Climate change, the more we try to learn about it the more puzzling it gets. Our current weather forecasting models are so primitive that we cannot accurately predict weather patterns more than ten days in advance, let alone predict the effects of global warming years into the future. As our climate becomes more uncertain and deviates from historically predictable weather patterns, it will certainly become even more challenging to forecast in the future.

Many have predicted that our changing climate will wreak havoc on our ecosystem. Assuming that those predictions are true, lets make some educated guesses and see what our survival options are.

In the future, as climate gets disrupted, there will be no more distinct seasons to look forward to. Summer, winter, autumn and spring will slowly begin to overlap. This is mostly fine for urban populations as they hardly depend on the outside weather. Most buildings are fitted with air conditioners and central heating systems to keep indoor temperatures constant. The predominantly indoor lives of city dwellers will not be as drastically affected as their less-urban counterparts.

When seasons overlap, it will affect flora, fauna, and the natural ecosystems that are fully dependent on timely rain and shine. When they are affected, there will be serious threat to our food supply. The economy that is dependent on these changes will begin to bite our pockets. Food will become very expensive as the output decreases. The impact will be so high our food eating habits will change. The food sold in super markets will begin to look different as they will have to use available ingredients to match our buying capacity.

The restaurant’s menu would change a lot too. You have eat what is available in that distorted season and not what we like. Whenever the weather is good, grow as much as possible and store. This becomes the norm. How do you think the economy will react if basic food becomes very expensive? If a loaf of bread that cost couple of dollars becomes twenty dollars or more, how do you think the economy will brace up to face the challenges? The food cost will not change from two dollars to twenty dollars over night. It will take years, but the increase is gradual and will be felt by all. As food cost increases, all our expenses will be toward buying food and other things become secondary. This will start affected the entire economy. Global economy may go into serious depression. This is the situation that we have to avoid at all costs.

Now lets look at how the economy will react to this. The growers will not be quietly watching the climate change. They will be looking for ways to move away from this dependency on the nature. This is where research organizations who are currently working on agriculture technology will jump in with their own inventions. Broadly we can expect two kinds of approaches this problem.

First and immediate approach is to use existing buildings to grow food. Water will be recirculated and reused moving us away from rain water dependency. Further into the future, we may expect huge greenhouses being built in cornfields and paddy fields. All the agricultural fields will eventually be filled with green houses. We will begin to see similar projects that would move us away from dependency on rain water.

The second approach that we may expect is the introduction of artificial food into the market. In the laboratory researchers are already growing food from plant and animal tissue. This tissue based food industry will gain strength as more research is done and the food becomes acceptable to society as a regular food. This kind of food will be relatively cheap compared the food grown in green houses. This would definitely be our future food as climate begin to get wilder and even the green houses will become hard to maintain. Hurricanes, tornadoes, high speed winds will start threatening the very existence of cities.

By this time our technological evolution should have, hopefully, reached or come close to the age of automation where we will build homes with robots. If we have reached this stage well in time, we will continue to survive and flourish. We will build much more robust homes and have robots manage the cities. If we can reach the age of automation before global warming get to us, we can consider ourselves modern survivors. We will continue to survive in the ensuing ice age. This is a race between our technological evolution and global warming.

Who wins this race is anybody’s guess.

To win this race we need to begin preparing now. This preparation must start in our own homes. This must be discussed across the nation and across the globe. Politicians and policy makers must consider ways to increase the pace of technological evolution.

Human survival as always is in their own hands.

- R.S. Amblee
Author "The Art of Looking Into the Future: The Five Principles of Technological Evolution"