Severely damaged during a battle between the Chicago and New York pretender governments. Chicago won, and they kept the capital there afterwards.
Icarus: A Climate TL
- Thread starter ItsMyKetchup
- Start date
DWS is president???? Now that's something. Intervention in Chile... ummm not good, not again.
This is a super interesting article overall I love all the little details you added like the stock going up. This is extremely well made and seems like very real. Did Norway relinquish Svalbard because of the seed vault?
Well, they're still available, just obscenely expensive, so grocers have stocked up on more hardy fruits like plums or blackcurrants that nobody really wants.
Yes, the UN plans to build a bunker and base there in case of complete climate catastrophe (although it's marketed in much less dire terms to the general public).
Based on the Svalbard Treaty, Norway really didn't have a ton of sovereignty over it, so they let the UN take it over, although they kept a few exclusive rights on the island and the EEZ surrounding it.
Good to see this back! "Spurned" in the second-to-last paragraph should probably be "spurred" - other than that, great update.
To think that this would be reality if we didn't stop CFCs in the 80s is chilling, but also reassuring, because it shows things could have been a lot worse than they are in real life. If reddit still exists here, I bet it's basically 80% r/collapse and "my specific type of revolution NOW is the only hope" posts. To be fair to them, they'd have a lot more reason to feel that way; I'm sure climate anxiety and depression are soaring, as are the escapist and apocalyptic media markets. At least treasury bonds are up by a lot compared to OTL?
To think that this would be reality if we didn't stop CFCs in the 80s is chilling, but also reassuring, because it shows things could have been a lot worse than they are in real life. If reddit still exists here, I bet it's basically 80% r/collapse and "my specific type of revolution NOW is the only hope" posts. To be fair to them, they'd have a lot more reason to feel that way; I'm sure climate anxiety and depression are soaring, as are the escapist and apocalyptic media markets. At least treasury bonds are up by a lot compared to OTL?
Yeah, this timeline is fairly depressing. But really that's a good thing, since it shows the world we successfully avoided by taking decisive, coordinated action. Sentiment about the future in younger generations is accordingly much worse than OTL, and more radical ideologies are more popular with the youth as a result.
Bonds are up because the stock market is lot riskier than OTL, so investors park their money in safer investments like this.
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Do you have a specific prediction for the climate change impact that you have made up or do you go by one from like the actual ICC estimates?
I would imagine this ends up having some effect on events. That is, if things don't collapse in spectacular fashion ala Tresckow's Soylentverse.
What's the water situation like in the western US ITTL 2024? Have the Great Salt Lake, Lake Mead, Colorado River, etc. dried up? Also, has there been a renewed push to pipe water from the Great Lakes out west? Because if so I imagine it'd be super divisive; Midwesterners won't be interested in giving up water so California can grow alfalfa in the middle of the desert. Speaking of which, Chicago being the capital of the post-collapse US honestly makes sense given its access to so much fresh water from the Great Lakes.
On that note, how is agriculture in the US adopting to the deteriorating environmental situation, especially since I assume a lot of the agricultural areas out west have become physically impossible to grow crops in by TTL 2024.
On that note, how is agriculture in the US adopting to the deteriorating environmental situation, especially since I assume a lot of the agricultural areas out west have become physically impossible to grow crops in by TTL 2024.
reread the thread will you get to the possibly non-canon future update with an ongoing civil war/warlordism. you want a flashpoint to break up the US? Well, you just proposed an OBVIOUS potential one.
Yeah that's what I was referring to when I mentioned the post-collapse US being based in Chicago. And yeah, I feel like a definite flashpoint would be the federal government trying to take control of the Great Lakes to better distribute water to the rest of the country, the midwestern states giving the government the finger, and things snowballing from there.
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Oh, this will have some effects. Just wait a bit for the 2024 election
All of the major Western lakes and rivers are drier than OTL. California is on a dam-building spree, and has entered into a compact with Oregon and Washington to import water at high prices. California is also the main leader of a coalition of states behind legislation to commit to a national water pipeline from the Great Lakes to the Western states. This has not helped simmering political tensions in the country.
Agriculture is in dire straits. Lots of imported international food items are no longer available, and other fruits and vegetables are not at all available in the off-season. Alfalfa, almond farming, etc. have been banned in California for exorbitant water usage, although agriculture still hogs up an insane amount of water. Agriculture is still thriving in the
Imports from other countries have filled in some of the gaps. You're much more likely to find Asian pears in a supermarket than European ones. Another way to meet demand is to simply sell more American made stuff (this is where our massive farm subsidies finally come in handy). So, high fructose corn syrup is much more omnipresent than even OTL.
And as an aside, the NYT front page graphic from 2021 that said that the US was in a famine is no longer canon. Things aren't that bad in the US yet, but they might be in the future.
Yeah, that's one of the main political divides in the country at the moment. Alongside this, there's the urban/rural divide like OTL, although much less prevalent, and the north/south divide based along climate priority funding and internal refugees.
I do not have a current prediction for the climate change impact, since there isn't too much scientific literature on Montreal Protocol counterfactuals. I've been going off of estimates. Currently, Icarus is sitting at around ~2-2.3C above pre-anthropogenic levels, with approximately 1-2 meters of sea level rise. Based off of the following graph, with some creative liberties taken.
What does this look like compared to where we are at the present time? (I've looked at graphs online but find interpreting them to be puzzling at best to outright confounding for some reason).I do not have a current prediction for the climate change impact, since there isn't too much scientific literature on Montreal Protocol counterfactuals. I've been going off of estimates. Currently, Icarus is sitting at around ~2-2.3C above pre-anthropogenic levels, with approximately 1-2 meters of sea level rise. Based off of the following graph, with some creative liberties taken.
Lol. Anyways, it was meant to say that agriculture is still thriving in the water-rich Midwest.
Current estimates put OTL as 1.3C above pre-anthropogenic temperatures.