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50 minutes ago · What Earth in 2050 Could Look Like. Climate change • Climate change refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns. Human activities have been the main driver of climate change, primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas. (via TEDEd) While we’re already feeling the devastating effects of human ...
Welcome to Earth 2050. Take a look at the future of the world through the eyes of the renowned futurists and Kaspersky experts. Don’t miss out on this chance to change the world. Share your vision of the future.
- Overview
- The world in 50 years
- Picturing our future
- What future will we choose?
Projections by climate scientists paint a vivid picture of our future, hoping it will inspire us to change our ways—before it’s too late.
Floods along the Mississippi River cover crops in Oakville, Iowa. Heat isn't the only consequence of a warming planet—floods and natural disasters are likely to worsen too.
On TikTok, a viral “aged” filter recently gave users a glimpse into their future. The AI-generated filter predicts how you might look in 50 years, complete with sagging skin, deeper wrinkles, and dark spots from decades of sun exposure. In a matter of months, the filter amassed close to 11 billion views, and shook many with a sneak peak into the aging process.
Humans are visual creatures; if images of how we could look in the future can motivate us to slather on more sunscreen, can visual projections do the same for inspiring more climate action?
By the time today’s Tiktok user is old enough to see the artificially aged version of their face come to fruition, the world will look very different if nothing is done to address climate change.
The planet is on track for catastrophic warming, U.N.’s 2023 climate change report says.
The world’s leading climate scientists’ predictions, reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries, warned that the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature tipping point within the next 10 years, unless nations immediately transition away from fossil fuels. If governments stick with their current policies, the remaining "carbon budget" will be wiped out by 2030.
A third of the world's population could live in a climate similar to the Sahara in just 50 years, according to a study published in PNAS in 2020. That means 3.5 billion people could live with average temperatures in the mid-80s, “outside of humanity’s comfort zone” by 2070.
Just as the time travel TikTok filter shows a split screen of the user’s current face alongside an AI-generated aged version, there’s a similarly distressing visual model for climate change. Non-profit climate research group Climate Central’s Picturing Our Future shows two versions of the future: what the world will look like if we keep our current path and warm the Earth by 3°C, and what it will look like if we sharply cut carbon pollution and limit warming to 1.5°C global warming, a target set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
Using peer-reviewed research, these visual projections show how the climate and energy choices we make this decade will influence how high sea levels rise in the future. Climate Central uses a combination of photorealistic images, flyover videos, Google Earth Images, and animated GIFs, to generate their Picturing Our Future visual tools.
The visualizations compare potential outcomes for nearly 200 landmarks and iconic places around the world, from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. These long-term sea level projections show astonishing science-based renders of coastal cities submerged under water.
“Human beings are visual. About 30 percent of our brain is used for vision. Most scientific reports of climate threats report numbers that are hard to interpret: what would one foot or five feet of sea level rise really mean?” says Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central.
The goal of these visuals is to show we can influence the future, says Strauss. “We present comparisons of different potential futures depending on the path we take. The actions of governments, corporations, and industries to cut carbon pollution as much and as fast as possible, can reduce risks and protect coastal communities around the world.”
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe also believes in the power of visualizing what life will be like based on the choices we make today. “By painting a picture of the impact our choices make, that is actually dynamically altering the probability of our future scenarios,” says Hayhoe, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
“We have to understand what's going to happen if we don't do anything. But we also have to understand what doing something looks like, otherwise, you just have a bunch of scared people who are paralyzed,” stresses Hayhoe.
The book “The Future We Choose” by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, who together led the negotiations of the historic Paris Agreement, helped influence Hayhoe’s own vision of how Earth could be saved from catastrophic warming.
The principal architects of the landmark climate deal offer two different versions of how the world might look in 2050. While there’s a worst case scenario, the book also offers a best case scenario: how things would look if we move toward a world that will be no more than 1.5°C warmer by 2100, a world in which we’ve been halving emissions every decade since 2020.
It paints a vivid picture of how livable our world would be in the future if we address climate change at scale, adds Hayhoe: “How blue the sky would be, how breathable our air would be, how clean our water would be, how walkable and green our cities would be.”
- Kathleen Rellihan
Aug 30, 2019 · Our research shows there’s at least one path to a more sustainable world in 2050, and that major advances can be made if all parts of society focus their efforts on three changes. First, we need to ramp up clean energy and site it on lands that have already been developed or degraded.
Sep 10, 2021 · Climate change scientists don't like to use the term "prediction." Rather, they're making "projections" about the future of the planet as sea levels rise, wildfires sweep the West and hurricanes ...
Apr 5, 2017 · Apr 5, 2017 4:00 AM. Futuristic map shows what Earth could look like in 2050. Kaspersky's interactive Earth 2050 map is a striking look into the future of our world. To mark its 20th...
9 hours ago · What could our world look like in the next 30 to 80 years if we continue to do nothing about climate change? Take a look at the possibilities:
- 5 min
- TED-Ed