Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology forecast that global warming's effects [search] this century could be twice as extreme as estimated [ark] just six years ago. They found that Earth's median surface temperature could rise 9.3 degrees F (5.2 degrees C) by 2100 compared to a 2003 study that projected a median temperature increase of 4.3 degrees F (2.4 degrees C). The new study, published in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, said the difference was due to improved economic modeling and data. The paper calls for "rapid and massive action".
What fascinates me about these predictions is rarely do they project out further than the end of the century. If this much global heating occurs in under 100 years, what do the next 200-500 years hold? And what if increased average temperatures is combined with increasing "global weirding", or climate variability, as is almost certainly the case. It is not inconceivable, particularly with feedbacks, that Earth will become uninhabitable. Are we to sit passively by and allow this to happen? Says something about the lack of moral fiber of modern, comfortable humans.
