"Global warming could make Australia 'uninhabitable' ... New South Wales Premier Bob Carr says new scientific data shows global warming will have serious consequences for Australia.... global warming will affect rainfall, make weather patterns more erratic and will increase the number of days with a temperature exceeding 35 degrees.... temperature increases could make Australia less inhabitable and could also have dire global consequences.... The polar icecaps just melt away, the oceans rise, the rainforests around the globe dry out,Bangladesh floods and a lot of other extreme things happen... Now that would have us living at temperatures that human beings have never lived at."
Not really.
Not "us" - climate change is a slow process and it is unlikely that any of us will be living long enough to see if predictions of Premier Bob Carr were correct.
Nothing new for human beings either. During the Medieval Warm Period - an unusually warm period in history lasting from about the 10th century to about the 14th century - the Vikings took advantage of ice-free seas to colonise Greenland. The climate still have some catching-up to do before we fully emerge from last glacial period and from the Little Ice Age (period of cooling lasting approximately from the mid-14th to the mid-19th centuries). Aboriginals lived through this warm period here in Australia.
Human beings as species have a bit longer history and even our direct ancestors lived through at least two glacial periods and one full interglacial period. Humans have been through all this before and we keep smiling.
Rainforests were through the all of glacial cycles - we do not have to worry about them either.
Even if there may be difficult times ahead, they are unlikely to be radically different from the past glacial / interglacial cycles. There are clear indications that they are controlled by sun activity and other laws of nature and it is unlikely that we are heading for catastrophe. At any case we cannot do much about it - it is out of our control.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm
PS:
17/11/2004, BBC :
"Environmentalists are calling for Mount Everest to be put on a UN danger list because of global warming....The move to save the world's highest peak is part of a new campaign to force reductions in emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide..."
Unfortunately, they would have to adjust the Sun to achive anything. Fortunately, fools have no access to Sun's controls!
And Mount Everest does not care anyway....