Homo sapiens.

Simon squatted next to a coral: "Accordingly, this reef should not be exposed to the sea."

"It may have something to do with the recent climate change." Wu Kang guessed, grabbing a handful of dry seaweed.

Simon seemed to have heard about it: "Sudden change in climate? Is it a matter of the warm flow of the North Atlantic Ocean?"

"Well, I didn't expect the sea to retreat so fast. It seems that the speed of climate change is much faster than we thought."

According to the situation of this reef, before this reef was only a small part of land exposed when the tide was low, but now during high tide, so much land is exposed to the sea, obviously the sea level has dropped a lot.

In fact, the weather service of Homo sapiens has detected a drop in sea levels around the world.

With the rapid expansion of ice sheets at the north and south poles this year, the sea levels of the world's five oceans have dropped by an average of 1.3 to 1.5 meters.

This caused part of the reef to emerge from the sea.

For example, in the Pacific Ocean, the Homo sapiens company has used advanced monitoring methods to take the lead in erecting monuments on these islands and reefs, and even established ocean observation stations on some relatively large new islands.

And the other four major forces have also reacted one after another, and are also strengthening their detection of the surrounding waters, and will try to control these new islands.

Of course, they are not for the few square kilometers of island land, but are worried about the Homo sapiens company doing things.

Moreover, new islands continue to emerge from the sea, which is actually not a good thing.

Because this shows the fact that sea regression has already occurred.

Even if they desperately use coal and fuel vehicles, the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases produced, there is no way to prevent climate change.

Many people think that this is caused by the greening of the Sahara Desert.

In fact, this is a bit of a generalization.

Because the North Atlantic warm current is the key, and this ocean current system is the key to the stability of the north and south polar ice sheets.

The carbon sequestered by the greening of the Sahara desert accounts for only a small fraction of the carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere.

The real culprit that caused the North Atlantic warm current to stop flowing is actually humans themselves, who use fossil fuels on a large scale and emit a lot of greenhouse gases.

These greenhouse gases can increase the probability of extreme weather, which in turn can lead to abnormalities in ocean current systems.

If the earth is regarded as a living body, the sudden change in the ocean current system is actually the earth feeling that it is too hot, and now it needs to strengthen heat dissipation.

How to dissipate heat?

It is very simple, just cut off the warm current in the North Atlantic Ocean, which will cause the ice sheets of the north and south poles to expand rapidly, and a large part of the solar radiation energy will be reflected by the ice sheets, resulting in a decrease in the total amount of solar energy received by the earth, which in turn triggers global cooling. .

Therefore, Homo sapiens' Sahara desert greening project is not the main culprit for this ice age strengthening.

In fact, this era of human life happened to be in the ice age.

It is only because of the advancement of technology and the large amount of carbon dioxide emissions that many people think that it is very warm now.

However, this attempt to fight against the climate can easily backfire before human civilization reaches Level 1.

Now is a living example.

The backlash of the earth is coming.

Increasing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions now has no way to change the expansion of ice sheets in the north and south poles. On the contrary, it may exacerbate global cooling and trigger more extreme weather.

Lucia, Maple Leaf Country, and Northern Europe with the highest latitudes are already in a hurry.

The freezing period of more than half a year before was very cheating.

Now the freezing period will continue to be extended, that is simply terrible.

Especially in the Europa region and North America, where there are no mountains or plateaus to block them. When the ice age came, more than half of the area was covered by glaciers.

In order to deal with this climate crisis, the four major forces had to hold an emergency meeting.

Chapter 521 Self-help

The behind-the-scenes bosses of the four major forces.

In their respective safe houses, this emergency meeting started through a very confidential and exclusive network.

Caesar looked at the other people in the video interface, and was the first to speak:

"Everyone, this sudden climate change is very likely to become a huge crisis for us. Now the open-air agricultural production in high-latitude areas has been seriously affected. If the situation continues to deteriorate, you should all know the consequences by then. .”

Thomas Morgan and others are naturally clear, after all, they also have think tanks and professional meteorologists.

It is precisely because they know that this sudden climate crisis may bring catastrophe that they hurriedly held secret talks.

