How 4C temperature rise this century will change world beyond recognition and threaten human survival

Mail Online (UK): Alligators bask off the English coast, the Saharan desert stretches far into Europe and just 10 per cent of humans are left on the planet. Science fiction? No, this is the doomsday scenario being predicted by scientists if global temperatures make a predicted rise of 4C in the next 100 years. Some fear it could happen as early as 2050.

Rivers from the Danube to the Rhine would be reduced to a trickle while melting glaciers and storm surges would drown coastal regions under two metres of water. More if parts of Antarctica were to melt. While 4C does not sound like very much, the New Scientist magazine, has said it could easily occur.

…In August of 2008 Bob Watson, former chair of the IPCC, warned that the world should prepare for 4C of warming. As part of their research into the article the New Scientist spoke to leading climate experts from around the world to create a map of how our world might look 4C warmer.

Many were optimistic that humans would survive but would have to adapt to vastly altered circumstances. Vast numbers would have to migrate and there would have to be a world effort to redistribute resources. As a huge swathe of desert started to spread out from the equator, humans would migrate north and south towards the poles, knocking down national boundaries. 'We need to look at the world afresh and see it in terms of where the resources are, and then plan population around that,' Peter Cox from the University of Exeter said.

…Large chunks of Earth's biodiversity would vanish because they could not adapt in such a short time. In the world's oceans, numbers of fish would drop dramatically as acid levels rose because of decreasing plankton. As the remaining fertile lands would be so precious people would have to live in compact high-rise cities to preserve space for food growing.

Scientists have put forward the prospect of energy being supplied for homes by a giant solar belt running across North Africa, the Middle East and the southern U.S. The New Scientist article also questioned the future of the humankind. 'I think they'll survive as a species all right, but the cull during this century is going to be huge,' former Nasa scientists James Lovelock said. 'The number remaining at the end of the century will probably be a billion or less.'…

Rub' al Khali or Empty Quarter is the largest sand desert on earth. Shot by Nepenthes, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 License