upworthy

fossil fuels

Science

What will Earth look like if all its land ice melts? These maps show the clear answer.

Climate change isn't pretty.

via Business Insider Science/YouTube.

A map of the United States post land-ice melt.

Land ice: We got a lot of it. Considering the two largest ice sheets on earth — the one on Antarctica and the one on Greenland — extend more than 6 million square miles combined ... yeah, we're talkin' a lot of ice. But what if it was all just ... gone? Not like gone gone, but melted?

If all of earth's land ice melted, it would be nothing short of disastrous. And that's putting it lightly. This video by Business Insider Science (seen below) depicts exactly what our coastlines would look like if all the land ice melted. And spoiler alert: It isn't great. Lots of European cities like, Brussels and Venice, would be basically underwater.

I bring up the topic not just for funsies, of course, but because the maps are real possibilities.

How? Climate change.

As we continue to burn fossil fuels for energy and emit carbon into our atmosphere, the planet gets warmer and warmer. And that, ladies and gentlemen, means melted ice.

A study published this past September by researchers in the U.S., U.K., and Germany found that if we don't change our ways, there's definitely enough fossil fuel resources available for us to completely melt the Antarctic ice sheet.

Basically, the self-inflicted disaster you see above is certainly within the realm of possibility.


assets.rebelmouse.io


In Africa and the Middle East? Dakar, Accra, Jeddah — gone.



assets.rebelmouse.io


Millions of people in Asia, in cities like Mumbai, Beijing, and Tokyo, would be uprooted and have to move inland.



assets.rebelmouse.io


South America would say goodbye to cities like Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.


assets.rebelmouse.io


And in the U.S., we'd watch places like Houston, San Francisco, and New York City — not to mention the entire state of Florida — slowly disappear into the sea.


assets.rebelmouse.io

All GIFs via Business Insider Science/YouTube.

Business Insider based these visuals off National Geographic's estimation that sea levels will rise 216 feet (!) if all of earth's land ice melted into our oceans.

There's even a tool where you can take a detailed look at how your community could be affected by rising seas, for better or worse.

Although ... looking at these maps, it's hard to imagine "for better" is a likely outcome for many of us.

Much of America's most populated regions would be severely affected by rising sea levels, as you'll notice exploring the map, created by Alex Tingle using data provided by NASA.

Take, for instance, the West Coast. (Goodbye, San Fran!)



assets.rebelmouse.io


Or the East Coast. (See ya, Philly!)


assets.rebelmouse.io


And the Gulf Coast. (RIP, Bourbon Street!)

"This would not happen overnight, but the mind-boggling point is that our actions today are changing the face of planet Earth as we know it and will continue to do so for tens of thousands of years to come," said lead author of the study Ricarda Winkelmann, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.

If we want to stop this from happening," she says, "we need to keep coal, gas, and oil in the ground."

The good news? Most of our coastlines are still intact! And they can stay that way, too — if we act now.

World leaders are finally starting to treat climate change like the global crisis that it is — and you can help get the point across to them, too.

Check out Business Insider's video below:


- YouTubewww.youtube.com


This article originally appeared eleven years ago.

From Your Site Articles
climate change
Heroes

How has the world changed since 'An Inconvenient Truth' premiered?

In the past decade, a lot has changed in our fight against climate change.

In a recent Q&A with Sen. Bernie Sanders published in The Guardian, former Vice President Al Gore pinpointed "two big things" that have changed since his groundbreaking documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" hit theaters in 2006.

Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New York Times.

One is rather promising. The other? Not so much.

1. First, the bad news: There's been a jaw-dropping increase in extreme weather that was considered relatively rare in 2006.

"The climate-related extreme weather events are way more common now, and way more destructive," Gore told Sanders. "Here in the U.S., in the last seven years, we’ve had 11 so-called 'once-in-a-1,000 year' downpours."

"1,000-year" is an official term used by organizations like the NOAA National Center for Environmental Information to describe the probability that such an event will happen in a given year. South Carolina's record-breaking October 2015 flooding — which The Weather Channel deemed "catastrophic" — was one of those events.

A man in Columbia, South Carolina, cleans up his home after much of it was destroyed in the floods that ravished the region in October 2015. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Upward of 2 feet of rain blanketed many regions of the state in under 24 hours, causing massive (and expensive) damages and taking over a dozen lives.

