Everyone talks about global warming and how it's gonna get hotter, but no one breaks down exactly what the effects will be if it happens. So I got National Geographic's "Six Degrees Could Change the World" and took a few notes, since most folks are too lazy to do the research.
These are my notes:
Usually warming occurs over thousands of years, not decades.
We've risen .8 degrees Celsius
1 degree Celsius Another
Dust Bowl in the Western US like the thirties - only bigger!
Sand dunes blow across the US plains
England will enjoy their best weather ever - able to produce wine and olives
2 degrees Celsius
insect migration to the north
some islands go under water
Coral reefs die, killing off 100s of 1000s of species.
Ocean algae that supports life and controls CO2 dies altering the way the ocean works completely
Coastal cities flood as Greenland melts
Nat'l Geographic says when the Arctic Ocean melts, that's when warming can become a 'runaway train'.
3 degees Celsius
will push warming over the edge
Arctic Ocean thaws all year.
Amazon Jungle turns to desert - (tributaries are already drying up)
We have El Nino every year
Europe becomes like the Middle east
Summer has Killer Heat Waves. - every summer
Paris 2003 30,000 died of heat strokes, which were uheard of there
Many deciduous trees start retaining O2 and releasing CO2
Dying trees from desrtification releases enough CO2 to raise warming to 4 degrees
Most violent storms ever - Katrina will be the norm
category 6 hurricanes
Basic life-support systems start to break down.
4 degrees Celsius -
hard to predict.
Rising Oceans displace a billion people from coasts and deltas
Glacial melting completes and cuts off freshwater flows to billions
Canada becomes agricultural
River Ganges - source of all freshwater in India - dries up to a creek
Manhattan floods
Europe develops desert as Alps melt and dry up
5 degrees Celsius
100s of millions of 'climate refugees' seek habitable land
civilization as a whole breaks down.
Only the rich remain comfortable, moving to better climates (which is why, I imagine, they don't care about it).
Natural disasters are common
People fight for dwindling resources
6 degrees Celsius
Mass extinction
Huge uninhabitable areas of land span the entire globe
Doomsday scenario
Cannibalism sounds like a good option
So I'm thinking the whole time I'm watching this movie, "What's the best method of population control?" Make as much money as you can, selling something that destroys the ecosystem, so you can blame the world's chaos on the masses, and take that money and build yourself a nice cozey little castle in the north til the rest of the population eats each other and kills each other off, then repopulate the world with your own DNA.
Survival of the fittest :-) Hey, it's just nature's way. The Cold Equation. (No ironic pun intended)
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