National Geographic: Six Degrees Could Change the World Page #2

Year:
2008
6,173 Views


A minor shift in the Earth's orbit

caused the summer sun

to warm slightly,

just enough to radically

transform this entire region.

Only a very thin layer of topsoil

covers the desert sand that still lurks

just centimeters below the surface.

As we race toward a planet

warmer by one degree,

the global warming scorecard

lists both losers and winners.

While the western U.S.

is dry and thirsty,

England is enjoying

an agricultural makeover.

Fortunes will be made and lost,

if global weather patterns rearrange

where different crops can be grown.

The winters, which used

to be hard in this country,

are getting much milder

so in some sense, that's a good thing.

That's not counterbalanced

by the devastation

which is affecting

other parts of the world.

Right now, England

is in the right place at the right time

for one of the world's most fragile

and most valuable crops.

You can't have it too hot for grapes,

because you realize

in the Champagne region...

When David Middleton

first planted Champagne-style grapes,

neighbors thought he'd gone mad.

But as wine producing regions

in France are getting hotter,

the climate for growing grapes

is migrating across the English Channel.

The idea of a fine English wine

is no longer a joke.

Now there are more

than 400 vineyards in Britain.

The Earth's average temperature

has always fluctuated.

And a variable climate isn't unusual.

It's the pace of climate change

today that's unprecedented.

The planet has experienced

climate change before.

But it usually plays out over

thousands or millions of years.

Now global warming

is measured in decades,

even years.

It means scores of species

won't be able to keep up.

Warming at this speed could send

us into uncharted territory,

like nothing we've experienced

in the history of life on Earth.

Global warming started

with our insatiable appetite for energy.

Every switch we flip, every plug,

every button we push

to turn something on,

inevitably leads back

to a place like this.

Nearly 90 percent of the world's energy

starts as a fossil fuel:

Coal, oil, natural gas.

These three fuels combined

are the single largest source

of CO2 emissions pouring

into the atmosphere.

If the world warms by two degrees,

some changes to the biosphere

are no longer gradual.

Greenland's glaciers are disappearing.

So much ice has melted,

polar bears struggle to survive.

Insects migrate

in strange new directions.

As a temperate climate

moves north in the U.S.,

pine beetles kill off

the white bark forests,

a grizzly bear's key source

of food in the fall.

New forests take root

in Canada's melting tundra.

The Pacific islands

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