The Morrow Project and Climate Collapse

[ChalkLine]

The Morrow Project postulates that two hundred years after the various edition's catastrophes the world has become much as it is today. The cities have decayed and animals are more abundant but otherwise it is fairly similar to the year 2000.

However, if we look at the science available now it is probably that even after two hundred years the ongoing negative changes to Earth's systems will still be ongoing, and will probably be worse due to the fact that the catastrophes will have added their own massive energies to the initially overloaded system.

For instance, glaciologists have recently found that there may well be a nine meter seal level raise lurking in Antarctica and Greenland due to the fact that the glaciers there no longer have their protective ice shelves. These shelves stopped the warming water rapidly eroding the glacier faces and pumping out ever more water, and thus energy, into the oceanic systems. It is far more complex than this but the rule is that once change starts it gets rapidly worse until the system stabilises. That time frame would be in the area of a thousand years.

If this is the case the Project personnel are going to awake into a world very different to what they expected and which they may well be unequipped for. Any low-lying bolt hole will be under crushing water and either collapse or be unable to be evacuated, leading to a horrid death for those who awake. Much of the areas not inundated will be very cold and higher latitudes may well be tundra or even less hospitable. Surviving peoples will have had to migrate southwards and will not have had time to adopt the geographically settled life required to raise their technology level, meaning that the death rate will be even higher and the overall level of civilisation lower.

There may well be almost no animals either. A concerning event in the last three years has discovered that Earth is rapidly losing its insect populations. Biology and Environmental Science mandates that insects are the building block of the biosphere. These creatures are seventeen times the biomass weight of humanity and the basic food supply for the entire food chain. When they die off they simply are gone as there is no recovery from extinction. As they are also the main part of the system of reproduction of flora, especially food plants that humans use, it is possible that in the Post-Apocalypse world that there has been a collapse of the entire biosphere for The Project to wake up. Most of the flora will be non-flowering and temperate or sub-temperate. Most of the animals will be extinct. Humans will probably live a very precarious existence with even lower technology and civilisation. Languages will probably massively different to Pre-Apocalypse due to the incredible changes. Cultures will be totally different and probably fairly basic.

What can The Project do the increase civilisation and technology?

First off the primary goal to reinstate the constitutional government of the United States of America can be effectively forgotten. Canada will probably be abandoned entirely and will be a cold desert. The continental United States will be uninhabitable probably from 40º degrees north, above that will be a silent forest and then tundra until you reach the former Canada.

Thoughts?