In 20 years time, how will global warming affect the world?

Question: In 20 years time, how will global warming affect the world?

Asked by anon-201696 to Sophia, Sarah, Meirin, George, Emily, Andy on 4 Mar 2019.
- Sarah O'Sullivan answered on 4 Mar 2019:
  
  These forward prediction questions are so hard because it’s difficult to tell what impact our current activities and measures will have, especially as politics and technologies change. 20 years ago we were in a very different technological landscape than we are now (20 years ago I was in primary school and we didn’t have computers!).
  
  What we do know is that despite our efforts to control climate change now, we’ve actually already committed to a certain impact by whats already occurred. There’s a very interesting paper that shows that the increase in global temperatures we’ve already induced means we can expect a sea level rise of 0.7 to 1.2m by the year 2300 and this assumes all the countries meet the targets for zero net CO2 emissions! SO we can definitely expect sea levels to have risen in that 20 years.
  
  There’s also going to be way wider impacts on the world too, like for growing food and all sorts of things, that are beyond my skill set!
- George Fulton answered on 4 Mar 2019:
  
  It is very difficult to know for sure. Sometimes it is dangerous to think about possible time frames especially if you are talking to a politician. Instead it is better if we consider what happens if we were to do nothing.
  
  Think about it this way:
  
  On one side of the scale, we have the present day – which doesn’t seem that bad.
  On the other side of the scale, we have unpredictable weather, more violent and frequent storms, warming near the equator and cooling for the UK (at least initially). This will shrink farming land, drop food supplies and cause a mass extinctions of animals and plants.
  
  This is something that is predicted to happen and will occur if we do nothing about it. Even if the effects do not happen in a significant way in 20 years time, this doesn’t mean that we should leave it for future generations.
  
  Global warming is like a slippery slope. At the bottom of the slope is disaster and mass extinction and we are somewhere up on the slope. We will be on the slope in 20 years time, but how close we are to the top and bottom is not known. As time goes on, we will move further and further down the slope if we do nothing about it. So we need to get on our walking boots and march back up the slope!
- Sophia Pells answered on 5 Mar 2019:
  
  To be honest, I don’t know. Lots of scientists have predicted that we are going to see things like rising sea levels and weather conditions that we aren’t used to. There are already so many plants and animals going extinct today, and that will only get worse unless humans make some serious changes!
- Andy Buckley answered on 5 Mar 2019:
  
  In very complex ways: the planet’s climate and weather are not simple systems like I study, and so I try to listen to the experts in that area. For example the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change https://www.ipcc.ch/ , and the Carbon Brief website seems to be acclaimed for good quality journalism on the topic: https://www.carbonbrief.org/ Since climate change is very politicised, check your sources to make sure you’re not being misled (in either direction)
- Emily Lewis answered on 8 Mar 2019:
  
  As the others have said, I’m not a climate scientist so I’m not an expert on this! What I know from climate research is that we can expect rising sea levels and more extreme weather patterns, maybe more heatwaves or droughts and damage to the environment. This will affect our farming and so might hurt food supply. There is a lot of political debate on this so be careful where you get your information from, it’s best to have a read of the papers they are referencing yourself so you can decide if the data is any good!

Question: In 20 years time, how will global warming affect the world?

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