Here are 10 worst-case climate predictions if we don’t keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees Celsius
January 03, 2019
The summer of 2018 was intense: deadly wildfires, persistent drought, killer floods and record-breaking heat. Although scientists exercise great care before linking individual weather events to climate change, the rise in global temperatures caused by human activities has been found to increase the severity, likelihood and duration of such conditions.
<p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Globally, 2018 is on pace to be the fourth-hottest year on record. Only 2015, 2016 and 2017 were hotter. The Paris climate agreement aims to hold temperature rise below 1.5 to 2 degrees Celsius, but if humankind carries on its business-as-usual approach to climate change, there’s a </span><a href="https://carnegiescience.edu/news/more-severe-climate-model-predictions-could-be-most-accurate"><span style="font-weight: 400;">93 percent chance</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> we’re barreling toward a world that is 4 degrees Celsius warmer by the end of the century, a potentially catastrophic level of warming.</span></p><p><b>A Warning and a Reckoning</b></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 1992, 1,700 scientists around the world issued a chilling “</span><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/about/1992-world-scientists.html#.W3nbVC2ZPBI"><span style="font-weight: 400;">warning to humanity</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.” The infamous letter declared that humans were on a “collision course” with the natural world if they did not rein in their environmentally damaging activities.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Such apocalyptic thinking might be easy to mock, and not entirely helpful in inspiring political action if end times are nigh. In 2017, however, more than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries co-signed their names to an updated—and even bleaker—version of the 1992 manifesto.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The latest </span><a href="https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/67/12/1026/4605229"><span style="font-weight: 400;">version</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, titled “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice,” asserts that most of the environmental challenges raised in the original letter—i.e., depletion of freshwater sources, overfishing, plummeting biodiversity, unsustainable human population growth—remain unsolved and are “getting far worse.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising [greenhouse gases] from burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production—particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption,” the paper states.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Moreover,” the authors wrote, “We have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But they stressed that, “Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">More recently, President Trump’s own administration released on November 23 the 1,600-page </span><a href="https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Fourth National Climate Assessment</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a quadrennial report compiled by 13 federal agencies. This report paints a particularly grim picture, including more frequent droughts, floods, wildfires and extreme weather, declining crop yields, the rise of disease-carrying insects and rising seas—all of which could </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/23/climate/us-climate-report.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">reduce U.S. gross domestic product by a tenth by the end of the century</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">So what we saw this summer? Unless humanity gets its act together, we can expect much worse to come. Here’s a peek into our climate-addled future.</span></p><ol class="ee-ol"><li><b>Species Extinction</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Amazon, one of the most biodiverse places on Earth, could lose about 70 percent of its plant and amphibian species and more than 60 percent of its birds, mammals and reptile species from unchecked climate change, according to a 2018 </span><a href="https://www.worldwildlife.org/publications/wildlife-in-a-warming-world-the-effects-of-climate-change-on-biodiversity"><span style="font-weight: 400;">study</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by the University of East Anglia, the James Cook University and World Wildlife Fund (WWF), which analyzed the impact of climate change on nearly 80,000 species of plants, birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians inhabiting the WWF’s 35 “</span><a href="https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Priority Places</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">” for conservation.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The study’s most alarming projection was for the </span><a href="https://wwf.panda.org/knowledge_hub/where_we_work/miombo_woodlands/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Miombo Woodlands</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in central and Southern Africa, one of the priority places most vulnerable to climate change. If global temperatures rose 4.5 degrees Celsius, the researchers projected the loss of 90 percent of amphibians and 80 percent or more of plants, birds, mammals and reptiles.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This incredible loss of biodiversity affects humans, too. “This is not simply about the disappearance of certain species from particular places, but about profound changes to ecosystems that provide vital services to hundreds of millions of people,” the authors warned.</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="2"><li><b> Food Insecurity and Nutritional Deficiencies</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While climate change could </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ya7p42bw"><span style="font-weight: 400;">actually benefit</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> colder parts of the world with longer growing seasons, tropical and subtropical regions in Africa, South America, India and Europe could lose vast chunks of arable land. For coastal countries, </span><a href="https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170118082423.htm"><span style="font-weight: 400;">rising seas</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> could inundate farming land and drinking water with salt.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Staple crops such as wheat, rice, maize and soybeans, which provide </span><a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326"><span style="font-weight: 400;">two-thirds of the world’s caloric intake</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, are sensitive to temperature and precipitation and to rising atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide. A sweeping 2017 </span><a href="https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326"><span style="font-weight: 400;">study</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> showed that every degree-Celsius of warming will reduce average global yields of wheat by 6 percent, rice by 3.2 percent, maize by 7.4 percent and soybeans by 3.1 percent.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">What’s more, according to a recent </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0253-3"><span style="font-weight: 400;">paper</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, carbon dioxide levels expected by 2050 will make staple crops such as rice and wheat less nutritious. This could result in 175 million people becoming zinc deficient (which can cause a </span><a href="https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/Zinc-HealthProfessional/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">wide array of health impacts</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, including impaired growth and immune function and impotence) and 122 million people becoming protein deficient (which can </span><a href="https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/protein-deficiency-symptoms"><span style="font-weight: 400;">cause</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> edema, fat accumulation in liver cells, loss of muscle mass and in children, stunted growth). Additionally, the researchers found that more than 1 billion women and children could lose a large portion of their dietary iron intake, putting them at increased risk of anemia and other diseases.</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="3"><li><b> Farewell to Coastal Cities and Island Nations</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Unless we cut heat-trapping greenhouse gases, scientists predict sea levels could rise up to three feet by 2100, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Fifth Assessment </span><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This could bring high tides and surges from strong storms, and be devastating for the millions of people living in coastal areas. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) </span><a href="https://insideclimatenews.org/news/07032018/sea-level-rise-data-global-warming-noaa-coastal-cities-united-states-climate-change"><span style="font-weight: 400;">published a report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> earlier this year that predicted parts of Miami, New York City and San Francisco could flood every day by 2100, under a sea-level rise scenario of three feet.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Entire countries could also be swallowed by the sea due to global warming. Kiribati, a nation consisting of 33 atolls and reef islands in the South Pacific, is </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/posteverything/wp/2018/07/26/feature/this-is-what-happens-when-climate-change-forces-an-entire-country-to-seek-higher-ground/?noredirect=on"><span style="font-weight: 400;">expected to be one of the first</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Kiribati won’t be alone. </span><a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11852-017-0531-7"><span style="font-weight: 400;">At least eight</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> islands have already disappeared into the Pacific Ocean due to rising sea levels </span><a href="https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23531434-200-eight-lowlying-pacific-islands-swallowed-whole-by-rising-seas/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">since 2016</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, and an April </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/ybyabl5x"><span style="font-weight: 400;">study</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> said that most coral atolls will be uninhabitable by the mid-21st century.</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="4"><li><b> Social Conflict and Mass Migration</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">In 2017, New York Magazine Deputy Editor David Wallace-Wells wrote an alarming and widely read essay called “</span><a href="https://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Uninhabitable Earth</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">” that focused almost entirely on worst-case climate scenarios. He discussed that, with diminished resources and increased migration caused by flooding, “social conflict could more than double this century.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The article’s scientific merit has been </span><a href="https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/scientists-explain-what-new-york-magazine-article-on-the-uninhabitable-earth-gets-wrong-david-wallace-wells/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">fiercely debated</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, but the World Bank did </span><a href="https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461"><span style="font-weight: 400;">conclude</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> in March 2018 that water scarcity, crop failure and rising sea levels could displace 143 million people by 2050. The report focused on Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America, which represent 55 percent of the developing world’s population. Unsurprisingly, the poorest and most climate-vulnerable areas will be hardest hit.