MONTREAL, QUEBEC — Scientists have modeled what Earth would look like in 500 years if our planet keeps warming up at the present rate.
What they found would surprise you.
A group of environmental scientists have combined to model the impact of climate change all the way up to the year 2500.
After publishing their findings in Global Change Biology, the researchers wrote in The Conversation that Earth will gradually become uninhabitable if governments across the globe do not act more strongly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
The study’s results show that the Amazon will change into a place that is too hot and dry for plants to grow in, leaving a barren wasteland with no vegetation and little human activity.
In the American midwest, the model predicts that today’s cornfield prairies will be replaced by a hot and humid subtropical climate, where AI drones tend to strange plants engineered from oil palms. In the Indian subcontinent, the study predicts that humans would have to wear air-conditioned suits and use farming drones to grow food in the intense heat and humidity.
The scientists say the modeling reveals a future where agriculture and humans have moved toward the poles to escape the intense heat and humidity of the equatorial regions.
The researchers say long-term future models like theirs are not factored into mainstream climate planning.
They say these should be, as people who are born today will be in their 70s by 2099, and we should start to ask what the world would look like for their children and grandchildren.