Courtesy: Pebble Beach, Calif.

In a little over 70 years, golf might be played year round in southeastern Canada and the northeastern US states.

That's one of the conclusions of a study published last summer.

You can thank two things: climate change and computer projections.

On Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its landmark study in Paris, the combined work of some 2 thousand scientists worldwide.

It concludes that the planet is heating up rapidly, sea levels will rise dramatically and it is all due to us humans.

I did some elementary research online and learned that very few reports have been written on climate change and the golf industry. Even though the golf industry in North America is roughly the size of the motion picture industry (60 BILLION dollars a year), there isn't a lot of knowledge down on paper on the impact of climate change on the industry.

But there is one study that is startling.

It was done by three climate change scientists who have prepared studies for the IPCC in recent years on global warming and it has been published in the Journal of Leisure Research.

This is a serious publication, so banish those images of guys with their feet up, TV remotes in hand and a bowl of chips next to their elbow. Not that kind of "leisure research".

The study, while international, focused on the Greater Toronto Area in southern Ontario. The concentration of golfers and golf courses in this part of the world is one of the highest in North America, it said.

Here are some of the significant points in the report.

- The average number of rounds played was projected to increase between 5.5% and 13.5% by the 2020s. In hard numbers, that means up to 5 million more rounds per year.

- In the 2050s, the projected increase in rounds played is even more pronounced, ranging from 7.7% to 23.7%. It's all due to warmer weather early and late in the golf season.

- The golf season will be up to 7 weeks longer within 13 years and as much as 12 weeks longer by the mid 2050s.

- And in the 2080s, the golf season in southern Ontario could be year-round.

These are stunning predictions.

What are we to conclude from this? Well, let's blue-sky it a little. Let's say this climate change prediction in Canada holds for much of the Northern Hemisphere, a fair assumption.

The golf industry could absolutely explode in this part of the world.

By the same token, warmer year round temperatures could bake courses in traditionally warm climates. That could lead to severe water shortages and the industry could suffer greatly in those areas. Perhaps the golf season there becomes what it is in Canada right now: only 8 months long.

What a world we're living in.