What Global Warming Looks Like : Global Effects

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Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" is hardly the first or last word on the subject, but for many people it brought the issue to light. The movie "The Day After Tomorrow" is a Hollywood dramatization along those lines. I'm not a government funded think tank (so maybe I'm less biased -- ha!), but here's how I think the future might go down.

Actions of Politicians

George Bush and Dickhead Cheney and politicians like them continue to line their pockets and give figurative blow-jobs to their corporate interests (hey, Republicans AND Democrats know about blow-jobs). By definition, Capitalism only looks at the bottom line, and corporations are legally obligated to make money for their stock holders. So, here's a news flash: Capitalization is just as amoral and incomplete as any other system. A bearish economy might give Bushy and the Boys some good cash, but hey, the environment has always suffered because of such myopic thinking. I forsee that this trend continues, resulting in more pollution, more carbon dioxide emissions, and more neglecting of the environment.

Global ice caps continue to melt. Al Gore presented research that says that if Greenland goes, global sea levels rise 20 feet. Well, if Greenland goes, the North Pole and Antartica would be soon to follow, so I'd make an estimate that sea levels would rise 50 feet. Hey, in every engineering class I ever took, we over-estimated for calculations like this. The calculation that should be made is "How much would sea-levels rise if all our ice melted?"

Ok, sea-levels are up 40 or 50 feet. This would make the Katrina "disaster" look like a joke. The majority of the Earth's population lives near the coast. The ice wouldn't melt instantly, so those billions of people would have time to get out, triggering the largest migration in human history. Manhattan, Florida, and half of Los Angeles would all be underwater. Not to mention Bangladesh, Indonesia, and swaths of China....

Oops... if the coast goes, so does most of the planet's arable land. Read: huge reduction in crops and massive starvation because we simply won't have as much farmland. More on that later...

Oh yeah, and if the sea-level rises, there go our sea ports. That's right: international shipping would take a massive hit (or cease entirely). A few deep-water ports might be able to be converted to the new coastline... but there would only be a handful.

Weather Changes

Weather would continued to change. We'd have more drought and more flooding. Anyone read "The Grapes of Wrath"? We're talking about weather here that might make the 1930s dustbowl look pretty good in comparison. Already articles are surfacing showing that the American West and parts of South America are headed towards this harsh pattern of drought and flood. Although this might equate to a longer growing season farther north, any arable land would be harder and harder to maintain due to the increasing extremity of the weather (i.e. drier droughts and wetter floods). Food prices would go up, starvation would get worse and worse. It brings to mind a little saying: "Society is only a meal away from anarchy."

Rise in Crime

Another little research project to do would be to estimate what kind of crime would rise with massive shortages of food and shelter. Rapes, murders, and all those things you hear about in those nasty refugee camps would probably go off the charts. The poor would bear the brunt of this I would expect, as per usual (see article in New York Times). Already in Africa, we have seen increased warfare as farmland is lost to desert. As the climate changes, the heat would go up in more way than one: neighboring tribes would become increasingly hostile to preserve what farmland they had left.

Halt of the Petroleum Based Economy

If international shipping goes, our petroleum based energy supply would be very short lived. Tractors, combines, and the trucks used to transport the harvests just couldn't cut it (and forget about using our precious oil to ship Barbie Dolls and Play Stations). Those old-timey third-world farmers would be much better off when the technological clock gets set back about 2,000 years by this kind of disaster. Hey, hey, hope your food cellar is REALLY big!

Ecological Damage

It seems obvious that rising ocean levels would coincide with mass extinctions. I'd like to see a study of the 100 most adaptable animals on the planet. Those dainty little creatures with finicky diets would probably die. Say goodbye to parrots and panda bears. Things like coyotes and cockroaches would be king. Mass extinctions all up and down the food chain. Birds wouldn't migrate, plants would wither, and it would be bleak and depressing for anyone who remembered what our planet used to look like.

Technology

Technology isn't always the most robust thing out there. If cell phone towers, power stations, or data centers went underwater, we could pretty much say goodbye to computers and phones. I remember the microburst in Lawrence, KS and another one in St. Louis... a few trees came down, then BOOM... power and phones were out for days. If you want to do a correspondence course from the Learning Annex, I might recommend "making stone tools" or "learning to cure meat in the wild." Our current infrastructure is VERY vulnerable to violent weather conditions when a downed tree can knock out power to a whole neighborhood. If our food and oil supply goes, there isn't going to be much ability to repair our electrical system.

Social Impact

Katrina was easy because Americans were evacuating to America, but what would happen if one country's citizens had to evacuate across a border? Language and cultural barriers would come to the fore. Another study: just like we have exit routes for every hotel room, what would be the evacuation route for every major population center? Which countries are enemies with their lowland neighbors? Which have religious differences? What if those who had food didn't speak the language of those who needed it? It would probably be a bad time to live on an island.

