So we’ll structure this in the following manner
- why the temperature range of the last 10,000 years is important
- why some pretty clever people think we need to act, and
- what will happen if we don’t

Got it? Good. Read on, and arm yourself with knowledge. You can also check our effects page for more info.

Ok, so take a look at the below graph. You’ll notice that for the last 10,000 years there has been a very stable climate across a very narrow temperature anomaly band (about +/- 0.5deg C). Now, I don’t (and I am still looking) have the date this is current to, but I think it’s a tiny bit old. Anyway, you can see the IPCC’s modelling, with a degree of uncertainty (incidentally, these numbers probably need revising upwards – a lot). I want you to have a think about what happens if we move out of that band, to the degree shown in the graph. You’ll notice that within the narrow confines of that graph, we have a had a mini-warming, in the Medieaval Period, and a mini ice age. My bet is that with the temperatures that the IPCC is talking about, combined with new data that shows even higher temps as well as all the predicted increased warming from feedbacks, we’re in deep trouble.

So, what do we have to look forward to? Well as much as I HATE doom and gloom, reality does need some air. I mean, it’s no use being all happy go lucky and tra-la-la everything is going to be alright, if it isn’t. We need to man up and face up to this. So here it is, what we can expect.

We can expect dustbowls in a lot of the world as well as permanent drought – read. We can expect extensive desert areas. People abandoning their land.

Environmental refugees – the Maldives is already buying land as a hedge against this, as a new location for their country. That’s right, a country is probably almost certainly going to need to relocate.

Australia’s drought is set to be permanent in the SE. One that will last a long, long time. This will affect the US, China. No one is immune. No one.

We face oceans that are significantly affected both in their ability to provide us food and one whose reefs, like the Great Barrier Reef, are killed off in part or their entirety. Meanwhile the CO2 will keep climbing as the oceans acidify and important carbon sinks and lungs of the Earth like the Amazon are virtually destroyed (for a long, long time).

Worst of all, we have mass human deaths from famine. All this as we experience a population explosion that will almost certainly cause famine. Global warming and ice melt does NOT mean we will have more arable land to farm (that moron Andrew Bolt at the Herald Sun seems to think so, no I do NOT want to link to him) – see below.

No, what we’re talking about is a new age of humanity. Have a read of this. It seems hard to imagine, surrounded by iPods, TVs, cars – anything that we want, when we want – that we might have to shift our way of living. It seems surreal. Fantastical. Nope. It’s a reality – from New Scientist:

ALLIGATORS basking off the English coast; a vast Brazilian desert; the mythical lost cities of Saigon, New Orleans, Venice and Mumbai; and 90 per cent of humanity vanished. Welcome to the world warmed by 4 °C.

And:

Four degrees may not sound like much – after all, it is less than a typical temperature change between night and day. It might sound quite pleasant, like moving to Florida from Boston, say, or retiring from the UK to southern Spain. An average warming of the entire globe by 4 °C is a very different matter, however, and would render the planet unrecognisable from anything humans have ever experienced. Indeed, human activity has and will have such a great impact that some have proposed describing the time from the 18th century onward as a new geological era, marked by human activity. “It can be considered the Anthropocene,” says Nobel prizewinning atmospheric chemist Paul Crutzen of the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry in Mainz, Germany.

This is why people like Bill Clinton and Steve Chu (new US Energy Secretary, Nobel Laureate) are as blunt as:

California’s major part of its water storage system is in the Sierra Mountains. It snows there, and then we have dams, but it’s the snow and the slow melting of the snow and the forests in the watershed area that helps store the water in California. And much of the Central Valley is desert. Los Angeles, San Diego — it’s all desert. Without water — right now, California spends about 20 percent of its electricity moving water. What is being predicted in climate change, there are two bracketed scenarios. The more optimistic one — that we will really control carbon emissions, that we will get a handle on this, and we’re talking the end of this century — even by mid-century, in the optimistic scenario, we will have decreased our snow pack by 20 percent on an average basis. And our forests are going to begin to die, because of parasites and such. At the end of this century, optimistic scenario, you will have decreased [snow pack] by 47 percent. In the pessimistic scenario, the snow pack will decrease by 70 to 90 percent. Well, let me tell you what California does when there’s a two-year in a row 20 percent decrease in snow pack: They water-ration.

Q: So you’re looking at a scenario of permanent water rationing?

CHU: No, you’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California. When you lose 70 percent of your water in the mountains, I don’t see how agriculture can continue. California produces 20 percent of the agriculture in the United States. I don’t actually see how they can keep their cities going.

This is not only true of California, this is true for all the Western states. Forests are dying because of parasites. The pine bark beetle is killing pine. British Columbia has already lost 40 percent of its pine … so, when there are no trees, when it rains, the soil doesn’t hold the water… The American public needs to be made aware that this is happening. This is a real economic disaster in the making for our children, for your children. If you live in California, any of the Western states, this is going to be very serious. In the Upper Midwest, water shortages, huge water shortages are being predicted. … It goes back to this fire insurance. How do we find the political will? It hopefully has to come from the people of America.

This is why we must act, or else we risk destroying everything we take for granted – like the surf and waves, the amazing forests, the amazing animals, the MAGIC you felt the first time snow fell on your cold face and bare skin, as you marvelled at the snow flake, that seemed to be made just for you.

• Climate Change: not so good for anyone (especially for snow seasons and drinking water)
• The planet is still melting: how will affect your snow season
• Climate change trajectory – very fast
• Think climate change won’t affect you, Snow Person? Wrong.
• Despair + Hope.