</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="5"><li><b> Lethal Heat</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Today, around 30 percent of the global population suffers deadly levels of heat and humidity for at least 20 days a year, a 2017 </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate3322"><span style="font-weight: 400;">analysis</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> showed. If emissions continue increasing at current rates, the researchers suggested 74 percent of the global population—three in four people—will experience more than 20 days of lethal heat waves.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Our attitude towards the environment has been so reckless that we are running out of good choices for the future,” Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii at Manoa, the study’s lead author, told </span><a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/06/heatwaves-climate-change-global-warming/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">National Geographic</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“For heatwaves, our options are now between bad or terrible,” he added. “Many people around the world are already paying the ultimate price of heatwaves.”</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="6"><li><b> Surging Wildfires</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Camp Fire, which burned more than 150,000 acres in Butte County in November, was the deadliest and most destructive fire in California’s history, killing at least 85 people. The Mendocino Complex Fire, which started in July and torched roughly 300,000 acres in Northern California, was the largest fire in the state’s modern history. The second-largest was 2017’s Thomas Fire, which burned 281,000 acres in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">But the Golden State’s fires will only get worse, according to </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8qfhjmg"><span style="font-weight: 400;">California’s Fourth Climate Change Assessment</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> released by the governor’s office in August. If greenhouse gases continue rising, large fires that burn more than 25,000 acres will increase by 50 percent by the end of the century, and the volume of acres that will be burned by wildfires in an average year will increase by 77 percent, the report said.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Higher spring and summer temperatures and </span><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global_warming/science_and_impacts/impacts/springs-domino-effect.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">earlier spring snowmelt typically</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> cause soils to be drier for longer, increasing the likelihood of drought and </span><a href="https://www.edf.org/climate/will-wildfires-keep-spreading-climate-change"><span style="font-weight: 400;">a longer wildfire season</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, particularly in the western United States,” The Union of Concerned Scientists explained in a </span><a href="https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/impacts/global-warming-and-wildfire.html#.W4m2Py2ZPBI"><span style="font-weight: 400;">blog post</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“These hot, dry conditions also increase the likelihood that wildfires will be </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8bnqxda"><span style="font-weight: 400;">more intense and long-burning</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> once they are started by lightning strikes or human error.”</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="7"><li><b> Hurricanes: More Frequent, More Intense</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">It’s not currently clear if changes in climate directly led to 2017’s major hurricanes, including Harvey, Irma, Maria and Ophelia. What we do know is this: Moist air over warm ocean water is hurricane fuel.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“Everything in the atmosphere now is impacted by the fact that it’s warmer than it’s ever been,” CNN Senior Meteorologist Brandon Miller </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2017/09/15/us/climate-change-hurricanes-harvey-and-irma/index.html"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “There’s more water vapor in the atmosphere. The ocean is warmer. And all of that really only pushes the impact in one direction, and that is worse: higher surge in storms, higher rainfall in storms.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">NOAA </span><a href="https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">concluded</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> this June that, “It is likely that greenhouse warming will cause hurricanes in the coming century to be more intense globally and have higher rainfall rates than present-day hurricanes.”</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="8"><li><b> Melted Polar Ice and Permafrost</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Arctic is warming at a rate twice as fast as the rest of the planet, and continued loss of ice and snow cover “will cause big changes to ocean currents, to circulation of the atmosphere, to fisheries and especially to the air temperature, which will warm up because there isn’t any ice cooling the surface anymore,” Peter Wadhams, head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at the University of Cambridge, told </span><a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2017-11-18/melting-polar-ice-poses-serious-global-risk"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Public Radio International</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “That will have an effect, for instance, on air currents over Greenland, which will increase the melt rate of the Greenland ice sheet.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Not only that, frozen Arctic soil—or permafrost—is starting to melt, causing the release of methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. It’s said that the permafrost holds 1.8 trillion tons of carbon, more than twice as much as is currently suspended in the Earth’s atmosphere. Wadhams explained that the fear is that the permafrost will melt in “one rapid go.” If that happens, “The amount of methane that comes out will be a huge pulse, and that would have a detectable climate change, maybe 0.6 of a degree. … So, it would be just a big jerk to the global climate.”