"What the World will look like with 4°C Warmer?" Topic

"Polynesia is gone – sunk beneath the waves. Pakistan and South India have been abandoned. And Europe is slowly turning into a desert. This is the world, 4°C warmer than it is now.

But there is also good news: Western Antarctica is no longer icy and uninhabitable. Smart cities thrive in newly green and pleasant lands. And Northern Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia produce bountiful harvests to feed the hundreds of millions of climate refugees who now call those regions home.

This map, which shows some of the effects a 4°C rise in average temperature could have on the planet, is eight years old, but it seems to get more contemporary as it ages (and the planet warms). Antarctica is white with snow and ice, on the ground and, traditionally, on most maps. This map has turned the continent's western end incongruously green. And only last week did reports confirm that Antarctica is indeed turning green.

Few serious scientists doubt that climate change is happening, or that it is man-made. But the fact remains that many still have a hard time grasping global warming, partly as a convenient way of ignoring the destructive impact it is predicted to have.

Those on the fact-based side of this argument should realise that continuously bombarding the opposition with doom and gloom is likely to reinforce their resistance to accepting the new paradigm.

This map offers an alternative: lots of misery and disaster, but also plenty of hope and solutions. Not solutions that will lead us back to the way climate of a few decades ago – costly and pointless – but solutions that work for the world as it will be, when it will be much warmer than it is now.

First, the bad news. Brown indicates 'Uninhabitable due to floods, drought or extreme weather'. Say goodby the Eastern Seaboard of the U.S., to Mexico and Central America, to the middle third of South America. In Africa, Mozambique and Madagascar are gone; Asia loses much of the Indian subcontinent, including all of Pakistan; Indochina is abandoned, as is most of Indonesia. As the map mentions, "The last inhabitants of (the South-west U.S. are) migrating north. The Colorado river is a mere trickle"; "Deglaciation means (Peru) is dry and uninhabitable"; and "Bangladesh is largely abandoned, as is South India. (In) Pakistan, isolated communities remain in pockets"…"
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Amicalement
Armand

I love it. Bring it on.

I'm thinking of buying some beachfront property in the central Texas "hill country".

Dan
PS. I thought all the glaciers were supposed to have melted by now though. :)

Actually Dan, they have receded significantly and are accelerating. To steel your joke, I'm moving to tropical Norway. I'd stay away from Texas. It won't be hill country. It will be dune country.

They never say when anymore, do they? :)

Dan

Lets meet at my future tropical bungalow in Oslo in 20 years time. We can discuss how close they were.

Malarkey. 4C warmer, uhuh. Man-made, just we, are the cause. Right. Nothing is going to happen fast.

*sigh* Not this stuff again.

They never say when anymore, do they? :)

But is that a logical response, Dan?

Let's say you are a heavy smoker and come to see me, your Doctor. I tell you to quit smoking because it leads to emphysema, COPD, Lung cancer, mouth cancer, esophageal cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, elevated blood pressure, etc, etc.

You can't understand the danger that is happening until I give you an exact timeline on when the above conditions will occur? So I would need a crystal ball prognostication for you to realize the threat? Otherwise you'd continue smoking?

So if climate change is caused by man and we must save the planet, then doesn't if follow that we should remove man from the planet?

Who volunteers to be the first to walk the plank?

Ok for the "Normal People" what is 4C in degrees?

It's 4 Caliente degrees.

Dan
PS. I think it's something like 7 degrees Fahrenheit

Ok for the "Normal People" what is 4C in degrees?

about that… The green is looking a tad lonely.

(smile)

Amicalement
Armand

Let's say you are a heavy smoker and come to see me, your Doctor. I tell you to quit smoking because it leads to emphysema, COPD, Lung cancer, mouth cancer, esophageal cancer, coronary heart disease, stroke, elevated blood pressure, etc, etc.

You MAY get some/all/none of those things. But you WILL at some point in your life, develop emphysema.

So that is analogous to…if we continue to ignore climate charge, we WILL raise the temperature of our earth. We WILL at some point, melt all of the ice caps…much like they are melting now. We MAY get deserts and all that other stuff.

So if climate change is caused by man and we must save the planet, then doesn't if follow that we should remove man from the planet?

Reductio ad Absurdum.

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@Martin,

Are the green parts of the map where the "normal people" live? Is that Belize?

We MAY get deserts

We already have them. They will get bigger and we may get a lot more of them.

But this MAY not happen for a few lifetimes.

I wish someone could speed it up. Oh wait, China is doing great in that department (unless you go by its official numbers, which are pretty squeaky clean). No wonder they're expanding their territorial claims over the South China Sea.

@Martin From Canada: "about that… The green is looking a tad lonely."

But, have no fear, Europe says China is coming to the rescue!

I love all this pure unadulterated hard "science" that you guys always speak of, untainted by politics.

Dan
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@Bowman

By the end of the 20th century, Fahrenheit was used as the official temperature scale only in the United States (including its unincorporated territories), its freely associated states in the Western Pacific (Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands), the Bahamas, Belize, and the Cayman Islands. All other countries in the world now use the Celsius scale, defined since 1954 by absolute zero being −273.15 °C and the triple point of water being at 0.01 °C.[3]

But this MAY not happen for a few lifetimes.

So you are willing to punt on your children's and grandchildren's future? Sounds kind of short sided, don't you think?

And let's not forget Puerto Rico! Though some idiot thought it would be so cool to sell gas by the liter even when they already knew everything else was going to remain using "English" units of measurements.

It's just such an odd exception though. There had to be some money to be made out of that, for someone.

Dan
PS. By the way, I love to gamble!

@Martin From Canada: "about that… The green is looking a tad lonely."

But, have no fear, Europe says China is coming to the rescue!

I think something went right over your head, Dan.

Did it now? :)

Dan

Since we don't use 'C^', global warming won't affect us.

There ya go!!!

Dan

Always love the 'save the planet' bit. The planet couldn't care less. Wife out a few species? Few million years evolution has kicked in. Melting ice? Space for a few more fish.

Now, saving our present civilisation…