Climate change is a serious danger. Biodiversity, agriculture and infrastructure are under threat. American author David Wallace-Wells has collected the most frightening hypothetical consequences of global warming drawing.
deadly heat
Humans, like all mammals, are heat engines, but our bodies need to cool down occasionally to keep them working. For this, the air temperature must be sufficiently low. With an increase in average temperature by 7 ° C, most of the land around the equator will become dangerous for humans. The situation in the tropics will only become more complicated due to the fact that the humidity of the air there often exceeds 90%. Just moving around in such conditions at 40 ° C can be deadly. With an increase in temperature by 11 ° C, half of the world’s population will die.
world hunger
The main rule when growing basic grain crops: for every 1 ° C increase, the yield is reduced by 10%. According to other estimates, the decline can reach 15-17%. This is largely due to the deterioration of soil quality. Precipitation is hard to predict, but on one point the predictions agree: by 2080, unless the pace of climate change can be slowed, an unprecedented drought will hit southern Europe, the Middle East, parts of Australia and China. If you watched the movie “Interstellar”, then remember the dust storms that cover the dying Earth. In real life, things can go according to a similar scenario.
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ice plague
Ice serves as a centuries-old safe. For example, the corpse of the “ice man” Ötzi lay in the Alps for 5 thousand years and preserved the DNA that scientists deciphered in 2011. Diseases that have not been in the Earth’s atmosphere for millions of years can be stored in the Arctic permafrost. If the ice begins to melt, they will get out. And the human immune system will not be able to cope with them.
Poisonous air
Now the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 0.03–0.045 ‰ of carbon dioxide. If nothing changes, the figure could reach 0.1‰ by the end of the century. At this concentration, the mental abilities of a person are reduced by 21%. In addition, with global warming, the ozone content in the atmosphere increases. Due to this, by 2090 more than 2 billion people will breathe air that does not meet the WHO safety standard. This will be harmful to adults and may be fatal to children. In addition, if a pregnant woman breathes such air, it increases the chances of developing autism in a child.
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Flooding of territories
Global warming will lead to sea level rise by 1–3 m by the end of the century. A third of the world’s largest cities are located on the coast, and 600 million people live within 10 meters above sea level. This area will gradually fill with water.
Poisoned oceans
Gradually, “ocean acidification” occurs – a decrease in pH due to human activities. Because of this, more than 25% of marine animals and fish may die , which will lead to interruptions in the supply of food for 500 million people, whose livelihood is largely dependent on the oceans.
*Source: The Uninhabitable Earth: Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think .
All of these scenarios are just suggestions of what the worst-case climate change might look like in the future. However, global warming is already negatively affecting our lives. RBC Trends continues to talk about how this happens and what everyone can do to prevent natural collapse.
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