On TikTok, a viral “aged” filter recently gave users a glimpse into their future. The AI-generated filter predicts how you might look in 50 years, complete with sagging skin, deeper wrinkles, and dark spots from decades of sun exposure. In a matter of months, the filter amassed close to 11 billion views, and shook many with a sneak peak into the aging process.
Humans are visual creatures; if images of how we could look in the future can motivate us to slather on more sunscreen, can visual projections do the same for inspiring more climate action?
To predict how climate change will expose us to disaster, reshape agriculture, or make some regions unlivable, scientists run models that forecast how the world will change. Yet, when it comes to climate change, statistics and figures often aren’t as powerful as staggering photos of cities sinking under rising sea levels. If a viral TikTok filter can shock us with how old we might look in 2070, could projections of flooding and drastic temps in the places we love—including our own neighborhoods—help bring home the climate crisis?
The world in 50 years
By the time today’s Tiktok user is old enough to see the artificially aged version of their face come to fruition, the world will look very different if nothing is done to address climate change.
The planet is on track for catastrophic warming, U.N.’s 2023 climate change reportsays.
The world’s leading climate scientists’ predictions, reviewed by delegates from nearly 200 countries, warned that the world is likely to pass a dangerous temperature tipping point within the next 10 years, unless nations immediately transition away from fossil fuels. If governments stick with their current policies, the remaining "carbon budget" will be wiped out by 2030.
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A third of the world's population could live in a climate similar to the Sahara in just 50 years, according to a study published in PNAS in 2020. That means 3.5 billion people could live with average temperatures in the mid-80s, “outside of humanity’s comfort zone” by 2070.
National Geographic produced its own interactive feature in 2020 that takes a look at what the world will feel like in 50 years: By the 2070s, it shows Boston will feel more like Bardwell, Kentucky, with summers averaging 8°F hotter; and London will feel more like Sovicille, Italy, with summer temperatures rising 6°F. Some cities, like Hanoi, Vietnam, will be hotter than what any region currently experiences. (The interactive tool lets you see how your own city’s temperatures will rise in about 50 years, too.)
Picturing our future
Just as the time travel TikTok filter shows a split screen of the user’s current face alongside an AI-generated aged version, there’s a similarly distressing visual model for climate change. Non-profit climate research group Climate Central’s Picturing Our Future shows two versions of the future: what the world will look like if we keep our current path and warm the Earth by 3°C, and what it will look like if we sharply cut carbon pollution and limit warming to 1.5°C global warming, a target set by the Paris Climate Agreement.
Using peer-reviewed research, these visual projections show how the climate and energy choices we make this decade will influence how high sea levels rise in the future. Climate Central uses a combination of photorealistic images, flyover videos, Google Earth Images, and animated GIFs, to generate their Picturing Our Future visual tools.
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The visualizations compare potential outcomes for nearly 200 landmarks and iconic places around the world, from the Burj Khalifa in Dubai to the National Mall in Washington, D.C. These long-term sea level projections show astonishing science-based renders of coastal cities submerged under water.
“Human beings are visual. About 30 percent of our brain is used for vision. Most scientific reports of climate threats report numbers that are hard to interpret: what would one foot or five feet of sea level rise really mean?” says Benjamin Strauss, CEO and chief scientist of Climate Central.
The goal of these visuals is to show we can influence the future, says Strauss. “We present comparisons of different potential futures depending on the path we take. The actions of governments, corporations, and industries to cut carbon pollution as much and as fast as possible, can reduce risks and protect coastal communities around the world.”
Climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe also believes in the power of visualizing what life will be like based on the choices we make today. “By painting a picture of the impact our choices make, that is actually dynamically altering the probability of our future scenarios,” says Hayhoe, the chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy.
Hayhoe tries to help people imagine how a warming planet will affect them personally, “Think of the hottest summer you remember. What did your power bill look like? What did it feel like?” A Texas resident, Hayhoe says the state has already seen that the number of 100 degree days has tripled over the last 40 years.
“By 2070, if you lived in New Hampshire, you would feel more like you live in northern Virginia, in terms of the summers, even if we do as much as we can,” says Hayhoe, referencing projections that show the climate of states at more southern latitudes will “migrate” north as the planet warms.
“If we don't do everything we can, a summer in New Hampshire could feel like one in the Carolinas,” she adds.
What future will we choose?
“We have to understand what's going to happen if we don't do anything. But we also have to understand what doing something looks like, otherwise, you just have a bunch of scared people who are paralyzed,” stresses Hayhoe.
The book “The Future We Choose” by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac, who together led the negotiations of the historic Paris Agreement, helped influence Hayhoe’s own vision of how Earth could be saved from catastrophic warming.
The principal architects of the landmark climate deal offer two different versions of how the world might look in 2050. While there’s a worst case scenario, the book also offers a best case scenario: how things would look if we move toward a world that will be no more than 1.5°C warmer by 2100, a world in which we’ve been halving emissions every decade since 2020.
It paints a vivid picture of how livable our world would be in the future if we address climate change at scale, adds Hayhoe: “How blue the sky would be, how breathable our air would be, how clean our water would be, how walkable and green our cities would be.”
