Week 8 New York City Mike Bruno

This week I decided to travel forward in time and visit New York City! I chose to visit the city in the year 7010. When I left 2020 global warming was a serious issue and upon traveling to the future I have discovered that it is still an issue one that now defines the times and impacts human survival. Upon arriving I noticed that most of the city is underwater. I went in search of a local to figure out exactly what had happened. Once I found someone he explained that while the Earth's natural cycle was moving towards another ice age in 2020 but, human intervention delayed the natural cooling of the Earth through greenhouse gasses. Most major coastal cities are mostly, if not entirely, submerged into the ocean. Today society has finally decided to try and take more measures to ensure the Earth is ready to cool next time it enters the appropriate orbit window from the Sun. While the small changes helped delay the process of global warming in 2020 it still took place. Now resources are scarce and the citizens of Earth are doing their best to survive despite all of this horror. The current effort is still focused on lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Still, it is expected that next time the Earth enters the appropriate orbit from the Sun that there will be a great ice age and if all goes well the humans on Earth will survive.

Wk8_Global Warming_Josiah Freeman

Lincoln City 2020
IMAGE CREDIT: Google

The year is 7010, I’ve traveled 5,000 years into the future to investigate the effects of global warming. I’ve arrived in Lincoln City, Oregon, a favorite coastal city of my home state. The scene I arrived to leaves an empty feeling of dismay that struggles to set in as reality. Fossil fuel burning was not abandoned until just shortly 2,000 years ago. Our vast contribution of CO2 into the atmosphere finally caught up to our blind ambitions. In the year 5010 the concern of global warming surpassed that of being a silent progression to that of an undeniable consequence.

I recall the average temperature of Lincoln City during June as 63 degrees Fahrenheit, and yet the current temperature here in June is just over 90 degrees Fahrenheit. In a city where central cooling was almost a foreign concept, and everyone was always outside; I stand in what can be described as little else besides a ghost town. Everyone stays inside to deal with the incessant heat. I can’t hear the sound of a single seagull and am worried that the wildlife here has simply ceased to exist.

The beautiful coastline I grew up with is now submerged by an ever-increasing aggressive sea level. The city has shrunk dramatically in both size and population as the ocean reclaimed landmass. Massive walls surround what once was the coastal line I knew so well. The city has been swallowed by the shadow of “barriers” that keep the ocean out and our cities and property safe.

The Ocean Advance Barrier Act, OABA was initiated in response to thousands of homes and coastal lines throughout the world being submerged and destroyed. The walls that act as protectors are little more than prisons that remind us of the weight of our pride. Only now, as sea levels refuse to recede and the threat of flooding terrorizes everyone’s minds, the question is how long will these walls last? Will we reform ourselves as a society that strives to discover and utilize environmentally friendly energy sources, or will we be pursued by the oceans till naught else remains? 

Week 8 – Jacob Fisher – The Future of Charleston

This week I traveled forward in time to the year 7010 to Charleston, South Carolina. To cover the question of whether global warming ‘happened’, how is happened defined, is there a quantifiable objective that you can check to say it happened? I do not think there is one or a strict set of objectives that can quantify that global warming has ‘happened’ so moving forward with what these changes do environmentally and culturally.

Extrapolating the current data on Charleston sea levels would show that the Charleston see in 2020 could be under 535ft of water if the sea levels continue to rise at their current rate. ("Flooding & Sea Level Rise Strategy", 2019) Based on that data, I would assume anyone still living in the area has found a way to breathe in water or are living above the current sea level; whether they are floating above everything from the past or have built a mountain to live on.

Watervilla IJburg 2, Amsterdam, The Netherlands [PHOTO: https://www.waterstudio.nl/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Watervilla-ijburg-A.jpg]

There are advantages of having a floating city, further rise would not cause as much of an issue. I believe that humanity is ever adapting and will solve the current dependence on energy and commodity sources that are detrimental to the environment eventually. I hope that irreversible damage is not done in the time it takes us to solve these problems, so perhaps 5000 years in the future sea levels will have normalized and the need for a city floating on the water is not there and I would just find an advanced humanity continuing to enjoy a lovely coast.

Waterfront Park Charleston [PHOTO: https://stock.adobe.com/85321825 By, SeanPavonePhoto]

References

Flooding & Sea Level Rise Strategy. (2019, February). Retrieved April 29, 2020, from https://www.charleston-sc.gov/1981/Flooding-Sea-Level-Rise-Strategy

Week 8- Sydney Rodriguez

Today I am writing about the coast of Miami, Florida. Currently, the water levels have risen over 50 feet from global warming. Downtown Miami and the surrounding bridges and structures are history. The reason this costal paradise became this way is people decided global warming was not important and some even felt that it did not exist. They did not limit fossil-fuel burning which caused sea levels to rises rapidly. The sun experienced a drastic explosion that forced it closer to the earth which also increased the already rapidly rising levels of seawater. By the time society realized global warming was occurring and that the sun coming closer to Earth caused excessive heating it was too late to do anything, but efforts were made to moderate and slow down global warming such as eliminating all fossil fuel burning. Cars were all taken away and everyone was forced to walk or ride bikes. Generations after generations did not care about global warming until it was too late and our society became destroyed.

