3 ms·

This article would be a lot more credible if it mentioned timescales. Do we have 1 year to make a change or 100? At current rates of progress, when do we reach

• scarmig 14y ago
  "Looking towards the year 2100, models forecast that pressures on biota will continue to increase. The co-opting of resources and energy use by humans will continue to increase as the global population reaches 9,500,000,000 people (by 2050), and effects will be greatly exacerbated if per capita resource use also increases. Projections for 2100 range from apopulation low of 6,200,000,000 (requiring a substantial decline in fertility rates) to 10,100,000,000 (requiring continued decline of fertility in countries that still have fertility above replacement level) to 27,000,000,000 (if fertility remains at 2005–2010 levels; this population size is not thought to be supportable; ref. 31). Rapid climate change shows no signs of slowing. Modelling suggests that for ,30% of Earth, the speed at which plant species will have to migrate to keep pace with projected climate change is greater than their dispersal rate when Earth last shifted from a glacial to an interglacial climate, and that dispersal will be thwartedby highly fragmented landscapes. Climates found at present on 10–48% of the planet are projected to disappear within a century, and climates that contemporary organisms have never experienced are likely to cover 12–39% of Earth. The mean global temperature by 2070 (or possibly a few decades earlier) will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved."