We’ve burned past +1°C. Did a 2008 climate prediction get it right?

In 2008, the National Geographic documentary Six Degrees That Could Change the World offered a sobering look at how our planet could become increasingly unrecognizable as it continues to warm. I was curious about what it had to say now that Earth has passed the first benchmark in the film—one degree Celsius warmer than the global average in 1900.

Let’s explore its predictions and see which of them came true.

(All temperatures in Celsius.)

Six Degrees’ “Almost one degree” became “more than one degree” in record time

In 2008, scientists knew that the world had gotten warmer. They even knew just how much warmer: “almost one degree Celsius,” as the documentary tells us, since the Industrial Age began around 1900. It warned that each of those six degrees means “a radically different future” for life on Earth.

Six degrees cooler has its own serious impacts, of course. The documentary contains striking imagery of huge ice sheets visible in Oxford, England, which is what happened 18,000 years ago when the planet was, on average, six degrees cooler than it was in 2008. But we’re nowhere near that now. Now, we’re having the opposite problem.

In fact, Six Degrees tells us, even just almost one degree warmer than in 1900 had already caused “one of the worst” brush fire seasons in Victoria, Australia. It’d also kicked off the worst drought in that country in a thousand years.

By 2021, though, we’d tipped over into 1.1-1.2 degrees warmer. Most estimates indicate that by 2050, we’ll have hit 1.5 degrees warmer. So I wanted to re-watch this documentary to see how close its predictions were.

Six Degrees predicted an ice-free Arctic at one degree warmer

The documentary tells us:

If the world warms by one degree, the Arctic is ice-free for half the year, opening the legendary Northwest Passage for ships.

Six Degrees That Could Change the World, 11:42 from this video upload

It wasn’t hard to scare up information regarding Arctic ice meltoff. Smithsonian Magazine tells us that no, Arctic ice isn’t completely melted yet. But it sure could be “almost completely gone” by 2030:

An ice-free summer, also called a “blue ocean event,” will happen when the sea ice drops below one million square kilometers (386,102 square miles), writes Jonathan Bamber, a professor of physical geography at the University of Bristol, in the Conversation. This equates to just 15 percent of the Arctic’s seasonal minimum ice cover of the late 1970s, per the Times. [. . .]

While sea ice naturally shrinks in the summer and refreezes during the winter, summer ice coverage has steadily been declining over the past few decades because of climate change. And Arctic ice melting accelerates itself—as ice disappears, it exposes more of the dark blue ocean, which absorbs more heat and leads to more melting. This process, known as Arctic amplification, has led to the region warming nearly four times faster than the rest of the globe since 1979.

“Arctic Could Be Sea Ice-Free in the Summer by the 2030s,” Smithsonian Magazine, June 2023 (archive)

So we aren’t at an ice-free summer Arctic quite yet. But it seems like we’re a lot closer than anyone should find comfortable. In measuring the extent of sea ice, meaning the percentage of Arctic seawater with a certain amount of ice in it, the Arctic keeps setting the wrong kind of world records. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), last year the maximum and minimum extents of Arctic ice were both the 10th-smallest on record.

As for the opening of the Northwest Passage, that’s already happening on an intermittent basis. In 2007, unprecedented warm temperatures opened the passage for ship travel during summer months. Though it’s not open consistently or for all sizes of ships, it’s definitely seeing some action.

Nowadays, the problem with the Northwest Passage is the greater amount of fog along it, not the ice so much. If that’s a problem, there’s a Northeast Passage that might work for adventurers and tourists. It also appears to be usually open in the summers these days.

Six Degrees predicted flooding in the Bay of Bengal at one degree warmer

Right after the bit about the Northwest Passage, the documentary narration tells us this:

Tens of thousands of homes around the Bay of Bengal are flooding [at one degree warmer].

Six Degrees That Could Change the world, 11:48 from this video upload

In reality, a lot of people likely wish that it could be so few homes affected.

Before the release of Six Degrees, the bay’s water level was already rising. But since then, the water level of the Bay of Bengal just keeps increasing. Obviously, that rise impacts a whole lot of people in a whole lot of densely-populated areas. As well, climate change has led to a striking increase in violent storms. Such storms cause floods and landslides.

In particular, scientists raise alarms about Bangladesh, which sits at the very north end of the bay, and India’s financial and commercial center Kolkata, situated at the northwest end of the bay. That’s not even counting islands to the east of the bay, like Malaysia, and the Andamans within it.

Many millions of people live in and along that bay.

