Excerpt: 'The Future of Everything'

Nov. 4, 2006 — -- Can we really tell what the future has in store?

That's the question David Orrell investigates in "The Future of Everything," in stores Dec. 28, 2006. By looking back at how scientists have predicted the future in the past, Orrell puts forth visions of what the coming years may be like.

Read an excerpt of "The Future of Everything" below:

Consulting the Crystal Ball

Our World in 2100

But what have been thy answers, what but darkAmbiguous, and with double sense deluding,Which they who asked have seldom understood . . .No more shalt thou by oracling abuseThe Gentiles; henceforth oracles are ceased,And thou no more with pomp and sacrificeShalt be enquired at Delphos or elsewhere,At least in vain, for they shall find thee mute. -- John Milton, Paradise Regained

Let now the astrologers, the star-gazers, the monthlyprognosticators, stand up and save thee from these things thatshall come upon thee. -- Isaiah, 47:13

Forecast 2100

So now that we have all those theoretical points and disclaimers outof the way, we can ask how things will really look in the year 2100.While researching this book, I came across a variety of ideas, scenarios,predictions, and concerns. Most are based on the output ofGCMs, coupled in some cases with models of physical, biologicalor economic systems. Others are speculations based on what appearto be credible scenarios. The most plausible are listed below.

The average global temperature will rise by about five degrees(C or F).

Droughts in places such as Spain, Australia, New Zealand, theMiddle East, and parts of the United States will make it difficultto grow traditional crops.

Wheat yields will improve in Canada and Russia.

Sea levels will rise by a metre or more.

Summer monsoons in Asia will be more variable, withincreased risks of floods or droughts.

Three million cubic kilometres of ice in the Greenland icesheet will begin a long and unstoppable melting process.

The West Antarctic ice sheet will also begin to melt.

Glaciers worldwide will continue to recede.

The Arctic will have ice-free summers, impacting on ice-livinganimals, birds, and northern indigenous peoples.

Much of the tundra in northern countries will disappear,releasing its stores of carbon.

A combination of fires and pest outbreaks will severely damageboreal forests in China and other countries.

Huge dust storms in the Gobi and Sahara deserts will causerespiratory problems worldwide.

Local warming and rainfall reduction will cause parts of theAmazonian rainforest to collapse and die, releasing their storesof carbon.

Wetlands such as South America's Pantanal will dry out,impacting species such as migratory birds.

Storms and hurricanes will dramatically intensify.338 Future

Areas including France, Germany, and the northwest UnitedStates will experience increased heat waves, like the one thathit Paris in the summer of 2003.

Coastal erosion will displace hundreds of millions of people,destroy prime farmland, flood entire island nations, andresult in huge costs for cities such as Alexandria, Amsterdam,Manila, Calcutta, and London.

The thermohaline ocean circulation will slow or stop, causingthe U.K. winter to go Canadian.

Warmer oceans will result in quasi-permanent El Niñoconditions.

Exhausted fisheries will not recover.

Coral reefs will turn white.

Losses in species diversity will result in widespread ecosystemcollapse.

Global warming will accelerate disease spread in a range ofspecies, from coral to Hawaiian songbirds.

Dengue fever, malaria, and other mosquito-borne tropicalillnesses will head north.

The increased incursion of humans into natural habitats willbring new and deadly diseases.

Biotechnologists will accidentally or deliberately create novelpathogens that will be released into the population.

Our increased population density, coupled with rapid transportationnetworks, will result in fast-spreading pandemics.

The gap between rich and poor will accelerate, leading toincreased social and economic instabilities.

The NASDAQ stock index will reach one million.

Poor people will cluster in vulnerable areas, and the numberof lives lost to natural disasters will continue to climb.

Wars will erupt over water, as well as oil.

Local shortages of food and water will lead to mass migrations.

Climate disruption, unsustainable land use, ecosystem collapse,population growth, pollution, and other factors willcombine to reinforce one another and accelerate the degradationof the planet.

An asteroid at least fifty kilometres wide will collide with theearth sometime during the century, killing millions of people.

The release of tiny, self-replicating machines invented by nanotechnologistswill reduce the surface of the planet to a "greygoo."

There will be a nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter.

Civilization will collapse globally.

