"Our food should be our medicine and our medicine should be our food."
~ Hippocrates

SAVE OUR PLANET
GLOBAL WARMING AND OUR FUTURE

By Robin Greenslade

How will global warming change our lives? Scientists predict that the planet would continue to warm for 20 to 30 years even if we stopped all greenhouse gas emissions now. But emissions are increasing every year. The effects of today's global warming will be felt for decades, if not centuries. What will our lives be like in the future?

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported in 2002 that human changes to Earth's climate are ongoing and that it is too late to prevent future catastrophic events. The IPCC forecasted:

• Widespread death from heat stress.
• Increasing devastation from weather disasters.
• Acute water shortages.
• Rapidly transmitted diseases.
• The possibility of an altered Atlantic jet stream freezing Europe.
• 5.4 billion people living in areas where water is scarce within 25 years, compared to 1.7 billion in 2002.
  

The IPCC chairman, Robert Watson, stated that tens of millions of people may be displaced by rising sea levels and that agriculture will be disrupted in tropical and sub-tropical countries. Satellite photographs show that global warming caused Arctic ice-cover to shrink by 540,000 square miles between 1980 and 2005, while the central ice pack has thinned by 40%.

Arctic ice is melting even faster in 2006. Methane, a greenhouse gas at least 8 times more potent than carbon dioxide, is being released from ice-free areas of the Arctic. Meanwhile, sections of Antarctic ice up to 16 miles long are breaking off the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.

Sea levels will rise. Many coastal cities may be drowned. Ongoing warming of the top 300 meters of oceans will create increasingly severe hurricanes, adding to the woes of many coastal cities.

Climate changes do not necessarily creep up on us gradually so that we have time to adapt to the changing conditions. On the contrary, major elements of the planet's climate can suddenly (that is, in months or a few years) jump from one stable state to another. These 'Sudden Climate Changes' (SCCs), may be defined as 'climate changes which cause major disruption because there isn't time to adapt to the new conditions'.

A possible SCC is the freezing of eastern North America and Western Europe because of shutdown of the world's 'thermohaline circulation' (THC). The THC is a global ocean current that flows around the equator. But in the Atlantic the THC carries warm, South Atlantic water north past the southern tip of Greenland before flowing south and resuming its equatorial circumnavigation.

The warm water carried north helps keep Western Europe and eastern North America warmer than otherwise. The THC has turned on and off many times in the past. The ongoing, rapid melting of the Greenland icecap because of global warming could cause the THC to turn off again, resulting in severe cooling in North Atlantic countries. Paradoxically, global warming could precipitate an ice age.

How else might global warming effect us? Here are a few possibilities:

• Humanity retreats to equatorial countries to avoid advancing glaciers.
• Cities are routinely evacuated as sea levels rise.
• Global climate becomes increasingly unstable.
• Freshwater is more valuable than gold.
• Agriculture is disrupted with dire results.
• Widespread loss of life threatens the global economy.
• Human population declines, rather than growing to the nearly 10 billion forecast by United Nations.
  

Global warming will cause massive change within our lifetimes. Will humanity regress into inter-national wars, fighting over scarce resources, or will we unite to assist each other through the coming turbulent times? We have expanded our societal inclusivity from hunter-gatherer tribes to villages, cities, city-states, nation states, and now international federations. Will we now embrace all people, everywhere, in a united, global consciousness?

It may be that our higher purpose in creating this concatenation of global crises is to bring us all together in recognition of our common humanity. It may be that in embracing global consciousness, compassion and love we will fulfill our destiny on Earth. It may be that learning to love everyone, no matter what their skin colour, religious or political beliefs, is our ultimate purpose for being here.