NOTE The following is an adaptation from the soon to be released book ‘Letters From 2030’. To register interest on its release, or to order a copy email Bob Williamson via this link.
During the years from 2000-2010, weather anomalies grew in strength, and our planet found itself suffering a food crisis. As in decades past, the third world countries suffered most. Prices for staple foods caused more protests; the rising increase in floods and severe drought conditions greatly affected the crops; barley, rapeseed, wheat, rice and corn production massively diminished around the globe.
By the year 2012, the Arctic and Antarctic were ice free during the summer months, adding to solar absorption in the Northern Latitudes with areas warming at 6 degrees C, four times the global average. Methane clathrates destabilised in the shallow coastal shelves of Siberia and Alaska, adding to the ever increasing manmade emissions by a further 5 billion tonnes per annum of CO2-e in methane. The projections of the Science community in the first decade of the 21st century had not accounted for the catastrophic climate change that would follow this methane release, a greenhouse gas 25 times more powerful than carbon dioxide.
Kilimanjaro had also become free of its historical ice cap. The Swiss and Italian Alps saw increased rock slides as the permafrost line moved up the slopes destabilising the areas. Summer snow melt during those early years of abrupt climate change caused landslides and erosion, with some towns being totally abandoned.
By 2014, global emissions from manmade and the natural system were contributing the equivalent to 5 parts per million (38.85 billion tonnes) annually into the atmosphere. This added to the best estimates of parts per million (ppm) rise during the 21st century that had not been included in even the best advice from the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) in their predictions for upper level scenarios during the first decades of the 21st century.
The permafrost melt in Siberia's release of methane had reached the equivalent level of emissions of the US and China combined; a total of 50% of global manmade emissions at the levels of 2010, equal to 12 billion tonnes per annum.
In February of 2014, the Ross Ice Shelf (an area the size of France) destabilised due to the warming seas at it base, and collapsed. A large portion of the shelf had been grounded upon bedrock, and its collapse brought with it a six foot rise in the oceans of the world. Hundreds of millions were displaced worldwide -- the abrupt sea rise submerged cities from Florida to New York, the Mexican Gulf States and low lying coastal areas of California to Washington; it swept into Bangladesh, Shanghai and London, and submerged many island nations including the Maldives. The tsunami caused by the disintegration swept so quickly across the oceans few were able to escape and millions perished.
Humanity failed to see this as a wake up call, blundering ahead in their self absorbed dream. The inundation of many coastal industrial centres caused massive toxic pollution events around the world, and inundated coastal ground water supplies relied upon in major population centres, including Florida & Shanghai; the poisoned water supplies further debilitated recovery and tens of thousands of the tsunami survivors refusing or unable to reach safe ground then too perished.
Starting in 2014 and running through 2020, major Red Tides and Cyanobacteria Blooms started drifting their poisons over the coastal cities of the world, coastal wetlands and their ecosystems were wiped out. The blue green algae reached into inland river systems, many of which were already depleted of oxygen and dead of life, or inundated by sea water from rising seas. Sparse to no pockets of agriculture survived, intense heat and radiation having torched the soil; the virus-like spread algae left no areas of water to feed the crops.
From 2014 through 2016, H1N1 combining with West Nile and H5N5 (Bird Flu), mutated and swept the globe with a lethality level of 10 percent killing 750 million people. Right wing radio shows proclaimed in live reports, “As the majority of deaths are in third world nations, this will help with the food shortages upon the planet.”
In 2015 the Hail Mary Project implemented by the United States military as the ‘Plan B’ crisis attempt to geo-engineer the weather by anthropogenic intervention to reduce runaway global warming, resulted in sulphuric rains across the planet, making crop production anywhere in the world almost impossible in the open air. Food riots broke out across the global and rioting and looting in the streets became an everyday event.
Culminating in 2017 the rise in temperature of the tropical Atlantic, now exasperated by a five year Atlantic El Nino created severe drought condition over the Amazon Rain Forest, resulting in the world largest forest fire, burning for months. It was reported that over 70 percent of the rainforest was lost. Media reports at the time tried to assure the public that the smoke from these fires would act as a balance to global warming.
