As for the next Crisis, I can already see its cause: the consequences of anthropogenic global warming, with the economic disruption, personal dislocation, and political chaos that will ensue. Maybe we can shape that Crisis now. Nobody could see in 1865 that Japan overthrowing the feudal rule of the shoguns and unifying Italian and German states would become the monstrosities that they would be in 75 years. War had gone as far as it could with the technologies of the time with the horrible Gatling gun and the strange invention of the submarine. Big Business would supply the means of war. Sherman's march through Georgia was as devastating as warfare could get at the time.
Here is an illustration of how climates will change from now until 2100 -- yes, in time for the Crisis of 2100 which will by more than coincidence occur in a hotter, thirstier world in which agricultural production is under stress in Europe and North America, the parts of the world that will be least afflicted. Inundation of lowlands is not shown, but such will be inevitable as the Greenland Ice Sheet shrinks. The Sahara will expand a bit in the north, and the hot semi-desert of southeastern Spain will expand. Semi-desert will appear in some lowland areas of Romania, Hungary, and Serbia. Places like Paris, Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Vilnius, and Kiev will have dangerously-hot summers for people without air conditioning.
![[Image: shifts.htm]](http://koeppen-geiger.vu-wien.ac.at/shifts.htm)
(link)
In North America, any semblance of winter disappears altogether in a small area that includes several of Florida's largest cities: Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Sarasota, and Clearwater -- if those places aren't underwater. Midland and Odessa in Texas and Roswell, New Mexico go from being barely suited for low grass to outright hot desert, so one won't have to go so far west from Dallas or San Antonio to experience conditions of hot desert as in Phoenix today. The High Plains become warmer, but also drier or at least fail to get the rain that they need for rich grain crops. Edmonton gets about as warm as Calgary -- but also similarly dry.
The really bad effects come to countries that still have large numbers of peasant farmers in lowlands with rich crop production but rural overpopulation, as in Bangladesh and eastern rural China. "King Neptune" is more effective than any Bolshevik commissar in taking over farmland. But with the Bolsheviks the farmland was there, and what had been independent farmers became serfs on still-productive land, serfs bled for the rapid establishment of the Stalinist version of socialism. "King Neptune" will seize land from peasant farmers and simply drive them off.
Born in 1955, I know well that I may not live out this Crisis (I probably will), but I will not be around in the 2070's to see the trends leading to the Crises with their consequences. You may see two Crisis Eras: this one and the next. This one so far has been rather tame. The next one? Some people need to be scared.
Here is an illustration of how climates will change from now until 2100 -- yes, in time for the Crisis of 2100 which will by more than coincidence occur in a hotter, thirstier world in which agricultural production is under stress in Europe and North America, the parts of the world that will be least afflicted. Inundation of lowlands is not shown, but such will be inevitable as the Greenland Ice Sheet shrinks. The Sahara will expand a bit in the north, and the hot semi-desert of southeastern Spain will expand. Semi-desert will appear in some lowland areas of Romania, Hungary, and Serbia. Places like Paris, Prague, Vienna, Berlin, Warsaw, Vilnius, and Kiev will have dangerously-hot summers for people without air conditioning.
(link)
In North America, any semblance of winter disappears altogether in a small area that includes several of Florida's largest cities: Tampa, St. Petersburg, Orlando, Sarasota, and Clearwater -- if those places aren't underwater. Midland and Odessa in Texas and Roswell, New Mexico go from being barely suited for low grass to outright hot desert, so one won't have to go so far west from Dallas or San Antonio to experience conditions of hot desert as in Phoenix today. The High Plains become warmer, but also drier or at least fail to get the rain that they need for rich grain crops. Edmonton gets about as warm as Calgary -- but also similarly dry.
The really bad effects come to countries that still have large numbers of peasant farmers in lowlands with rich crop production but rural overpopulation, as in Bangladesh and eastern rural China. "King Neptune" is more effective than any Bolshevik commissar in taking over farmland. But with the Bolsheviks the farmland was there, and what had been independent farmers became serfs on still-productive land, serfs bled for the rapid establishment of the Stalinist version of socialism. "King Neptune" will seize land from peasant farmers and simply drive them off.
Born in 1955, I know well that I may not live out this Crisis (I probably will), but I will not be around in the 2070's to see the trends leading to the Crises with their consequences. You may see two Crisis Eras: this one and the next. This one so far has been rather tame. The next one? Some people need to be scared.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
