2017-04 NG

CLIMATE FACTS | ALASKA ARTIFACTS | SURVIVING ISIS

THE NEXT HUMAN

APRIL 2017

Explore how farmers feed our growing population
with just 0.7% of the Earth’s water1,2 at
NationalGeographic.com/UnchartedWaters

this is how much we
have to grow
all our food.

1. “Feeding Ourselves Thirsty: How the Food Sector is Managing Global Water Risks,” http://www.ceres.org/issues/water/agriculture/water-risks-food-sector. Accessed January 18, 2017. 2. National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration, Science on a Sphere, “Blue Planet,” https://sos.noaa.gov/Datasets/dataset.php?id=284. Accessed January 24, 2017. WinField United and Uncharted Waters are trademarks
and WinField is a registered trademark of Winfield Solutions, LLC. © 2017 Winfield Solutions, LLC. Land O’Lakes SUSTAIN is a registered trademark of Land O’Lakes, Inc. © 2017 Land O’Lakes Inc

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I CONTENTS

. .A P R I L 2 0 1 7 • VO L 2 3 1 • N O 4 • O F F I C I A L J O U R N A L O F T H E N AT I O N A L G EO G R A P H I C SO C I E T Y

FRONT F E AT U R E S

3 QUESTIONS 96 LIFE AFTER ISIS
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the “great part” of Einstein $V ,UDTL DQG FRDOLWLRQ IRUFHV PRYHG WR UHWDNH 0RVXO LQ ƄHHLQJ ,UDTLV WROG
harrowing stories of the Islamic State’s brutal reign.
VISIONS By James Verini Photographs by Moises Saman

EXPLORE: WATER
,Q WKH ZDWHU ƃVK WUDVK
signs of stress. Out of
water: people worldwide.

On the Cover From Stone Age 30 | CLIMATE 40 | BEYOND HUMAN 64 | HOME
hunter-gatherers to today’s CHANGE: 7 THINGS ON THE RANGE
high-tech pioneers, humans in- YOU NEED TO KNOW Are humans still evolving?
creasingly have taken evolution <HV XQGHU WKH LQƄXHQFH Modernity and tradition
into our own hands. Where will 7KH VFLHQWLƃF IDFWV DERXW of culture and technology. meet in a Pakistani village.
our species go next? threats to the planet and
Illustration by Owen Freeman how to mitigate them. By D. T. Max Story and Photographs by
Illustrations by Owen Freeman Matthieu Paley
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Go to natgeo.com/corrections.

7 2   |   G R A S S - E AT I N G 124 | TINY RUINS 134 | RACING
MONKEYS OF ETHIOPIA THE THAW
Artists’ miniature tableaux
A community aims to shield depict abandoned cities Alaska natives hope to
habitat that geladas need. gone to seed. rescue ancestral artifacts
before the sea takes them.
By Craig Welch By Jeremy Berlin By A. R. Williams
3KRWRJUDSKV E\ -HƂUH\ .HUE\ Photographs by Lori Nix and Photographs by Erika Larsen
and Trevor Beck Frost .DWKOHHQ *HUEHU

ELSEWHERE

NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC KIDS

TALKING TRASH TO HELP THE PLANET

,Q WLPH IRU (DUWK 'D\ $SULO 7+,6 %22. 67,1.6 a col-
orful look at the science of trash. For ages eight through
12, it covers topics from composting to clever uses of rub-
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC BOOKS TELEVISION

MEET THE PASSENGERS OF THE PHOTO ARK WHO GETS WATER IN A DROUGHT?

The waxy monkey tree frog above is one of more than 7KLV YLHZ RI &DOLIRUQLDŠV &HQWUDO 9DOOH\ŞOXVK RUFKDUGV
6,000 animals immortalized in portraits by photographer DFURVV IURP IDOORZ RQHVŞHPERGLHV WKH SRLQW RI Water &
Joel Sartore, who is circling the globe in his quest to Power: A California Heist. The documentary examines the
photograph every species in captivity. See hundreds of state’s history of water manipulations and the risk they
Sartore’s colorful subjects in his new book, The Photo SRVH WR YLWDO 8 6 IDUPODQGV :DWFK LW RQ 1DWLRQDO *HR-
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available at shopng.com or wherever books are sold. & Power inspired the three-part series Parched, a report
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Tune in for canine capers all weekend long starting
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SOH 2Q WKH WK LQ $GROI +LWOHU ZDV ERUQ Bad Days
is available at shopng.com and wherever books are sold.

