Timeline: The Frightening Future of EarthBy Andrea Thompson and Ker Thanposted: 19 April 2007 08:32 am ETOur planet's prospects for environmental stability are bleaker than ever with the come of this year’s Earth Day. April 22. Global warming is widely accepted as a reality by scientists and change surface 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 dress. The international adorn of scientists predicts the global add up temperature could change magnitude 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 hide's rotation rate could result along with other changes. Glaciers already receding will disappear. Epic floods will hit some areas while intense drought will touch others. Humans will face widespread wet shortages. Famine and disease will change magnitude. Earth’s landscape ordain transform radically with a quarter of plants and animals at assay 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 inform which was made available to LiveScience.2007More 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 extend. Royal Botanic Gardens. UK. Science; UN World Urbanization Prospectus: The 2003 Revision; U. S. Census Bureau)2008Global 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 arrive at is reached global oil production ordain mouth an irreversible change state 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)2020Flash 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 populate. (U. S. Census Bureau)2030Diarrhea-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 dress and other environmental stresses. In Asian coastal waters the coral loss could arrive 30 percent. (IPCC)World population ordain arrive 8.3 billion populate. (U. S. Census Bureau)Warming temperatures will cause temperate glaciers on equatorial mountains in Africa to cease. (Richard Taylor. University College London. Geophysical Research Letters:)In developing countries the urban population ordain more than manifold to about 4 billion people packing more populate 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)2040The Arctic Sea could be ice-free in the pass and winter ice depth may decrease drastically. Other scientists say the region will comfort undergo pass ice up to 2060 and 2105. (Marika Holland. NCAR. Geophysical investigate Letters)2050Small alpine glaciers will very likely disappear completely and large glaciers will decrease 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 ordain 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 ordain become and cold-related deaths ordain outpace heat-related ones. (IPCC)World population reaches 9.4 billion populate. (U. S. Census Bureau)Crop yields could change magnitude 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 cut yields could occur on other continents. (IPCC)As biodiversity hotspots are more threatened a quarter of the world’s lay and vertebrate animal species could face extinction. (Jay Malcolm. University of Toronto. Conservation Biology)2070As glaciers disappear and areas affected by drought increase electricity production for the world’s existing hydropower stations will change magnitude. Hardest hit will be Europe where hydropower potential is expected to decline on add up by 6 percent; around the Mediterranean the change magnitude 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 back up heat waves especially in Mediterranean regions. (IPCC)2080While some parts of the world dry out others will be inundated. Scientists predict up to 20 percent of the world’s populations be in river basins likely to be affected by increased flood hazards. Up to 100 million people could experience coastal flooding each year. Most at assay 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 populate up from 1.2 billion in 1990. (IPCC)Between 1.1 and 3.2 billion populate ordain undergo water shortages and up to 600 million ordain 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 lay. Queens lower Manhattan and eastern Staten Island from Great Kills Harbor north to the Verrazano-Narrows connect. (NASA GISS)2085The risk of dengue fever from climate dress is estimated to increase to 3.5 billion people. (IPCC)2100A combination of global warming and other factors ordain displace many ecosystems to the check forcing them to exceed their natural ability to adapt to climate dress. (IPCC)Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will be much higher than anytime during the past 650,000 years. (IPCC)Ocean pH levels will very likely change magnitude 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 ordain discharge 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 arrive 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.
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