[url=https://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/news/2904/climate-change-drought-may-threaten-much-globe-within-decades]Basically, we're fucked.[/url]
Unless there are serious CO2 scrubbing efforts and agricultural innovations, the Earth could heat by 2 degrees by the 2040s, which is the absolute maximum safe limit. After this, the melting permafrost will create a runaway warming effect.
The data was revised by the source as perhaps being too ambitious in its predictions. The northern reaches likely won't be as moist, and droughts won't be as serious as predicted. This is likely the world between 2035 and 2049.
As you can see, America will face extreme southwestern temperatures on a much larger scale, with heatwaves and extreme heat being potentially commonplace [url=http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2010/pr-extreme-heat-study-070810.html]by 2039.[/url] It could be a problem in the southwest that Lake Mead's water level drops, [url=http://www.enviro-news.com/article/lake_mead_water_level_dropping.html]causing water crises.[/url]
As early as [url=http://news.yahoo.com/us-intel-water-cause-war-coming-decades-124621169.html]2022,[/url] terrorist groups and rogue States could be using water as a weapon of war. Particularly in the Middle East and North Africa and South Asia. Unfortunately, desalianation of salt water might not become a solution until a decade later due to patents in the market.
By the mid-2030s, the European Union will likely have collapsed with the surge of immigrants from the Mediterranean northwards, and from North Africa to the Mediterranean. It is very likely that Russia will become very geopolitically influential, along with the Scandinavian countries, as their warmer northern reaches become ideal for agricultural production.
What can we do to stop this? Not a lot. The 2040s is the decade by which we must have done something. Good ideas for combating global warming include agricultural innovations like genetically modified crops and controlled climates in vertical farms so food can be grown and provided locally. Whether the market will capitalise on this before the northern countries become food-producers can't be said. Ocean acidification will likely cause species of fish to suffer, so farming of aqautic life seems to be the way to go. As well as pushing for off-shore power stations which could serve as aquaculture and desalianation centres, there is a massive potential for nuclear energy. Fourth generation nuclear energy is expected to be commercially viable by the 2030s - not soon enough.
Britain has a large capacity to be a force for good in this. The space industry will have [url=http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/ukspaceagency/docs-2013/igs-action-plan.pdf]quadrupled in size[/url] by the 2030s. The government won't be able to help much, but subsidies for private space ventures and nuclear power seem like a seriously necessary undertaking. The sooner we can develop these two sectors, the sooner we can begin extracting [url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9669000/9669997.stm]Helium-3[/url] from the moon. This needs to be combined with serious, international CO2 scrubbing and sink efforts. After this, we can begin looking at long-term sustainability by way of solar, geothermal and especially GM-algae biofuel energy.
Even with such changes, it must be noted that these are merely adaptations. The effects of climate change, even if we don't reach the maximum safe point, will be irreversible.
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10 RepliesGlobal warming is a cycle of the Earth, calm down.