Climate Change: Visions of the Future
Visions of our climate future
This article was first posted in 2012.
Everything else we are concerned about in our world pales next to climate change.
We are presently in the early stages of a surge in climate change. In the mid 2020’s climate change will become the highest priority.
- Climate change is exponential, which means the surges are ever more extreme and unexpected, not linear. The fires in the West will become more extreme and make this region unlivable. The hurricanes in the southeast and gulf will become more virulent. Eventually we will see storms with the power of tornados and the expanse of monster hurricanes. Areas that are humid will become too hot to remain outside for more than 20 minutes.
During the mid- to late 2020’s a large number of people will move to more hospitable climates. The Great Lakes regions will be preferred by many.
- During the 30’s, the Arctic turns brown and caribou herds roam, super storms become more frequent.
- The melting of the Antarctica ice sheets will escalate over the next decades in fits and starts, raising sea levels and showing us that most coastal cities will experience regular floods during the second half of the century. By mid century, people will know that many, if not most, of the world’s coastal will be overwhelmed by the sea by the end of the century.
Average wind speeds will be increasing at exponential rates, so fires will spread more quickly.
- The warming Arctic will unleash a new normal in wind and temperature patterns felt across the U.S. and the world.
- Wind energy from huge turbines will be able to fuel our entire economy.
There will be crop failures and food prices will soar.
- I see acres of greenhouses in Canada and sustainable generators to fuel them.
- People become more empowered and motivated to improve the world and honor the earth.
- People will migrate out of cities and wish to be near farmland.
- Most will have their own gardens and greenhouses to supplement food.
- New drought-resistant crops will be developed.
In the twenties and thirties, science will be seeking remedies and ways of adjusting to the new climate.
- Geo Engineering will be attempted to stop climate change: They will consider geo-engineering methods, like spraying aerosols into the atmosphere to cut the sun’s rays, but these projects are dangerous and foolhardy and could cause unintended effects like stopping the monsoons that feed billions in Asia. I pray they don’t do them.
- Carbon capture projects may be able to help soften the long term rise in the carbon blanket sparing us the worst outcomes.
- Massive tree planting will help.
Fossil fuel burning will be banned and reserved only for special use. Scientists and engineers will be working on finding ways to siphon greenhouse gases from the atmosphere as well as other ways to lower atmospheric carbon and methane.
We will not be able to stop the melting of the ice sheets, however. By 2100 at the latest, and likely much sooner, seas will rise 20 feet and up to 80 feet in some hotspots, like the U.S. Eastern Seaboard. South Florida will be gone and eventually all of Florida by the next century. Coastal cities will spend trillions to protect from the sea, but many will not succeed. State of the art flooding systems will be erected in coastal areas. Island nations and barrier islands will disappear.
Home insurance companies will stop insuring coastline properties in many areas, insurance rates will be too high for people to afford.
People will migrate during the year to the opposite hemisphere seeking winter, the way they formerly sought summer.
The rise in temperatures will cause people to finally drop materialism and turn to a more earth-centered life, and for others, more spiritual perspective, to deal with what we will be facing. People will also begin preparing for how they will survive long term.
This crisis will spawn an age of enlightenment to arise out of the ashes of a dying civilization
I see an epic loss in the water table in the Midwest plains states by late 2020’s. I feel this drought situation may last for centuries.
By 2030, sustainability will become the highest priority. An efficient global rail system will make rail a preferable way to travel for me. Cars will be all electric. Using fossil fuels will become tightly regulated.
Cities will build sea walls and hurricane barriers, at great cost, to protect from the sea. But these measures will not be enough because climate change and sea level rise will continue at an ever faster pace until all of the glaciers are melted, which means ultimately 220 feet rise over the long term. Expensive measures that cities will take to recover from storms will be literally washed out by more storms the following years. Cities should save their money for moving people to much higher ground.
I see miles of greenhouses to grow food in controlled environments especially in Canada. People will also grow food in their homes using technology to regulate moisture, temperature, and sunlight. There will be scientific discoveries that will help us grow food under difficult conditions and they will draw upon strains that can handle difficult conditions. To save in the cost of produce, gardens will be common, as well as some livestock in many households.