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EDITOR IN CHIEF Susan Goldberg DIGITAL PUBLISHING NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY
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NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC • APRIL 2017



| FROM THE EDITOR | SOCIAL MEDIA

OUR SOCIAL
MEDIA MISSION

At National Geographic, we want to be immersive experiences we’ve created so A storm lights Nebraska’s
part of the conversation. We do that by far include a close look at an erupting Platte River as hundreds
creating stories for our magazines and volcano and the first ever VR event with of thousands of cranes rest
nationalgeographic.com that are timely, a sitting president. for the night. The image was
memorable, and important. Our recent among the most popular
coverage of the refugee crisis, the gender What do our audiences want to see? on the @NatGeo Instagram
revolution, and climate change are ex- The photo above is a good example. Ran- account in 2016.
amples of meeting that objective. dy Olson shot it while on assignment for
a story on the Ogallala aquifer, which Find the book @NatGeo at
But today, to be in conversation with ran in our August 2016 issue. Putting the shopng.com/natgeobook,
the widest possible audience, we need photo on Instagram gave it new life. More or wherever books are sold.
to be a player on social media as well. than 1.3 million people “liked” it, making And until April 30, 2017,
it one of the year’s most liked images. see the exhibit “@NatGeo:
We’re proud that for most of the Popular Instagram Photos”
past two years, National Geographic We’ve come a long way since 1906, at the National Geographic
has ranked number one among brands when Editor Gilbert H. Grosvenor’s bold Museum, Washington, D.C.
on social media in the United States. use of photos in the magazine prompted
With more than 2.6 billion social en- two National Geographic board members @
gagements, we’re right up there with to resign. In all those years, though, one
the NFL, the NBA, and Victoria’s Secret. thing hasn’t changed: our commitment NAT
to storytelling that brings you the world. GEO
Our largest publishing platforms, out-
side of our own properties, are Facebook, Susan Goldberg, Editor in Chief
Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. We
approach each differently, customizing
content to meet the unique expectations
and desires of each site’s users. For ex-
ample, our Snapchat audience—mostly
younger people—wants a more kinetic,
high-energy approach to information
than our audience on Facebook.

And then there’s Instagram. Given
that we’re famous for visual storytelling,
perhaps it’s not surprising that our main
account—@NatGeo, which is run by
our photographers—is taking almost
67 million followers on virtual journeys
all over the world.

“One moment you’ll be underwater,
face-to-face with a whitetip shark, and
the next moment you’ll be atop a volcano
in Rwanda with a family of mountain
gorillas,” says Patrick Witty, our dep-
uty director of digital photography,
who manages the account. “Through
@NatGeo we help people experience the
planet and cultures as seen by our pho-
tographers—a special, unfiltered view.”

We also see a great future with 360-
degree video and virtual reality. The fully

PHOTO: RANDY OLSON, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE

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| 3 QUESTIONS | GEOFFREY RUSH How was Einstein unlike most of us?
In preparing for the role, I found the most
PL AYING THE fantastic, pithy expression, from the phi-
PART OF GENIUS losopher Arthur Schopenhauer: “Talent
hits a target no one else can hit. Genius
His acting roles have ranged from Captain hits a target no one else can see.” That’s
Barbossa in the Pirates of the Caribbean absolutely a description of Einstein’s
movies to George VI’s speech therapist in mind, because he overturned hundreds
The King’s Speech. But *HRƂUH\ 5XVK 65, of years of scientific orthodoxies about
says that portraying Albert Einstein in the gravity, light, space, time. Another aspect
television series Genius is “what actors call of being seen as a genius is endurance. He
a great part. For a sexagenarian character was still working on unified field theory
actor, they don’t come along every day.” into his 70s, and on his deathbed he was
still trying to find what we would now
call the theory of everything.

What might we have in common?
When Einstein died, they dissected his
brain and found it was a normal weight—
about 1.23 kilos [2.7 pounds]. I think they
were expecting to find he had a massive
frontal cortex or something. He was said
to have a very high IQ: 160—about the
same as [theoretical physicist Stephen]
Hawking. He had a lot of human frail-
ties. He had ego, he had doubt, he had
sadness. He suffered the deaths of many
loved ones in his life span, massive mar-
ital problems, estrangement from his
children. He was vulnerable to all the
contradictions that every human can be.

Can you imagine yourself in conver-
sation with him, or sharing a meal?
It’s a parlor game, really, isn’t it? The
fantasy of having historical dinner
guests. He’d be on my list alongside
Plato, Shakespeare, Charlie Chaplin,
and Queen Elizabeth I. I just hope he’d
accept the invitation, because he was
obsessed by the need for solace for what
his exploratory brain demanded of him.
But he was also gregarious; he quipped
absurdities and made wisecracks like
Groucho Marx. In terms of the meal:
I have German ancestry too, and I like
schnitzel, strudel, my grandmother’s
sauerkraut… So that’s probably what I’d
suggest. And I think he’d join in heartily.

The 10-part series Genius airs Tuesdays
starting April 25, on National Geographic.

THIS INTERVIEW WAS EDITED FOR LENGTH AND CLARITY.
PHOTO: MAARTEN DE BOER, CONTOUR BY GETTY IMAGES



I VISIONS

O Order prints of select National Geographic photos online at NationalGeographicArt.com.

Japan
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|   V I S I O N S  |   YO U R S H OT. N G M .CO M

CHALLENGE Hiro Kurashina
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Barrigada, Guam
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were all in the frame at once. “Somehow they came together
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©2017 COORS BREWING CO., GOLDEN, CO

EXPLORE

W AT E R

GARBAGE SWELL

By Catherine Zuckerman

Outdoor photographer Zak Noyle has
seen his share of marine debris, but
he was shocked by what he discov-
ered on an assignment in a remote
spot off the coast of Java. There to
cover Indonesian surfer Dede Suryana
(right) in 2012, Noyle found himself
literally swimming in a sea of garbage.
“It was overwhelming,” he recalls.
“I really thought we were going to see
a dead body in the water.”

Roughly eight million tons of plas-
tic enters the ocean every year. That’s
according to a 2015 report, which also
identified where the bulk of this trash
originates. At the top of the list: China,
the Philippines, and Indonesia.

Sightings of junk-filled waters are
common—and not only in Southeast
Asia, says marine biologist Nicholas
Mallos, who runs the Ocean Conser-
vancy’s Trash Free Seas program.
“Accumulations like this are unfortu-
nately the norm,” he says, particularly
in developing parts of the world where
there are “rising middle-class popula-
tions along coastlines, and spending
and consumption have increased, but
waste management has not.”

Though trash remains a global prob-
lem, Mallos sees reasons to be hopeful.
In the United States, for example, Cali-
fornia voters in 2016 upheld a statewide
ban on plastic bags. And in Indonesia,
he says, there has been a shift in aware-
ness: “We’re seeing an eager and willing
group of stakeholders who are trying
to step up and tackle these issues.” Put
another way: The tide may be turning.

3+272 =$. 12</( $Ǒ)5$0(

| EXPLORE | WATER

FISH FOR
THOUGHT

By Catherine Zuckerman

Hundreds of millions of people world- potentially damaging than within South- Examples of freshwater
wide would lack their prime source of east Asia’s multicountry Mekong River ƃVK LQFOXGH FORFNZLVH
protein without freshwater fish. Yet the system—the world’s biggest freshwater from top left) common
lakes and river systems that supply them fishery. There, says McIntyre, many peo- bream, giant pangasius,
are often overlooked by policymakers, ple rely on catfish and other river species ZDONLQJ FDWƃVK DQG WLODSLD
who focus sustainability efforts instead as a critical source of dietary protein that
on ocean species. could not easily be replaced. ),6+ 3+2726 ǖ&/2&.:,6( )520
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mercial operations, while freshwater a “sky is falling” scenario, he says, but 6$5725( 1$7,21$/ *(2*5$3+,&
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omy, so they draw less interest,” says ,& &5($7,9( '5,1. 3+272
University of Wisconsin–Madison 5(%(&&$ +$/( 1*0 67$))
zoologist Peter McIntyre.

McIntyre recently conducted a global
analysis of riverine fisheries—and the
threats they face—and determined there
is an urgent need to safeguard these
regions. He and his team found that 90
percent of the global freshwater catch
comes from ecosystems that are stressed
by “above average” pollution, dambuild-
ing, and invasive species.

Nowhere are these challenges more

HYDRATION STATION: WHAT DRINK DOES THE JOB BEST?

Move over, glycemic index. British researchers are creating a beverage hydration index. The less a drink is peed out over

two hours, the higher its “BHI” compared with water, rated “1.” Minerals and nutrients, like sodium and casein protein in milk,

can raise the score. Fun fact: Researcher Stuart Galloway says a few cups of beer or tea can be as hydrating as water.

—Eve Conant

1.50

WHOLE MILK 1.54

ORAL REHYDRATION

SOLUTION

1.02 1.39 0.91
SPORTS ORANGE COFFEE*
DRINK JUICE

%/$&. &2))((
0.98 1.23
SPARKLING COLA
WATER

LEAVE YOUR
FAMILY A
BETTER WORLD

Family comes first when planning your legacy,
which is why many people decide to leave a gift
to the National Geographic Society in their will
or trust. It’s a wonderful way to change your
family’s world for generations to come.