</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="9"><li><b> The Spread of Pathogens</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Disturbingly, permafrost is full of pathogens, and its melting could unleash once-frozen bacteria and viruses, </span><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/11/the-zombie-diseases-of-climate-change/544274/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">The Atlantic</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> reported. In 2016, dozens of people were hospitalized and a 12-year-old boy died after an outbreak of anthrax in Siberia. More than 2,000 reindeer were also infected. Anthrax hadn’t been seen in the region for 75 years. The cause? Scientists suggested that a heat wave thawed a reindeer carcass that was infected with the disease decades ago, according to </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2016/08/03/488400947/anthrax-outbreak-in-russia-thought-to-be-result-of-thawing-permafrost"><span style="font-weight: 400;">NPR</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">While we shouldn’t get too frightened about Earth’s once-frozen pathogens wiping us out (yet), the warming planet has also widened the geographic ranges of ticks, mosquitoes and other organisms that carry disease.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">“We now have dengue in southern parts of Texas,” George C. Stewart, McKee Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and chair of the department of veterinary pathobiology at the University of Missouri, told </span><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/as-earth-warms-the-diseases-that-may-lie-within-permafrost-become-a-bigger-worry/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Scientific American</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">. “Malaria is seen at higher elevations and latitudes as temperatures climb. And the cholera agent,</span><i><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Vibrio cholerae</span></i><span style="font-weight: 400;">, replicates better at higher temperatures.”</span></p><ol class="ee-ol" start="10"><li><b> Dead Corals</b></li></ol><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">As the world’s largest carbon sink, our oceans bear the brunt of climate change. But the more carbon it absorbs (about 22 million tons a day), the more acidic the waters become. This could put a whole host of marine life at risk, including coral reef ecosystems, the thousands of species that depend on them and the estimated </span><a href="https://wwf.panda.org/our_work/oceans/coasts/coral_reefs/coral_importance/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">1 billion people</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> around the globe who rely on healthy reefs for sustenance and income. According to </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8vbtk7h"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Science</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, “Researchers predict that with increasing levels of acidification, </span><a href="https://tinyurl.com/y8vbtk7h"><span style="font-weight: 400;">most coral reefs will be gradually dissolving away</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> by the end of the century.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">These climate predictions are worst-case scenarios, but there are many more dangers to consider in our warming world. A </span><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0315-6.epdf?shared_access_token=w2vydeAY_LtdzuwmJ8cv5tRgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MpBFb5oK9YR4Jvx3dMn7ibkjfQYb-dSx_q1kIVe7wppn8j_ZJEZIpvonmAzHedBRnXfBuUXisIwaB-5BpuAv-sJ-tmB7I2QgY42PNFZCbTgFXd1RrLiFmxL7WqHaPVnnE%3D"><span style="font-weight: 400;">report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> recently published in the journal Nature Climate Change found “evidence for 467 pathways by which human health, water, food, economy, infrastructure and security have been recently impacted by climate hazards such as warming, heatwaves, precipitation, drought, floods, fires, storms, sea-level rise and changes in natural land cover and ocean chemistry.”</span></p><p><b>Half a Degree Matters</b></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">Since the 19th century, the Earth has warmed by 1 degree Celsius. Now, a major IPCC </span><a href="https://www.ipcc.ch/sr15/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">special report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> released in October warns that even just a half-degree more of warming could be disastrous. “Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems,” </span><a href="https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2018/10/special-climate-report-1-5oc-is-possible-but-requires-unprecedented-and-urgent-action/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> Hans-Otto Pörtner, co-chair of IPCC Working Group II.</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">The panel </span><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/ipcc-15-c-degree-report-points-to-high-stakes-of-climate-inaction/a-45791882"><span style="font-weight: 400;">said</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;"> that “limiting global warming to 1.5°C compared to 2°C could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society.”</span></p><p><span style="font-weight: 400;">With President Trump saying he </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/26/trump-national-climate-assessment-dont-believe"><span style="font-weight: 400;">doesn’t believe his own administration’s climate report</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, that sustainable and equitable society remains a distant dream.</span></p><p><em><span style="font-weight: 400;">This article was produced by </span><a href="https://independentmediainstitute.org/earth-food-life/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Earth | Food | Life</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">, a project of the Independent Media Institute, and originally published by </span><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/ten-grim-climate-scenarios-if-global-temperatures-rise-above-1-5-degrees-celsius/"><span style="font-weight: 400;">Truthout</span></a><span style="font-weight: 400;">.</span></em></p>
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