Our diet will change due to the inability to grow the foods we had come to expect.
Gulf Stream: There will continue to be a weakening of the Gulf Stream which is part of the AMOC (Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) that forms the heart pump of our oceans. I am not sure how this will affect us, but I have felt for the last five years that it will have serious impacts in temperatures that will harm crops. This shift will likely coincide with an accelerated melting of Antarctica which will contribute to sea level rise.
On a lighter note, in a vision I had in 2013, the melting of the Arctic will give rise to boating, even kayaking, expeditions to the North Pole. Any expeditions however will required vigilance for sudden, frequent nor’easter storms coming down from the northeastern Atlantic.
Click here and scroll through the topics to get to our Intuitive Wisdom Forum Predictions.
I feel like I should move to Minnesota and buy a farm. ?
– just a guy from the philly burbs
Honestly the best thing to do would be to collect the melting ice water and use it for drinking water.
Victoria, I’m glad you brought this up. There are proposals to tow icebergs to drought stricken areas, like the the UAE.
But it won’t prevent the melting glaciers from drowning most of the world’s coastal cities. I wonder if people appreciate the scale of the earth and the amount of ice that is melting.
When Greenland fully melts, the seas will rise 20 feet. For every foot the seas rise, it would fill a lake the size of the continental U.S. that is 70 feet deep.
The sad thing is these predictions have been made by others also, which does make one stop and think. A good friend of mine who was extremely psychic said to me often that it’s likely that the Gulf Stream would change, which would have enormous impact on the weather (see for example this newspaper article https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/apr/13/avoid-at-all-costs-gulf-streams-record-weakening-prompts-warnings-global-warming) . Let’s hope we are all wrong and somehow it’s all averted…Thanks Jeanne for your article.
Hello Jeanne! how about the world population count in the early to mid 20’s?
Hi leafy. Thanks for bringing up the issue. It’s a big issue with wide ranging implications for the future. It will determine much of our future and involves demographics — the growth by socioeconomic groups and by racial ethnic breakdown. And growth by region. I will open a topic in the forum for people to contribute their knowledge and questions.
I have not studied it but took a look at UN projectiona. Unless there is a major cataclysmic event which neither I nor anyone who reads with me has seen happening in the 20’s, the world population will go from 7.7 billion to 8.7 Billion between now and 2030. The UN says our planet cannot feed more than 10 billion and we will reach 10 billion after 2050.
That figure doesn’t take into account changes in diet that will make food production go further. It also doesn’t take into account that food production will suffer from climate setbacks. If nothing changes in other words we can’t feed more than 10 billion people.
The hardest hit will be places whose populations are growing the fastest—Asia and Africa and at the same time where there will be serious drought and bad weather as well as greatest poverty.
In the US, the problem will be in soaring food prices. The last 30 years have see. Huge rises in health care prices and real estate prices. The next 30 years will see huge rises in food prices. That’s a psychic not statistical projection. Just feel it. But people will find ways to soften the impact with home gardens and livestock and a rise in small farms. But I’m digressing.
Could a large lake be built to drain off the rising water from climate change.
Andrew, welcome to our community. That’s an interesting question that helps us get a sense of the situation we are in. The consensus among environmental fluid experts is that it would be impossible. Here’s a good article. Remember that the seas cover 70% of the globe. To reduce the sea level rise by only 1 ft, you would need 3 ft of water on all the earth’s land. If the seas rise just 20 feet, (and eventually they will rise 220 feet), a rough calculation is that the lake would cover the whole U.S. and be about 70 feet deep, give or take 10 feet. Once all the earth’s ice melts, and it will melt, that lake will be 700 feet deep not to mention, how the heck are we going to move all that water to heights that are way above seal level? The Dutch are the best experts in the world on dealing with living below sea level. And no, they don’t do it by building lakes. But the amount of sea level rise we are looking at is many times greater than what the Dutch have faced.