The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Earth has what’s called a greenhouse atmosphere, with gases like carbon dioxide (CO₂), water vapor (H₂O), methane (CH₄) and others that trap heat that is radiated up from the surface, much like a greenhouse collects light and turns it into heat so plants can thrive. The greenhouse effect makes our planet habitable. When Earth’s surface gets hotter, more evaporation occurs, releasing water vapor into the atmosphere. Water vapor is a greenhouse gas and when more of it is in the air, it traps even more heat and radiates it back down to the surface. The extra infrared heat evaporates more water vapor, which traps more heat, then, in turn, evaporates even more water vapor, and so on. It becomes a feedback loop. Scientists believe a similar process may have played a key role in what happened to the planet Venus. A few billion years ago, high levels of carbon dioxide in the Venusian atmosphere may have trapped enough heat to trigger a runaway greenhouse effect that boiled away the oceans. Today, the surface of Venus is hot enough to melt lead.

The 2015 Paris climate accord set an aspirational goal of a 1.5 degree  target. A recent IPCC report ― authored by 91 researchers and editors from 40 countries citing more than 6,000 scientific references ― suggests that to meet that target, the world would need to aggressively phase out fossil fuels to meet net-zero emissions by 2050, and remove carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases out of the atmosphere from then on. More immediately, emissions would have to drop by about 45 percent below 2010 levels by 2030.

In any case, the 1.5 degree target would lead to very unpleasant consequences. Summers would suffer extreme heatwaves  similar to the 2003 degree heatwave in Europe that led to 10,000 deaths in France and over 35,000 deaths in Europe as a whole. Based on the 2003 experience, agriculture would be devastated, the flows of the River Po, the Rhine and the Loire would dramatically decrease, and glaciers in the Alps would begin to melt. The incredible, destructive forest fires recently seen in California would be the norm. It would indeed become intolerable to live anywhere in the tropics or even the subtropics, and a mass migration of people moving North or South to escape the heat would occur.

A 2-3 degree increase in temperature would involve world wide mass starvation due to the effect on agriculture of massive droughts and heat, accompanied by mass migrations of people searching for food.  Rain forests would be destroyed. The Greenland ice pack would melt as well as parts of the Antarctic ice packs, leading to world wide increases in ocean level and flooding of coastal cities. Several other tipping point phenomena would occur which would exponentially increase the rate of accumulation of greenhouse  gases: Melting of the tundra, releasing huge amounts of  CO2 and also methane, which is a much better greenhouse gas than CO2. Methane would also be released from melting of the methyl hydrides in the deep oceans. “Super hurricanes” would be the norm due to the energy derived from passage over the warm ocean. Massive flooding would occur due to the evaporation of ocean water leading to intense rain storms. Another consequence of increased CO2 is a decrease in ocean pH, which leads to death of shellfish and coral, and perhaps  has other less understood effects on fish life.

A 3-4 degree increase in temperature would involve massive migrations of people from the flooded coasts, almost certainly leading to wars as the industrial countries attempt to decrease the waves of migrations. Nuclear exchanges may indeed occur between Pakistan and India, Israel and the Arab states, the United States, Europe and Russia. The flooding may in fact slow down these wars as the sites of armies and launch sites are covered by water.

And finally a 4-6 degree warming  will be rapidly reached due to the tipping point events. By this time the structures of civilizations will become destroyed and people will revert to a hunter- gatherer life style for food.  Life will become almost  impossible as the earth turns into another Venus due to a runaway greenhouse effect. A recent report by dozens of U.S. federal agencies concluded that if nothing is done, a cataclysmic 4 degrees Celsius (or 7 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming is inevitable by the end of the century.

This would probably lead to Venus-like conditions, and there will cease to be life on the planet Earth!

The Ugly
A recent article by Noah Chomsky provides some responsibility for these horrible events. Many of the climate change deniers, including our moronic President, either are too stupid to  understand what the Scientists are saying or they understand it but assume that nothing can be done to avert these disasters, and so they may as well enrich themselves while the earth burns by continuing to pump and sell oil and methane. The energy companies are continuing to search for new oil fields and even the banks are investing in fossil fuel development. Chomsky concludes that “I cant think of anything like this in human history. You  just cant find words to describe it. And at the peak of this monstrosity is in fact the Trump Administration. It’s as if we are like the proverbial lemmings just  happily marching off the cliff, led by leaders who understand very well what they are doing, but are so dedicated to enriching themselves and their friends that it simply does  not matter what happens to the human species. There is nothing like this in all of human history. There have been plenty of  monsters in the past,  but you cant find one who was dedicated with passion to destroying the prospects for organized human life. Hitler was horrible but  not that.”