Instant Alert: Here's what Earth might look like in 100 years — if we're lucky

MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS   |   UNSUBSCRIBE   |   VIEW ONLINE   Here's what Earth might look like in 100 years — if we're lucky by Dave Mosher on Jun 1, 2017, 1:59 PM Advertisement President Donald Trump is expected to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord on Thursday, June 1. Trump's reported decision comes on the heels of the hottest year the world has seen since 1880 — when scientists first started keeping global temperature logs — and the fifth annual heat record of the past dozen years. Overall, planet Earth has warmed 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.26 degrees Celsius) above preindustrial averages, which is dangerously close to the 2.7-degree-Fahrenheit (1.5-degree-Celsius) limit set by international policymakers for global warming. (Some argue this cutoff is arbitrary, though it could still rein in some of the most disruptive changes to human civilization.) "There's no stopping global warming," Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist who is the director of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, previously told Business Insider. "Everything that's happened so far is baked into the system." That means that even if carbon emissions were to drop to zero tomorrow, we'd still be watching human-driven climate change play out for centuries. And we all know emissions aren't going to stop. So the key thing now, Schmidt said, is to slow climate change down enough to make sure we can adapt to it as painlessly as possible. This is what the Earth could look like within 100 years if we succeed in curbing climate change with international agreements like the Paris climate accord (barring huge leaps in renewable energy or carbon-capture technology). Sarah Kramer wrote a previous version of this post. DON'T MISS: 25 photos that prove we're all stowaways on a tiny, fragile spaceship SEE ALSO: A huge crack in a 1,000-foot-thick Antarctic ice block has taken an alarming turn "I think the 1.5-degree [2.7-degree F] target is out of reach as a long-term goal," Schmidt said. He estimated that we will blow past that by about 2030. But Schmidt is more optimistic about staying at or under 3.6 degrees F, or 2 degrees C, above preindustrial levels. That's the level of temperature rise the UN hopes to avoid. Let's assume that we land somewhere between those two targets. At the end of this century, we'd be looking at a world that is on average about 3 degrees Fahrenheit above where we are now. See the rest of the story at Business Insider   Share the latest business news with your network:    Email sent to:   |   Manage your email preferences   |   Unsubscribe Terms of Service   |   Privacy Policy Business Insider. 150 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10011