These events have become disturbingly normal, Gore said. On the other hand, we've also normalized many of the innovative solutions that help drastically cut back greenhouse gas emissions.

Which brings us to...

2. The thing that'll make you feel optimistic: When "An Inconvenient Truth" released in theaters over a decade ago, many solutions to reduce carbon emissions were still out of reach.

Not anymore.

"In a growing number of cities and regions, electricity from solar and wind is cheaper than electricity from burning fossil fuels," the former vice president said. "Electric cars are becoming more commonplace. Efficiency technologies are coming down in cost."

In other words, going green has become good business.

Workers install solar panels in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2016. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.

After President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement to dramatically lower the world's carbon emissions, many have argued the country will reach its targets anyway as sustainable technologies continue to boom.

An analysis by Morgan Stanley found that the economic benefits to switching to renewable energies is outweighing the pros to keeping up the status quo:

"By our forecasts, in most cases favorable renewables economics rather than government policy will be the primary driver of changes to utilities’ carbon emissions levels. For example, notwithstanding president Trump’s stated intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020."

As Gore put it, "The problems are worse, but the solutions are here."

We can't assume progress will happen, though; we have to work for it.

"All over the country activists are being energized," Gore said. And it's those activists — not just politicians in Washington — who will make the difference. "We are counting on people at the grassroots level."

Gore sat down to chat with Sanders to promote his new film on climate change, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," which opens in theaters on July 28, 2017. Watch a trailer below:

Heroes

While Trump is retreating on climate, Volvo just made a bold move away from oil.

Volvos.

Photo by Shirley 501JFW/Wikimedia Commons.

Once preferred by sushi-eating, latte-drinking Hollywood-loving elitists, much like sushi, lattes, and Hollywood, they've now gone mainstream. U.S. sales of the Chinese-owned, Swedish-made vehicles grew by 18% last year, thanks to the most American of car models, an SUV (the popular XC90).  

If all goes according to plan, they're about to get a whole lot cleaner.

The company intends to make all new models introduced from 2019 on either hybrid or fully electric, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

In a statement, Volvo Cars CEO HÃ¥kan Samuelsson heralded the move as "the end of the solely combustion engine-powered car."

While bombastic predictions from top executives about their company's impact might not be anything new, the commitment to transitioning away from pure fossil fuel power is.

While efforts to combat climate change have had a rough few months, many companies are continuing to plug along with efforts to limit emissions.

On June 1, 2017, President Donald Trump announced the U.S. would withdraw from the Paris Climate Agreement. Meanwhile, the EPA continues to attempt to delay implementation of methane emission regulations and reduce global warming to a matter of debate.

Volvo Cars CEO HÃ¥kan Samuelsson. Photo by Jonas Ekstromer/Getty Images.

Meanwhile, not only is Volvo seeing green in a transition to green, several major oil companies, including ExxonMobil, recently announced support for a carbon tax, and utilities across the country are accelerating their push to incorporate more renewables.

With the world's second-biggest polluter essentially giving companies a run on the emissions store, the fact that much of private industry is saying, "Eh, we're good," is a hopeful signal.

Despite its lefty rep, Volvo isn't doing this solely out of concern that emissions are devitalizing the dawn aura of Mother Gaia.

Uh oh. Photo by Steve Jurvetson/Wikimedia Commons.

The luxury carmaker faces competition from companies like Tesla, whose Model 3 is expected to start at $35,000, a still-expensive-but-way-more-affordable-than-previous-Teslas price point.

In a weird way, the cynicism of the move is perhaps the most encouraging sign of all.

It might feel icky to see saving the Earth reduced to cold capitalist calculus.

Still, absent a quickie smashing o' the industrialist class hegemony, if a major car company believes there's money to be made in transitioning away from fossil fuels, so much the better.  

Hopefully, more car companies will catch wind of that sweet, sweet money trail and follow Volvo's lead.

Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images.

The fossil fuels might be going away. Thankfully, the cupholders for your grande skinny soy aren't.

Heroes

5 times Leonardo DiCaprio's viral documentary gave me real feelings.

Leonardo DiCaprio's new documentary, "Before the Flood," has been on YouTube for just a few days, but it already has millions of views.

