Climate 3052

Climate 3052 

"Men come and men go, but the Earth abides." Ecclesiastes.

The climate of the Earth has been far warmer than it is now and it has been far colder too. In short, the Earth doesn't care about the average temperature of a day, a year, a decade, a century or even a millennium. When the Earth is colder sea level drops as ice builds up on northern and southern land masses. Sea level goes up as the Earth warms and land-bound ice melts and flows back into the sea. The Earth doesn't care what the sea level is or what land is exposed or submerged. This cycle has been going on for hundreds of millions of years. It is only now that humans reside on the present day coastlines and assign a monetary value to possessing a plot of that temporal real estate that there is any concern at all.

At the time of the 21st Century, sea level has been rising. A series of events and processes have been set in motion that will require a huge change in human behavior and attitudes in order to slow, stop and possibly reverse the observed changes in our climate.

"While Man may not be responsible for all climate change where the atmosphere is warmed by greenhouse gases that he discharges, he did do a lot to set it in motion. That activity has set up "feedback loops" that cascade the impacts. It is just like Man did not burn down the entire forest, but he did leave his camp fire unattended and started the conflagration."

Many theoretical but fully predictable mitigating factors could alter the steady effects of our contributions to atmospheric CO2 and Methane loading. Volcanoes are quite capable of expelling as much CO2 into the atmosphere as two decades of human fossil fuel burning. While that is a possibility so is the opposing effect posed by millions of tons of volcanic ash rising high into the atmosphere blocking the sun and cooling the planet for some period of time. Too warm or too cool will change the crop yields and oceanic life level that alter our protein sources. Ocean water too warm can breed algae blooms that toxify the water and deplete oxygen levels. 

An asteroid could strike the Earth and measurably alter its survivability by humans other plant and animal species.

Any number of viruses could evolve into an extinction level event that more than decimates the human population. Our rampant use of antibiotics and other agricultural chemicals can breed plant and microbe species that are no longer controllable and diminish our comfortable world.

Too much rain or too little ruins arable land and reduces crop yields. When we are living at the margin between having just enough to eat and not having enough to eat, we are living at a place where the Principle of Imminent Collapse can manifest and bring about a New Equilibrium that doesn’t include all of us.

This vision of 3052 does not assume horrible events and actions that brings mankind to the brink of extinction. That said, the Principle of Imminent Collapse does only need a nudge to precipitate the cascading failures that are capable of creating an apocalypse.

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