Greetings, intrepid readers! I am very please to present to you the first in a series of science articles from my dear friend and colleague, Simon Hanslow. Simon is currently completing his second degree and is well on his way to becoming an authority on everything on, within and around Earth, with the notable exception of us pesky human beings. Simon has chosen to begin his contributions to Wonderbread with a somewhat ambitious take on what the next century may hold for the planet and those who inhabit it.

-Morgan

The next generation of modern society will be affected in serious ways by the much debated “climate crisis” that may soon arise on this planet. What would be the ramifications, if any, of said disasters for the modern culture? For instance an example used by Al Gore in his 2006 movie “An Inconvenient Truth” describes a situation wherein the refugees arising from displacement globally could eventually number in the hundreds of millions (in many disaster scenarios, this number can climb to even a billion). In such a situation, would the traditional values of the societal zeitgeist survive? To present an alarmist view of the situation: what of the simple fact that if you look around right now, every single thing on your desk, table etc., comes either directly or indirectly from oil. Imagine a world without plastic, imagine a world where the simple luxuries we take for granted like abundant food and diverse entertainment are not present, where the shoes you wear belonged to your father because it’s difficult to make new ones where the comforts of western civilization become a hindrance rather than a boon. The outcomes of the next 100 years are no more or less extreme, complex or terrifying then the previous century, the difference is that that experience rarely carries and we must learn anew how to adapt to changing conditions in an unstable future.

That wonderful black gold

In 1956 M. King Hubbert created a model that theorized that US oil production would peak in the latter half of the 20th century, specifically around 1970; this has since been shown to be startlingly accurate, predicting the decline in all US oil production: other analysts have put global peak production around 2010 or even as early as 1998. Ironically around the same time the Ghawar field was discovered in what is now Saudi Arabia, which has since produced roughly 60 billion barrels of oil since the ’50s and is the largest oil field ever discovered. So since the ’50s we have been living amidst a glut of oil, a seemingly never-ending supply of what is the most energy rich substance we have ever discovered. I won’t go into too much detail here but suffice to say this world runs on a material that has dictated the foreign policy of most major nations for the last 75 years, has the capacity to usher in a time of major climactic instability, fuels the economy of the world and if we ran out tomorrow most likely a large portion of the human race would starve to death because the trucks bringing the food to the local supermarket would be unable to move. Everything of any consequence is made from oil: the computer you’re reading this on is mostly plastic, which a product of oil; you buy food in plastic bags, in plastic wrappers; the clothes you wear are made halfway around the world and get here using diesel. Simply put, the entirety of the manner in which we live our lives is based upon a resource for which the peak in production was possibly a decade ago.

Figure 1: World energy use over time

Calamitous Calamities

What can possibly go wrong if the climate shifts? Well, before I say anything else. let me mention that during the greatest mass extinction on the planet, at the end of the Permian some 250 odd million years ago, 95% of all species went extinct because a series of events occurred that spiraled the planet into a period of warming so severe that, when it was finished, it took nearly a million years for life to recover. Watch this clip, ladies and gentlemen: this is the doom scenario. This video articulates in a very specific way the method by which life almost ceased to exist, and remember the details; we will be drawing analogies to the modern era after.

If you cling to any kind of notion that this can’t happen again, then think again. The time it took the Siberian traps to erupt was 45,000 years. In that time, the amount of CO2 that was released was comparable to the amount that is stored in the oil reserves currently known. While this is by no means an accurate statement, that amount of CO2 released took the Earth’s temperature up by five degrees, but if the amount of oil, let alone gas and coal, that is left is burned we will have put into the atmosphere a similar amount of CO2 to what it took one of the largest volcanoes the Earth has ever seen 45,000 years to emit, and we will have done it in two centuries.

An increase in atmospheric temperature is only one of several concerns. The oceans exist as they are through the maintenance of a delicate balance of temperatures: the species within it are adapted to a range of temperatures, much like the land-dwelling inhabitants of the rest of the world. If the atmospheric temperatures rise five degrees then the oceans will rise by as much as three or four degrees, which, while not sounding like much, is enough to cause massive ocean-sized algal blooms which will  be capable of depopulating whole entire regions of life. The rise in ocean temperatures will in turn change weather patterns, resulting in the majority of rain falling on the ocean, and rivers changing course or drying completely. The worst outcome, however, is methane hydrates. Over time, living organisms in the oceans die, the majority of these being floating plankton and zooplankton (microscopic invertebrates), as well as everything else. Anaerobic processes eventually break down the rotting material and the waste product produced is methane, a greenhouse gas that is three times as problematic as carbon dioxide to this world. Given that it’s the bottom of the ocean the temperature is low enough to reach the freezing point of methane, so it freezes and sinks to the bottom, becoming intermingled with sediment. This is the most terrifying part of this process, in that, when the methane melts, it destabilizes whole regions of coastline, creating vast earthquakes, tsunamis and making vast coastal areas slip into the ocean, truly biblical in its destructive power.

That’s the bad new. While it’s possible, it is rather unlikely, but what is more likely is by no means less destructive. When rivers and other water courses shift, populations won’t be able to grow enough food, or if rainfall patterns change, as is the most likely outcome. Most plants and animals will have to migrate to climate zones that they are adapted to and if they cannot do that or the zones no longer exist then they will go extinct. The total land mass created by deserts will increase dramatically across the Earth and the annual monsoons that feeds Asia may cease to exist.

Society perhaps

What happens to our society when these events occur? With the possibility of most of India being displaced by rising sea levels, as with Africa, Australia and China, what is the carrying capacity of refugees in various nations? With the probable end of production and cheap labour in developing nations, what will be most likely the outcome most shocking to the affected population is the making of a refugee population in a western nation. Australia has a long history of accepting refugee populations (the Lebanese in the ’80s during Lebanon’s civil war, and people from Somalia in the last decade) but do we have the capacity of infrastructure let alone the marginal political will required if half a billion foreign nationals require a better place to live? There will be physical disasters, flooding, typhoons and hurricanes, mass extinctions and famine, but it is the effects that climate change will have on our societies that will be the ones most in need of mitigation. It will be easy to let millions of refugees die but that is abhorrent to our shared humanity. The lifestyle we lead in the West is completely unsustainable and as is often the case it is other peoples who will pay the price for that very unsustainability having reached a fever pitch. Technology can change the fortunes of disaster if it has to but the will must also exist. It is the current generation of youth who will have to cope with the ensuing disasters of the age.

In abstention

The next 100 years are going to wreak some remarkable changes to our planet, both for good and for ill. A rise in sea levels may create in Australia an inland ocean and over the next few centuries a tropical paradise. We don’t know what’s going to happen in tomorrow’s weather let alone that of the next generation: all we can do is be aware and make the best choices we can.

Notes

I encourage anyone interested in the formation and geopolitical implications of oil to watch the ABC documentary “Crude”, it’s very interesting material.

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