What Will Global Warming Look Like on the Ground?

What Will Global Warming Look Like on the Ground?

BY KATHERINE GUSTAFSON

CATEGORIES: FOOD & AGRICULTURE, FORESTS, GLOBAL WARMING DENIAL, IMAGINING THE FUTURE, OCEANS, SCIENCE, WATER,WILDERNESS

PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 19, 2009 @ 06:00AM PT

• Share
• 2744 Views

It's easy to talk about global warming on grandiose terms (the word "global" is in the title, after all). But it's sometimes harder to imagine what the concept really means for our daily lives. Some of us want to know what will happen when all the analysts and number-crunchers have gone home and the climatic disturbances start appearing one by one.

The UK's Telegraph recently published an article detailing some of the changes those of us not exposed to the extremes of a drowning island or a melting Himalaya might experience as the climate warms. What can we expect? Here's a run-down of some of the possibilities in Europe.

Food shortages

• Italy’s durum crops will disappear by the end of the century.
• Polish potato and wheat crops will decline, cutting these off from much of Europe.
• France will be forced to stop producing much of its wine, including champagne.
• Spain will see much of its now-productive land become desert.

Wild weather

• Rivers across Europe will flood regularly due to extreme weather.
• Sea levels around the UK will rise by 7 inches by the 2040s.
• Storm surges will be 3.3 feet higher by the end of the century.
• Insurance costs will rise with the risk of floods and storms.

Forest damage

• IKEA furniture will be no more as Scandinavian forests suffer irreversible damage.
• Forest fires triggered by summer heatwaves will start scouring the land around 2025.
• The spruce beetle, a new pest that can breed quickly in warmer temperatures, will render wood useless even if it doesn't burn in the fires.
• Certain types of trees like beech will die out entirely in the south of England.

And that's only a list brief enough to be contained in a newspaper article. Who know what other pleasures lie in store for us all, especially on this side of the pond. If you own beachfront property or in a house in a forest-fire zone, this might be a good time to sell it to a climate-change-denier.

Photo courtesy of teren in Virginia via flickr