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| SCIENCE BENCHMARKS 6 DEGREES OF DEVASTATION ? |
Six Degrees of Devastation
Guest Contributor | 1 week ago | Comments (0) | Flag this
Editor's note: This post was written by Mark Lynas for the Global Observatory.
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1 DEGREE
In North America a new dust-bowl brings deserts to life in the high plains—centered on Nebraska, but also wiping out agriculture and cattle ranching as sand dunes appear across five US
states, from Texas in the south to Montana in the north. Mount Kilimanjaro loses the very last of its snow and ice as temperatures rise, leaving the entire continent ice-free for the first time in at
least eleven thousand years. The Alps are also melting, releasing deadly giant landslides as thawing permafrost removes the glue that holds the lofty peaks together. In Peru, disappearing Andean
glaciers mean ten million people face water shortages. Warming seas wipe out the Great Barrier Reef and make coral reefs virtually extinct throughout the tropics. Worldwide, a third of all
species on the planet face extinction.
2 degrees
The entire Arctic ice-cap disappears in the summer months, leaving the North Pole ice-free for the first time in 3 million years. Polar bears, walrus and ringed seals all go extinct. Water supplies
run short in California as the Sierra Nevada snowpack melts away. Tens of millions are displaced as the Kalahari desert expands across southern Africa. Sea level rise quickly accelerates as
Greenland ice sheet tips into irreversible melt, submerging atoll nations and low-lying deltas. Ocean acidification finishes off remaining coral reefs and makes much of the seas toxic to calcareous
plankton—the base of much of the marine food chain.
3 degrees
The Amazonian rainforest burns down in a firestorm of unimaginable ferocity, covering South America with ash and smoke. Once the smoke clears, the interior of Brazil has become desert, and
huge amounts of extra carbon have entered the atmosphere, further boosting global warming. Melting ice-caps and sea level rise displace over a hundred million people worldwide, particularly in
Bangladesh, the Nile Delta and Shanghai. Heatwaves and drought make much of the sub-tropics uninhabitable: large-scale migration even takes place within Europe, where deserts are growing in
southern Spain, Italy and Greece. More than half of wild species are wiped out, in the worst mass extinction since the end of the dinosaurs. Agriculture collapses in Australia.
4 degrees
Rapidly-rising temperatures in the Arctic put Siberian permafrost in the melt zone, releasing vast quantities of methane and CO2. Global temperatures keep on rising rapidly in consequence. Most
glaciers disappear from the Himalayas, reducing dry-season flows in Asia’s biggest rivers to a trickle: 1.5 billion people are affected. The Alps are also ice-free. Food shortages strike
worldwide, especially in drought-struck Africa and Central America. In northern Europe and the UK, summer drought—with temperatures in the home counties reaching 45 degrees
C—alternates with extreme winter flooding as torrential rainstorms sweep in from the Atlantic. England’s ‘green and pleasant land’ is history—new invasive
species drive out the last of familiar trees and flowers from our countryside.
5 degrees
The West Antarctic ice sheet breaks up, eventually adding another 5 metres to global sea levels—2 metres is a likely total by 2100. If these temperatures are sustained for centuries, the
entire planet will be ice-free, and sea levels 70 metres higher than today. South Asian society collapses due to the disappearance of glaciers in the Himalayas, drying up the Indus river, whilst in
east India and Bangladesh, monsoonal floods threaten millions. ‘Super-El Ninos’ spark weather chaos across the globe. Most of humanity begins to seek refuge away from higher
temperatures closer to the poles. Tens of millions of climate refugees force their way into Scandinavia and the British Isles. World food supplies run out, and billions starve.
6 degrees
Warming seas leads to the release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic sediments: further runaway warming is now unstoppable. The oceans lose their oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing
poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas and partially destroying the ozone layer. Deserts extend almost to the Arctic as the Earth’s hydrological cycle intensifies massively with the extra heat.
‘Hypercanes’ (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circum-navigate the globe, causing flash floods which strip the land of soil. Humanity reduced to a few survivors eking out a
living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.
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Mark Lynas is the author of Six Degrees: Our future on a hotter planet, which won the Royal Society science books prize in 2008.
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CEEI COMMENT
If it weren't for the oceans cooling the planet, we would be goners already ! Arctic temperature has been recorded 25 deg F above average 5 years ago ! The world average is talking about 380 parts per million! ONE DEG.
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National Geographic Image Collection/Annie Griffiths Belt |
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