Other things to look out for are the following:

The average global temperature will be little changed.

The growth in global communication, coupled with increasedinterest in the environment, will help slow or reverse environmentaldamage.

People will switch to fuel-cell cars or hybrids or bicycles orfoot-power or public transit or stay at home in huge numbers.

Countries will become far more efficient in energy use, embracingnon-carbon energy sources such as solar, biomass, wind, etc.

Countries will switch to nuclear reactors, perhaps based onfusion technology.

Most cancers will be curable or treatable in rich countries.

Stem-cell and other genetic treatments will extend thelifespans of wealthy people.

Nanomachines will help control global warming by removingcarbon from the atmosphere (before they convert the earth'ssurface to a grey goo).

We will rapidly evolve taboos against pollution and overpopulation.

Partly as a result of a booming global economy, birth rateswill fall more quickly than anticipated. The earth's populationwill not be much greater than today's.

Carbon emissions will stabilize.

We will experience a revolution on the scale of the agriculturaland industrial revolutions.

Civilization will prosper globally.

The NASDAQ stock index will cease to exist.

The earth system will recover quickly from the damage we aredoing.

The earth system will cure itself, in a way that is bad for us.23Finally, we might:

begin to see the planet as a living system, and as a result stopdamaging it

denounce our oracles as false, deluding, and distracting -- orsimply stop listening to them

Except perhaps for the last, these predictions are consistent withGCM forecasts and IPCC projections under different economicscenarios, but represent only a sample of the known unknowns.There are, of course, also the unknown unknowns.Given that we can rule none of these out, how can we determinethe probability of any of them happening? Is the chance thatglobal warming will be greater than 2°C just 10 percent, or is itmore like 90 percent? What exactly are the odds?Robert FitzRoy defined a forecast as something completelyobjective, "the result of a scientific combination and calculation."

But as I argued in this book, we cannot obtain accurate equationsfor atmospheric, biological, or social systems, and those we have aretypically sensitive to errors in parameterization. By varying a handfulof parameters within apparently reasonable bounds, we can geta single climate model to give radically different answers. Theseproblems do not go away with more research or a faster computer;the number of unknown parameters explodes, and the crystalball grows murkier still. There is no State of Civilization RiskAssessment Test (SOCRATES) to tell us the answer. We can't mathematicallycalculate the odds, even if it looks serious, scientific, andsomehow reassuring to do so. Like Socrates himself, we only knowthat we know nothing. Any prediction necessarily involves a largedollop of subjectivity. Numerical models are not enough.

One way forward is to ask experts what they think. This isthe approach of the IPCC, who asked themselves. Based on "collectivejudgment of the authors, using the observational evidence,modeling results, and theory that they have examined," the IPCCconcludes, for example, that there is a 90 to 99 percent probabilityof "increased heat stress in livestock and wildlife" because ofhigher maximum temperatures, but only a 67 to 90 percent chanceof "increased damage to coastal ecosystems such as coral reefs andmangroves" because of more intense tropical cyclones. Such fuzzyestimates are a useful way to present complex information andattempt to rank threats. However, the results are panel-dependent,and not everyone shares the IPCC's robust belief in the models. Agroup of economists would probably conclude that in a hundredyears, we and our livestock will all be living in air-conditioned bubbles,and a panel of sceptics would insist that we will acclimatizeto slightly warmer conditions. A panel consisting of AstronomerRoyal Sir Martin Rees, meanwhile, would give us only a 50 percentchance of surviving at all, which puts things into perspective.

To get a balanced assessment, we have established a panel ofenlightened, rational, far-sighted experts -- the true paragons ofreason. Yes, we mean you, the readers of Apollo's Arrow. Please jointhe online forum at www.apollosarrow.ca to vote on issues fromthe likely extent of global warming and the chance of a globalpandemic to the probability of a major shift towards a sustainableeconomy. We will tabulate the responses in real time and use themto formulate a prediction. The result will be carefully archived. Itmay not predict the future, but will at least provide amusement foranyone from future generations who happens across it.

Great Predictions from History

No book on prediction would be complete without a saluteto famous predictions from yesteryear.

