Is it possible that the results of climate change could be really cool?

Question

I mean if the world was changed so drastically that civilisation collapsed and humanity found itself in a cool mediaeval-like fantasy world, threatened by monsters (nuclear plants might collapse, causing weird mutations) and surrounded by the incomprehensible remnants of an older far more advanced civilisation (so that would be like magic).

Wouldn't that be excellent?

Answer 1

The grass is always greener on the other side isn't it. What if you were one of those mutants, affected my the meltdown of a powerplant. Dating would be a real challenge, in fact just making friends would be difficult. I think the worst part would be the constant nausea and shame of being a social reject. Then again, would it be a big change to your existing lifestyle????

Answer 2

During the medieval warm period (900 - 1200 AD) it was substantially warmer than it is today. There were vineyards in the north of England and agricultural communities on Greenland, without there being any catastrophic melting of the ice cap or the polar bears dying out. It was a time of relative economic prosperity, political stability and cultural development. It was at this time that most of the large cathedrals in Europe were built.
So don't let the alarmists or gloom and doom merchants con you into paying more taxes or not going on holiday.

Answer 3

Actually, however, History tells us that the real results of Global Warming, if we keep the politicians out of it, and work along with Mother Nature rather then kicking and screaming and fighting, are likely to be:

1. MUCH more food worldwide. Agriculture will prosper, with the warmth and higher CO2 levels as the seas release their CO2. Food crops will prosper, and as the ice melts we will have more and more land area to cultivate.

This has already been proven from writings from that period known as the MWP, and recent findings from 10,000 years ago in Peru, and the ruins of farms and towns now comming out from under the ice in Greenland.

2. The shallow sea extentions provide the potential for aquaculture, if we accept it, fish farming, lobster farming, sea weed farming, and even living in the shallow seas.. If we choose to accept it and design for it. Lots of new and interesting job potentials, and work for designers galore.

3. History again shows us that the periods of global warming that have already happened recently led to expansion in the Arts, as people did not have to work at subsistence farming, and had time to learn arts and sciences and move culture in general along.

Beautiful ornate buildings were put up, some of which we still have. They remind us of what can be done when Global Warming makes life easier, IF the human spirit is freed, not stifled by innumerable regulations and "thou cannot" oriented governments.

4. As the ice retreats, we will have more and more natural resources readily available for use. Russia is already claiming some of the Arctic Ocean bed for its resources, including a new oil bed for energy.

There will be new supplies of useful minerals. And the options with them to build new and ecologically better cities, replacing the old ones abandoned due to incursions of the seas.

If we wish, of course. But I cannot imagine turning down a spacious new city with green belts and all we know now about building well, to live in slums behind heavy sea walls trying to keep the oceans in check.

5. Israel has shown us how with drip watering and other techniques we can make even the desert areas "bloom" and produce food and flowers, and with the clear warm skies and lots of resources newly released we have the opportunity to do this, using known technology to farm the desert areas.

6. There will be more opportunities to make beautiful year-round parks, with the lovely flowers of the tropics, presuming of course that the current pressure to destroy the rain forests for growing biofuels does not leave us no rare and beautiful plants left to grow from.

At the present rate though, we have to move fast or there will be a brown belt around the earth of bulldozed destruction of the rainforests. Paid for in Carbon Credits.

7. We do all need to realize that the Earth has been through many cycles of Global Warming, and cooling, and Polar Bears have survived, man has survived and indeed prospered, storms have not wiped out the earth, and we have a huge biodiversity built up to expand on, if we will.

Of course, we can retreat and set up Big Government with zillions of regulations, and live as Orwell saw possible in his book, "1984".

I do think we are at a choice point between the two options, and the propaganda of the Global Warming frightmongers wants to condition us to an Orwellian future, which I would hate. As opposed to going with nature, and common sense, and enjoying what Nature has for us.

How did that one older ad go, "It's not nice to mess with Mother Nature?" I say we should move to enjoy what she gives us now, and work to make this a better climate politically as well, rather than a repressive attempt to keep the old old ways in a world that wants to be new.

The sci-fi world is unlikely, btw, because releasing enough radiation to case such widespread and massive mutations would in fact bleach the earth totally barren of life. Viable mutations do not come en-masse rapidly.

But I do think we have a potential for making a warm and excellent world, and also preparing for the next slide into 90,000 years of glaciation. Maybe we ought to be looking to building out in space and housing humanity there...before Mother Earth turns a cold shoulder on us, as History ALSO tells us will happen??

I am afraid the old adage that those who do not learn from History are condemned to repeat it will become true yet again, if we continue to let corruption and Big Government and demagogs run this our own world, and us, for their short-term benefits, and try to get in Nature's way!

Answer 4

See - this is what you get when you mix fantasy with science.

This is why science need to be held to objective standards, and not to the subjective 'consensus'.

Answer 5

That would be cool, compared to the probable outcomes.

Answer 6

make sitting in a traffic jam on the m25 interesting,with all those monsters about...

Answer 7

garik, your imagination is wilder than even mine! I'm envious!

Answer 8

anything is possible, but how bout we take action and avoid all that nasty stuff, eh?

Answer 9

erm...no