Methane Clathrate eruptions from warming costal areas in Siberia and Alaska occurred, and in many of the areas of the ocean that had until then remained too cold, now were observed with methane welling up across thousands of locations. The results were seen from the air. As the methane rose it depleted the oxygen in the oceans causing dead zones across the globe. It killed everything from Whales to Tuna to tiny krill; the surface of the globe was awash and spreading outward with the global fish die off. Dead and decaying fish filled with toxins from the methane clathrates killed millions of birds feeding off the carcases.
In 2019 with the increased sea temperature, tropical storms churned off the coast of Portugal and Africa. Drawn through the Gibraltar Straight by the warmer waters of the Mediterranean a H1 hurricane hit Sicily head on, completely wiping out the entire population as it worked its way to the Turkish coast and almost completely destroyed Istanbul as well.
In March 2020, the "Big Thunder" began on Greenland and continued for a three week period. The initial break was caused by, they speculated, a deep underground earthquake, with approximately 20 percent of Greenland’s ice cascading into the oceans. Tsunamis began sweeping into Europe and North America. Roughly ten days later the outside perimeter ice, around 15 percent of Greenland’s ice cover crashed into the sea, with the Media on hand to broadcast the event to the world. Mandatory evacuation of coastlines all along the Atlantic were ordered, the world descended into chaos. Three days later, the vast majority of the ice left on Greenland was displaced as the land mass which had been relieved of its weight, shifted upward, displacing the remaining ice sending forth the tsunami. Thus began the domino effect and another monstrous tsunami emanating from the collapse of the Canary islands volcano. The Greenland ice collapse caused an exponentially rapid rise in the oceans of the world as it spread out and circumnavigated the globe, levelling out at a 29 foot sea level rise to the levels of pre-21st century.
Mass chaos had gripped the planet. Untold hundreds of millions more people perished in the global flooding along the Atlantic seaboards. Nations of the Pacific scrambled to evacuate their coastal properties, and broadcasts continued telling the populous there was no danger, there was still time. Panic ensued and mass violence erupted. Remaining Island nations of the globe attempted to evacuate their elites, only to find mainland countries refused entry, in some cases aircrafts were shot down. Poor island nations awaited their fate. Media coverage reported survivors taking to the high seas in small fishing vessels seeking coves and shelter as they became refugees and fugitives at the same time.
By June of 2020, Global ‘Just-In-Time’ delivery systems broke down with supplies becoming scarce. The world in three short months had been thrown into a new Dark Age. Plagues began to spread.
The resulting inability of what was left of humanity was unable to intern the corpses of humans and animals alike washed upon the new shores of the re-surfaced planet. For four long years from 2021-2025 plagues swept the globe, reducing humanity to a mere 750,000 lost and tepid souls, interspersed with mad marauders serving their own selfish desires.
By 2015 it had become known that other forces were working behind the scenes to help reduce the global population through stealth. These were the self proclaimed ‘masters of industry and commerce’, those who had profited while working within the halls of power and behind the scenes with agendas to control what needed to become the reduced number of survivors of any future world past 2050, a culling of the world’s population in a slow bloodless coup was written into their collective business plans. He knew them as the Dark Eyes. He had personally come across only a few of their inner circle in the years before, but had researched in depth many of their intricate initiatives and looked into their eyes many times. Their use of mild but carcinogenic residual toxins in food crops with genetic modification and genetic engineering and their use of chemicals and additives in food packaging and plastics had been widespread and world wide. They had agendas linked through the banking and global support systems to control decisions and policy and bring governments and nations to heal to fulfil their end game; to cull 90% of the worlds overpopulation by 2050 by reducing life expectancy to an average 50 years of age through cancer and other diseases. These plans were well underway by the end of the first decade and irreversible by 2015. They were made up of a collective that had started their plans much earlier in the 1950’s knowing that by 2050 without their actions the world would have reached well past overshoot and consumed every resource on the planet. Along with the outcome of pollution causing global warming, they had initiated the slow poisoning of the worlds population while conditioning developed and affluent populations via consumerism not to be concerned about where the world was headed in the years to come, keeping them in the sleepwalk of modern life. Maintaining the status quo while their plans were implemented had been easy once set in motion.
Now in 2030, no one is safe to live a life any longer without threat of death by violence, disease, or extinguished by nature. The planet now has to again adjust to its new state. Those that have survived in the few areas that still support life fight daily for their lives, or what's left to them.