Global Warming: The Worst Case Scenarios

Temperature Rise of One Degree

• The Arctic will be free of ice for half a year, opening a giant passage for ships. This gigantic "meltdown" will flood the homes of tens of thousands of people.
• Hurricanes strike the South Atlantic in huge numbers.
• Severe droughts strike the Western US, destroying massive amounts of crops and killing huge numbers of cattle.
• Deserts form in the West US, from Texas to the Canadian border.

Temperature Rise of Two Degrees

• Glaciers begin disappearing, causing polar bears to die out.
• Massive amounts of insects start migrating.
• Pine beetles will kill huge amounts of forests in the US, causing the grizzly bear to die out.
• New forests start growing in Canada, of which the glaciers have almost completely molten.
• The Pacific islands will flood and completely lost.

Temperature Rise of Three Degrees

• The Arctic will be permanently ice free.
• The Amazon rainforest dries out.
• The snow on the tops of the Alps disappears.
• El Niño becomes daily news.
• The Mediterranean and Western Europe burn in the summer heat.

Temperature Rise of Four Degrees

• The oceans rise destroying homes of over a billion people living in river deltas. Cities like Bangladesh, Egypt and Venice completely flood.
• Glaciers disappear. The fresh water sources of many millions more are gone.
• North Canada becomes the best agricultural zone in the world.
• Scandinavian beaches are the next Saint-Tropez.
• The western part of the Antarctic ice collapses, causing sea levels to rise even further.

Temperature Rise of Five Degrees

• Two massive uninhabitable zones spread around once temperate zones.
• Rivers that provide water to great cities dry out. Los Angeles, Caïro, Lima and Bombay are out of water.
• Over 100 million climate refugees migrate from all over the world.

Temperature Rise of Six Degrees

• The oceans become marine wastelands.
• Deserts march across continents like armies.
• Natural disasters such as hurricanes and tornadoes become very common.
• The world's greatest cities are flooded and completely abandoned.