As a member of the free association, the few Dukes of Windsor who are eligible to participate in the meeting have a gloomy expression:

"Now the ice caps in the north and south poles are expanding, and the impact of the North Atlantic warm current is too great. The temperature in the British Isles has dropped by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius compared with previous years, and the unstable climate is also harmful to agricultural production in the middle and low latitudes. No small impact."

In this regard, Louis Comte of the Europa Consortium went straight to the point: "We are all aware of these situations, everyone talk about how to solve them!"

Thomas Morgan had a solemn expression: "Our meteorological research team has studied it and also used supercomputers to simulate it. Unless the North Atlantic warm current can be restored to normal, the ice age will be difficult to stop."

Kaiser frowned, and then proposed a simple and crude idea: "Increasing the use of fossil fuels, or directly releasing the methane produced by fermentation into the atmosphere, can it increase the greenhouse effect and suppress the outbreak of the ice age?"

"This……"

Everyone looked at each other.

However, the Duke of Windsor shook his head: "It's useless. The carbon dioxide and methane we release can increase the greenhouse effect, but the solar energy reflected by the ice sheets at the north and south poles exceeds the heat preservation effect brought by the greenhouse effect."

"And if you continue to release carbon dioxide and methane, the oxygen content in the atmosphere will continue to decline, which will cause health problems. You don't plan to stay in the artificial ecosystem for the rest of your life, do you?"

Obviously, although Britain has fallen so low that it has to join the free association before it can survive, the legacy left over from the era of the empire on which the sun never sets still has some heritage.

Their research on atmospheric science is at least better than that of the frizzy and leaky Lucia.

Now many meteorological research groups have found that the continued release of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane will not only fail to suppress the arrival of the ice age, but may accelerate the arrival of the ice age.

Because carbon dioxide is water-soluble to a certain extent, it can dissolve into seawater, causing seawater to become acidic.

In addition, the temperature of seawater in tropical seas rises, which affects the change of seawater salinity, which will lead to changes in deep-sea density currents.

This is one of the internal reasons for the current cut-off of the North Atlantic warm current.

The ocean current systems of the five oceans are all connected together. As long as some of the ocean currents are abnormal, the ocean currents in other sea areas will also be affected.

Caesar proposes to increase emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, with the result that the tropics will be hotter, the frigid regions will be colder, and extreme weather in the mid-latitudes will become more frequent.

This is obviously a bad idea.

"Then you have some suggestions? You can't just do nothing, right?" Caesar was also anxious.

Master Feng of the Europa Consortium looked at everyone, and then wiped the cold sweat from his forehead: "How about increasing the scale of indoor agriculture and nuclear power plants?"

"Indoor farming? Nuclear power plant?" Kaiser was very entangled.

Technically speaking, if indoor agriculture and nuclear power plants are pushed hard, it can indeed solve the reduction in agricultural production caused by extreme weather.

The problem is, this investment is also an astronomical figure.

But without indoor agriculture and nuclear power plants, future open-air agriculture in mid-to-high latitudes will definitely be seriously affected.

You must know that the population of the four major forces is not small at this time.

Its free association has 5.2 million people, Lucia has 1.3 million people, Europa Federation has 4.5 million people, and other forces have 7.9 million people.

In addition, there are some small forces attached to the four major forces, including 1.6 million people in Central Asia and other Asian regions (excluding the neutral West Asia region), and 0.8 million people in Eastern Europe and Northern Europe.

The total population of the free world is currently 21.3 billion people.

With such a huge population, if calculated on the basis of the food and clothing standard of 400 kilograms of grain per capita per year, it would need to consume 8.52 million tons of grain.

If there is no sudden change in climate, 8.52 million tons of grain can easily produce 14 billion tons of grain based on the homeland of the four major powers alone.

However, it is no longer possible. In the high latitudes of Lucia, Maple Leaf Country, and Europa, the agricultural production capacity may have to be cut in half.

In the Great Lakes Plain in northern North America, the Northeast Coastal Plain, and the northern Mississippi Great Plains, agricultural production will also experience varying degrees of decline.

In this year's situation alone, the ABCD and the agricultural data analysis agencies of the major forces predict that the grain output of the free world will drop by 2-3 million tons this year, leaving only about 10.5 billion-11 billion tons.

