More on What Could Happen (and What Is Happening)

In my last post I focused on the perils part of the U.S. would face with a one degree Centigrad rise in global temperature. Steven Chu, the new U.S. Energy Secretary painted a similar picture a couple of days ago:

"I don't think the American public has gripped in its gut what could happen," he said. "We're looking at a scenario where there's no more agriculture in California." And, he added, "I don't actually see how they can keep their cities going" either.

Here is the complete article:
http://www.truthout.org/020509EA#comment-38241

I am very glad that Obama appointed someone who is a real scientist and who can comprehend what is happening. I just hope it isn't too late.

I also mentioned that places like Australia would be experiencing droughts at the same time, and in fact they already are experiencing the worst drought in 117 years:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25617864/

Another article I read recently (which I couldn't find just now) said the Australian government acknowledged the drought was due to global warming and that it will only get worse. And China is also experiencing a drought right now that is so bad they declared an emergency. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d99e77fc-f38b-11dd-9c4b-0000779fd2ac.html

Just in: China raised the emergency from level 2 to level 1, their highest level of threat:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-02/06/content_10773460.htm

Korea is in a drought too right now:
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2900712

And the Arctic continues to warm:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29038734/

This is just a hint of what will be happening in the coming years. Chu said California may not be producing crops by the end of this century, but I think it could happen earlier than that. I base this mostly on the fact that scientists continue to be surprised at how the effects of global warming are happening sooner and with more severity than they predict. Let's hope I'm wrong.

Addendum 2/28/09: Speaking of California and droughts, we are in our third year of a pretty bad drought, and even though we've gotten lots of rain and snow over the past couple of weeks, the federal government announced recently that it plans to cut off water from thousands of California farms for at least two weeks, starting tomorrow. The San Joaquin valley alone is expected to lose 1.15 billion dollars in wages, as 40,000 jobs are lost because of the drought. State residents will be asked to cut water use by 20%, and there will be mandatory rationing in some places. Here is the full article:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29302902/

I mentioned in an earlier post that California grows most of this country's fruits and vegetables, but the above article has specific examples at the bottom, such as 93% of the broccoli, 98% of the carrots, 86% of the garlic, 94% of the tomatoes, 99% of the almonds and walnuts, 95% of the apricots, 90% of the strawberries, and 100% of the olives. This is just a partial list, and it means prices for all these things will go up.

And remember, this is only a 3 year drought. During each succeeding year of drought, water becomes more scarce. Unless we invent and implement a way to remove massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere right away (an impossible task, really), global warming will continue to get worse for many years, regardless of what else we do. This means we will have more severe and longer lasting droughts over the next few decades. Farmers will suffer great economic hardships and many will go out of business. They and people whose jobs depend on them will be unemployed, and if it goes on long enough, they will have to migrate. But where will they go?

If we would have started cutting our GHG emissions years ago, when we first knew about the problem, we could have avoided this. Now it is becoming a fight for our very existence. Yet most people in power still think in terms of how much reducing GHG will hurt business or how much of the GDP it will cost. That is supremely stupid, because global warming is already going to hurt business and reduce our GDP way more than reducing GHG output would have, and if we delay much longer, there will be no GDP at all. I wish people would put things like this into perspective.