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| credit: https://www.wikiwand.com/en/DeLorean_time_machine |
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.
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| 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:
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| 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.
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Maybe make a trip back to Australia to see how a flux-capacitor fairs in the Thunder Dome?... on second thought, never mind. One of those big rigs would rip through you like tin foil.
ReplyDeleteGood work!