, which seems to be a pretty good reason for looking after it the best we can.

We are doomed, crops will fail and starvation is upon, we simple have destroyed ever thing in our path, space has no food and no oxygen to breath,so offer no solution. The cycle of mass death is already in Africa, millions without water and food. The wealthy countries have brought up land in Africa to farm, not to provide for the Africans but themselves, exhausting the water supply, and then transporting the produce vast distances causing more green house gases, the only hope is to adopt the China one child policy globally, and radically reduce the 7 billion people now here, but will first world counties agree to that, we all think it is our right to have freedom of choice to live for today and not to care about the future generations, tell your mother, wife or girlfriend only one child and see that their response is, we are doomed.

Trevor the oceans cause the warming with currents which flow globally so regardless of your geographical position it is all warming.

Yeah, we are on the brink messing everything up, all people care about is money and they dont realise it has no real value. I think the biggest reason for all of this is because of the planet being over populated (there simply is just too many people living on this rock in space!) the government put all their money into a source that is about to run out... which is OIL! we survived for so long until this century where we jhave milked the planet for its resources and i think we are like mould on this planet now. Humans living on Earth is like Cancer living in a Human.

Im a bit younger than you and think the same sometimes. But i personally think know one will do anything till were in our 70's (to an extreme) I don't have much hope for our grandchildren tho, there life will probably be harder. I personally don't think the world will end with global warming but with these atomic bombs. i sound really pessimistic im not pessimistic usually, so just live Your life and try not no worry, live for today i say :)

Earth, yes, sure, Earth will survive.

But almost everything else is doomed, every plant, every animal, and, obviously, humans.

There´s a solution, of course, a very simple one, this planet is overpopulated, too many of using too many resources, ravaging the environment, decimating wildlife, collapsing the very ecosystems that support us.

The simple solution would be, reduce our population to manageable levels, it does not means not having kids, but reducing drastically total fertility rates, for example, no woman should be allowed to have more than 2.

The problem is, we are in denial, to many years of religious indoctrination made us incapable of even seeing the truth, so, yes, I don´t really believe we´ll wake up in time to save this planet and mankind.

yes, we are doomed, Earth will survive, but as something completely different.

we are fine.....people take things way out of proportion! the earth has easily 300 years left

We're too lazy and unmotivated.

My life goal is to change that though :)

Discipline is a key thing. It should start from us.

Earth will be fine. Humans are ******!