It is a foregone conclusion that due to a historic level of corruption, ignorance, and blatant disregard for the future, changes will not be made to forestall global climate change for some time. Even if such actions were taken immediately, they would be too late to avoid- at last estimate- two degrees of warming over the surface of the planet, a very serious amount.
As such, we have no choice but to plan for an uncertain future of global shifting. Perhaps uniquely, we can predict at least the forces that will shape the world, if not the ultimate results.
Over the next hundred years, the temperature is expected to change at least two degrees C on average- and while most projections put it at 5 or 6 degrees, some go even higher. The short term projections say that those first two degrees could appear over the next few decades.
Most of North America, all of Africa, Europe, northern and central Asia, and most of Central and South America are likely to warm more than the global average. Projections suggest that the warming will be close to the global average in south Asia, Australia and New Zealand, and southern South America. The far North Atlantic, and the southern ocean that surrounds Antarctica, will increase the least.
Places that already see high precipitation will see more, and more intense storms. Summers will be dryer everywhere, but average annual precipitation will increase in northern Europe, the Arctic, Canada, the northeastern United States, tropical and eastern Africa, the northern Pacific, and Antarctica, as well as northern Asia and the Tibetan Plateau in winter.
There will also be an increase in snowfall in Greenland and Antarctica, which will lock away some freshwater. Perhaps this will partially counteract the loss of some coastal ice selves.
Rainfall will decrease in the Mediterranean, northern Africa, northern Sahara, Central America, the American Southwest, the southern Andes, as well as southwestern Australia during winter. There may also be significant drying in India and Brazil.
With the decrease in rainfall will be a failure of crops in some of the most densely populated parts of the globe. This will be the subject of further discussion shortly.
The amount of sea level increase is more difficult to predict. It is known that it will increase, likely by about as half a meter, or perhaps more, over the next century. Though this will be troubling for some low-lying nations, it won't be as widespread a problem as it could potentially be. Ice-Free arctic summers are very likely in the short term, but will not have any effect on sea levels as the ice was already floating. The Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets account for a great deal of water, enough to cause multiple meters of sea level increase each, but are very likely to remain frozen for the foreseeable future.
The ocean will experience severe acidification from dissolved CO2. This is quite certain given the geologic timescales of ocean chemistry- at this point there's nothing short of geoengineering that could stop it. If Carbon Dioxide production rates continue to 2100, the ocean could by then have become more acidic than it has been in the past 100,000 years. The immediately obvious effect of this would be that shell-forming creatures would be unable to collect calcium, but it will undoubtedly cause breakdowns throughout the food chain.
When coupled with overfishing, a failure of more or less every fishing region in the world is inevitable, and soon. If people do not stop fishing now, then they will be forced to soon when fisheries are simply tapped out.
It is certain that the next few decades will be firstly dominated by hunger as productive farming regions go dry and essential fisheries die out. Places that rely on groundwater may last longer than others, but will face the same pressures within a few years. The places most likely to remain or become effective farming areas are in the high northern latitudes- western Canada, possibly parts of Russia and northern Europe. Southeast Asia will have drastically increased rainfall, perhaps so much so that it is impossible to farm effectively there.
Due to increased hunger, and secondary problems such as disease and crime, social unrest will increase, perhaps drastically. Food prices as a function of the average wage seem to very strongly correlate to civil breakdown. At some point in the next several decades, we will see many more nations facing social disorder, quite possibly in relatively stable seeming, "western" countries in southern Europe. West Central Africa will most certainly break down entirely. Given the already significant strife in the region and the upcoming drying and lack of effective fishing, it would be utterly inhumane to allow someone to live there.
Agriculture uses 70% of freshwater used currently. It is safe to assume that this will be a place where some kind of technological revolution takes place. One likely way of decreasing that demand is a shift away from crops such as wheat and especially rice, to either hardier local plants or GMO forms.
Solar energy may become very powerful, specifically in areas that are or become more dry. Southern Europe will be particularly suited, being high-density population areas with dry weather. That said, panels farther south in North Africa, although farther and more susceptible to civil unrest, may be drastically more efficient than the northern ones.
Given that oil will become drastically more expensive in the next few decades, coal will grow in importance. Hopefully people will understand the effects of coal and some kind of mitigation technology will be used. Also likely to become more widespread is natural gas as a fuel source. The extraction has some side effects which it has in common with other mines. The difference being, rather than poor people in other countries that need to deal with them, it's middle-class people in the US.
Disease is likely to become more common. Lower-quality food, dense population, limited medical supplies, little water, and social disorder will lead to the selection for virulent diseases in the nations hardest-hit by drought, which will spread with aid workers and refugees. Industrial farming methods, however, will introduce resistance to treatment. The worst case scenario is a drug-resistant disease appearing briefly in the west, festering in central Africa, India, or Brazil, and bursting out again perhaps years later as a more deadly and virulent mutation.
That is what I suspect will happen, at any rate.
My question to you is, what do we do to survive and thrive in a world shaped by decreasing access to food and water and increasing prices, temperature, and sea level?
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Topic: Climate Change (Read 2864 times)