And its waters are rising, and storms are delivering more and more rain there by the year.

The troubles of the Bay of Bengal

According to the West Bengal Disaster Management and Civil Defense Department, which comprises a narrow slice of eastern India from Nepal southward to the bay, most of their districts have been affected by severe flooding since 2006. In 2013, heavy rainfalls in this area burst dams in several districts, leading to 2.1 million deaths.

Over in Bangladesh, heavy monsoons triggered the worst landslides in the country’s history in 2017. Then, in 2020, super cyclone Amphan ripped across the coast of the bay. It forced millions of people to flee their homes and caused unthinkable damage. Last year, a tropical storm killed “at least 24 people” and rendered hundreds of thousands of other people in Bangladesh homeless.

“It was terrible, it looked like the sea was coming to grab us,” Mizanur Rahman, a resident of Bhola district, told Reuters.

“Tropical Storm Sitrang floods streets in Bangladesh’s Bay of Bengal, leaving more than a dozen people dead,” ABC News, 2022 (archive)

In a terrible way, that’s kind of what happened. And those responsible for saving millions from that storm’s wrath knew exactly what to blame for these storms:

“2022 has seen climate emergencies such as floods and droughts impact countries on a scale that has never been witnessed before. The climate crisis is growing, and here in Bangladesh we feel its ferocity,” said Farah Kabir, Bangladesh Country Director of ActionAid.

“Hundreds of thousands evacuated as Bangladesh braces for cyclone,” Reuters, 2022 (archive)

At one degree warmer, that’s not going to change any time soon.

A World Heritage site at risk

Climate change doesn’t just affect people, of course. A 2021 study examined southwestern Bangladesh’s mangrove forest, the Sundarbans. This forest is a designated World Heritage site. It’s also a thriving and rich ecosystem all its own.

The researchers discovered that the water levels there were rising at the rate of 1.5mm/year. The paper’s authors predicted that if the sea level rises 1m over its current level, then it will “inundate” and “destroy” the entire site. Even a rise of 10cm would destroy 15% of the forest, while 60cm would kill all of the trees of the forest themselves.

In addition, the temperature of that water has increased at the rate of a half-degree every decade over the past 30 years. The paper suggests that this rise will both lead to adverse weather events and exacerbate sea-level rise.

(Think on that the next time an evangelical warbles at you about the Great Flood being a thing that totally happened. No way, no how did any olive trees survive for a bird to bring back a branch of one to Noah.)

As Prevention Web notes, the higher the sea level gets, the worse storm-produced floods get—and the further inland they reach, and the more people they affect. The site notes that scientists project that the Bay of Bengal could rise anywhere from .32m to .85m between 2020 and 2100.

Remember how it’d take 60cm—or 0.6m—for the Sundarbans mangroves to vanish?

Six Degrees predicted “severe droughts in the western US” at one degree warmer

This one caught my eye because I used to live in Idaho, which has been going through an extended drought for years. In the Aughts, total strangers delighted in telling me that technically, I lived in a desert now. That drought lasted for many years. The state might have just begun to recover from that drought, though it’s still struggling hard to balance its water supplies with its water demands.

Here’s what the documentary tells us about the future of Idaho and its westward neighbors:

Severe droughts in the western US cause shortages in global grain and meat markets. This could be our world plus one degree.

[Scientist speaks:] “At one degree additional warming to today, we’re likely to see the emergence of new deserts in the western half of the United States. From Texas in the south right up to the Canadian border is in danger of becoming new hyper-arid areas where really no crops can be grown at all.”

Six Degrees That Could Change the world, beginning at 12:00 from this video upload

And that does seem to be happening.

Drought is hitting the Northwest hard

When Stacker compiled their ranked list of states’ level of drought this past May, literally only West Virginia seemed to be doing all right at only 3 of their 55 counties (or 5.5% of them) reporting drought conditions between March 2022 and March 2023. Every other state reported 29%+ of their counties suffering from drought. By #45 on the list, we begin hitting 50%+ of states’ counties. By #40, we’re well past the 75% mark. And by #35, we’re past 90%.

