james_nicoll

Yeah. A lot of people needing pity-targets or scapegoats are going to have problems with this.

It will be interesting to see how climate change effects all regions, not just africa, but I am rather concerned about africa in that regard.

The parts that are most at risk of getting dry are already pretty dry, and it's surrounded by a lot of ocean.

The Horn of Africa will probably get thoroughly desertified, but sub-saharan and especially equatorial Africa aren't at anything like as much risk as the North American Great Plains, Montane West, or North-East are for extreme weather or being rendered unsuitable for agriculture.

Of course, all of that supposes the old climate regime for making weather expectations from, and chances are, we're already in a new one.

See http://rabett.blogspot.ca/2012/06/message-from-unknown.html for a presentation on a probable mechanism for the climate regime shift and the comments of same for links to the papers.

-- Graydon

hmm. There's a comment that Graydon I see in email, but not here.

I work with the climate community. The modeling of what's going to happen is generally understood (within constraints) as for temperature. When it comes to precipitation, its not. They need far, far more powerful general purpose HPC assets or specific built machines for modeling that accurately. The granularity of the models is completely insufficient at current: they need a minimum of 1 km by 1 km grid size and far more vertical cells than current.

Right now, they do a lot of approximations right now that are...not nearly as accurate as they ought to be. Use of the regional models is highly (!!!!) controversial among the workers. One told me privately when I asked about them, he stated: If you put crap in you get crap out. The individual in question is on the IPCC.

There is an ongoing argument in the climate community whether or not there is a Neo-Oligocene or Neo-Eocene coming: hotter and drier or hotter and wetter. Its more a matter of opinion and hunch now than anything.

The problem though is that even the paleoclimate data is somewhat suspect for future projections: the continental arrangement was different /and/ there's never been a period of repeated climate. Each ice age, each green house has had a very unique set of conditions.

I worry a lot about africa less about water - though it is a concern, but unknowable as yet - than about temperature. Even if the water availability stays the same, increased temp means increased needs.

I had to unscreen it.

Speaking of paleoclimate... I've seen it stated that at the Permian-Triassic boundary, temperatures at the equator may have reached as high as 70 C. How well accepted is this?

If we do not have these poor dejected nations to rush in and help anymore, who will we enact our 'helocopter parent' by proxie behaviors upon?

Perhaps the growing number of offspring not leaving the nest anymore or 'boomeranging' back are a hidden blessing?

KSR?

Kim Stanley Robinson.

Known for writing otherwise passably good SF novels into which he inexplicably inserts implausibly lengthy "yay for socialism!" speeches (real socialism, not what US right wingers call "socialism"). I suspect he may be on record somewhere expressing the view that Africa is irretrievably fucked without rescue by the developed economies.

I haven't read it yet (though it's on my shelf) but from what James said about his new novel _2312_ it sounds like that's an element of it.

Or with rescue. He's written about times centuries in the future in which Westerners are frustrated by the fact that Africa is just unfixably broken no matter what anyone does.


I remember once reading a story in which "Africa will rise someday" is one of a laundry list of naive futuristic ideas that the protagonist had to abandon once he was mugged by reality. I'm not sure it was KSR, though it might have been.

Anyway, I've been feeling very gloomy about human prospects in general lately, probably under pressure from the unrelenting horribleness of US politics, and obviously if the whole world gets screwed Africa, being poor, probably gets screwed harder than usual. But right now the affluence gap between Africa and everyone else is narrowing, rapidly.

As long as there's life, there's hope.

Gets me through the days.

There's the contrarian model in which Africa (being poor, etc) doesn't play in the global economy as much and therefore when the Coming Global Economic Failure hits remains poor, cut off, and generally screwed - as opposed to the currently rich developed areas which become poor, cut off, and generally screwed.

You'll notice I haven't provided any actual numbers for this scenario. But who can demonstrate that Portugal will be more refragable than Senegal in a hundred years?

In (mild) defense of KSR, "irrefrageble Africa" is thought by a character who is short-tempered and quick to jump to conclusions. She is imagining why another character left Africa. From a previous chapter, we already know that her assessment is incorrect.

Don't know about Kim Stanley Robinson (it may have been a character's opinion, not the author's), but Joe Haldeman did say in a non-fiction essay that "developing world is turning out to be never-developing world." He said it in late 80's or early 90's.

Well, that's pretty standard futurism for you, isn't it? Trends and entities that continue for more than a decade or two will go on forever.

Bruce

It wasn't even the trend at the time. However, the horror of the AIDS pandemic might have made it hard to see.

Sometimes his "yay for socialism" is too over the top even for me, the former Green Party activist. When he tones it down, his books can be lovely. I'm not sure that he's any more of a propagandist than numerous libertarian/winger sf authors with followings. One aspect of his work I like: there are no saints. Even the people doing the right thing can be right bastards.