What Happens When the World Gets Hot?

#ClimateChangeIsReal if things don't change

​With the wildfires engulfing the West Coast. My friend in Seattle texting me a picture of yellow smoke in his house. And the news media reporting POTUS 45 denying all this, I felt the need to write something about Rosella’s climate change.

I’ve been meaning to write something about how the world becomes flooded. It’s complex science, so I can’t blame POTUS 45 for not understanding. Honestly, I think most of us don’t understand weather except what we see up in the sky.

Mentally it's fairly easy to deny it because it's such an model driven concept with a speculative end result. As POTUS 45 is known to say, "I don't think science knows, actually." This is a truism in that science as a discipline doesn't have all the answers.

Many have faith in science that it has all answers, but in the end much of it is speculation. And I hate to say it, even the climate change modeling has ranges of outcome possibilities depending upon certain inputs. Change the inputs, the results change. This is the nature of science. But this doesn't change the facts on conclusions concerning climate change based on the data (i.e. that human activity is impacting our climate).

And yes, Mr. President, the weather does change but that doesn't stop the fires from coming back next year. Or the year after that. Or the one after that. Or the next twenty years. Each fire being worse than one before. That's what climate and environmental planning is all about. Taking interventions for the common good of all.

Rosella's World

Rosella’s dystopian world is where global warming has gone unchecked to the point it has heated up to an average of 89 degrees Fahrenheit globally. That’s 28 degrees more than the current world average. It’s the average world temperature typically found during the Carboniferous geological period.

In building this world, I’ve had to deal with the complex problems of extreme global warming. This means stuff like extreme storms and wildfires, besides flooding. But that’s only touching the surface of things.

I’ve also added a twist to this climate catastrophe by changing one variable. I base the weather pattern on a single Hadley cell going from the equator to the pole. This is like Venus. Why did I do this? This is an assumption on my part because Venus is a runaway greenhouse. Could this really happen? I have no clue, but many scientists have not explored this.

What I Found

Overall, this is what I’ve discovered in trying to build a world like this-

1. Raising the temperature this far causes all the polar ice to melt. Thus, raising the ocean levels by 216 feet on average. In my research, I discovered math that pointed to this happening much quicker than what many scientists think. The math showed a delta of 121 years going from the current temperature average and ocean levels to the levels I desired. Many scientists typically predicted thousands of years to melt the polar ice caps completely, but they base their assumptions on a much slower warming trend. For this to happen in my future world there must be mechanisms that speed up global warming, aside from unchecked human activity. To help this equation, I added in the middle of the U.S. a volcanic trap system (the New Madrid Traps) spewing tons of greenhouse gases out. This is not unlike previous geological volcanic traps that have warmed up the planet before.
2. Having just a single Hadley cell causes the weather to reverse in direction and produces weather patterns of wet and dry seasons across the entire north or south part of the globe. This gives rise to seasons where more savanna like conditions persist. Wildfires are prone in certain areas during the dry season. Storms during the rainy season are typically large and strong hurricanes/typhoons depending upon the amount of energy they can gather.
3. The rising waters change so many political boundaries that in the U.S. some states disappear. Rising waters would cause across the globe massive migrations to areas that were dry. Such migration even from citizens fleeing rising waters would cause social anxieties for those dry communities. I realized that underdeveloped nations might handle such migration problems with greater ease by using direct military force than developed nations. I noted that developed nations have people that are more protective of personal resources and resistant to the use of military force. Not that a developed nation could not use military force under such situations, but I noted there’s a general reluctance in many democratic developed nations to do so if they can get away with it.
4. With a single Hadley cell system, ozone distribution becomes a problem. What happens is a greater thinning of ozone across more of the globe than just the current equatorial regions. This will increase the amount of ultraviolet radiation. Consequently, I have many seeking a genetic solution to the problem by having their cloned children naturally darkened through increased melanin. Having scant amounts of melanin in the skin will unfortunately result in a bad sun burn every day with my future world.
5. Many plants and animals go extinct as predicted. But this opens niches for new animals and plants. Some of which I have humans introduced through genetic manipulation, such as My Pet Dragon (a flying dragon-like lizard). Just like the Carboniferous period, insects are going well and have become the main protein diet for many. With a mono-Hadley wet-dry climate, you end up with a globe that’s like the African plains or the jungle regions of Southeast Asia. The equatorial regions become so hot that desertification happens. The cooler climate creatures and plants die off rapidly, being replaced with more savanna and tropical ones. Humans just help transmigrate species into the new climates to replace lost plants and animals.

In Summation

Despite being dystopian, it’s not all bad. Simply different from what we are used to today. Humanity continues to live with this hotter world. Some things die off and others adapt. This is not unlike what has taken place in all geological history. The only difference is humankind is chiefly behind this one. Especially the New Madrid Traps which is the result of fracking along this geological fault line.

This is not to say we, as humans, shouldn't try our best to change our ways. We are intelligent creatures with inherent responsibilities. We should try to understand the science behind weather, how we impact it, and how we can ensure the greatest good for all of creation from our technologies as it relates to weather. All this with understanding that we are at the same time flawed, and can still fail at this endeavor despite our efforts.

Climate change is not a light switch. You can't just flick it on or off by doing X or Y. It's complex. So far humanity has been changing things since the start of the industrial revolution. That's a long time for our species if you think about. And look at what's happened since.

If I invest in wind power for my electricity that makes a tiny impact, but it will take my entire nation doing this to even make a dent in the environment. Similar to how everyone during the industrial revolution was doing the same thing across the global at the same time. 

If you don't want Rosella Tolfree's world, and having to eat bugs for breakfast, lunch and dinner, then it's time that whole nations must be honestly committed to substantial change.

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Image- Here in Puerto Rico from February to April/May is the fire season and burning of plants and trees in the wilderness., By Benjamin Lizardo, Source Unsplash, Unsplash License (Processed using Adobe Splash)