In addition, commercial crops such as sunflower seeds, rapeseed, soybeans, peanuts, sugar cane, sugar beets, and cotton should also reduce their production by 20-30%.

If it weren't for the ruthless actions of the four major forces, it is estimated that the price of goods would have gone up by now.

There have been panic buying of grain, edible oil, and sugar in many places. In order to deal with the panic buying, the four major forces can only initiate purchase restrictions, and at the same time make every effort to crack down on hoarding behavior.

However, these countermeasures are palliative rather than permanent.

If the supply problem of agricultural products is not resolved, purchase restrictions and a crackdown on hoarding will only stabilize for a period of time.

For Master Feng's proposal, everyone debated, the main differences were how to keep the production cost of indoor farming down, and the safety of nuclear power plants.

In fact, they have another option, which is to abandon some high-latitude areas and migrate the population to mid- and low-latitude areas.

This plan was opposed by Lucia and the Europa Federation.

Lucia is a region without middle and low latitudes, and the Europa Commonwealth is a region with a long and narrow Mediterranean coast, which is a region with middle and low latitudes.

In fact, the four major powers are not willing to give up the high-latitude areas. After all, although these places are cold, they are rich in various resources, and they are also the rear for them to resist Homo sapiens.

If the population is relocated to the middle and low latitudes, it will basically be next to the Homo sapiens company, which is like delivering food.

Do you know why only more than 1000 million people in Lucia went to Homo Sapiens to work?

The reason is that the distance between the two parties is too far away. Under various conditions, it is much more difficult for ordinary people to go to Homo sapiens company to work.

And those areas that are close to the Homo sapiens company, such as Annan, no matter how restricted, many people have a way to go to the Homo sapiens company to work there.

Now the four major forces are eager to separate the Pacific Ocean from Homo sapiens.

As for whether the four major forces have thought about joining forces and fighting Homo sapiens, of course they have thought about this idea, and even performed supercomputing simulations.

However, the results of various deduction are not very good, either the whole army is wiped out, or it is completely defeated.

Thomas Morgan knew that Homo sapiens could electrocute a person silently, which made him give up the idea of ​​fighting to the death with Homo sapiens.

Now they just want to maintain the status quo, not to provoke Homo sapiens.

Chapter 522 Cutting Meat and Persisting

Thomas and others are still self-aware.

Don't look at the sudden climate change that may cause serious agricultural production reductions. In fact, it has no real impact on Tianlong people like them.

After all, no matter how difficult it is, Thomas and others can live comfortably.

If there is no Homo sapiens company, even if there is a sudden climate change and the earth enters an ice age, the Tianlong people will not care about the life and death of ordinary consumables.

Now they are trying to stabilize prices and restore agricultural production capacity, not because of their conscience.

But in order to ensure their own strength, these consumables are needed to work for them.

Without these consumables, everything would fall apart, not to mention competing with Homo sapiens, even self-protection would be very difficult.

After all, there are only a few people in the Tianlong group.

Many people may think that artificial intelligence, automation technology, and robot technology are very powerful now, and artificial intelligence and robots can be used to replace ordinary consumables, so that there is no need to worry about food supply.

Indeed, the idea is brilliant.

But many people ignore a problem.

That is, computers and robots also need to be manufactured by humans, designed by humans, and maintained by humans.

You said, you can directly use automated production lines to produce computers and robots?This reduces the consumption of consumables.

But what about design and maintenance?What about technology research and development?

Can't let artificial intelligence design, maintain and engage in technology research and development by itself?

If artificial intelligence can do this level.

Congratulations to human civilization, your historical mission has been completed, you can get ready to receive lunch, now is the era of omnic civilization.

Obviously, at this stage, artificial intelligence has no way to design, maintain, and engage in technology research and development by itself.

And the number of Tianlong people is too small, and most of these guys are not science and engineering.

Let them play tricks, financial games, eat, drink, and have fun. Maybe they are masters, engaged in industrial production and technology research and development, it is really embarrassing for them.

With the development of modern industry, many industries need too many industrial technicians.

Take the computer industry as an example.

Chip manufacturing equipment, chip manufacturing raw materials, chip design and manufacturing, computer supporting components, assembly, software design, post-maintenance, etc., the entire industry chain needs at least several million practitioners.