As we come toward Earth Day, I admit to some sympathy with the folks in the bathroom. I haven't been so gripped by a dystopian vision since reading Jonathan Schell's Fate of the Earth some years ago. But we haven't done in the species with nukes yet, so just perhaps we can also evade some of the worst effects of the grand experiment in accelerated planetwide climate change we set loose through our innocent, thoughtless, greedy exploitation of our only home.
Lynas's project is simple. He has read the massive accumulation of scientific papers now in circulation about particular probable effects of global warming and brought them together in narrative descriptions of what the world will be like as it warms from one to six degrees Celsius (roughly warming over a range of 1.8 degrees to 13 degrees Fahrenheit). The news is bad. Very bad. The few of us humans still around in a six degrees Celsius warmer world would be lonely, hungry and chronically terrified of catastrophe.
I'll pull out some particular scientific predictions recounted by Lynas that apply to where I live, California.
- At one degree of warming (virtually accomplished today), the entire Great Plains agricultural region of the United States will be prone to perennial drought leading to permanent conditions like the Dust Bowl in the 1930s. In California we'll have to pick up some of the people and some of the slack in food growing -- while our own water shortages worsen.
- At two degrees, a couple of centuries of water engineering in California that have made the underlying desert bloom will reach the end of their capacity to hide water scarcity. We'll be
- In a three degree Celsius warmer world, the melting Artic will change weather patterns further. Low pressure systems that now blow in off the Pacific and dump rain on California will move north as Artic ice melts to open water. Scientists project 30 percent less winter rain fall. In these conditions, Forest Service scientists based at the Lawrence Berkeley lab project 50 percent more out of control wild fires in the San Francisco Bay Area -- and 125 percent more on the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.
- In a five degree warmer world, ninety percent of California's snowpack is gone -- there simply isn't any water in most of the state.
Okay, all this is scary as hell. Can we avert it? According to Lynas, maybe.
Click for a larger image of Lynas's chart.
The key to his prescription for us -- worldwide, collectively -- is not to allow carbon dioxide concentrations to exceed 400 ppm (parts per million) which would stabilize the climate at not more than 2 degrees warming and give us a chance of pick up after the mess we've made. We stand at 385 ppm now. We probably have less than 10 years to avert the most drastic parts of this forecast.
Does the species choose to fry? Apparently we can't avoid having an opportunity to find out.