Why do so many of us doubt climatologists? Casting aspersions on their motives, ignoring their work, and dismissing their warnings.

Amitav Ghosh hinted at an answer in ‘The Great Derangement’, ‘Contrary to what I might like to think, my life is not guided by reason; it is ruled rather by the inertia of habitual motion.’ Are we trapped in the mindset of yesteryear, like the Generals always planning for the last war?

Or, is it that we are simply incredulous, dumbstruck, as if visiting a fortune-teller, who upon inspecting the tea leaves pronounces your doom? Climatologists are often branded scaremongers, hyperbolic loons, Socratically corrupting the youth with visions of apocalypse. They wouldn’t be the first, nor the last.

But perhaps the sceptics doth protest too much.

We don’t know because we don’t want to know. Yet, as the writer Aldous Huxley pithily put it, ‘Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.’ Nor, cancer vanish because you pretended not to notice the blood in the sink. Reality has a quality entirely of its own.

So, what are the facts? Where do we stand, and where are we headed? How will the major regions of the world fare, if the visions of the climate prophets come to pass? Basically, are we fucked?

United States of America

Roaming The Great Plains

One-thousand years ago, on the Great Plains which stretch from Canada to Texas, gargantuan dunes roamed. We call it the Medieval Warm Period, temperatures were roughly 1C higher, just enough to turn the tranquil landscape of deep-rooted prairie grass, into an endless sea of shifting sand. In time things settled; until once again, in the 1930s drought hit, the roots of the grasses which meshed the topsoil together had, misguidedly, been torn apart by deep ploughing. Like dust, millions of livelihoods, poverty-stricken and uprooted, were scattered on the winds.

The Crucified Land (1939), by Texan Painter Alexander Hogue, depicting the soil slashed and eroded by agriculture

John Steinbeck, who chronicled the events of the Dust Bowl in his Magnum opus ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, remarked, ‘There ain’t no sin and there ain’t no virtue. There’s just stuff people do.’ And my, oh my, haven’t we been busy.

In 1956, former Vice President Henry Wallace declared the corn belt — centred on the northern Plains — the ‘most productive agricultural civilization the world has ever seen.’ Today the plains are a vital breadbasket for wheat, maize, soybeans and cattle; at least until the water fails.

Below the Sandhills of Nebraska lies the Ogallala aquifer, it supplies 30% of the groundwater used in irrigation for the entire US and 82% of the regions drinking water. Already wells run dry, in western Kansas levels have dropped by more than 60%. Once depleted, it would take six-thousand years to refill. Just as it is needed most, it is gone.

The Sandhills namesake, the undulating dunes, still slumber beneath a thin blanket of topsoil. Once more, they threaten to awaken. By 2100, the region will face a drought unimaginable in human history, with a Palmer Drought Index of -15 — during the Dust Bowl, it was -2. In the south, an additional 30–60 days per year will top 38 degrees Celsius. Rivers will run dry as glaciers, and the annual snowpack vanish into memory. If the rains do come, it will be as a deluge, eroding the life-giving soils upon which millions rely. In North Dakota only ten of the initial forty centimetres of topsoil remains, turning from a deep nourishing black to pallid grey. Never has so much relied upon so little.

The Sandhills — Hooker County, Nebraska

Down in the Deep South

Along the southern coast, the problem is not too little water, but too much. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts at most six and a half feet of sea-level rise by century’s end. In south Florida, flip a coin; half the six million residents will be permanently flooded. Of the top 25 American cities most vulnerable to floods, 22 are in Florida: Miami, Pensacola, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, and the white towers of Miami beach will, like Atlantis before, sink beneath the sea.

The reality might be worse, as Professor Hal Wanless, at the University of Miami, puts it, ‘The rate of sea-level rise is currently doubling every seven years, and if it continued in this manner… we would have 205 feet of sea-level rise by 2095… while I don’t think we are going to get that much water… we could have something like 15 feet by then.’

Aerial of flooding caused by Tropical Storm Isaac near Lake Worth Road and South Shore Blvd. in Wellington in 2012. (Gary Coronado/The Palm Beach Post)

Before you build an ark, like a latter-day Noah, herding the animals aboard two by two, consider that the additional warmth in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico will fuel colossal hurricanes on the scale of Katrina or greater; though they will move slower, inside winds will top 200 mph, ripping cities apart, while dumping an ocean onto the land. Eventually, cities such as Houston or New Orleans will be overwhelmed, as the coastline recedes and damage accumulates year on year.

What do such events do to the American psyche? To have to admit defeat, to accept the perpetual retreat. As the west dries and the south floods, refugees will pour into a north-east and Great Lakes regions, beset by their own substantial problems. How long can a nation sustain itself under such pressure? How far can the ties which bind stretch before they snap?

Remember the biblical words of W.B. Yeats in his poem ‘The Second Coming’:

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world…

Indian Subcontinent

Bangladesh-by-the-Sea

Believe it or not, things could be worse. Bangladesh, a country of 163 million squeezed in an area the size of New York State, where cities overflow, building crumble down into the waste, into the cacophony of filth, where no one should have to live. And few want to. But, every year an estimated 100,000 people pour into the cities escaping saltwater flooding, scratching a living collecting plastic amongst the labyrinthine slums.

The country sits at the tip of the Bay of Bengal, a nexus point, where the Brahmaputra, Ganges and Meghna rivers join to form the largest river delta on Earth. Due to this peculiar geography, a recent analysis of tidal records found high tides were rising ten times faster than the global average. Sea levels could rise four times the global average to thirteen feet — or much more if Professor Hal Wanless is correct.

Two-thirds of land here is less than fifteen feet above sea level, and one-quarter is less than seven feet above sea level. By 2050, an estimated 18 million people will be displaced. To state the obvious, Bangladesh will be wiped off the map. Already, entire villages disappear in a matter of years, recently built roads suddenly jut out into the sea, heading nowhere.

Expectantly, India is fencing the country in; the predominantly Muslim population is unwelcome; neighbouring Myanmar is facing allegations of genocide of the Rohingya Muslims. With nowhere to go, and nowhere to hide, Bangladeshi’s find themselves trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea.

The Lifeline of Pakistan

To the west, Pakistan is amongst the top ten countries most affected by climate change; due in part to its reliance on the Indus River Basin (IRB), which flows precipitously from the glaciers and snowpack in the towering Himalaya and Karakoram mountains. The river, the lifeblood of civilisations for millennia, is at risk of drying up. In a business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, two-thirds of glaciers, vital to the river’s survival, will be lost. For now, water flows are increasing due to the melt, but after 2050 most rivers across the subcontinent will ebb away; eventually, even the Indus will die.

Around 300 million rely on the IRB and the complex web of canals crisscrossing the region. However, due to the partition of 1947, most of the headworks lie in India, but strangely 80% of the irrigated lands lie in Pakistan. Already a sore spot in a region’s glaring tensions, a drying climate and failing glaciers could tip the precarious balance.

Adding fuel to the fire, hellacious heatwaves, the stuff of nightmares are on the cards. Using ‘wet-bulb temperatures’, when the temperature of the air is measured by wrapping a wet cloth around a thermometer to replicate the body’s ability to cool down, scientists found we can survive up to 35C; after that, we cannot radiate off excess heat, which accumulates leading to a loss of vital functions and eventually death — a painful way to go. Worryingly, the subcontinental temperatures will exceed this threshold, leading to a lethal combination of heat and humidity.

Last year, the city of Chennai, which hosts 9 million people, ran out of water following three years of failed monsoons. In 2017 temperatures hit 54 degrees Celsius. You don’t need a crystal ball to see what’s next. Where do the regions 1.5 billion people go, when they no longer have anywhere to live?

If you’re hoping the world’s poor, the forgotten masses will slip away, history tells us otherwise. In the Bronze Age Collapse, a quarter of humanity became refugees, the mysterious ‘sea peoples’ — hypothesised to be refugees or migrants — precipitated the collapse of that antique world. Today, the stakes are even higher.

Europe

In the coming decades, nowhere will be spared; in the end, climate change will come for us all. As waves of African migrant’s march northwards in blind hope, to their surprise, they may find lands not dissimilar to those they’ve left, as the Sahara vaults across the sea, and into southern Europe.

Research from ETH Zurich issued a dizzying assessment. By 2050, the climates of Europe’s major cities will be unrecognisable. Paris and Berlin will resemble Canberra, Australia, with the latter experiencing peak temperatures 6.1C above today. Marseille will feel like Algiers, Leeds like Melbourne, London will be the new Barcelona, and Madrid will be as hot as Marrakesh. In southern Spain, the land lurches towards the desert. As one scientist warns, ‘The Med is very sensitive to climate change, maybe more than any other region in the world.’