Week 8- Global warming- Michael Nyadimo

I have created a time machine, that at this point in time is fueled by solar energy, to take me to year 7010. The destination in particular that i have chosen is Nairobi, Kenya mainly because this is where many of my relatives were born. It is personal for me as i would like to know what would happen to the landmass many centuries from now. I already know that port cities like Kisumu have flooding issues which are currently taking place at this moment which normally happens. I fear that it could get worse as most of the water that will flood into other countries will be traced to the icebergs melting in the arctic.

There is a sign of hope in current day Kenya. Knowing that Kenya, which is near the equator in eastern Africa, the heat could badly affect things like crops. It seems that now in 7010, Kenyan engineers have created more solar windmills. This is turn will help to pump water and grind grain for things like cooking flour. It is a smart approach by many African nations that surround us like Ethiopia and Somalia who seem to have also taken the same action. Solar energy seems to be the future to combat global warming for years to come.

Week 8 Evan Lieberman Climate Change New Orleans

Week 8 - Climate Change - New Orleans

credit: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/DeLorean_time_machine

For this week's adventure, we have been challenged to go into the future, to a site in the year 7010 to examine what the Earth looks like 5000 years in the future, and observe the impacts of global climate change.  Having run into a fuel issue on previous adventures, I modified my time machine to run on garbage, and set forward to the year 7010 to New Orleans, LA.

 After filling up my time machine with biodegradable garbage instead of plutonium, I plugged in my date coordinates and proceeded to an Earth 5000 years in the future.  Unfortunately, I made a mistake and accidentally ended up in futuristic Australia, which seems to have devolved into some sort of primitive society.  I quickly pivoted my vehicle away from the onslaught, and set my coordinates to North America, year 7010.

Credit:Mad Max: Fury Road

Upon arriving at the correct location, what I observed on my flight path into the site of the city was scary.  I flew over the gulf of Mexico which appeared to have become a large trash dump.  for miles outward, there was a sea of floating plastic, and other human garbage.  I also saw large "red tides" omnipresent.  "Scientists generally believe that coastal pollution from human sewage, agricultural runoff, and other sources contributes to red tides, along with rising ocean temperatures"(https://www.thoughtco.com/).  As the gulf of mexico is an outlet for the Mississippi river this is not surprising.

From this observation it was obvious to me that Human society did nothing, or not enough to address the massive pollution in our oceans.  This continued abuse of the Ocean caused massive outbreaks of Red Tide activity which contributed to increases in Ocean temperature, as well as general surface temperature.   I took out a handy thermometer to check temperature and it read: 120 degrees Fahrenheit!  Taking the global surface temperature data from NASA, and extrapolating it that means global temperature rose over 40 degrees in the last 5000 years (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/).  Extrapolating current trends out since 1880, this means a raise of temperature of 40.24 degrees Fahrenheit to be exact.

Not surprisingly, what I remembered as my former home city was not visible from the surface, and I had to dive underwater with my Delorean's submarine function to view the current state of the city:

credit: https://2050.earth/predictions/an-underwater-city

What this tells me is the disastrous ignorance of science, led global society to accept that climate change is "fake news".  As such Global Warming did occur due to unfettered use of fossil fuels, and continued deforestation, and ocean pollution.  Continued build-up of Methane and Carbon Dioxide was unable to flatten the curve of upward global temperatures causing massive temperature increase and melting of the ice caps.  Extrapolating the NASA numbers for sea level this meant a ~54 foot increase in global sea level in the years from 2019 to 7010 (https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/, assumes 3.3 mm rise per year).  As New Orleans sits today below sea level, it never had a chance.

From our study of the science of fluctuations in the Earth's Milankovitch cycles, we know that some flucuation in the earth's eccentricity and obliquity would cause a variation in temperature, but as the Earth is on a 40,000 year cycle, we could surmise this accounted for perhaps a change of ~9 degrees fahrenheit (https://sciencecourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/Tutorials/Milankovitch/).  This tells us that the majority of the change was likely related to anthropogenic effects. 

As I looked over the shattered remnants of a once great human society, I wondered what society did to mitigate this crisis of environment, and it is clear nothing was done.  I landed my time machine on the remaining visible continent, and a poster blew up to my car advertising trips to Mars.  It seems the only human response to the crisis was to start over somewhere else, it seems the science-embracing members of humanity went underwater or to the stars.

Grateful to be on my way away from a human-created environmental crisis, I flew home, re-read the Lorax, and pledged to devote myself to being part of the solution to the climate crisis to save not only my city, but the Earth itself.

Sources:

https://sciencecourseware.org/eec/GlobalWarming/Tutorials

https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/

https://www.thoughtco.com

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/redtide.html