Earth 2099
Population crashes
Mass migration
Vast new deserts
Cities abandoned
The editorial starts:
DESPITE the numerous warnings about extreme weather, rising sea levels and mass extinctions, one message seems to have got lost in the debate about the impact of climate change. A warmer world won't just be inconvenient. Huge swathes of it, including most of Europe, the US and Australia as well as all of Africa and China will actually be uninhabitable - too hot, dry or stormy to sustain a human population.
This is no mirage. It could materialise if the world warms by an average of just 4 °C, which some scientists fear could happen as soon as 2050. This is the world our children and grandchildren are going to have to live in. So what are we going to do about it?
And Gaia Vince's article (what were her parents thinking) make dieoff.com sound like a walk in the park.
happychicken wrote:The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained
Is that true? We would need more than 200 people to continue the species, wouldn't we? Genetic diversity and all that?
happychicken wrote:The good news is that the survival of humankind itself is not at stake: the species could continue if only a couple of hundred individuals remained
Is that true? We would need more than 200 people to continue the species, wouldn't we? Genetic diversity and all that?
Allegedly evolution works much faster in small populations, so it may actually be a new species which ends up continuing, one with a bit more common sense with any luck.
Somebody I know who is a geneticist reckons you need more like 10,000 people to ensure a healthy gene pool...
Not what I believe not what I know just what I was told by someone cleverer than me
The new scientist article was good though...sort of explains why we're up poo creek without a paddle...the creek being the 'way things are going' the paddle being the need for planetary wide cooperation...could happen I suppose
I cancelled my subscription to New Scientist as it was getting to sound like a religious doctrine. There are other things than global warming to report about..... Blah Blah Blah. Give it a rest
Just had a count up. In this week's issue of NS there are 37 articles and 10 letters that have nothing to do with global warming and 7 articles that are related to that subject. There is one article entitled, 'Hidden religious agendas and how to spot them', so readers are well armed in case Ziggy's warning is valid.
There's a picture in Gaia Vince's article that I thought particularly disturbing:
In geological terms I guess it shows the realtime formation of the Upper Anthropocene Unconformity, the layer that marks TEOTWAWKI and the start of the Post Anthropocene Desert Sandstone Formation.
I've found the exact same spot on Google Maps, which a little zooming out shows the town of Dunhuang located in an inlier within a rather inhospitable landscape. It's not going to be long before this place becomes uninhabitable.
