The world is going to end. At least, the world as we know it.
The following is an excerpt from a book, privately published and circulated now ten years ago. The book itself is an important philosophical text. In my judgment it is the most important philosophical text in a hundred years. Of course, it's damning by faint praise to consider the academic importance of it.
Some of you will recognize the book and its author here. Suffice it to say, the book itself is unlike most philosophical tracts in that it is a highly faithful transcription of an actual conversation.
Again, bear in mind the book was published ten years ago. First the excerpt. Then some comments:
p.68
I wish to ask about the future. What is our future?
The future of mankind is either to ascend or go extinct. The future of life on earth is, in either case, to evolve new intelligent creatures. Species of bird will become intelligent. Then, eons later, a species of insect. Like you, the insect species will have hands. They will remake the earth as you have, but never find the least evidence of your existence, nor will any memory of you, or history of you, persist in that time. They will walk the earth in a billion and a half years, at a time when it still has two billion years to live. For mankind, the matter will be decided in this century, however.
How will it be decided?
The climate will begin to change in 2000, and this process will accelerate over the next decades. There is a great cycle of climate that began 2.8 million years ago and has resulted in the fundamental destabilization of your world's weather system. You evolved intelligence in order to survive the sudden shifts back and forth from ice ages to temperate periods. In fact, this planetary instability has been the engine of your evolution. The cycle is about to change, and to challenge you again.
Why will this happen?
Warmth being retained near the surface by greenhouse elements results in cooling aloft. A massive and extremely powerful convection can arise that results in a storm so great that it changes the climate permanently.
What form will this take?
The next ice age will begin soon, and this will lead to the extinction of mankind, or to a massive reduction in population, given your inability to expand off the planet. This planet is at present a deathtrap.
Why will this happen?
Because air at the surface is getting warmer, the north polar ice is melting, reducing the salinity of the Laurentian sea. At some point, winds crossing the sea due to the increasing difference between lower and higher atmospheric pressures will warm the northern ocean so much that the temperature differential needed to pump the North Atlantic Current will not be sufficient, and the current will slow down, stop, or stop flowing so far north. This same mechanism always triggers ice ages, and would happen within a few thousand years no matter what. However, human activity has sped up the process of atmospheric warming, so the change will be sooner and stronger. The greater part of human industry and culture, along with the species' most educated populations, will be destroyed in a single season. This will happen suddenly and without warning, or rather, the warning will not be recognized for what it is.
What will it be?
First, the surface features of the currents will slow down. This will result in violent storms in Europe. At some point, arctic temperatures will rise forty or more points above normal during a spring or summer season. Then the currents themselves will change their routes or stop. Cold air trapped above the arctic will plunge down and collide with the warm tropical air present at the surface. It will create the most powerful storms in ten thousand years, storms unlike any you have seen or imagined. They will bring about the end of the northern civilization and the climate change that follows will lead to the starvation of billions.
*
There are a number of points to be made about the above passage. I will restrict myself to one or two.
The entire "climate change" nee "global warming" debate has been framed entirely as a choice between a) the world is on the brink of runaway heating and Man is to blame; b) the world is not heating up, and any anomalies observed are natural oscillations; Man is not powerful enough to affect the climate.
In other words, the debate to date has been a predictable choice between two ideological stupidities: a) science-backed technocrats and their desire to exert control through social engineering; b) theological traditionalists who find it easy to assert the supremacy of Nature while advocating a quiet, total exploitation.
This is the primitive choice -- and it has been the frame of the whole issue for at least two decades.
The above-quoted passage is unique in that it makes no attempt to advocate for one or the other stupidity. This uniqueness, in fact, only goes toward the actuality of the conversation, and the legitimacy of the book.
The passage suggests that when the jet stream stops as result of melting, what will occur is not some simple runaway heating over, say, a hundred years, as science would have it. Instead, what will occur is a global climate reset mechanism, in which to check such a runaway heating scenario, a massive set of storms will initiate an ice age.
The passage does not attempt to indict human industrial activity as a sort of original sin behind climate change. It instead suggests that an ice age would be coming anyway -- as we know.
So there you have it. Three links for your edification.
http://www.tbd.com/blogs/weather/2011/0 ... -7616.html http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/record- ... g-12761346http://gizmodo.com/5748771/this-is-the- ... ing-the-us
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