The Uninhabitable Earth — When Will The Planet Be Too Hot For Humans? Much, Much Sooner Than You Imagine.
From an Article by David Wallace-Wells, New York Magazine, July 9, 2017
Unbreathable air — We inhale not only oxygen and nitrogen, but everything else in ambient air. The air now contains 400 parts per million of CO2. If CO2 enters the atmosphere at the high level of the projection it will reach 1000 ppm by 2100. At that concentration, compared to the air we breathe now, human cognitive ability declines by 21 percent.
Hotter air increases pollutants. “An increase in pollution particles in the air of 10 micrograms per cubic meter cuts victims’ life expectancy by 9-11 years,” one recent study showed. 10 micrograms is ten thousandths of a gram. A dime weighs 28.3 grams, so 10 micrograms is one half a thousandth the weight of a dime!
By mid-century, Americans will be exposed to a 70% increase in ozone smog, the National Center for Atmospheric Research says. By 2090 2 billion people globally will be breathing air above WHO “safe” level. A pregnant mother’s exposure to ozone raises the child’s risk of autism, too. More than 10,000 people die each day from the small particles emitted from fossil fuel burning.
A metric called the Air Quality Index categorizes the risks and tops out at the 301-to-500 range, warning of “serious aggravation of heart or lung disease and premature mortality in persons with cardiopulmonary disease and the elderly” and, for all others, “serious risk of respiratory effects”; at that level, “everyone should avoid all outdoor exertion.” The Chinese “airpocalypse” of 2013 peaked at what would have been an Air Quality Index of over 800. That year, smog was responsible for a third of all deaths in the country.
Perpetual War — Violence goes with heat. Syria has experienced serious drought since 2007. The fight and the flight of its population are not due to politics only, but to the shortage of food, and terrible heat. It has long been recognized that interpersonal violence and war flourish in hot weather. Now the statistical correlation has been shown. When you increase temperature by half a degree, on average you see something like a 10 to 20 percent increase in the risk of conflict.
It can be expected that a planet five degrees warmer would have at least half again as many wars as we do today. Overall, social conflict could more than double this century. The U.S. military is obsessed with climate change. Droughts, food shortage, populations migrating, ocean rise, and greater violence with higher temperature make a very complex problem for them. There are 65 million displaced people wandering the earth now. When it is hot, suicides go up, crime goes up and people swear more on social media.
Air conditioning will not help because it is beyond the reach of most of the world’s population. Also it requires more energy, contributing to the temperature rise.
Permanent Economic Collapse — Neoliberalism the belief that economic growth will solve all problems. Crashes seem to inevitable, and many people even in advanced economies are marginalized. Now there is a school of historians studying what they call “fossil capitalism.” They believe the swift economic growth in recent history is not due to the dynamics of global capitalism, but to the use of fossil fuels after the mid 18th century.
Before that time, most people had a subsistence living. Conditions did not improve from one generation to the next. After fossil fuels are gone (assuming no other source of energy is used) the world will return to subsistence living.
Another group has studied the effect of temperature on economics. They find every degree Celsius warming costs 1.2% of the GDP (Gross Domestic Product, total value of all production of a nation). Since growth of GDP is in small whole numbers, 1.2% loss is quite significant. See here for the recent US record. The theory is quite complicated. Their median projection is for a 23 percent loss in per capita earning globally by the end of this century. This resulting from changes in agriculture, crime, storms, energy, mortality, and labor. The Great Depression lowered global GDP per person by 6%, for comparison.
Poisoned Oceans — There will be four to ten feet of sea level rise by 2100. One third of the world’s major cities are on the coast. With severe storms, a much greater area will be effected. People, industry, naval installations, farmlands, coastal food resources such as oysters and other shellfish will be affected.
More than a third of the world’s extra CO2 is dissolved in the ocean, making it more acid. Already coral bleaching is a problem in several areas, including the great barrier reef off the Australian east coast, the world’s largest. These protecting reefs contain much more wildlife than most oceans areas, some say one quarter of all sea life. Reefs supply food for half a billion people. More acid sea water will make it difficult to impossible for shell fish, which have calcium carbonate shells, to form their shells. The acid will affect other sea creatures, too.
Carbon absorption causes anoxic conditions, in other words, lack of oxygen, which destroys life dependent on oxygen, which includes most forms of higher life than microbes. Then hydrogen sulfide bubbles up as it does along the “skeleton coast” as it does off Mexico and Nambia. Hydrogen sulfide is extremely poisonous, making such areas prone to expand.
The great filter — Why don’t all of us see and worry about climate change? Because it is slow and we are psychologically adapted to react on a short time line. We get used to change, like the proverbial frog in water that is brought to a boil. It is hard to develop a sense of urgency for something that is not an immediate threat. Eventually consciousness will rise, but consciousness needs to come up in time to effectively deter what surely will happen on the present course.
More than half the carbon society has put into the atmosphere in all of history has been emitted in the last three decades! Some 85% has been produced since WWII, little time for science to discover and publicize it.
The fact that needed change gets into the pockets of some of the world’s most wealthy and powerful doesn’t help. There is a huge barrage of disinformation, and very effective political power being brought up to fight the rising consciousness of the public. This is particularly true in the United States, but also in other places where coal, oil and gas are an economic power.
How will it go? That’s anybody’s guess.
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