Almost a decade ago, Chris Wayan took the George W. Bush idea of how things should go on the planet -- a Business as Usual scenario, but without nuclear disasters -- and projected it, with sea level rise, on to maps of the world. He calls the result Dubia:
Suppose we avoid war, plague, and famine, and the world goes democratic and capitalist? That appears to be the dream of President George W. Bush, or, as he's sometimes known, Dubya.
But part of Dubya's dream is that oil goes on ruling the world for another generation. Despite all conservation attempts, carbon dioxide levels go on soaring. Too many people burning too much fuel! Poor countries industrializing will offset any efficiency-savings in rich countries.
So our grandchildren live in a world with C02 levels double ours, 600-700 ppm. Double ya!
That world heats up. Climate zones move north until the poles thaw. Greenland and Antarctica melt. Coastal nations are drowned. In the end, the sea rises some 110 meters. Global hothouse! It's happened before, of course, on this scale, but not in the last 50 million years or so.
But once the catastrophe's happened and the survivors replant, and adjust to redwoods at the poles, and farms in Siberia, and jungles on the prairies, and coral seas where great cities once stood... what if they don't change it back? After all, they may argue, why put the Earth through birth-pains TWICE? Double jeopardy! It's climate change, not climate, that's disrupts communities--both biological and political.
So... they leave the new world alone, to stabilize. We think of global warming in the short range--the shock of change. But what's on the far side? What would that world be like?
I couldn't resist--even though I admit that any climatological projection this long-term and radical is inherently dubious...
Dubia.
Here's California and the Left Coast, complete with an inland sea where today swelters the Central Valley. Actually looks kind of appealing...if watery.
