All The Horrifying Ways Climate Change May Impact Humans

By Daniel Tucker
climate change
The suns sets as an iceberg floats in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord near Nuuk in southwestern Greenland on Aug. 1, 2017. Greenland's glaciers have been melting and retreating at an accelerated pace in recent years due to warmer temperatures. If all of that ice melts, sea levels will rise by several meters, though there will be regional differences. David Goldman / Associated Press
climate change
The suns sets as an iceberg floats in the Nuup Kangerlua Fjord near Nuuk in southwestern Greenland on Aug. 1, 2017. Greenland's glaciers have been melting and retreating at an accelerated pace in recent years due to warmer temperatures. If all of that ice melts, sea levels will rise by several meters, though there will be regional differences. David Goldman / Associated Press

All The Horrifying Ways Climate Change May Impact Humans

By Daniel Tucker
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In his new book The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming, author David Wallace-Wells taps into the latest science to paint a picture of what life will be like in the coming decades if humanity continues to warm the globe. It’s not a rosy picture.

At two degrees Celsius of warming, ice-sheets will begin to collapse, 400 million more people will face water scarcity and major cities near the Equator become unlivable.

Three degrees of warming means southern Europe will be in a permanent drought and wildfires will sextuple in the United States.

Four degrees of warming brings near-annual global food crises as well as frequent and devastating river flooding in Bangladesh, India, the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

Rising seas, flooding, freshwater shortages, drought and wildfires are only part of the picture. We’ll also face famines, plagues and wars over dwindling natural resource and economic collapse.

As Wallace-Wells writes in the very first sentence: “It is worse, much worse, than you think.”

Morning Shift explores life after warming and what can be done to prevent this horrifying picture from become a reality.

GUEST: David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming