Four Degrees, Six Meters

Two climate change thoughts for today.

From Inside Climate News: the last time Earth was as warm as it is now was about 125,000 years ago. Sea level was 6 meters higher then than it is today. The story focuses on the acceleration of sea-level rise. And that's at our current level of warming.

Which makes this map of what a 4°C-warmer world will look like — originally published in New Scientist in 2009 — newly relevant:


Clicking the image will let you see it larger, but if it's still not large enough there, check it out on kottke.org.

I notice that Minnesota is on the desert fringe. All of China and almost all of the U.S., India, South America, and Africa are basically uninhabitable. And people are growing food in part of Antarctica. Imagine the migration of billions of people (and probably mass deaths) that would happen in this scenario.

Why is anything else we humans are dealing with important?