The documentary is a moving, uncompromising look at climate change, produced by both DiCaprio and National Geographic. In the documentary, DiCaprio, who's been an outspoken supporter of climate action, gives us a refreshing, very frank look at what the climate change situation is really like.

DiCaprio doesn't pull his punches on the big stuff, but what actually fascinated me were some of the smaller, simpler, more emotional moments.

"Before the Flood" is an hour and a half long, and I can't recommend watching it enough, mostly because of these five affecting, emotional moments that stayed with me once the movie was done.

1. The quiet moment when a researcher admits how much the natural world means to him.

All images are screengrabs from "Before the Flood"/National Geographic/YouTube.

Near the beginning of the film, DiCaprio goes up to Greenland to check out the glaciers and ice sheets. You'll get to see amazing footage of crevasses and ice floes, and he also does some really cool interviews, including one with a local hunter.

But one moment in this scene stands out: DiCaprio is standing with Dr. Enric Sala, a marine ecologist and National Geographic explorer, watching some narwhals come up before them. You can actually hear the whales click and purr.

Then, just at the end, Sala turns to DiCaprio and says, unbidden, "You know, I don't want to be on a planet without these animals." 

2. The moment in Beijing that made me think about my own family.

A short while later, the crew is in Beijing talking to a Chinese woman who's holding an air mask in her hand. She explains what it's like to live surrounded by Beijing's legendarily bad air pollution, mentioning that her family puts on their masks when they step outside and feed the cat.

"When the air is bad it hurts my throat," the woman says.

The scene isn't as visually impressive as drone footage of smoke stacks or giant industrial machines, but it stuck with me all the same. It sounds like the kind of everyday comment someone in my family might make.

3. The moment when Sunita Narain called out DiCaprio's wishful thinking and told him to get real.

Later, DiCaprio goes to India to talk to Sunita Narain, an environmentalist and activist. About 30% of India — roughly 300 million people — still live with no electricity, so the discussion turns to how to bring power to people without resorting to fossil fuels.

If you're like me and like thinking about the nitty-gritty of climate change — not just the big goals but the hard truths and big questions — this is an amazing exchange. But the best part is when she calls out the U.S. for wanting India to move to renewables while the U.S. drags their feet.

"If it was that easy, I would have really liked the U.S. to move towards solar, but you haven't," Narain says. "Let's put our money where our mouth is."

It's real, uncompromising conversation and actually feels awesome. It's a "take that" to every simpering, milquetoast politician who's more concerned with firing up their base and talking pretty than getting results.

4. The moment I'll remember every time I watch a snowy movie from now on.

While they were filming "The Revenant," they actually had to have the snow trucked in. It was too warm. In fact, they ended up having to fly halfway around the world to frosty Argentina in order to continue filming.

I remember "The Revenant." I remember the snow and the cold and the biting frost of that film. To think of future movies having to truck in snow is just so ... weird. I'm not sure I'll be able to see any frozen, snowy landscape without wondering how much snow was there and how much had to be trucked in.

5. Finally, what might have been my favorite moment: when DiCaprio asked Obama a really uncomfortable question.

This is my favorite moment in the film by far.

"You are the leader of the free world," says DiCaprio. "You have access to information that most people do not. What makes you terrified for the future?"

Obama's answer? He waxes poetic about his kids for a moment, but when it comes down to it, he says, a huge amount of people live near the ocean. If the sea levels rise, those people will need to flee to somewhere — and that could be a problem.

"In very hard-headed terms, you've got to worry about the national security implications of this. And the capacity for the existing world order as we understand it to survive the kinds of strains that the scientists are predicting."

In truth, this movie is full of amazing moments. It was really hard to pick just five.

There were so many awesome scenes, like when DiCaprio visits the mayor of Miami Beach, which is already experiencing flooding, or when he feeds rescued orangutans in Indonesia and tried his Italian on Pope Francis.

But in the end, "Before the Flood" has two simple messages.

One, we have to consume differently. We need to think about where our food and lifestyles are coming from. In many ways, though, we're beyond the stage where simple actions can solve everything. So two, and perhaps more importantly, we all need to vote. We need world leaders who will invest in renewables and put taxes on carbon.

The final segment, by the way — where DiCaprio gives a speech to the United Nations — might be the most affecting. I found it hard to not tear up. But I'm not going to link to it because you really owe it to yourself to watch the whole movie.

Trending Stories