Saving the human race

I see no point in debating whether the human race should be saved or not. The purpose of this post is simply to offer an alternative to self-destruction because our destruction is well under way and I have lost all hope.
April 14th, 2018West Guilford, OntarioCanada
The weather forecast for today is: “Significant snow with ice pellets expected into tonight. Freezing rain beginning Sunday.” For tomorrow the forecast reads, “Sunday morning another round of ice pellets will move into the region quickly changing to freezing rain later in the morning. The freezing rain will change over to rain Sunday evening. Significant ice buildup is possible on Sunday. Power outages are possible given the significant ice buildup combined with strong and gusty winds.” We sometimes have an April snowstorm, that is not unusual, but normally it last one or two days and then it is gone. This “April storm” has been going on for two weeks now. When I consider the other abnormal weather the world has been experiencing this winter I see no reason to doubt that the climate is changing.
2018 in Canada (as well as many other parts of the world) began with extreme weather. It is all documented in the following report from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO)What is happening to the climate?It doesn’t take much searching to identify that greenhouse gases (GHG) are responsible for what is happening. The GHGs carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (H2O) are the main players but other short lived pollutants play a part also with black carbon, tropospheric ozone and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) chief among them. They are part of the air we breathe, but the proportions in the atmosphere are increasing. NOAA NATIONAL CENTERS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL INFORMATION, State of the Climate in 2016 report https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/sotc/global/201601
This report is in its 27th year of publication and is contributed to by 468 authors from 64 countries; and 16 editors on 3 continents.
How GHGs effect the earth is shown in the following diagram:


The key factors are absorption and reflection. More GHGs in the atmosphere means more heat is radiated back to the earth Science refers to this as “radiation forcing” or “climate forcing” It is defined as “the difference between the sunlight absorbed by the earth and the energy reflected back to space.”

I would think that even if no one was telling me about it I would have noticed a 40% heat increase in the last 28 years, but it turns out that about 90% of that heat increase is stored in the oceans and the ‘ocean thermal lag’ as it is called, delays the heating of the surface air, sea, and land. We may not be feeling the heat yet, but it is locked in for the future. The world we leave our children is going to be hotter than the one we are familiar with. How much hotter is the question a lot of people are trying to answer accurately.
In 2014 the IPCC Assessment estimated that ocean heat lag had committed us to 0.6° C (1.08°F), but not until well after 2100. (It is important to remember that input to the IPCC is from all policy makers of all governments plus leading scientists from all world regions. Policy makers on the panel review every line of the report and must agree on the final text before the report is published. Estimates are conservative at best.) Since the report in 2014 further research now suggests that we will reach a 1.5°C (2.7°F) increase within the next 10 years. If fact “the voluntary national emission reduction commitments since Paris now put the world on a path of 3.4°C of warming by 2100 , and more than 5°C if high-end risks including carbon-cycle feedbacks are taken into account.”[5]
There are 4 global warming scenarios that scientists work with as shown in the following chart. There meanings are explained in the chart.

As it says, the best-case scenario requires the immediate decline of global emissions in order to stay below the target set in the UN Paris Agreement. We are past the point where reducing emissions will guarantee our children’s future. The only choice left is to actually reduce the GHGs that are in the environment.
The effects of global warming that we are now seeing were not expected to happen this quickly, and are having repercussions that no one saw coming. Arctic, Antarctic and Greenland glaciers and ice are melting faster causing sea levels to rise and opening up parts of the oceans that were normally ice covered which allows the water to absorb more heat. Ocean heat is causing the currents to change which in turn causes the jet stream to become erratic. Arctic permafrost is melting and releasing more GHG’s into the atmosphere. Is it too late?The consensus among scientists is that concerted war-time efforts (similar to the nationwide effort undertaken during WWII) may be able to limit global warming to 2○ Celsius if the world stops all carbon emissions now. Unfortunately many of the major western countries like the USA are ignoring the warning and insist on pursuing business as it was in the boom years of the early 20th century. Worse still, some countries like Canada say they are committed to the effort, but continue to invest in oil and gas exploration and technology like pipelines.
https://www.nationalobserver.com/2018/03/06/analysis/theres-some-good-news-about-canadas-2020-climate-targethttps://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2018/05/29/canada-to-buy-trans-mountain_a_23445896/
Worse yet, some politicians in Canadian provinces—provinces are the equivalent of states in the US—are following the trend occurring in the US recently and dismantling efforts that are underway. Doug Ford, leader of the newly elected Conservative provincial government in the province of Ontario, has stopped the Cap and Trade system in Ontario.
https://torontosun.com/news/provincial/doug-ford-ends-cap-and-trade-in-ontario
Efforts and legal challenges are underway to stop these actions, but is it enough to counteract the money and effort made by the large oil and gas industry since the 1980s to discredit the science? I do not believe it is.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/05062017/exxon-climate-change-fraud-investigation-eric-schneiderman-rex-tillerson-exxonmobil
Despite winning some of the legal battles recently, my belief the human race will destroy the ability of this planet to sustain us has not changed. By all means, do not give up the fight, but don’t put the survival of the race in the hands of those currently ignoring the conditions or even the population in general. We are not going to change our lifestyles in the ways being proposed. We are not going to give up eating meat, or cattle ranching, or dairy farming, or using plastic, or heating with gas/wood/oil. The planet will survive, but the environment will be toxic to humans and most current life.
https://www.resilience.org/stories/2018-05-09/humans-didnt-exist-the-last-time-there-was-this-much-co2-in-the-air/
“Scientists estimate we're now losing species at 1,000 to 10,000 times the background rate, with literally dozens going extinct every day [1]. It could be a scary future indeed, with as many as 30 to 50 percent of all species possibly heading toward extinction by mid-century”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-is-becoming-a-top-threat-to-biodiversity/What can be done?
Some people are sending their hope into space. Colonies on the Moon and Mars have been suggested. Getting off our planet may be a viable option for 98.5 percent of the people.The concept of large scale space colonies has been around for many years. I believe they were first proposed by Freeman John DysonFRS (born 15 December 1923) an English-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician. The most famous is probably the O’Neill Cylinder, designed by Princeton physicist Gerard K. O’Neill. This design, is referred to as “Island 3” or 3rd- generation space colony. Consists of a pair of cylinders, each 20 miles long and 4 miles in diameter, the total land area inside the cylinders is about 500 square miles and can house several million people.



Building new enclosed cities using ‘space colony’ technology and concepts, but locating them here on earth instead of off-world is one way of ensuring that human’s survive the Great Acceleration. Building these ‘colonies’ on earth instead of in space would be less expensive. Research at Cornell University is now estimating that two billion people will be displaced by raising sea levels. We will need to build housing and structure for them, and I would like to see sustainable energy conscious structures instead of refugee camps.
 “By 2060, about 1.4 billion people could be climate change refugees, according to the paper. Geisler extrapolated that number to 2 billion by 2100.” http://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/06/rising-seas-could-result-2-billion-refugees-21002060 is only forty-two (42) years away. I won’t see it, but my children will allowing they can still breathe the air around them, find enough food to eat and clean water to drink. Where do people go when food, water and breathable air are not available?