Hell and high water: The global warming impacts of business-as-usual

by Joe Romm

In this post, I will examine the key impacts we face by 2100 if we stay anywhere near our current emissions path. I will focus primarily on:

Staggeringly high temperature rise, especially over land — some 15°F over much of the United States

Sea level rise of 5 feet, rising some 6 to 12 inches (or more) each decade thereafter

Widespread desertification — as much as one-third of the land

Massive species loss on land and sea — 50% or more of all life

Unexpected impacts — the fearsome “unknown unknowns”

More severe hurricanes — especially in the Gulf

Equally tragic, as a 2009 NOAA-led study found, these impacts be “largely irreversible for 1000 years.” The single biggest failure of messaging by climate scientists (until very recently) has been the failure to explain to the public, opinion makers, and the media that business-as-usual warming results in impacts that are beyond catastrophic. For these impacts, terms like “global warming” and “climate change” are essentially euphemisms. That is why I prefer the term “Hell and High Water.” … So I pieced together those impacts from available studies and from discussions with leading climate scientists for my book, Hell and High Water. But now as climate scientists have sobered up to their painful role as modern-day Cassandras, the scientific literature on what we face is much richer. Let me review it here. …