From #27 onward, 100% of states’ counties reported drought conditions. Here’s their top 10, along with the average number of weeks affected counties suffered from drought during the 52 weeks of that time period:

10. Wyoming, 31.4 weeks
9. Oregon, 31.7 weeks
8. New Mexico, 32.3 weeks
7. Idaho, 34.3 weeks
6. Oklahoma, 34.3 weeks
5. Kansas, 36.3 weeks
4. Nebraska, 31.2 weeks
3. California, 42.1 weeks
2. Nevada, 42.9 weeks
1. Utah, 45.3 weeks

“States with the most droughts during the past year,” Stacker, May 2023 (archive)

That said, Utah lucked out this past winter. Very heavy snowfalls saved them from the worst effects of drought. One official report said that it was Utah’s best winter in 25 years. And they’re still first ranked in a contest that no state wants to win.

Drought has huge impacts on agriculture

You might have noticed that a lot of agricultural and beef-producing states are on that top 10 list.

The USDA runs an interesting interactive site that shows what agricultural products each state produces most, along with the value of those products. Here are our top 10 winners’ agricultural exports in 2021:

10. Wyoming: Beef/veal, $145M; “Other livestock products,” $68.5M; “Other plant products,” $66.1M; Pork $33M.
9. Oregon: “Other plant products,” $1315M; Wheat, $198M; Tree nuts, $186M; Processed vegetables, $128M; Beef/veal, $121M; Dairy products, $100M; Fresh fruit, $96M; Processed fruit, $84M; Fresh vegetables, $64M.
8. New Mexico: Dairy products, $229M; Tree nuts, $210M; Beef/veal, $154M; “Other plant products,” $109M; Processed vegetables, $55M.
7. Idaho: “Other plant products,” $596M; Dairy products, $558M; Wheat, $379M; Processed vegetables, $355; Beef/veal, $240M; Fresh vegetables, $176M.
6. Oklahoma: Beef/veal, $492M; Wheat, $410M; Pork, $388M; Cotton, $236M; “Other plant products,” $129M; Broiler meat, $88M; Soybeans, $77M.
5. Kansas: Beef/veal, $1423M; Wheat, $1334M; Soybeans, $1183M; Corn, $966M.
4. Nebraska: Corn, $2341M; Soybeans, $1979M; Beef/veal, $1640M; Feeds etc., $1296M.
3. California: Tree nuts, $8032M; “Other plant products,” $3787M; Fresh fruit, $2830M; Processed fruit, $2481M; Processed vegetables, $2307M; Dairy products, $1380M.
2. Nevada: Beef/veal, $52M; “Other plant products,” $40M; Dairy products, $26M. (Approximately all of that is more than I expected!)
1. Utah: “Other plant products,” $168M; Dairy products, $74M; Beef/veal, $72M; Pork, $60M.

“Annual State Agricultural Exports Interactive Chart,” USDA (archive)

Only a couple of these states aren’t what most people would consider breadbaskets of agriculture. Wyoming, for example, exports barely any beef compared to Nebraska. But its $145M of beef exports matters enormously to their economy.

Indeed, Six Degrees spends a lot of time talking about Nebraska’s beef industry—and how ongoing climate change has markedly affected it.

Six Degrees talked to an average Nebraska cattle rancher

In the documentary, rancher Bruce Wohler talks about having to haul water to fill water tanks for his cattle. Normally, rain fills those tanks. But not that year. For weeks now—and sometimes twice a day—Wohler must manually fill tanks so his herds can get enough water to survive. As well, he must bring them food because there’s not enough rain to produce the grass they normally eat.

In a lot of ways, ranchers like Wohler represent humanity’s front line in climate change. Thanks to generations of families going into fields like ranching and farming, these folks can tell when the weather begins acting very strangely.

Indeed, Wohler notes in the documentary that he’s seen creeks drying up that have never before dried up in his lifetime, nor even in his father’s lifetime. That concerns him because, as he says, much of the country is unusable for cattle if there’s no water for them.

That was in 2008.

By 2000, Nebraska’s leaders had already recognized that drought was becoming a problem in that state. That year, they released an official drought mitigation plan to address that problem. Their report reveals that they’d already noticed something going wrong in the 1980s. It also outlines the many, many social and economic costs associated with drought. These include increased electricity usage amid higher temperatures, financial losses rippling all through the economy, bankruptcies, mental unwellness, and even social unrest and loss of life (due to heat and starvation).

So how did Six Degrees do here? Did Nebraska become a desert where ranching is impossible? Did “new deserts” spring up in the American West?

One degree warmer, and agricultural producers are hanging on by the skin of their teeth

Not particularly, but things are getting more dicey by the year for ranchers and farmers.

A 2022 study reveals that Nebraskan crop yields have decreased in the past 40 years due to increased temperatures. But there’s a figure even more important than maximum daily temperatures: the difference between a day’s highest and lowest temperature. Nighttime lows have been increasing. That increase leads to higher plant respiration rates and faster maturation, which both lower yields.

