Oz +4 - No Place Now On Earth Analogous To Darwin @ +4C; Food Shortages, Endless Heat Waves

EDIT

One of the key insights from Four degrees or More? is that almost nothing about the consequences of climate change will be uniform. To better represent changes across Australia, the book’s initial chapters match Australian cities with places with climates currently analogous with those that these cities will experience in a four-degree world. So Sydney becomes Rockhampton and Brisbane becomes more like Cairns. Broome, which currently has 54 days a year over 35 degrees is projected to have 284 days per year over 35 degrees by 2100. Darwin will be like be like nowhere on earth; the researchers could find no analogue anywhere on earth to a Darwin under a four-degrees scenario.

The possible consequences of these changes for Australia’s population are not explored in the book. This would be a valuable exercise for geographers and urban planners. One might assume that some northern Australia’s inland settlements will be abandoned. Meanwhile, Tasmania is likely to be a haven from the heat. At the book’s launch, the number of climate scientists who own land in Tasmania was remarked on. Penfolds and Brown Brothers have already purchased land for new vineyards in Tasmania, the wine industry being one that is highly climate dependent and (at least in some companies) very alive to how the climate is already changing.

The impact of climate change on the marine environment is not as visible but the consequences are worrying indeed. The basic science means that as carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere increase, some of it dissolves in and acidifies seawater. The world’s oceans have already acidified by almost thirty percent since the Industrial Revolution. Further ocean acidification will disrupt the marine food chain, making it more difficult for organisms to form shells and skeletons, and leading to the decline or collapse of coral reef ecosystems.

Over 2.6 billion people depend on the seas for their primary source of protein. As Four degrees highlights, overfishing is just one of a multitude of examples of where climate change will exacerbate, accelerate or multiply an existing unsustainable trend. The emission of greenhouse gases is only one way in which humans have fundamentally altered the planet’s biosphere and ecology. Other examples of the numerous negative feedback effects caused by climate change include the strengthening of the urban heat island effect (which already exists as a result of the sheer coverage of paved areas and building mass in most cities) and increased riverine salinity due to the extraction of ever-decreasing amounts of water for agriculture from rivers such as the Murray Darling.

EDIT

http://www.climatecodered.org/2014/03/too-hot-to-handle-life-in-four-degree.html#more