"If one might trust the Pythagoreans, who believe in therecurrence of precisely the same series of events, you willbe sitting there, and I shall be holding this staff and tellingyou my story, and everything will be the same." -- Eudemus,a student of Aristotle, commenting (around 300 B.C.) onthe Pythagorean notion of eternal recurrence. That wouldexplain those faint feelings of déjà vu.

"Sooner or later a crash is coming, and it may be terrific.. . . Factories will shut down . . . men will be thrown outof work. . . . The vicious circle will get in full swing andthe result will be a serious business depression." -- RogerBabson, 1929. His remarks came before the worst crash inU.S. stock-market history -- and may have helped trigger it.

"Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the sons and daughtersof the Earth." -- Chief Seattle, 1854. Not a prediction somuch as a warning.

"When the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will closewith it and no more be heard of." -- Erasmus Wilson,Oxford University, 1878. Electric lights are now visiblefrom space.

"The inhabitant of London could order by telephone,sipping his morning tea in bed, the various products ofthe whole earth and reasonably expect their early deliveryupon his doorstep; he could at the same moment andby the same means adventure his wealth in the naturalresources and new enterprises of any quarter of the world,and share, without exertion or even trouble, in their prospectivefruits and advantages." -- John Maynard Keynespredicting Internet commerce, around 1900.

"The horse is here to stay, but the automobile is only a novelty." -- The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advisesagainst investing in the Ford Motor Company, 1903.Computer chips should double in power at a rate of"roughly a factor of two per year." -- In 1975, Gordon E.Moore modified his 1965 prediction (otherwise known asMoore's Law) to a doubling every two years. It has provedquite accurate. If computer-based predictions had kept pacesince the 1950s, they would have improved by a factor of amillion, and we would be able to see into the next century.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, 1943. A good thing for this chairmanof IBM that he was wrong.

"By the year 2000, people will work no more than four daysa week and less than eight hours a day. With legal holidaysand long vacations, this could result in an annual workingperiod of 147 days worked and 218 days off." -- From theNew York Times, October 19, 1967. If only we could getaway from those computers.

"Genetic control or influence over the 'basic constitution'of an individual." -- First predicted in 1967 to be availableby the year 2000, it was assessed by a panel of scientistsin 2002 as "a prediction that might occur, but hasn't happenedyet."

"There is now considerable evidence that the first stagesof the next ice age may really begin soon, within the nextfew years -- and that the transitional stage of extreme andinhospitable climate may already have begun." -- LarryEphron in The End: The Imminent Ice Age and How WeCan Stop It (1988). Global warming put a stop to that.We are "moving toward the greatest worldwide depressionin history, in which millions of people will suffercatastrophicfinancial reversals. . . . It will occur in 1990and plague the world through at least 1996." -- Ravi Batra,talking up what became a huge economic boom, in TheGreat Depression of 1990 (1987)

"You can live long enough to live forever." And see thefuture yourself. An optimistic (I think) 2004 forecast fromthe anti-aging guru Ray Kurtzweil. So long as you rememberto look each way before crossing the road, from nowuntil the end of time.

The Future Foretold (for Non-mathematicians Only)

In the meantime, allow me to probe the tangled entrails, thewhisperingtrees, the babbling brooks of subjectivity for omens andportents and wholesome advice. . . .

I feel we're living in a bubble, but I can't prove it, and I can'tcall the top. I think, at a global level, we won't run out of energy,water, or resources anytime soon, but the planet still has limits, andjust because they bend (they are not fixed or immutable) doesn'tmean they won't break. I think we will affect the climate, and notbe best pleased with the warm and erratic outcome. But the realproblems will be down here on the ground, not up there in thesky. I think we won't be able to produce detailed and convincingpredictions of the changes before they happen. I think we shouldhave fewer children, pollute less, tread more lightly -- and not waitfor our scientists to compute us a solution. It's a time for action,not calculation. I feel a storm is coming, but I don't know if it isatmospheric, medical, economic, or all three. I feel we're in onlythe second act of this particular story -- tension is building, forcesare aligning, clouds are gathering -- and it's not clear what twistslie ahead or how matters will resolve. I think nature has a fewtricks left up her sleeve.

I think this is pretty unoriginal (it's not rocket science), but Ican't prove it objectively, rationally, or mathematically, because it'snot that kind of problem. Life is not a predictable machine. Life isa surprise.

