Climate Porn

At the risk of posting some hot & sweaty climate porn, I’d like to respond to a question that was asked in class last night. We all know that climate change is a real thing… but “What will it really be like?

google earth

The best place to go if you’re looking to get a picture in your mind about the impacts of climate change is the IPCC reports. The models used by the IPCC make predictions based on different emissions scenarios. These reports give us projections, numbers, and figures. But it’s kind of easy to get swamped in data and still not really have a view of what it will be like. The IPCC also concentrates on a very global view (because we’d need to use different models for each idiosyncratic local climate). Remember, climate change is a global effect but it won’t be felt equally. Even if we don’t feel the effects ourselves, we’ll certainly hear about them on the news. Whether or not you do have a view of ‘what it will be like’ in your minds eye, we know climate change is a problem, so we know we need to talk about solutions.

So what ‘s going to happen here? What are the solutions that we need to be thinking about? I’m going to suggest that you post your own views of what climate change will be like for the Vancouver region. If you post a comment that has some doomsday prediction, MAKE SURE YOU FOLLOW UP WITH AN IDEA FOR A SOLUTION. I’ll start us off…

Related Topics

terryman

Joanne often gets really excited when she talks about Science. Luckily, she works in the Advanced Molecular Biology Laboratory, the educational arm of the Michael Smith Labs. She likes all kinds of science but has a special spot in her heart for biology, technology, and well, sports. As a scientist and educator at UBC, she hopes that she never becomes so specialized that she loses her global perspective. (When she gets around to writing an intro post, I'm sure that she'll link to it here).