Resultantly, agriculture is undergoing a revolution. Olives and grapes, once staples of the Med, are now being grown in southern England in quantities beyond farmers expectations.

In the Alps, temperatures rise 2C for every 1C globally. Switzerland presently faces annual water shortages. Helicopters face the Sisyphean task of airlifting tens of thousands of gallons of water every week to maintain the herds of cows stranded amongst the barren landscape. Permafrost which cements the mountainous terrain is melting, whole swathes are crumbling away, and the world-famous ski resorts are bare, spending vast amounts on artificial snow.

As Europe struggles to adapt to conditions more in common with the 2003 heatwave which led to 70,000 deaths, than the usual climate; millions of migrants will continue to flock to this once verdant and prosperous continent. Inevitably, they will find a husk of its former self. In the 2015 Syrian Migrant Crisis, 1.8 million refugees, migrants and asylum seekers crossed into Europe; bolstering far-right parties, anti-immigrant sentiments ran high, unity wobbled but the centre held once the crisis ended. What would have happened if it didn’t? Don’t worry about the answer, put the kettle on and wait, we’ll find out soon enough.

China

From the Yellow to the Pearl

In the West, China is the great Satan of climate change, a coal chuffing, baby-birthing nation bloody-mindedly pursuing the good life, and damned be the consequences. Rarely do we consider them the victims of it, but China is vast, especially to Westerners who barely know beyond Beijing. Consider this, of the people at serious risk of rising sea levels; one-quarter are in China, twice the number of Europe and the US combined.

It is a nation of extremes, insane wealth and eye-watering poverty, an ancient land, and yet so blindingly new. Shanghai, though inhabited for six thousand years, glistens with the skyscrapers constructed in the last twenty. It is the world’s largest container port and China’s financial hub, home to over 20 million people. In 2012, a report from UK and Dutch scientists declared Shanghai the most vulnerable major city in the world to serious flooding, with 17.5 million people at risk of displacement in a 3C scenario.

If the world warms 4C, a Climate Central study found that 145 million people living in cities such as Hong-Kong and Tianjin will be submerged. In the south, the dizzying rise of the Pearl River Delta centred on Guangzhou is awe-inspiring in its speed, soon the rising megacity will face the rising tide. Mangrove forests, small rivers and tributaries, once vital to people’s lives, might have offered protection, had they not been obliterated in the pursuit of so-called progress. Now the bay festers with garbage, fish die, and the filth-infested waters move hungrily toward the city.

The Drylands

If the people flee inland, they may well meet people fleeing towards the coast. Creeping deserts are devouring the interior’s arable lands, more than 1,300 square miles are lost each year. Drylands cover 50% of China’s area, as the Northern Chinese Plains — where the capital Beijing is situated — suffer devasting heatwaves, these lands will devour their way towards the sea.

Millions have evacuated from the west; however, resettlement is troublesome, most receive only a fraction of their former farmland, following recent relocations, a quarter of families received no land at all. At this rate, a third of China’s population will see their subsistence threatened.

Like the dust bowl before, dust and sand storms have intensified: chock-full of toxic pollutants, bacteria and viruses; these death clouds descend upon China’s eastern cities, including Beijing, causing deleterious effects on human and animal health, notably cardiovascular and respiratory disease, in a nation already choking on industrial smog.

Dust Storm in China, NASA

China, like the US, sustains itself on hope, the Chinese dream is a prosperous one. However, unlike the US, as a down payment on that hope, it takes your freedom. Can a monolithic one-party state maintain its vice-like grip on over a billion souls pushed to destitution? Revisiting Steinbeck, and the namesake of his book, he suggests not ‘In the souls of the people, the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.’ But, the Dust Bowl ended, returning the world to normal; now we are creating a new normal, and China is feeling the squeeze.

Controversial scientist James Lovelock noted China’s dilemma back in 2007, questioning: ‘The Chinese have nowhere to go but up into Siberia. How will the Russians feel about that?’

We know the answer, we know precisely what will happen, we’ve seen it before on the small stage of history. We thought then it was the long march of progress, but alas, we come to the end of the road, the road to nowhere that juts out into the sea. There we learn the terrible truth. All the wars, the disasters and droughts, the floods and famines, the genocides and massacres, were but the dress rehearsal. Take your places on the stage; the play is about to begin.

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