"Climate-change is natural. The climate has changed before."

[DetlefK]

http://xkcd.com/1732/



http://xkcd.com/1732/



In related news, there are climate-scenarios that predict that large parts of the Middle-East (the countries bordering on the Persian Gulf) will be so hot by 2100 that there will be hot summer-days where every human caught outside will just die.
Now guess what happens to the Middle-East when agriculture collapses due to drought, when the fish leave the warm Persian Gulf due to lack of oxygen and food, when no livestock except camels and desert-critters can survive outside.

[anoNY42]

1. Guess

"Now guess what happens to the Middle-East when agriculture collapses due to drought, when the fish leave the warm Persian Gulf due to lack of oxygen and food, when no livestock except camels and desert-critters can survive outside."

My guess is that the subsequent wars over the oil there will have far fewer civilian casualties.

Or, we will have stopped needing oil by then and will just ignore the ME like we do everywhere else there is no oil...

[DetlefK]

2. Nobody is fighting over middle-eastern oil anymore.

Israel is trying to secretly gain control of the groundwater in the Westbank.

The syrian civil-war was kicked off by fears of famine resulting from several years of drought.

Saudi-Arabia has scrapped it's domestic wheat-production because it consumed too much water. Saudi-Arabia is now essentially trying to turn Africa into a "colony" that will supply the homeland with food.



Oil is no longer worth being fought over. The price is down because everybody wants to sell and everybody wants to sell because the price is down.
Global-warming means that oil-free technologies will become more and more important. Even China is trying to move large-scale towards electric cars.

Barring drastic global change, there is no scenario where there will be a shortage of oil in the upcoming decades.

[anoNY42]

3. "Drastic global change"

"Barring drastic global change"

You mean, like the changes currently underway wrt climate?

[DetlefK]

6. Climate-change is already incorporated in that prediction.

The price of oil is down mid-term because of over-supply.
The price of oil will stay down long-term, because demand will go down because global-warming.

Unless we decide to ignore global-warming and ramp up use of oil again, increasing the price, it won't be as precious a commodity as it used to be. It's still valuable, but its best times are over.

[pscot]

4. Watch that last step

It's a bitch.

[cstanleytech]

5. If I recall we actually are still in a cooler period than prior times within the last

65 million years.
That aside I personally believe we are having a significant impact and are contributing greatly to the current warming trend, hopefully though things will level out sooner rather than later but regardless we really need to look at reducing our environmental impact to a more manageable level.