Climate Change Is Getting Me Down

I woke up today to yet another doom and gloom article about climate change. It’s the same story all over the place, the newspapers, TV and radio. The internet is full of it. Even my email inbox is choked with friends telling me about the latest 500 page scientific review adding yet another 1°C to Gaia’s temperature and spammers offering me the latest gizmo to save energy, or grow organic food without soil and even offering to help with erectile difficulties.

Quite honestly I’ve had enough, I might even be tempted to take that blue pill, or red pill, or whatever pill it was, to get back into The Matrix and never think about climate change ever again. Where’s that remote control…that ‘off-button’ never looked so good. I must remember to update that anti-spam software too…

Did you see the latest gloom from the stuffy old Met Office in the UK, those weather guys, running the latest gazillion-bit models, stuffed with positive feedback effects, reporting that by 2055 the average global temperature will be 4°C higher than pre-industrial levels. Shit. That’s got to be bad, right? Sure it is. Especially when you have 130 climate researchers in Oxford, in transcendental deep thought on the ramifications of the temperature increase.

Turns out it means no Arctic sea ice at all, not even in the winter. In fact, you will be able to grow grapes at the North Pole as temperatures rise a wacky 15°C there. Pity there is no land though, just lots more oil and gas to add to the never-ending party. You won’t need thermal jackets, more like Bermuda shorts, a Daiquiri, a snorkel and some serious petroleum-based mosquito repellent.

Problem is I can’t swim and don’t own a boat so an ice free Arctic doesn’t do much for me…and I really wouldn’t want to be out on that ocean, particularly one that’s risen an average of 1.4m (4ft 6”).

I’m sure glad I don’t have oceanfront property. I mean, if the mega hurricanes don’t get you, then the tsunamis probably will, especially as all that ice melts off Antarctica and Greenland, mega-billions of tons of weight that will lead to the Earth’s crust re-adjusting itself, creaking back into a shape it was millions of years ago.

Guess it will be just like my old back, all twisted and knotted from climate change worry getting straightened out by a good massage, lots of discomfort at the time but it sure will feel great afterwards. But not as good as it will be for all those Greenlanders who can sell building lots to those less fortunate souls who just lost everything to the rising oceans.

Forget the forests too – at these increased temperature the Amazon, according to those stiff, no nonsense, no BS Germans at the world-renowned Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, they reckon that 30% of the Amazon, or what’s left of it right now, will be shrubs! By 2100, 83% of it will be gone – so kiss goodbye to that dense tropical forest, those cool animals, undiscovered insects and plants and the indigenous peoples. Oh, and all that oxygen, well at least 20% of the world’s oxygen that is, we will need to try not to breathe too deeply and not exert ourselves.

The upside will be more grassland that will make the methane-farting beef cattle fatter and burgers cheaper… if there is any agricultural land left to grow wheat for burger buns, that is. I’m a veggie so that won’t work for me either. Guess I’ll also be dead by then. Ah, starting to feel better already...

I won’t have to worry about breathing less oxygen, but those extra 2-3 billion people from rampant population growth might have to start taking it in turns to breathe and to eat and drink, but there will be less animals and fish to share the air with since the ocean fish stocks will collapse by then, along with 30% of the world’s animal species!  In fact, by 2055 I’ll probably already be well on the way to senile dementia, so I won’t be worrying about what I’ll be seeing in the news, and I can also claim it was nothing to do with me or at least I won’t remember doing anything bad, or good, just business as usual.

Now which pill was it I was meant to take?

But maybe I can find a place to hide out while all this happens, retire some place nice and warm, not too warm of course...

But it won’t be Australia, because it looks like they get 10°C hotter and are likely to be burned 3 to 5 times more often than they are now. Maybe Canada will be OK…if I can avoid all that melting permafrost, coastal storms, plains tornados and those Americans looking for retirement homes away from flooded Florida, baking Texas, stormy California and the ocean flooded East Coast. Oh! I guess I forgot to mention that an average 1.4m sea level rise actually means somewhere around 3-4m on the East Coast due to all that ice sitting on top of Greenland, and because it will take something like 50 years for the ocean surface to level out.

Seems sea levels were already 2ft higher than normal this summer in the East, according to a National Geographic article. What’s so strange is that they said it wasn’t due to global warming – but went on to say it was a combination of a slow down in the Gulf Stream and the early arrival of Atlantic winds by a couple of months.  Like – duh! This is uncannily like what global climate change does…

Seems there are lots of people still taking the blue pill. Will I join them?  I thought about it, but probably not, never been one to take the easy way out. But do yourself a favor, or for your children and their children (or someone else’s children)… I don’t have any, so it won’t be for mine…and wake up.

Stop the business as usual crap, take control of your responsibilities, lower your climate impact and demand some action from your government at the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December.

This is it. If we blow this opportunity to work together now then we may as well party-like-there-is-no-tomorrow, because there won’t be a tomorrow for many people, animals, forests and islands.

The clock’s ticking – Countdown to Copenhagen.

Trevor Williams is a University of Victoria Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate specializing in renewable energy, power grid modelling and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. He has a bachelors in Aeronautical Engineering, a Masters in Management Science and over 23 years international experience in the space industry, having worked on Earth observation and telecommunications satellites. He is the author of the Eco-Geek blog and Climate Getting Me Down was inspired by the New Scientist article No rainforest, no monsoon: get ready for a warmer world.

Comments (5)

Show/Hide comment form