One of my old professors once said to us students: "You will see things happening like no generations saw before because all human problems will probably grow like in an exponential curve and no one seems to be prepared for that or willing to work on them until the problems 'are flying around your ears'. (German saying: "Die Sachen werden euch um die Ohren fliegen!")
At the same time, you will witness the "synchronicity" of "asynchroneous events in human society", for example people will live in a mental or in a socially state of the Middle Ages at the same time when science will make its greatest progress but many people will cling to their personal beliefs or "atavistic political or pseudo-religious beliefs" because they do not want to understand the need of scientific research and results. It will be interesting how mankind will solve all these problems but I am sometimes happy that I do not have to live through these modern times, because I am soon an emerited professor."
I am afraid, my old pessimistic professor who died 10 years ago, was absolutely right.
In principle, we all could have known of all our coming problems long before.
It was a typical human failure not wanting to perceive the results of an exponentially growing population on earth with billions of new engines and motors in cars, ships, airplanes, factories, heatings, etc. and all these items are burning something.
Only 150 years ago, the only engines and motors were steam engines in locomotives, and there was not one billion of human beings on Earth, I think, and today?
Believing that all these developments will have no impact on the temperatures on Earth was a nice illusion.
I do not know how the temperatures are in the USA right now, but Europe had during the last 18 years 6 of the hottest summers ever and in last year's summer, Paris had for the first time ever in the center of the city - next to the Eiffel Tower - at noon in the shadow (!) a temperature of 42 degrees Celsius = 107 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 consecutive days.
In the future and even after coronavirus-times, you will not like such temperatures being a tourist in Paris, believe me.
This summer in Germany is not so hot, but it is almost too warm again and very dry, so dry that we are worrying about our big forests. Other countries are already having more problems than Germany, which is lucky again to have usually wind from West and from the North Sea. Portugal, Spain and France are remarking changes in their landscapes - an almost desertification in some areas - and all our countries are reporting problems with diseases which are transmitted via insects we did not know before because they died in the cold winters we knew in our childhood.
For the first time, the so-called "Asian Tiger Mosquito" or the "Sand Mosquito" survived in the warmest regions of Germany (Heidelberg, Freiburg) and we suddenly have confirmed cases like the "West Nile Fever" and other "tropical" illnesses we only heard before from Africa or Italy's Sicily.
Too much of such "nature" will become dangerous very soon.
And unfortunatley, some studies are telling us, we in Europe or we in the Northern hemisphere of our globe are the most responsible for this, because we use the most energy and we produce the most carbon dioxide by our standard of living. We need to find some solutions and this "better yesterday than tomorrow".
This analysis proposes a novel method for quantifying national responsibility for damages related to climate change by looking at national contributio…
www.sciencedirect.com
German abbreviation of that article:
Ein britischer Forscher hat berechnet, wie viel CO2 alle Staaten ausstoßen dürften und wieviel aus ihnen kommen. Das Ergebnis ist eindeutiger als erwartet.
www.heise.de
paulwandrews.wordpress.com
I’ve thought a lot of his concept of a “Seldon Crisis” recently, when two or three crises arrive simultaneously, and civilisations either adapt or die
come back squirrels - all is forgiven!
