Scientists
Offer Frightening Forecast
By Ker Than &
Andrea Thompson
25 April, 2007
Livescience.com
Our
planet's prospects for environmental stability are bleaker than ever.
Global warming is widely accepted as a reality by scientists and even
by previously doubtful government and industrial leaders. And according
to a recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(IPCC), there is a 90 percent likelihood that humans are contributing
to the change.
The international panel of scientists predicts the global average temperature
could increase by 2 to 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 and that sea levels
could rise by up to 2 feet.
Scientists have even speculated
that a slight increase in Earth's rotation rate could result, along
with other changes. Glaciers, already receding, will disappear. Epic
floods will hit some areas while intense drought will strike others.
Humans will face widespread water shortages. Famine and disease will
increase. Earth’s landscape will transform radically, with a quarter
of plants and animals at risk of extinction.
While putting specific dates
on these traumatic potential events is challenging, this timeline paints
the big picture and details Earth's future based on several recent studies
and the longer scientific version of the IPCC report, which was made
available to LiveScience.
2007
More of the world's population
now lives in cities than in rural areas, changing patterns of land use.
The world population surpasses 6.6 billion. (Peter Crane, Royal Botanic
Gardens, UK, Science; UN World Urbanization Prospectus: The 2003 Revision;
U.S. Census Bureau)
2008
Global oil production peaks
sometime between 2008 and 2018, according to a model by one Swedish
physicist. Others say this turning point, known as “Hubbert’s
Peak,” won’t occur until after 2020. Once Hubbert’s
Peak is reached, global oil production will begin an irreversible decline,
possibly triggering a global recession, food shortages and conflict
between nations over dwindling oil supplies. (doctoral dissertation
of Frederik Robelius, University of Uppsala, Sweden; report by Robert
Hirsch of the Science Applications International Corporation)
2020
Flash floods will very likely
increase across all parts of Europe. (IPCC)
Less rainfall could reduce
agriculture yields by up to 50 percent in some parts of the world. (IPCC)
World population will reach
7.6 billion people. (U.S. Census Bureau)
2030
Diarrhea-related diseases
will likely increase by up to 5 percent in low-income parts of the world.
(IPCC)
Up to 18 percent of the world’s
coral reefs will likely be lost as a result of climate change and other
environmental stresses. In Asian coastal waters, the coral loss could
reach 30 percent. (IPCC)
World population will reach
8.3 billion people. (U.S. Census Bureau)
Warming temperatures will
cause temperate glaciers on equatorial mountains in Africa to disappear.
(Richard Taylor, University College London, Geophysical Research Letters:)
In developing countries,
the urban population will more than double to about 4 billion people,
packing more people onto a given city's land area. The urban populations
of developed countries may also increase by as much as 20 percent. (World
Bank: The Dynamics of Global Urban Expansion)
2040
The Arctic Sea could be ice-free
in the summer, and winter ice depth may shrink drastically. Other scientists
say the region will still have summer ice up to 2060 and 2105. (Marika
Holland, NCAR, Geophysical Research Letters)
2050
Small alpine glaciers will
very likely disappear completely, and large glaciers will shrink by
30 to 70 percent. Austrian scientist Roland Psenner of the University
of Innsbruck says this is a conservative estimate, and the small alpine
glaciers could be gone as soon as 2037. (IPCC)
In Australia, there will
likely be an additional 3,200 to 5,200 heat-related deaths per year.
The hardest hit will be people over the age of 65. An extra 500 to 1,000
people will die of heat-related deaths in New York City per year. In
the United Kingdom, the opposite will occur, and cold-related deaths
will outpace heat-related ones. (IPCC)
World population reaches
9.4 billion people. (U.S. Census Bureau)
Crop yields could increase
by up to 20 percent in East and Southeast Asia, while decreasing by
up to 30 percent in Central and South Asia. Similar shifts in crop yields
could occur on other continents. (IPCC)
As biodiversity hotspots
are more threatened, a quarter of the world’s plant and vertebrate
animal species could face extinction. (Jay Malcolm, University of Toronto,
Conservation Biology)
2070
As glaciers disappear and
areas affected by drought increase, electricity production for the world’s
existing hydropower stations will decrease. Hardest hit will be Europe,
where hydropower potential is expected to decline on average by 6 percent;
around the Mediterranean, the decrease could be up to 50 percent. (IPCC)
Warmer, drier conditions
will lead to more frequent and longer droughts, as well as longer fire-seasons,
increased fire risks, and more frequent heat waves, especially in Mediterranean
regions. (IPCC)
2080
While some parts of the world
dry out, others will be inundated. Scientists predict up to 20 percent
of the world’s populations live in river basins likely to be affected
by increased flood hazards. Up to 100 million people could experience
coastal flooding each year. Most at risk are densely populated and low-lying
areas that are less able to adapt to rising sea levels and areas which
already face other challenges such as tropical storms. (IPCC)
Coastal population could
balloon to 5 billion people, up from 1.2 billion in 1990. (IPCC)
Between 1.1 and 3.2 billion
people will experience water shortages and up to 600 million will go
hungry. (IPCC)
Sea levels could rise around
New York City by more than three feet, potentially flooding the Rockaways,
Coney Island, much of southern Brooklyn and Queens, portions of Long
Island City, Astoria, Flushing Meadows-Corona Park, Queens, lower Manhattan
and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano-Narrows
Bridge. (NASA GISS)
2085
The risk of dengue fever
from climate change is estimated to increase to 3.5 billion people.
(IPCC)
2100
A combination of global warming
and other factors will push many ecosystems to the limit, forcing them
to exceed their natural ability to adapt to climate change. (IPCC)
Atmospheric carbon dioxide
levels will be much higher than anytime during the past 650,000 years.
(IPCC)
Ocean pH levels will very
likely decrease by as much as 0.5 pH units, the lowest it’s been
in the last 20 million years. The ability of marine organisms such as
corals, crabs and oysters to form shells or exoskeletons could be impaired.
(IPCC)
Thawing permafrost and other
factors will make Earth’s land a net source of carbon emissions,
meaning it will emit more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than it
absorbs. (IPCC)
Roughly 20 to 30 percent
of species assessed as of 2007 could be extinct by 2100 if global mean
temperatures exceed 2 to 3 degrees of pre-industrial levels. (IPCC)
New climate zones appear
on up to 39 percent of the world’s land surface, radically transforming
the planet. (Jack Williams, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences)
A quarter of all species
of plants and land animals—more than a million total—could
be driven to extinction. The IPCC reports warn that current “conservation
practices are generally ill-prepared for climate change and effective
adaptation responses are likely to be costly to implement.” (IPCC)
Increased droughts could
significantly reduce moisture levels in the American Southwest, northern
Mexico and possibly parts of Europe, Africa and the Middle East, effectively
recreating the “Dust Bowl” environments of the 1930s in
the United States. (Richard Seager, Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory,
Science)
2200
An Earth day will be 0.12
milliseconds shorter, as rising temperatures cause oceans to expand
away from the equator and toward the poles, one model predicts. One
reason water will be shifted toward the poles is most of the expansion
will take place in the North Atlantic Ocean, near the North Pole. The
poles are closer to the Earth’s axis of rotation, so having more
mass there should speed up the planet’s rotation. (Felix Landerer,
Max Planck Institute for Meteorology, Geophysical Research Letters)
(c) 1999-2007 Imaginova Corp.
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