But . . . when Kepler asked his tutor, Mästlin, for advice onastrological predictions, he told him just to predict disaster, sincethat was bound to come true sooner or later. So a disaster: sometimein the next hundred years, just when overpopulation and environmentalstress seem to be the biggest problems, and many inpoorer countries are weakened by drought and famine, there willbe a worldwide pandemic. Our global, interlinked, just-in-timeeconomic system will fall apart as countries impose quarantinesand people stay at home. A couple of years later, when the diseasehas run its course, we will try to start up the economic machineagain -- but rust will have set in. Carbon emissions will decline, andthe climate will eventually stabilize. After a period of wars, invasions,and insurgencies, so will we. Life will return once again tonormal, with the difference that we are wiser, more humble, andmore respectful of nature.

And then we'll do it again.

Or, scenario B -- and here I embrace the non-objective, ensemble-forecasting approach -- we get a warning shot that we can'tignore. This kick-starts a third, already nascent revolution, onethat's of the same magnitude as the agricultural and industrial revolutionsbut does not involve a new way of extracting energy fromthe ground. We'll know it after we see it. Carbon emissions willdecline, and the climate will eventually stabilize.

Defence of Socrates

As we've seen in this book, mathematical models have consistentlyfailed to provide accurate predictions of atmospheric, biological,or economic systems -- they do not know the future. Such a statementusually has negative connotations: "I don't know" is associated with failure, bad marks on exams, and in Socrates' case, thesipping of poisonous hemlock drinks. But it does not mean thatmathematical models are of no use in addressing the world's problemsor understanding the present. Our impact on the planet canbe visualized only with scientific technology that extends our sensesto a global level. The important thing is that we do not allow anunbalanced and often fake insistence on objectivity to distance usfrom the world or cut off our connection to it. The future dependson the choices we make, and on the reactions of complex systemsthat are beyond our control. Decision-making in such situationsrelies as much on felt cultural and political values as it does onlogical analysis. Objectivity and subjectivity must be in balance,and inform each other, just like the positive and negative feedbackloops that characterize living systems. We will choose to protectnature only if we value it -- and not just as an object, but because itis alive. The only way we will respect it is if we understand that wecannot control it.

In non-linear, complex systems, change often happens abruptly,like water turning to ice. Extreme change is normal. This makesprediction difficult, but it also holds out tremendous hope, becauseit means that a sudden change in course can be expected. Suchchange often comes from the bottom up, rather than from the topdown; it comes as a felt reaction, rather than something told tous by experts. Unlike deterministic mechanical systems, we have achoice; we can determine our own destiny. We are not slaves to theinitial condition, our genes, or the efficient market. We are unpredictable,and that's no bad thing.

The science of complexity will not build a better GCM, andneither will Gaia theory or earth system science. Their stories aremore of humility than of human ingenuity. But if we as a speciesare standing at a precipice, it is better that we see the worldfeelinglythan be completely blinded by our mental models; that weknow what we do not know.27 Creativity often emerges from a stateof uncertainty. Grasping for illusory knowledge by over-modellingour environment is therefore part of the problem.

Even if we cannot predict storms, we can predict our abilityto weather them. Engineers can calculate the vulnerability ofstructures to disasters such as flooding, hurricanes, and tsunamis,and help design suitable building codes. Economists can pointout weaknesses in a country's financial system, and health workerscan determine how much medicine will be needed to fight an epidemic.But as our populations extend into floodplains and coastalareas, and global warming raises sea levels and increases the forceof storms, we may find that the walls we built to withstand thoseonce-in-a-lifetime storms are no longer high enough to keep thewater out.

Mathematical models will always be indispensable. Like language,they are a way to understand the world, and organize andcommunicate our thoughts. They help us perform hypotheticalexperiments, explore possible scenarios, and expose fragilities.Most of all, they help us comprehend what is happening now. Themathematician Ralph Abraham wrote: "While we may not be ableto predict the future with certainty, or at all, we may at least exerciseour cognitive processes, with mathematical models and computergraphic simulations that improve our understanding of thepresent, enhancing our chances of survival in the future." Apollo'sarrow cannot fly into the future or protect us from plague, but itmay serve as a compass, point out dangers, and help us navigate anunpredictable world.