It's "Game Over" time, folks. This post will be depressing or challenging reading, depending on how you take it.
We're too late to save Earth as we know it. It's changing and it's going to continue. For those that doubt me, please read a copy of Dr. James Lovelock's book, The Vanishing Face of Gaia. I urge those on this list to read this book and consider his advice. It's long past the time where Greenpeace or Earth First! can do any good. Now they are just a sideshow, "environmental theatre." I know this is heresy. Get over it. It's too late. We need to start planning for how to deal with a much reduced Earth while we still have time.
It's "Game Over" time, folks. I have been wondering if this were the case for quite some time. As a well-educated layperson that follows the science press closely, the data has been more frightening than reassuring. When one recalls that the planet is an interlinked, chaotic system, our climate future comes into focus. It's time to prepare for humanity's retreat: a much smaller population, far different cultures, less cropland and food, larger desert areas, human migration further north or south for survival. And far, far more. It's all coming, some of it within the lifetimes of the people reading this post.
As Dr. Lovelock says: "Forget undoing the damage we've done and prepare to survive it." We can't undo it because we actually would have had to have started back in the 1960's to have made any difference. The lag time of climate change is so great that no matter what we do now, it's far too little and too late. The planet is going to heat up significantly (at least 5 degrees C) and we'd better figure out how to deal with it.
Can we deal with it any other way than what I said above?
Geoengineering projects are likely too large for us to complete, not to mention that we'd have to keep them running reliably for centuries.
Solar? Helpful, but too little, too late.
Nuclear? Helpful in the short run. The nuclear waste issue is essentially bogus when compared to the vast destruction coal mining and burning causes.
Wind? Not enough to make a big enough dent in time, if ever.
There is no point in debating whether there is any moral stigma attached to what we have done to Earth. As he says, just as the first single-celled photosynthetic life in the distant past created a climate crisis by pumping out oxygen in an anerobic world, we are just doing what we (the tool-building species) does. Humans build tools and alter our environment. That's what we did.
It seems to me that Gaia is no longer a mere hypothesis, but a full-fledged theory with predictive powers. It implied that arctic ice would melt much faster than the models said, and it was correct. The rate is 1.6 times the worst case scenario's predictions. It also made other predictions that have come to pass. It disagrees with our computer models because the models are vastly simplified because of lack of data, lack of computing power and inadequate understanding of the details of how the atmosphere works.
The biggest problem is that our world political and industrial leadership work to come up with "consensus" on what the models say. That's not scientific - the science says what it says. There is no "consensus" to be had. We can't "negotiate" with climate change any more than we can "negotiate" with a hurricane. Consensus is a political word and concept, not a scientific one. We can create consensus on how we propose to survive it, but we can't create consensus on the physical world.
What worries me the most is that I think humans will go to war over the habitable places left as climate change becomes obvious, rather than work on and implement plans to survive the coming changes while we still have time and resources to do so.
We have the choice of planning for survival of some of humanity in some civilized (I hope) form while we still have time or becoming literal fossils in rock strata. No one will be left to dig them up if that happens.
The choice is ours to make, but time is running out.
This post owes a great debt to Dr. James Lovelock and his books. He may well be considered one of humanity's greatest heroes someday.