As well, rainfall has decreased in much of the state. That leads to an increased need for irrigation. Without irrigation, corn and soybean yields in particular decrease. Since these are by far the two biggest agricultural exports in the state (according to that list from the USDA, above), that’s obviously a big concern for state officials and farmers alike.

Global what, now?

On a previous article about climate change, a commenter noted that science deniers find it suspicious that the term global warming was replaced by climate change. If someone doesn’t understand why that replacement occurred, I suppose it is a little sus. But in reality, the change occurred for one simple reason: The warming of the planet causes some really weird weather effects at the local level. These include extremely high rainfall and extremely low temperatures at strange times of year.

And that is exactly what we see in Nebraska. As a 2018 report notes:

The projections in Nebraska for the next 75 years are similar to the trends we have seen over the last 30 years, with a few exceptions. It is projected to have longer growing seasons, warmer summers and more extreme hot days (current trend is decreasing). There is also an expectation to continue to see more precipitation; however, this is projected to come in less frequent, heavier events, so much of it may runoff causing other challenges and reducing infiltration into the soil.

“How Climate Change Affects Nebraska and Agriculture,” University of Nebraska-Lincoln Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources, 2018 (archive)

In recent years, the far west end of Nebraska in particular has showed an increase in rainfall. The report calls these “extreme precipitation events.” One of these was the “bomb cyclone” of March 2019. This powerful storm brought spring blizzards to many states in the Great Plains, from Colorado to Wisconsin.

In Nebraska, the storm made the icy Niobrara River rise so high and so quickly that it burst through a dam, which in turn unleashed floods and huge flung ice slabs at a bunch of neighboring towns. This storm was so bad that it forced personnel at the National Weather Service to flee their Omaha office for one a wee bit further from the action. The state didn’t finally see the last of its flood warnings until nearly Christmas that year.

All in all, Nebraska suffered $2.7Bn just in damage to private homes. That storm also caused about $840M in agricultural losses and seriously disrupted seed planting. That year, Nebraska’s net farming income dropped by a whopping 60%.

Here’s the punchline, though: Only 64% of Nebraska’s people think that climate change is a real thing that is really happening. Let’s hope they’re all in agriculture. And that the rest of ’em get on board before one of America’s most important water sources, the Ogallala Aquifer that’s mostly underneath Nebraska, runs out of water (estimated to happen to its southern half within 30 years).

England’s “agricultural makeover” firms up at one degree warmer

Six Degrees continues with a lighter note about an “agricultural makeover” in England:

England is enjoying an agricultural makeover. Fortunes will be made and lost if global weather patterns rearrange where different crops can be grown. [. . .]

Right now, England is at the right place at the right time for one of the world’s most fragile and vulnerable crops.

Six Degrees That Could Change the world, beginning at 16:39 from this video upload

Our narrator is talking about grape farming, or viticulture. Previously grown mostly in the Mediterranean, grapes have come to England and seem to be doing pretty well. As well, wineries have come to England. By the same token, areas once famous for their grapes—like the Champagne region of Wayne’s World and countless hilarious memes—might be having trouble because of those rearranged weather patterns.

(Of course, the documentary stressed repeatedly that this shift, while nice for UK farmers, did not in any way detract from the massive damage climate change is wreaking elsewhere.)

By 2008, when this documentary was made, it reported 400 vineyards operating in England. Even stranger perhaps, one grape farmer (or viticulturist) was also planting olives. England’s climate used to be entirely too cold to make olive groves feasible. As evidence, just check out this Renaissance-era weather report collation, and see how often it mentions freezing cold weather and the Thames freezing over—as opposed to heat snaps.

But now, that farmer is hoping his trees flourish in an England with much-easier winters.

The prediction here appears to be that grape and olive farming will begin to migrate away from the Mediterranean into more northerly countries.

Viticulture hits the UK in a major way

The prediction regarding grapes is quite true. British viticulture has taken off. In 2008, wineries were only barely getting going. So were vineyards. It’s not like the UK had never seen grapes planted before. According to EnglishWine.com, there have always been some farmers doing it, and there have always been others willing to bottle the results. In the 1990s, planting increased dramatically for a while before setting back down.

It just wasn’t until 2008 that planting increased and stayed increased. As it turns out, a lot of places in the UK already have good soil conditions for grapes. They just didn’t have the climate for it. But in 2018, climate change led to vineyards enjoying “the harvest of the century.”

