When the next ice age comes, the Earth will be on the brink of a new and much more dangerous climate.
And the consequences could be far-reaching.
The global water supply could be cut off, and as global warming accelerates, the amount of water available for human needs could be halved, according to the University of California, Davis, scientists.
In the next century, the oceans could become far less hospitable to life as we know it, leading to the end of a life that has existed on Earth for hundreds of millions of years.
For the first time, the United Nations is estimating that human civilization could disappear entirely within 20 years, and that it will be the world’s last living civilization.
This is the moment we need to start thinking about what it means to live, said Michael Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University who has spent decades studying the changing climate.
The human race, if we are lucky, is going to live to see another ice age.
It will be really hard to recover.
But we need some kind of long-term strategy to stop it, Mann said.
“The time has come to make a serious effort to reduce carbon emissions,” he said.
The best bet is to slow the rate of warming.
And we should do that now.
But the long-run impact on our species will depend on how much of our carbon emissions we can curb, Mann added.
The key, Mann explained, is to make sure the rate is as fast as possible.
“There are certain kinds of emissions that we’re willing to take on, and those are the ones that are going to be very bad for us,” he explained.
The future of the human race depends on how quickly we can do that.
The planet’s climate, as well as its water supply, is changing faster than we can predict.
In some places, the planet could be in for a period of extreme heat or drought in the next few decades.
The world is experiencing a heat wave in many places that could potentially become more severe, including parts of the United States and parts of Europe, the European Commission warned in a report published Monday.
In other parts of North America and parts or parts of Asia, there could be major droughts in the future.
And global sea levels could rise by up to 3 feet or more by the end