Religious Impact

The fundamentals of all religions will LOVE this. They will be convinced that it's the second coming or something and they won't do anything to help. They may even try to prevent people from working on useful solutions. Pat Roberson and the militant Muslim clerics like Chellali Benchellali will say it's all the work of the devil and their ranks will swell. And since fundies are such "loving" people, they will certainly try to kill each other en masse. Maybe they'll form maurading bands of freaks and waylay "heathen" travellers.

Environmental Impact

Ocean Life

God knows what will happen to the ocean. Salinity levels will drop. The oxygen levels will drop with each rising degree. I've seen this happen in Colorado ponds -- fish in ponds suffocated because the water got too warm to maintain a sufficient level of oxygen. Things would change for sure, and a majority of the plants and animals would have a hard time adapting to changes happening this fast. Oh, right... and if you don't believe in evolution, our planet is completely screwed.

Fires

Fires. Wildfires and forest fires would be rampant, and there would be less infrastructure to contain them. Paradoxically, it would become more and more important for them to be contained.

I'm sure there are more aspects to consider, but these are the things that got me started.

Disbelief : Calling it a Hoax

Some people out there may say that "Global warming is a hoax," or that there isn't enough evidence to support theories like this. On the whole, I think that kind of thinking is pretty ignorant. It's like someone's got a gun to your head and is going to pull the trigger, and you're supposed to relax because some people out there say it's not loaded. Didn't these doubters ever take a class on gun safety? There are certain things you just don't f*ck around with, guns and climate-change being two of them. Changes in the climate occur cyclically, yes, but the evidence we've seen suggests that it is happening now on a scale never before seen. And while some people may not find the current evidence convincing, who out there has convincing evidence that global warming is NOT happening? It needs to be considered. If all the possible consequences I've outlined above don't make you want to consider the possibility, read something by a real scientist.

Science vs. Politics

There may be some scientists out there penning facetious articles, but I think it's totally absurd to say that the whole issue is a sham. Scientists are traditionally hired for their objectivity and ability to observe phenomenon without bias. Politicians, however, live and die by such shrewd manipulation of facts and opinions. A scientist may lose his job for deviating from the truth; a politician may get hired. Politicians are members of huge, money-driven organizations -- just look at how many billions of dollars corporations spend on "lobbying" each year. Scientists may have a few clubs and organizations, but nothing on a scale of the politicians. If anyone is going to point the finger at people getting political, it should be first and foremost at the politicians. People from Bush's camp, for example, have repeatedly challenged scientific reports, ignored them, or fabricated their own data without a shred of qualification or evidence.

Considering "An Inconvenient Truth"

And finally, those criticisms lobbied against Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" just don't move me much, and here's why: Al Gore made a MOVIE. It's not a newscast, it's not a school textbook, it's not an article for a scientific periodical, nor did it claim to be. YES, he's a politician, and yes, it would hardly be surprising if he was milking the movie for political reasons. But importantly, the facts and figures he presented in the film came from articles that you can read yourself. He presented his footnotes. You can cross check his data, and many of the points raised in the film I had already read in articles previously. And unlike dip-sh*ts like Ann Coulter, Gore's footnotes actually were used correctly and did not take the data out of context.

For comparison, let's look at Fox News. Rupert Murdoch owns something like 9 satellite TV networks, 100 cable channels, 175 newspapers, 40 book imprints, 40 TV stations, and a movie studio. He has given huge sums of money to the Republican party, and it has been reciprocated. The Fox network consistently misrepresents facts and thrives on presenting opinions BECAUSE OPINIONS CAN'T BE PROVEN WRONG. Calling Fox News "Journalism" is an inaccurate misnomer at best. Every morning, Fox anchors get memos from the top down delineating what they can say and how they can say it. Fox is a political propaganda system dedicated to representing pre-approved views AND they have the insulting gall to call this Stalinist modus operandi "Real Journalism: Fair and Balanced." I've never heard of any legitimate news operation (newspaper or broadcast) operating in this manner. There is no news network in history that has ever reported less, yet they play the ridiculous line "We report. You decide." If you can't get your head to do a reality check on Fox News, contemplating global warming is probably beyond you, but I digress...

A study by the BBC showed that people who watch Fox are more likely to get facts WRONG. You can check yourself; if Fox ever gives you a footnote to a "fact," you'll have trouble tracking it down or you'll often find that they quote something that aired on one of their other channels... it's like saying "it's a fact, because we said it was." I could go on, but I think I've made my point. The only reason I include these final 3 paragraphs is because I have been challenged on these points. I lived in Communist China, and I know what propaganda smells like, and Fox reeks of it. (Ha! Murdoch has a joint venture with China's People's Daily. I knew I recognized that foul odor).

I wouldn't laud "An Inconvenient Truth" as a bastion of fairness, but IT NEVER CLAIMED TO BE -- and there are certain things I just don't f*ck around with. At least that movie had some sense of integrity. Anyhow, if you want to get upset about politics in the news, complaining about Al Gore's movie is a gross mis-prioritization, and I think that's about as generous as I can be about the issue.