It would be a problem because it would be happening far more quickly than the environment is prepared to cope with even if it weren't already in as bad a disarray as it is from human society. Massively accelerated pace of extinctions, with all the present and future problems that will cause.
Oh yes, and the minimum billion people who are going to die due to drowning and starvation. Humanity won't die out or civilisation collapse, but it will not be good for the vast majority of them. Tundra will not magically become productive farmland just because it unfreezes, either - it will be marginal at best. Meanwhile, enormous amounts of currently productive and marginal farmland will become permanently useless (hi, Australia), and desertification will accelerate. Even the few countries who get a net benefit to their own resources (Canada and Russia are certainly happy about a functional Northwest Passage) will lose out because the entire world will be so much poorer, more than negating their own gains due to economic interconnectivity.
I disagree about the religious perspective you offered, Bob, but it's probably too big a digression for the thread.
Edit: And on that note, as a more direct response to the ad, I basically agree with "What". I'm not offended, but I can't see what the point is. It's tasteless, but more damningly, it doesn't even convey anything. I figured at first they were making a crack about 10% of people dying to cut carbon emissions, but that wasn't the point either. Plus it was so repetitive that the shock value was lost completely after the first one. All in all, pretty piss-poor, but not really offensive - if anything, it seems more like an anti-environmentalist ad ("We're all creepy groupthinkers who will kill the heretics who don't care enough!") than a pro one.
Oh yes, and the minimum billion people who are going to die due to drowning and starvation. Humanity won't die out or civilisation collapse, but it will not be good for the vast majority of them. Tundra will not magically become productive farmland just because it unfreezes, either - it will be marginal at best. Meanwhile, enormous amounts of currently productive and marginal farmland will become permanently useless (hi, Australia), and desertification will accelerate. Even the few countries who get a net benefit to their own resources (Canada and Russia are certainly happy about a functional Northwest Passage) will lose out because the entire world will be so much poorer, more than negating their own gains due to economic interconnectivity.
I disagree about the religious perspective you offered, Bob, but it's probably too big a digression for the thread.
Edit: And on that note, as a more direct response to the ad, I basically agree with "What". I'm not offended, but I can't see what the point is. It's tasteless, but more damningly, it doesn't even convey anything. I figured at first they were making a crack about 10% of people dying to cut carbon emissions, but that wasn't the point either. Plus it was so repetitive that the shock value was lost completely after the first one. All in all, pretty piss-poor, but not really offensive - if anything, it seems more like an anti-environmentalist ad ("We're all creepy groupthinkers who will kill the heretics who don't care enough!") than a pro one.