Tuesday, 20 December 2016

MELTDOWN - COMING SOON TO A CITY NEAR YOU

Arctic temperatures are NOW, in December 2016, from 20C to 30C warmer than usual. 

The 3 km high ice-mountains on Greenland, Northern Canada, Northern Siberia, Northern Russia, around the Arctic Ocean - are melting. The permafrost is melting. The sea-ice is greatly reduced. The oceans are 1C warmer, which is a lot of extra heat.

The news from Antarctica is similar - though it is of course summer in the southern hemisphere; and there are fewer research stations on the south polar region to collect the data. Antarctica ice mountains are 5 km high. 

If and when all the polar ice melts, sea level will rise 200 to 300 feet (up to 97 metres). Except of course on coastlines where Donald Trump has built hotels and golf-courses - because he, employing the full powers of a USA-President-Elect, denies climate-change is happening. Everywhere else on Earth, the meltdown will increase sea-levels by metres (yards). 

At this stage, it doesn't matter a tinkers cuss who dunnit or didn't do it; whether it is man-made (anthropogenic) or sun-spot cycles or volcanic activity or divine intervention. It is happening and we 7 billion humans will have to adapt. 5 billion of us live on the coastal margins - by the sea and up to 100 feet above sea-level. Our farms, factories, fuel, transport and families will all be underwater. 

When? Science cannot give us an answer because (1) we haven't collected enough data and (2) there are too many variables of factors we, modern society, have never encountered before. How fast does an ice-cube melt in various different conditions. Try it - and take bets. My bet is it is coming far faster than science predicts. Buy an amphibious home or move uphill. But 5 billion refugees will call on you, however high you go.

How loudly do we need to shout these facts, this news, to the squabbling governments and populations of the world before they will take action? 

What will happen to me and my friends and enemies? I've answered this in novel form. Novels, which reflect the uncertain time-scale and scientific course of events;  and novels whose stories of families like ourselves, communicate the reality of what we all face, to the widest audience.

The first book OUT OF THE DEPTHS tells what happens, now, in London & New York (and the rest of the world) as sea-levels rise. I envisage disease, plagues as health-systems breakdown, wiping out 80% of us as we migrate to higher land. Read it as  a survival guide.

The second novel transports three of us from now, five hundred years into the future - to 2516 AD-After Global Warming - to a Utopian world of 11 billion civilised souls who function without money, want or strife. It is truly a good-read. I hope AD 2516 will act as a compass needle pointing to how we can arrive at a great future. 

Read the books - and then harass your governments. This is the most serious problem we have.

Happy Christmas. 

Noel Hodson


No comments:

Post a Comment