At least this is better than the state of denial that has characterized too many past administrations, which are now revealed to be little better than an expression of a death wish.

The planet is warming very quickly. In fact, much faster than Whitley Strieber and Art Bell thought possible when they were writing “the Coming Global Superstorm.”

In fact, a great disaster has already started, and it is taking two forms: First, the monsoon has become so violent that it is flooding huge areas of India and Southeast Asia each year, causing crop destruction and soil erosion on a massive, almost unimaginable scale; second, drought emergencies are emerging all over the planet, and, at present, if any of these droughts is broken, it will be temporary and a matter of lucky chance.

Over the next ten years, human beings are going to have to leave certain areas of the planet in massive numbers in order to survive, and agriculture in these drought zones is going to end.

These are the areas in question at the present time:

• Southern Australia—Extraordinary drought. 24 more months without relief will cause social collapse. Farming has already generally failed.
  
  
• Argentina—Agriculture on Pampas in severe decline. 24 more months of drought will end it.
  
  
• Central China—Danger of agricultural collapse unless efforts underway to divert Yangtze River water to the area are completed before 2012.
  
  
• California—Agricultural production declining now. 20% delivery reduction this year. Water shortages in 2011.
  
  
• US Southwest—Agricultural production declining now. Water shortages in 2011.
  

If our carbon output continues unabated, a seven degree Fahrenheit increase in planetary temperatures is virtually certain to take place by the end of the century. This does not sound like much, but it will result in massive increases in desertification and water shortages so severe that the will be civilization-destroying. As much as 95% of the human population could die back while the planet’s natural balance restores itself. In addition to human beings, virtually all animals requiring significant water will be affected. It is probable, for example, that the entire fauna of southern Africa will disappear during such an event.

Most of the Americas south of Canada will become rapidly untenable due to drought, as will all of Africa, Southern Asia and Southern Europe. As the situation worsens, storms are going to at first become more ferocious, associated with the weakening of ocean currents due to rising temperatures in the northern and southern oceans. (The Superstorm Scenario.) However, once the air temperature gradient across the planet becomes more even and the ocean currents slow, the atmosphere will enter a greater degree of stasis than has been seen in millions of years, and global heating will be intensified by a lack of air circulation. Large human concentrations are likely to experience heat exhaustion under such circumstances.

Certain areas are presently at greater peril than others. The most dangerous drought situation exists in Southern Australia, which will need to be depopulated within a year or at most two if there is no further rain. The southern half of Texas, California, and parts of China and Argentina have a little more time, but not much. Drought migrations are apt to be a perennial feature of the latter half of this century.

Canada, Siberia, Northern Europe, and the southern quarter of Argentina are apt to become wetter and warmer as the rest of the world dries out. New Zealand will be relatively unaffected. The changes will result in mass migrations into remaining viable regions, but they will not be able to accommodate anything close to the number of people attempting to enter them, and conflicts on a scale and of a brutality previously unimagined are a probable result.

It appears at present that, after ignoring this problem for so many years, that humanity’s options are rapidly narrowing. It is likely that there will be no significant action until after the situation is already untenable in many areas, and sufficiently intense environmental disasters have struck first world countries like the United States to galvanize public opinion and cause action.

There are ameliorating factors, the most significant of which is that the sun may be entering a quiescent period similar to that which occurred during the Little Ice Age, when sunspots declined to virtually zero, and solar output reduced. The resulted in a five hundred year cold period on earth, lasting from the 1350s to the 1850s. Famine, disease and war took place during the first phase of the period, as human societies adjusted to the change. Famine and the Black Death reduced world population by approximately 12% during this period.

If solar output does indeed decline again, however, this time the outcome will be different. The rise of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will be offset to some extent by the reduction in solar output, meaning that the climate will remain unexpectedly stable even as greenhouse gasses rise, giving the human population a chance to use technology to overcome its pollution problems without being suddenly overwhelmed by climate change.

It is also possible that innovative technologies will reduce the impact of climate change, or even reverse it if a way can be found to trap and contain carbon dioxide that is now fee in the atmosphere. However, the European Union in 2008 decided to reduce investment in carbon trapping technologies by two thirds. At present, new funding is being sought for carbon storage systems. The previous US administration refused to participate at all either in funding such systems or doing further research, on the theory that global warming did not exist.