What will Norwich be like in 3000 AD?
That's only 40 generations away - just an instant in geological time.
The city and its environs are likely to look very different from today. We shall clearly be in the Anthropocene Epoch. While we cannot be sure what local details will be like, we can project something of the wider environmental changes which are likely to set the scene. To guess the elements of the biological and cultural environment at the dawn of the 4th millennium means analysing present trends and extrapolating them into a range of potential scenarios.
Factors include the burning of fossil fuels, shifts in biodiversity, the impact of human population growth and migration, shifts in land-use, the likelihood of conflict and warfare, technological changes including the growth of biotechnology, growing resource depletion (notably soil and water), the possibility of catastrophic events such as volcanic eruptions, and even the possibility of human extinction.
What follows is a conjectural reconstruction based on present trends, enlivened by some imaginative interpretation.
- The closest historical analogue we have for the predicted climate over the next century is the Mid-Pliocene warm period c. 3 million years ago. CO2 values are estimated to have reached 360–440 parts per million, and global mean annual temperatures were approximately 3 deg C higher than today (Salzmann et al 2009). However, for 3000 AD the closest climatic analogue we have for the planet is the early Eocene Epoch, c.50 million years ago, when the world was much hotter and there little or no ice at the poles. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum/.
- In our imagined scenario, fossil fuel consumption continued through the 21st century, notably coal use in China, although peak oil production occurred as early as 2022. The resulting global warming/heating lasted for five centuries before the climate slowly reached an equilibrium state in the 27th century. It caused deglaciation of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets and thermal expansion of the oceans (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise), leading to sea-level rise of over 6 metres. Low-lying coastal areas of Norfolk were inundated and there was a corresponding landward shift of wetland environments. An estuarine environment now extends up the Yare and Wensum valleys as far as Bowthorpe and Drayton (http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/), with fringing mud flats and saltmarshes.
- The average global temperature in 3000 is over 6 deg C warmer than today. Thus, the average annual temperature in the UK may be comparable with southern Spain today. (http://www.climate-charts.com/World-Climate-Maps.html#temperature). However, in this imagined scenario dangerous exponential global heating has not occurred (c.f. Wasdell 2007). If it had, we would be envisaging a catastrophic scenario.
- Carbon dioxide levels are much higher than today’s levels, at over 1500 parts per million. (In 2013 the Mauna Loa observatory records broke the 400 ppm barrier; global pre-industrial levels were 280 ppm.) At these levels, the area would be experiencing a climate approaching those of the early Eocene Epoch (50 million years ago) see http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=1380 (n.b. peak Eocene levels were 2000 ppm (http://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1038/35021000?locale=en).
- Atmospheric methane levels are likely to be higher than today. Forcing factors over the 3rd millennium included release of methane hydrates in the ocean and melting of tundra permafrost due to global warming; there was also a volcanic eruption (perhaps in Iceland). This resulted in abrupt shifts in global climatic patterns and amplified positive feedback loops in the weather systems, which lead to several centuries of intense weather instability. Methane levels stabilised after 2400 due to natural attenuation., but remained at concentrations eight times pre-industrial levels (https://en.ikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum; Sloan et al 2000).
- Unstable weather has become normal, with periods of drought alternating with bouts of intense rainfall. This has led to widespread loss of topsoil and extensive gullying of farmland. As a result, much agriculture is now carried out using artificial media under shelter.
- Wildlife is different from that of today. Some Norfolk species were able to respond to the challenges of climate change by shifting their geographical distributions and life-cycles; others became extinct both locally and globally. Heightened temperature and CO2 levels mean that plant growth rates are now enhanced, and fungi, bacteria and algae different from today form the base of the trophic pyramid. Immigrant species typical of Mediterranean, African and Asian habitats today have become established, particularly hardy plants, insects and spiders. These include the malarial mosquitoes Anopheles atroparvus, which breeds in warm, brackish water along river estuaries. However, overall biodiversity has been grossly reduced, with fewer species forming the bulk of the biomass, including those resistant to pesticides and other environmental stresses. Many genetically-engineered feral and mutant species are present in the environment.
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Drought-resisting Mediterranean plants such as the pistachio
may be at home in Norfolk in 3000 AD.
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- Catastrophic changes to marine life occurred in the 3rd millennium, with the cumulative impacts of ocean acidification and warming, over-fishing and pollution contributing to ecosystem collapse in the North Sea, ecological phase shifting, and the rise of algal and jellyfish blooms. The effects can still be seen in 3000 AD in the ecology of the Yare estuary, which has a deeply impoverished fauna compared with 2000 AD.
- Globalised human society has undergone radical transformations. Rapid social evolution and much migration of populations has taken place in step with the forcing effects of environmental change, resource depletion, population growth, political instability, disease and an increasingly hostile and unpredictable climate. For instance, an influx of refugees from drought-stricken lands bordering the Mediterranean led to 37% of the Norfolk population being of Spanish and North African descent by 2200. Natural Malthusian processes have acted to control the human population through various decades of disease and starvation; this was particularly true in the aftermath of an Icelandic volcanic eruption in the early 23rd century, which caused a Volcanic Winter lasting nine years and triggered increased global warming feedbacks in the climate system. In 2000 the world population was just over 6 billion, and this climbed to 9 billion by 2040, boosted by continuing use of fossil fuels and genetically engineered foodstuffs. Birth control policies were finally implemented in the 2100s and again in the 2700s, and the world population has now successfully been returned to what it was in the year 1950, and is now artificially maintained at that level.
- A variety of technlogical solutions to the problems of human life have been attempted, which imitate the functional logic of biological systems through biotech engineering, including bio-robotics and chlorophyll technology. The result is sustainable modular hive technology which guarantees human life is tolerable for the majority within certain limits. The recycling of water, nutrients and wastes are key considerations. Fabricated nutrients are an important component of human diet. What happens in the environment beyond the hive is a matter of general indifference to the human population; biodiversity is no longer a meaningful value. Biological entities are now valued in functional terms as sources of useful information and material resources to mitigate the effects of living on the depleted planet.
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Artificial food production, from the film ‘Soylent Green’
(dir. Richard Fleischer, USA 1973). Image courtesy http://www.dvdbeaver.com
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Some local detail
- The Hub City of Norrich is surrounded by subcentres such as Catton and Erlem. The old University of East Anglia site was reclaimed in 2287 following the destruction of its buildings in the Third Boreal War a century earlier, which had been fought over the allocation of scarce water resources. The site was then used for hydroponic cultivation, and drew its fluid from the Yeh Estuary. An entry in the Solicon Archive for 2654 shows that the site was used as a location for a new Chlorofusion Reactor to power the Eton Sub. The view of the valley in 3000 is of an estuarine landscape seen through hot, misty air; a series of low buildings and plant growing installations line the valley sides. Biodiversity is dominated by hardy plants and insects; some herbivorous and insectivorous birds and small mammals are able to thrive in set-aside wilderness strips. The few trees permitted living space are those which been designed or selected for their functional value, and they are arranged in plantations sheltered by awnings and irrigated by a water collection system; rainfall is too erratic and violent for unsheltered and untended trees to survive.
- A tall stone monument to Old Earth was erected in the centre of Norrich in 2128, and its remains are still visible in 3000. The stonework has been eroded by acidic rainfall, and the lettering is poorly legible. It shows a vertical scale marked with a series of global CO2 concentration levels linked with dates. The design is topped with a stone ball chiselled in the likeness of the planet, and the side and back panels are carved with a profusion of interlaced plant and animal species, most of which are unfamiliar to the city’s inhabitants.
- Three attempts were made to colonise polar areas of the planet Mars in the 22nd century. Norrich contributed three couples to one of the expeditions. Each colony was abandoned after a few decades because of supply difficulties, psychological problems among the colonists and the adverse environment (Mars Colony II was buried by a dust storm). It is now generally accepted that planet Earth is the only viable home for the human species.
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Sources and resources
o International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme: Have we entered the Anthropocene? – see http://www.igbp.net/5.d8b4c3c12bf3be638a8000578.html
o National Geographic (2004): Six Degrees Could Change The World – Video at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKo4TSq40l0
o Lynas, M (2004): Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet; Harper Perennial
o Mitchell, D (2004): Cloud Atlas; Sceptre
o Reiter, P (2000): From Shakespeare to Defoe: Malaria in England in the Little Ice Age; Emerging Infectious Diseases, Vol.6, No.1 – see http://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/6/1/00-0101_article.htm
o Salzmann, U, Haywood, AM and Lunt, DJ (2009): The past is the guide to the future? Comparing Middle Pliocene vegetation with predicted biome ditributions for the twenty-first century; Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 367
o Sloan, CL, Huber, H & Ewing, A (2000): Polar stratospheric cloud forcing in a greenhouse world; in: Abrantes, F & Mix, A 2000: Reconstructing the Ocean History; Springer Verlag
o Warrick et al (1990): The greenhouse effect and its implications for the European Community; Commission of the European Communities
o Wasdell, D (2007): Feedback Dynamics and the Acceleration of Climate Change; APPCCG – see http://www.apollo-gaia.org/BaliandBeyond.htm
o World Bank (2012): Turn Down The Heat - Why a 4 deg C warmer world must be avoided – see http://www.worldbank.org/en/news/feature/2012/11/18/Climate-change-report-warns-dramatically-warmer-world-this-century
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‘Norwich in AD 2035 - A prophetic fantasy’, by WT Watling
(Norwich Almanac and Record, 1935). Image courtesy Norfolk Record Office |
© Tim Holt-Wilson
July 2013/ Sept 2015
