On Friday the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put its collective foot down about global warming. It’s happening and it’s most likely our fault. But as with any issue that affects all of humanity, the most important question is what’s gonna happen to you? Will you have to give up air conditioning? Will the song “White Christmas” become completely irrelevant? Will you have to feel guilty about how your generation is leaving things for your children’s generation? The Guardian has a way for you to check.
Posted by Duncan Clark, “Climate change: how hot will it get in my lifetime?” is an interactive guide to what’s going down in the next hundred years or so. And it isn’t the temperature, amirite?! You put in your birth year and the applet runs you through graphs of where we’re at now in terms of temperature, where things will probably go, and the range of what may happen after you’re gone.
The guide is powered by data from the UN panel, which comprised 259 scientists from 39 countries, and analysed the body of existing research on climate change to create projections and recommendations about how to avoid irreparable environmental damage. If you were born in 1980 things have gotten warmer every decade you’ve been alive and the Earth could reach its no-going-back point by your retirement unless emissions levels change in the next 20 years or so. But all that matters is what’s gonna happen to YOU so go scope it out. [The Guardian]