Those 400 vineyards in 2008 multiplied to 500 by 2020, and to 700 by 2023. Just as they vary in size in other countries, these range from little plots run by small-scale boutique or backyard farmers to massive commercial operations.

Those grapes feed some 400 UK wineries. (Some sources, like Statista and EnglishWine.com, say there are about 200, while winery and viticulture sites claim 400.)

It also wasn’t until 2008 that those wineries began getting good international attention. In 2017, a British wine (Winbirri Vineyards’ Bacchus 2015) won a platinum medal from Decanter World Wine Awards. That vineyard/winery applied for and received Protected Designation Origin (PDO) for Bacchus.

Just last month, one winery suggested that English farmers start looking to grapes if they want to “survive climate change.” Even regular normie gardeners have easy access to advice if they want to plunge into an increasingly-easy new experience.

But other countries’ vineyards are suffering at one degree warmer

Changes in weather patterns are not turning out as favorably for other parts of the world. Australia, once a grand place for vintners and viticulturists, suffered a devastating blow to its grape harvest thanks to those changes. For the third year in a row, La Niña swept across its grape trellises. It brought rainstorms and cold weather to crops that really like sunny, warm days. The results: a 26% drop in red grape harvest yields this year, and a 22% drop in white grapes.

France, the grand dame of wineries and viticulture, is having its own problems due to climate change. Heat waves and drought have taken a toll on their famous wine industry.

Some viticulturists are responding to these changes by finding higher ground. One grower had some high-elevation land that was too cool for grapes to flourish. But now, suddenly that land is perfect for it. Last month, that grower told Wine Enthusiast,

“Compared to when I was young when harvest began at the beginning of October, we harvest a full month earlier these days,” says Jean-Marie. It’s an outcome that Pierre Amadieu hadn’t intended, says Jean-Marie [Amadieu], “but we are very grateful to our grandfather [for buying that land decades ago],” he says.

“Due to Climate Change, This French Wine Region Embraces New Heights”, Wine Enthusiast, June 2023

As that quote suggests, the harvest season is also shifting. Harvests now occur weeks earlier than they did in previous decades.

Forest fires have become a dreadful new reality in France as well. In 2022, one of those fires almost claimed a vineyard that produces USD$30k/bottle Bordeaux wine. The French government is even allowing Bordeaux grape farmers to irrigate, which used to be off-limits. Even more unthinkably, the rules now allow those farmers to grow six additional grape varieties to make official Bordeaux wine. All of those new varieties grow in the new warmer, drier Bordeaux climate. That move in particular is seriously stressing wine enthusiasts right out:

“It was crazy,” said Georgie Hindle, a wine expert who covers the Bordeaux region at wine publication Decanter. “No one knows if this decision will change the profile of a classic claret.”

“Climate Change Forces French Vineyards to Alter the Way They Make Wine”, Wall Street Journal, September 25, 2022

One wonders, idly, if one day official champagne will come from somewhere besides Champagne, destroying the classic joke from Wayne’s World.

As for growing olives, yes, that’s happening in the UK as well. In 2019, one olive tree nursery called this practice “commonplace.” Another nursery site declares that “the English climate is perfect for growing olives.” And yes, higher temperatures and lower rainfall are wreaking havoc in classic olive regions like Tuscany.

Six Degrees is a sobering look at what is already happening—and may happen in days to come

Overall, Six Degrees made a bunch of chilling predictions about what would happen in a world that becomes one degree warmer. Most of those predictions have turned out to be true. The rest are very close. None turned out to be flat false.

In 2008, when this documentary was made, we hadn’t quite hit that number yet. Now, though, we are just past it and cruising right toward 1.5 degrees within this decade. One site thinks we’ve already lost the battle to curtail global warming before that point:

So if the understanding of the link between CO2 and warming is correct, we are not stopping at 1.5 degrees warmer than in the pre-industrial era. The IPCC indicates that we are likely to experience between 2 and 3 degrees of warming. So what do we do?

“The Battle for 1.5 Degrees of Warming Is Already Lost, So What’s Plan B?” American Institute for Economic Research, April 2022

Obviously, the documentary continues all the way into six degrees warmer. Long before that, though, our planet will seem unrecognizable to us—and way less populous than it is today. We still have time to act to prevent that outcome, but time is growing short. We’re in the DeLorean, the timer has gone off, and we are racing to the bell tower to catch a bolt of lightning. If we miss our shot, we may vanish from this good dark earth.