Hi Albert,
I decided to do this as an open letter to facilitate input from the global community. This letter asks the question: What are we going to do about climate changes both now and in the future? It will begin with a background section for the reader followed by some current statistics and end on current and future problems.

Background

About the Author

I'm just a farmer with a scientific background. I'm one of the people out on the front lines dealing with the climate every day, keeping plants and animals alive in the face of record-breaking heat-waves, record-breaking rainfalls, droughts, floods, insect migrations, etc.

About Albert Bates

For people already familiar with Albert Bates' presentations on climate change and biochar, please skip to the next section. I first saw him at a Mother Earth News Festival presentation he gave in which he educates people on where we are today and what our options are for climate change. He presented a graph similar to the following graph which illustrates what we will need to do in order to mitigate climate change from global warming:

What this graph shows is that today, in 2017, we are approaching the red line in which we will need to reduce emissions by 9% per year, for 20 years, to keep global warming at 2 degrees Celsius. Nobody on the planet is coming anywhere near that type of reduction.

Albert then goes on to explain that this type of problem can't be solved by emissions reductions and it becomes one of removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. He shows that this can be done by "scrubbing" it out of the air through the use of trees and then converting it into a soil amendment by burning the trees without oxygen(pyrolysis). Finally he shows all the ways this can be done by both the rich and poor, old and young, men and women, educated and uneducated, people of any color, etc. Thus solving the problem of global warming and returning the planet to a garden of eden with an abundance for everyone. Here's the presentation:

Current Statistics

Climate Change

According to NASA, CO2 is currently at 405.92 parts per million in the atmosphere, global temperatures have risen 1.7 deg F since 1850, arctic ice is declining 13.3% per decade, land ice is losing 281 gigatonnes per year, and sea level is rising 1.4mm per year.

CO2 Emissions

According to Earth Syst. Sci. Data, 8, 1–45, 2016 at https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9j5c5e237lboixt/AADhGuzfseOoOPnnRbTTr9XJa?dl=0&preview=essd-2016-51-typeset_manuscript-version4.pdf
it looks like emissions have declined in more advanced countries while it may have peaked in less developed countries, shown in the following graph:

Problems

Current Problems

Based on the statistics above and current trends in society in general, we now have the following list of problems:

1. Hot summers of increasing duration.
2. Trees are flowering sooner.
3. Plant and animal ranges have shifted.
4. Loss of sea ice
5. Accelerated sea level rise.
6. Accelerated oil extraction.
7. Deregulation of coal, oil, and gas.
8. "Business as usual" for the majority of the planet (e.g. driving cars, consumerism, increasing carbon footprints per capita, etc)

Future Problems

If we project out a few years, based on climate prediction models, we can get an idea what is most likely to happen. Future problems will probably include the following:

1. Temperatures will continue to rise 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century.
2. More droughts and heat waves
3. Sea level will rise 1-4 feet by 2100
4. The Arctic Ocean is expected to become essentially ice free in summer before mid-century. This will unleash runaway global warming.
5. Changes in precipitation patterns.
6. Frost-free season (and growing season) will lengthen

The Big Question

Now we arrive at the whole point of this letter; the big question: What are we to do about climate change now and in the future? As one person, I can't burn enough biochar to offset what the rest of the planet is doing. I can't teach every person how to reduce their own emissions. I can't out-vote the idiocracy. So what are we to do? I'll give a few scenarios and hope that you can come up with some some solutions:

• Scenario 1(likeliness =1%): Global leaders set aside their differences , come together and pool their resources to defeat climate change. They relocate affected people, drop seeds and reforest everywhere, and switch to biochar for heat+energy.
• Scenario 2(likeliness=99%): Nobody does jack. Stuff hits the fan. A few mega-cities go underwater, crops fail, species go extinct, etc.

I'm particularly interested in Scenario 2 because it is the most likely, and I'm pragmatic. Here are a few key questions I don't know the answer to:

1. What will be the best bio-region to be living in now and 50 years down the road?
2. How do we deal with the heat? What types of cooling can be employed for crops? Or do we need to switch everything over to greenhouses? Or just switch crops? Move the farm?
3. How do we deal with the longer growing season?
4. How do we deal with increased precipitation?
5. How do we deal with plants, animals, and insects migrating?
   I hope it's clear that climate change is here, now, and we need solutions to mitigating it. There are thousands of people who will say "I told ya so", and even more that will say "jeez we should do something", and probably even more that will say "global warming doesn't exist". But that's not helpful. We need real solutions. We already marched in the streets, did civil disobedience, wrote to our congressmen, voted, switched to LEDs, composted, gardened, farmed organically, planted trees, chicken tractors, backyard bees, inflated our tires, carpooled, recycled, permaculture, prayed, meditated, and so on and so forth. It's time to talk about low-cost, wind-proof hoophouses, heat-tolerant crops, DIY swales and levees, crowd-sourced plant/animal/insect migration tracking, and so much more.

Sincerely,
WhyteHorse