The same notorious one nuclear winter has become a very common concept describing the expected effect of global cooling. Black smoke and ash from those destroyed as a result nuclear strikes cities, will rise into the atmosphere and block access to sunlight. Considering what turbulent times we live, this scenario should not be discounted.
Another reason could be a geological disaster
However, it is not at all necessary to start fighting in order to experience all the “delights” of global cooling. Moreover, a decrease in temperature is not the most terrible consequence nuclear explosions. A similar effect can occur from too strong volcanic activity. Large volcanic eruptions, especially in tropical latitudes, can release a large number of ashes and particulate matter, which will remain there for several years and be distributed throughout almost the entire Earth. The particles will reflect sunlight, thereby lowering the overall temperature on the planet.
The Sun will most likely be responsible for the next global cooling
Many scientists associate forecasts of global cooling with cyclicality solar activity. It has been established that the activity of the Sun and the formation of sunspots on it have a certain cyclical nature. The most famous of these cycles are the 11-year, 90-year and 300-400-year. Current solar cycle According to all forecasts, it should have been extremely active, with a large number of sunspots. But the forecast failed. The sun, on the contrary, has become unusually passive, and the number of sunspots is not just less than expected, it is several orders of magnitude less. And this, naturally, cannot but affect the Earth's climate.
So what should we expect: cooling or warming?
But this is a more complicated question. There are many supporters of both theories among prominent representatives of the scientific world. The arguments of both are also not without foundation. However, increasingly in Lately There are compromise theories from a number of scientists who say that the coming global warming on the planet can provoke serious natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions, and these, in turn, will lead to global cooling.
Global cooling and ice age are not the same thing
It is important to understand that global cooling, although not a very pleasant thing, is not yet glacial period. However, this very cold snap could easily lead us to some kind of ice age. The fact is that global cooling will inevitably lead to an increase in the area of snow cover. This means that the surface of the Earth will reflect those falling on it. Sun rays and stops heating.
The last major global cooling occurred 8,200 years ago
It is known as the Global Cooling of 6200 BC. e. or Mizok wobble. The cooling continued for at least 200 years and led to the disappearance of an entire layer of Early Neolithic cultures. In particular, many civilizations were forced to leave their usual places of residence. In Cyprus, for example, after this cold snap there was no population for almost 1,500 years. And in Mesopotamia, due to cold and drought, it was necessary to create a whole network of irrigation canals.
The last Little Ice Age happened quite recently
Recently - naturally, by historical standards. This period lasted from the 14th to the 19th centuries. Researchers believe it was associated with a slowdown in the Gulf Stream around 1300. At the very beginning of this cold snap Western Europe experienced a real environmental disaster. After the traditionally warm summer of 1311, four gloomy and rainy summer 1312–1315. Heavy rains and unusual harsh winters led to the death of several crops and the freezing of orchards in England, Scotland, northern France and Germany. Famine struck throughout Europe. The second half of the 15th and 16th centuries were relatively warm, but the 17th - early XIX centuries were the most severe periods of cooling of this Little Ice Age. Historians wrote that in the Lower Volga region in the winter of 1778, birds froze mid-flight and fell dead.
People have virtually no influence on global temperature processes
People like biological species, live on the planet for only a few thousand years, and actively pollute the environment for only a few decades. And during all this time, periods of relative cooling followed by warming cyclically replaced each other on Earth. The very theory that global warming began due to human industrial activity has been questioned by many scientists. They believe that modern warming is a natural release from the Little Ice Age of the 14th–19th centuries, which may lead to a restoration of the temperatures of the 10th–13th century Little Climatic Optimum or even the earlier Atlantic Optimum.
A new period of global cooling is approaching
Be that as it may, by studying solar activity, scientists come to the conclusion that in the coming decades we will experience another global cooling. The sun continues to shine as before, but it warms less and less. Experts say that we will hear the “first bells” of the coming cooling by 2020, then the temperature will gradually decrease and reach a minimum by the middle of the century. According to the strength of the future cold period will be comparable to the previous one, when the Seine and Thames were covered with ice, and all the canals of Holland froze. For comparison: usually in London and Paris the temperature in January is around +10 degrees.
It is unlikely that this global cooling can destroy humanity
Of course, this cold snap does not pose any mortal threat. People will not disappear from the face of the earth and will not slide into the Stone Age. Those who will suffer the least from global cooling are the residents of Siberia, who most likely will not even notice it.
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website publishes the most interesting forecasts of Michio Kaku.
10. You only need to blink to go online.
In the coming decades, special contact lenses will appear that will allow us to access the Internet simply by blinking. People will see the world like a robot from the movie “Terminator”: various additional data will appear on top of the image of the surrounding reality. During a conversation with your interlocutor, you will see information about him, and if he speaks another language, you will be able to understand him using subtitles with translation. Have you run into an old friend on the street and don’t remember his name? The computer will figure out who it is and tell you. Electronic chips will be built into all products, and you will be able to read all the data about any of them.
These lenses will consume very little power, so you won't have to worry about the battery running out. You will have endless access to information anywhere and anytime.
9. Items will be able to change shape and color at the owner's command
The development of nanotechnology will lead to the fact that in 20 years there will be programmable matter, which can take any form. It will consist of microscopic computer chips - "claytron atoms" - that can be reprogrammed. It will be possible to sculpt from plastic and even metal, as if from plasticine, mobile phone you can reduce it so that it fits in your pocket, and turn a toy your child is tired of into a new one. Household appliances and furniture will be made from such materials, so the interior of the apartment can be changed at the touch of a button.
8. Instead of a doctor, we will consult with “smart” gadgets
There are already smart glasses for surgeons that can be loaded with medical history, MRI results and X-rays. Soon they will be able to exchange information with the Internet. A global Robodoc program will emerge that will help not only doctors, but also patients: it will receive information from the network and give accurate medical advice. Instead of wasting time visiting the doctor, taking tests and waiting for results, you can discuss your health with smart glasses or watches.
The condition of the body will be monitored by sensors built into clothing or the toilet. They will record changes and prevent serious illnesses. For example, at the very first symptoms of cancer, long before the tumor appears, the doctor will inject nanoparticles that will stop gene mutation and prevent the development of the disease.
7. Even the wallpaper will be “smart”
Computer screens will become flexible and paper thin. They can be unrolled and rolled up like scrolls and used in meters long. Not only will your phones become smart, but your wallpaper will also become smart, and you will be able to talk to them. For example, at 4 in the morning something in your chest hurts and you don’t understand why. Maybe you ate too much pizza, or maybe you're having a heart attack. What to do? Call an ambulance? You just walk up to the wall and say, “Connect me to Robodoc.”
6. Cars will become robots and learn to fly
Already in 2020, you will be able to drive a self-driving car. You won't have to park yourself, you just tell the car: “Park” and it will do it. Cars will turn into robots that will help you plan your day or just chat with you, and robotics will surpass automotive industry. Over time, cars will learn to fly.
To reduce fuel consumption, a significant part of which cars spend on overcoming the force of friction, electromagnetism will be used: thanks to the force of the magnetic field, the vehicle will float in the air. By the end of the 21st century, instead of asphalt, roads will be built from superconductors. Magnetic levitation is not an empty fantasy: magnetic levitation trains already exist in Germany, China and Japan, and maximum speed The speed of such a train was recorded in 2015 in the Japanese prefecture of Yamanashi and amounted to 603 km/h.
5. Computers will learn to read thoughts and emotions and transmit them over the Internet
According to Michio Kaku's forecast, by 2027, the Internet will be replaced by the “Brainnet”: computers will learn to read impressions and memories from the brain, transmit them through the network, and perhaps even download them into the brains of other people. Instead of emojis, you'll send your friends your real emotions, and uploading memories will help people with Alzheimer's preserve their memories.
We will also be able to record smells, tastes and tactile sensations and transmit them to the corresponding parts of the brain, creating an illusion in the human mind that is indistinguishable from reality. This can be called a controlled hallucination: all virtual objects will seem absolutely real. It remains to be seen how this will change the film industry and the entertainment industry as a whole.
Neuroscientists are already able to understand what a person is dreaming by the activity of his brain, but so far the picture is very fuzzy and blurry. But technology is improving, and in the future you will be able to record your dreams on video.
4. We will print shoes, toys and houses on a 3D printer
Already at home in the USA, China, the Netherlands and the United Arab Emirates print on 3D printers. Soon, with the help of such a printer, you will be able to print any thing you need: from ice cream to jewelry, from toys to a new home of your own design. In a shoe store they will measure your foot and print it in front of you. new pair shoes that fit you perfectly.
Moreover, people will be able to visualize their fantasies with the help of technology: the image that appears in your head can be printed on a 3D printer. Thus it will arise completely new form art.
3. Lost human organs can be grown back
Recently, Chinese scientists grew new ears from biodegradable plastic for children who were born with a defect. ears. They seeded a plastic frame with ear cells, and when it grew, the plastic dissolved, leaving behind an organ made from a person’s own tissues (such an organ can be sewn onto a person without the risk of rejection). Soon we will be able to grow skin, cartilage, blood vessels, tracheas, and a little later, more complex organs - liver, kidneys and perhaps even the brain. This is already being done, the goal of which is to create a map human brain. Thanks to him, we will soon be able to digitize human mind and in the future create a digital copy of a person. Digitally, you will exist forever, and your great-great-great grandchildren will be able to communicate with you. Moreover, you can send your copy into space: with the help of a laser, your digital “soul” will be on the Moon in a second, on Mars in 20 minutes, and on Alpha Centauri in 4 years.
1. People will connect with robots
How smart are robots now? The smartest robot in the world - Japanese Asimo - can run, climb stairs, talk and dance, but so far it has the intelligence of a cockroach. In a few years he will reach the level of a mouse, then a rat, a cat, a dog. By the beginning of the next century they may have overtaken the ape. And at that moment they can become dangerous, because monkeys have self-awareness, they can develop own interests. And then we should put a chip in their brain that will turn them off if they decide to kill someone.
Yes, someday they will figure out how to remove this chip, but by then, perhaps people will figure out how to connect with robots. You can, for example, use controlled avatars that are similar to us, but with superhuman abilities who will be able to live on Mars, conquer uncharted planets and travel through galaxies.
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It's time for humanity to say goodbye to the sinking Amsterdam, Venice, Tripoli, Yokohama and the Maldives
The level of the World Ocean is rising due to climate change, and this process can no longer be stopped, write Katerina Bogdanovich and Alexey Bondarev.
Englishman James Dixon is one of the few who considers the Maldives an excellent place for real estate investment. It would seem that there is nothing strange here, because this chain of picturesque coral islands V Indian Ocean- one of most beautiful places on the planet. And the number of people wishing to spend their holidays in the Maldives is growing every year.
In fact, all these people are rushing to visit the Maldives before they drown, laughs Dixon, the owner of a small British IT company, who is thinking about retiring and moving away from the bustle of the City of London. And the fact that the Maldives will be one of the first victims of global warming adds a special twist to his plans.
The Briton carefully monitors the latest climate forecasts and believes that the Maldives will have enough “buoyancy” reserves to last for his lifetime.
However, when planning to invest in the purchase of a plot on the islands, he is aware that for his children the benefits of such an inheritance will be very doubtful.
In the middle of the century it will be possible to begin to say goodbye to Bermuda and some others island states. Warming will also hit Europe.
Climatologists predict several global scenarios for rising sea levels. And even the most optimistic one, according to which this figure will increase by only 1.5-2.0 m by the end of the century, still assumes humanity’s farewell to the Maldives.
More pessimistic (and at the same time more reliable, according to some experts) scenarios suggest that many of the picturesque atolls will be below sea level in just a few decades.
Dixon is convinced that just then it will be possible to earn extra money at some small hotel in the Maldives. “If the flow of tourists to the Maldives has increased by last years Just because the country is in the news more often due to the flooding, imagine what will happen when the islands actually start to go under water,” says Dixon.
The flooding of the Maldives is happening slowly, so tourists have nothing to fear, the Briton notes, but there will be a great temptation to come every year to see if your favorite restaurant has already been flooded.
And the Maldives is not the only victim that humanity will make to global warming. In the middle of the century it will be possible to begin to say goodbye to Bermuda and some other island countries. Warming will also hit Europe.
The pride of Italy, the famous Venice, continues to sink: according to the latest data, this is happening at a rate of 2 to 4 mm per year, and the process, contrary to previous studies, has not stopped for a year. Diving into the waters of the Adriatic frightens the residents of Venice and local authorities, but has a positive effect on the local tourism business: the news that the city was sinking appeared in March of this year, and already in April prices in Venetian hotels soared by 52%, reaching an average of 239 euros per day - the same cost for hotel accommodation Geneva, recognized as the most expensive in Europe.
IN total by 2100, at least 100 million people will have to be relocated away from advancing waves
Those who are deterred from pursuing elusive beauty by modest budgets may be comforted by the fact that the fate of Venice and the Maldives will sooner or later befall most of the planet.
By the end of the century, rising ocean levels will seriously alter the map of the world. In addition to the Maldives, Bermuda and Venice, entire pieces of the current US coastline, a significant part of Holland, and large areas in Italy, Denmark, Germany, Poland, and Spain will go under water. China and Japan will suffer greatly from the advance of the ocean - Shanghai and Yokohama will be flooded. Warming will also not spare Ukraine: the Black Sea threatens to swallow Kerch, Feodosia, Yevpatoria and Odessa.
In total, by 2100, at least 100 million people will have to be relocated away from the advancing waves. Humanity will feel the first consequences of this process in the coming decades.
“Sea level rise is an invisible tsunami that gathers strength while we do nothing,” warns Ben Strauss, a spokesman for research organization Climate Central. “We are running out of time to prevent the worst consequences of the “big water.”
Irreversible process
Kenneth Miller, a professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey, believes that the rise modern oceans will engulf the world's coastlines and harm 70% of the world's population.
Last year, a report by the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program, a scientific group of about 100 climate scientists from eight countries, said that by the end of the next century, sea levels will rise by 1.6 m compared with 1990.
In the coming centuries, sea levels will rise by 4-6 m as Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melt like pieces of ice on a sidewalk in the summer heat
Further more. “Sea levels will rise 4 to 6 meters in the coming centuries as Antarctic and Greenland glaciers melt like pieces of ice on a sidewalk in the summer heat,” paints a depressing picture from Jeremy Weiss, a senior research fellow in the Department of Geological Sciences at the University of Arizona. .
To be fair, it is worth noting that it is not only human activity that warms the atmosphere, and with it the World Ocean. In April of this year at the bottom of the Northern Arctic Ocean Another leak of methane was discovered - a gas, along with carbon dioxide, “responsible” for the greenhouse effect.
Rising from under the water huge bubbles, reaching a diameter of up to 1 thousand m, scientists have noticed before, but the fact that there are more and more of them speaks of an alarming relationship: warming melts underwater permafrost, and gas deposits are released from under the ice, which accelerates warming.
water world
In addition to Venice and the Maldives, many other large and famous cities and states.
Danger lurks not only on islands lost in the endless expanses of the heaving World Ocean. Melting ice will be catastrophic for continental states as well.
By 2050, the famous island resorts of Tuvalu and Kiribati may be completely submerged.
Climatologists predict a bleak future for Miami, New Orleans and several hundred other coastal cities in the United States. According to a recent study by scientists from the University of Arizona, even if sea levels rise “only” by 1 m by the end of the century (and this is an incredibly optimistic forecast), all these cities will suffer serious damage. And a much more realistic 1.5-2.0 m increase to the current water level will be disastrous for them.
“The consequences of rising sea levels could include soil erosion, flooding and permanent inundation,” Weiss warns. Strauss adds New York to the “wet list” and argues that South Florida is at greatest risk.
Asia will not escape significant destruction. Huge areas in China will be flooded, including the area where the giant metropolis of Shanghai is located. Brazil and Argentina in South America will be seriously affected.
The flood will not bypass Ukraine either: the list of probable victims includes, in particular, the Crimean cities of Feodosia and Kerch. Ukrainian scientists also name other objects. “Even today, Evpatoria and Odessa are suffering from sea level rise,” says Yuri Goryachkin, senior Researcher Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Already today, Evpatoria and Odessa are suffering from sea level rise
According to scientists, a rise in water of 2 m will leave 48 million Asians, 15 million Europeans, 22 million people homeless South America and 17 million - Northern, as well as 11 million inhabitants African continent, 6 million Australians and 440 thousand islanders in the Pacific Ocean. In subsequent centuries, when the water rises by 4-7 m, even more frightening consequences can be expected.
However, according to some experts, the possibility of a faster development of events cannot be ruled out. Most current estimates are tied to a forecast of a 2°C increase in average annual temperatures. However, in the spring of this year, a group of scientists from the USA and Europe published a forecast according to which we need to talk not about 2°C by 2100, but about 3 0C by 2050. Calculations and forecasts are presented on the website climateprediction.net.
The Kyoto Protocol has not worked, and the main culprits of pollution - the United States, India and China - have so far only declared their intentions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, researchers say. It is too late. Pessimistic forecasts show that sea levels could rise by 7 m within 100-150 years. Then not only Venice, Shanghai and Miami will be under water, but also Copenhagen, Yokohama, Tripoli and most of southern Ukraine.
Rescue of drowning people
Confronting global warming is something akin to fighting windmills, says Canadian columnist Mike Flynn. That large industrialists who do not want their profits to decrease, or methane reserves at the bottom of the ocean, rushing to freedom - we're talking about about fighting unforgiving enemies, says Flynn.
In his opinion, the authorities of the Maldives did the right thing by opening a special account in 2008 to which part of the income from tourism will be transferred. These funds will be used to purchase land in Australia or India.
“We need to save for a rainy day,” former President Mohamed Nasheed explained this decision. “So that if one of the citizens wants to move from here, he will have such an opportunity.”
Official negotiations on the possible resettlement of 350 thousand islanders have not yet begun, and residents of other sinking islands - the Pacific Nauru and Tuvalu - have already lined up for Australian plots. And in April, the authorities of the Kiribati atoll began negotiations with the Fiji government on the purchase of 2.5 thousand hectares of land.
“We hope we don't have to move everyone to this piece of land, but if it becomes absolutely necessary, we will do it,” said Anote Tong, leader of the 103,000 Kiribatis.
In Europe, the approach to solving the problem is different. By 2014, construction of MOSE should be completed in Venice - new system protection consisting of mobile sluices and capable of withstanding water rises of up to 3 m (current hydraulic structures designed only for a 1.1-meter flood).
Dutch scientists are also involved in the development of dams: in a country where most of the territory is below sea level, this issue plays a vital role.
“The lives of millions in our country depend on how effectively the system of dams and other protective structures works,” says Guus Stelling, an employee of research institute Deltares.
No measures are being taken either in Odessa or Yevpatoria, and no one is going to do this
The Flood Control 2015 project, on which global technology corporations such as IBM are working together with Dutch engineers and scientists, will be able to prevent floods.
“Previously, the condition of the dams was monitored a whole army volunteers, now special electronic sensors will be used,” describes the essence of the project Peter Drieke, an employee of Arcadis, one of the development companies.
A joint statement from various scientific organizations and academies states that the Little Ice Age is approaching on Earth. In an address to the heads of the world's leading governments and the UN, scientists said: “Humanity is in danger of its continued existence.” Here is a list of organizations that wrote this statement:
