"A.D. 2040.
If we were to give this year a name it would be Despair. This is the hopeless world that we have left our children and grandchildren. Where once our lives were measured and enriched by the cycle of the seasons, in summer there is now only searing heat and the certainty that it will get hotter. Seasons exist only in the nostalgic longing of us old enough to remember the richness of life. Summer once took us to the world's coasts for the pleasure of sea and sand and cooling breezes; now, rising sea levels have driven millions of coastal and island peoples inland. Food is scarce. The Great Plains of America, once the bountiful bread basket of the world, are a vast dust bowl. And those who cannot find food or shelter from the unrelenting sun are growing sick. Daily, it seems, we face new famines, new droughts, new flooding, as the Earth's climate inexorable warms. Daily, experts try to play God, desperate to determine what each new ecosystem will be, before it, too, is lost. This is the nightmare world of 2040 on this sad excuse for the planet we once called home."
This may seem like a pessimists fantasy. This? Earth? OUR planet? i don't THINK so. However, this prediction is based upon computer insight. Scale models of Earth (winds, jet streams, high and low pressure systems, as well as human induced variables like carbon dioxide producing) are inserted the computer, and then put through 24 hours and it reasonable predicts weather for the planet. If you put it through 438 000 hours (50 years) and u get Despair.
"Right now, in 2040, the temperatures are about five degrees Celsius (9 F) warmer than they were in 1990. At the highest latitudes, the temperatures are almost 10 C (18 F) warmer. You just have to look at a city like Washington, D.C., to see the impact. Washington is in the middle of a searing heat wave. The temperatures have been over 32 C (90 F) every day for the past three months. Fifty years ago, we saw that kind of weather maybe 30 days a year.
The heat has had a dramatic impact on the amount of food available for the world's population, because the frequency of droughts has increased enormously; as was predicted back in teh 1980's, the warming up of the Earth's surface drove away rain-bearing clouds. Now, growing areas of the world, the bread baskets--the United States, Canada, Australia--have dried out."
Source: "it's a matter of Survival" David Suzuki and anita gordan. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1991 |
