May 25 – Alan Emery – Mapping a safe future for Canada in the face of inevitable severe global warming impacts

Next FSN meeting is May 25, 12 pm in DMS 7170. Alan Emory [link to bio] on Mapping a safe future for Canada in the face of inevitable severe global warming impacts.

Abstract
Based on the present behaviour of the nations of the world and their de facto commitment to at least some measure of the Paris Agreements, the world will be subjected to high levels of atmospheric greenhouse gases likely reaching between 700 and 1600ppm CO 2 and temperature increases of between 5 0 C and 11 0 C over the next several hundred years. This will result in severe and unavoidable global warming impacts sufficient to potentially destabilize global civil society, but will also leave Canada in a relatively benign, but vastly changed climate. With potentially billions of climate refugees world-wide, Canada and Siberia will be the two main safe climate havens for the world population. Following a description of these inevitable changes and impacts, as well as a short outline of some options for both industry and government, the workshop will develop a series of mechanisms to cope with the changed environmental, social, economic, and political environments. One unlikely option can be addressed as well – a globally directed emergency measure to transition rapidly away from using fossil fuels and a rapid reduction of atmospheric CO 2 to pre-industrial levels of about 280ppm that would avoid the calamitous global warming impacts.
The workshop approach will use global climate change scenarios that have been predicted by the scientific community as the basis from which to develop safe routes to a secure future for Canada in the face of intense pressure to provide the world with freshwater, agricultural potential, favourable climatic conditions, stable government, and a vastly increased infrastructure to handle something on the order of a billion or more people within 300 years. Break out groups will have the opportunity to map realistic and implementable action plans and events leading to solutions in the environment of a super wicked problem.

P.S. Summary of future events: