Nat'l Geo - Six Degrees Could Change The World

Six Degrees Could Change the World

DVDrip | English | 90:00 | 720×480 | PAL (25fps) | DivX | MP3 - 128kbps | 1.0 GB

By the year 2100, many scientists believe that the Earth’s average temperature could rise by as much as six degrees Celsius. In a compelling investigation, National Geographic leads a degree-by-degree journey to explore what each rising—and critical—degree could mean for the future of our people and planet. Through powerful filmmaking and intimate profiles, this special illustrates how global warming has already affected the reefs of Australia, the ice fields of Greenland, and the Amazonian rain forest. With a sobering look at the effects of our world’s insatiable appetite for energy, Six Degrees Could Change the World explains what’s real, what’s still controversial, and how existing technologies and remedies could help dial back the global thermometer.

In the 2004 eco-thriller The Day After Tomorrow, director Roland Emmerich dramatized the potential consequences of accelerated global warming. By combining stock footage with computer-generated imagery, the National Geographic special Six Degrees Could Change the World serves as a sort of nonfiction counterpoint. As NASA climate scientist James Hansen cautions, even two degrees Celsius represents a tipping point (from which there is no return). Based on Mark Lynas’s Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet and narrated by Alec Baldwin, the program roams from the bushfire-ravaged suburbs of Southern Australia to the drought-stricken farmlands of Nebraska to the rapidly melting glaciers of Greenland. In the process, aerospace engineers, marine biologists, and ordinary citizens share their experiences and predictions. In the end, it’s the actual events–rather than the speculative scenarios–that prove most alarming, like the 30,000 deaths that resulted from 2003’s European heat wave. While a skeptic might dismiss that tragedy as a statistical anomaly, every continent bears the scars of climate change, like the deforestation of the Amazon and the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina. In order to inject some levity, Six Degrees detours to look at a British grape grower who has actually benefited from his country’s drier environment and the carbon footprint involved in the creation of that all-American favorite, the cheeseburger (suffice to say, it’s considerable).