Global Warming: The Next Hundred Years

We’ve all seen the latest global warming reports rising temperatures will lead to water shortages and famines for people and mass extinction for lots of other species with the next hundred years. The time table varies but most scientists seem to agree on the basic facts, so this threat is real.
Now I’m in agreement with the scientists here I think global warming is real and it will have some catastrophic effects, but I do have a bone to pick with them. Most of the predictions they make assume that there will be no scientific and technological progress in the next century.
Given the rate of scientific and technological progress over the last century that doesn’t seem very realistic. Unless we all become Communists or Muslim Fundamentalists in the next century that doesn’t seem very realistic. My guess is that there will be tremendous scientific and technological progress over the next century much of it driven by Global Warming and the crises it produces.
The crises of World War I, World War II and the Cold War gave technology and science tremendous jump starts in the 20th Century. My guess is that Global Warming will have a similar effect and the technologies and scientific advances generated by it will profoundly change the world.
The new technology probably won’t cure or reverse Global Warming but it will alleviate much of its effects. Genetic engineering and nanotechnology could alleviate and perhaps prevent the famines and food shortages at least in the rich countries. Space travel could allow us to replenish some of the resources we’re running out of here on Earth with raw materials from the moon or Mars. Improved nuclear fission or fusion could prevent global warming completely by giving us sources of power that don’t rely on fossil fuels.
One likely scenario in the near future is the continuing trend that the rich countries which have the money and resources to take advantage of the new science and technology will have a steadily improving quality of life. Those nations that don’t have the money and resources to take advantage of the new technology will see life get worse. The effects of Global Warming come, the Swedes, Canadians and Japanese don’t feel them they can afford air conditioners and genetically engineered crops. The Kenyans and Burmese can’t so they starve or die of heat exhaustion.
This could lead to war and conflict the water crisis could be a perfect example of this the poor people of Africa don’t have enough water to drink. Meanwhile every house in America and Europe has a private swimming pool. The poor have nots could attack their rich neighbors which would probably lead to slaughter. The rich can and will afford high tech weapons and the mercenaries to use them, the poor will have a rusty AK-47 and some forty year old ammo. Only in Marxist fantasies does an ignorant peasant with a forty year old gun overcome a professional army with the latest weaponry. In real life the equation is usually this the peasant ends up dead or moves to another country. Ask the people of Cuba what happened to the peasants who objected to Castro’s socialized agriculture in the 1960s and challenged the Red Army.
There could also be civil wars especially in countries like India and China where a growing upper class with access to the latest technology can live high on the hog while the average man starves in the gutter. The average man eventually rises up and the elite deploys the storm troopers, (only the storm troopers are killer robots which always obey orders and have no qualms about shooting down the poor). The elite go back to their golf game, the poor quietly go back to their shantytowns, bury the dead and turn to religion.
Another result will be increased immigration especially from poor regions hard hit by global warming. One major catastrophe we see happening already in Africa is the middle class flight the African middle class fed up with the dictator of the week, Marxist economics, genocide and totalitarian politics has largely moved to Europe and the United States. The doctors, the lawyers, the businessmen, the mechanics, the school teachers, even the bus drivers (the people who make modern civilization run) have quietly left Africa leaving only three classes of people in many countries ignorant peasants, thugs and Marxist intellectuals. A similar fate may soon befall much of Latin America.
How this will play out I don’t know but I have a feeling that the reality of global warming is going to be far more complex and much uglier than the nightmare scenarios the scientists are presenting us with. So the scientists nightmare scenarios aren’t predictions of the future they’re simply statements of conditions we’ll face in the coming decades how we adapt to those conditions is up to us.