R

E

A

D

T

H

I

N

K

C

R

E

A

T

E

-- Arctic ice-free in summer by the ice cream affected the lives of animals, birds, and northern indigenous people. -- Many tundra in the North longer store carbon emission. -- The combination of fire and pest control, it will seriously damage China, and other countries in the boreal forest. -- Huge sand storms in the Sahara, Gobi and cause breathing difficulties and other. -- The weather is warming and low rainfall lead to the collapse of the Amazon rainforest and death, the release of their carbon stores.           Our Beleaguered Planet     ... [H]ow things will really look in the year 2100[?] [In my researches,] I came across a variety of ideas, scenarios, predictions, and concerns. Most are based on the output of GCMs [Global Climate Models], coupled in some cases with models of physical, biological or economic systems. Others are speculations based on what appear to be credible scenarios. The most plausible are listed below.   — The average global temperature will rise by about five degrees (C or F). — Droughts in places such as Spain, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, and parts of the United States will make it difficult to grow traditional crops. ... — Sea levels will rise by a meter or more. — Summer monsoons in Asia will be more variable, with increased risks of floods or droughts. — Three million cubic kilometers of ice in the Greenland ice sheet will begin a long and unstoppable melting process. — The West Antarctic ice sheet will also begin to melt. — Glaciers worldwide will continue to recede. — The Arctic will have ice-free summers, impacting on ice-living animals, birds, and northern indigenous peoples. — Much of tundra in northern countries will disappear releasing its stores of carbon. — A combination of fires and pest outbreaks will severely damage boreal forests in China and other countries. — Huge dust storms in the Gobi and Sahara deserts will cause respiratory problems worldwide. — Local warming and rainfall reduction will cause parts of the Amazonian rainforests to collapse and die, releasing their stores of carbon. .... — Storms and hurricanes will dramatically intensify. — Areas including France, Germany, and the northwest United States will experience increased heat waves, like the one that hit Paris in the summer of 2003. — Coastal erosion will displace hundreds of millions of people, destroy prime farmland, flood entire island nations, and result in huge costs for cities such as Alexandria, Amsterdam, Manila, Calcutta, and London. — The thermohaline ocean circulation will slow or stop, causing the U.K. winter to go Canadian. — Warmer oceans will result in quasi-permanent El Niño conditions. — Exhausted fisheries will not recover. ... — Losses in species diversity will result in widespread ecosystem collapse. — Global warming will accelerate disease spread in a range of species, from coral to Hawaiian songbirds. — Dengue fever, malaria, and other mosquito-borne tropical illnesses will head north. — The increased incursion of humans into natural habitats will bring new and deadly diseases. — Biotechnologists will accidentally or deliberately create novel pathogens that will be released into the population. — Our increased population density, coupled with rapid transportation networks, will result in fast-spreading pandemics. — The gap between rich and poor will accelerate, leading to increased social and economic instabilities. ... — Poor people will cluster in vulnerable areas, and the number of lives lost to natural disasters will continue to climb. — Wars will erupt over water, as well as oil. — Local shortages of food and water will lead to mass migrations. — Climate disruption, unsustainable land use, ecosystem collapse, population growth, pollution, and other factors will combine to reinforce one another and accelerate the degradation of the planet. — An asteroid at least fifty kilometers wide will collide with the earth sometime during the century, killing millions of people. — The release of tiny, self-replicating machines invented by nanotechnologists will reduce the surface of the planet to a "grey goo." — There will be a nuclear war, followed by a nuclear winter. — Civilization will collapse globally.   ... [T]hese predictions are consistent with GCM forecasts and IPCC projections under different economic scenarios, but represent only a sample of the known unknowns. There are, of course, also the unknown unknowns.       — David Orrell, The Future of Everything: The Science of Prediction, Chapter 9 – Consulting the Crystal Ball                         Indexes/16