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| EXPLORE | FIELD NOTES

F R E S H WAT E R photos, videos, and a 360-degree virtu- 360° VIDEO
AT THE SOURCE al underwater tour to nearby schools Explore Florida caves in
with lessons about water conservation this online experience at
By Daniel Stone and efficiency. Kids can be particularly ZDONLQJRQZDWHUƄ RUJ
curious about where water comes from, YLUWXDO WRXU
Most people don’t have the opportunity and urging kids to use less water is often
to swim in aquifers, but National Geo- an easier sell than persuading adults to Adler takes regular dives
graphic Young Explorer Jennifer Adler go easy on their lawns. in the Floridan aquifer for
regularly takes the plunge in hopes of material to teach students
promoting a new “water ethic,” an en- What do children see in her images of about where water comes
lightened mind-set about the different underwater caves with almost no light from—and why it’s scarce.
sources and uses of water. or marine life? “Often not much more
than a bunch of rock,” she says. “A lot PHOTO: JENNIFER ADLER
She chiefly studies—and swims in— of kids ask me if I ever find gems.” Her
the Floridan aquifer, a body that sup- finds tend more to sand dollar fossils.
plies more than 90 percent of Florida’s The real treasure, as she hopes the kids
drinking water. After her dives she brings understand, is the H2O itself.

®, TM, © 2016 Kellogg NA Co.

| EXPLORE | WATER

HUMANS AND THE OCEAN

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ANTARCTICA

TROUBLED depth of the ocean make it notoriously
WAT E R S difficult to study. But in 2008 a team of
researchers used satellite images and
By Daniel Stone modeling software to make a complete
portrait of human effects on the ocean.
The map above is essentially an x-ray of Five years later they did it again, captur-
the ocean, and the colors show where ing a comprehensive view of an ocean
it’s feeling the most impact from human in transition. Among the revelations:
activity. The darker the area, the more Two-thirds of the ocean shows increased
stressed the waters are by fishing, ship- strain from human-related factors, such
ping, the destabilizing effects of climate as fishing and climate change. And more
change, or all three. than three-quarters of coastal waters
suffer from climate change and increases
Such a map is rare. The vastness and

North
Sea

Seattle New York MID-ATLA Rotterdam
NORTH Charleston N EUROPE
T
AMERICA IC Valencia
RID G E
Los Angeles Tangier

Panama AFRICA
Canal Dakar

EQUATOR

SOUTH AMERICA
Rio de
Janeiro ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Cape
GEOGRAPHY UNDERWATER Town
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Human influence

Low High
Major shipping port
Areas of perennial ice
(not included in study)

in the effects of harmful land-based ac- change in particular is driving a lot of
tivities, including pollution. In all, the those changes,” says Halpern.
researchers classified more than 40 per-
cent of the ocean as “heavily impacted” Still, the story isn’t all bad. Some seas
by human activity. have seen reduced human impact—in
parts of the North Atlantic, for example,
A booming population is chiefly to where there are more fuel-efficient ships
blame, says biologist Ben Halpern, head and new regulations. In 2016 countries
of the team that collected the data. Most established more than 40 new sites to
of the dark areas are in the Northern create more than 1.4 million additional
Hemisphere, where almost 90 percent square miles of protected marine areas,
of humans live. But population alone shielding much of it from commercial
doesn’t affect marine life. “A lot of the fishing, energy drilling, and other ac-
ocean is getting worse, and climate tivities that might otherwise do harm.

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| EXPLORE | WATER

DEEP-SEA VINO Veuve Clicquot launched Cellar in the Cages of sparkling wine
Sea. Some 350 bottles were submerged in by Italian maker Bisson are
By Nina Strochlic the Baltic, to be retrieved and analyzed kept in the Mediterranean
periodically over 40 years. for up to 18 months, leaving
In 2010 Dominique Demarville, cellar the bottles covered in algae.
master for the champagne house Veuve Connoisseurs have long suspected that
Clicquot, got what he thought was a joke wine ages differently underwater. Anal-
call: 168 bottles of likely the world’s old- yses from a 10,000-bottle-capacity cellar
est champagne had been found in a ship- off the Spanish coast by a company called
wreck beneath the Baltic Sea. Bajoelagua Factory show that factors like
atmospheric pressure and water currents
Soon Demarville was sniffing and sip- change the chemical compounds in wine.
ping the 170-year-old champagne, which
he found sweet and fresh, although some Napa’s Mira Winery conducted its own
tasters described its initial scent as “wet taste tests on 240 bottles in Charleston
hair.” The dark, cool sea had preserved Harbor. When the first case was pulled
it in what researchers called “close to up in 2013, a sommelier told owner Jim
perfect” conditions. Four years later Dyke: “You’ve turned a 2009 cabernet
into a 2007 in three months.”

PHOTO: ALESSANDRO BELTRAME



| EXPLORE | WATER

WATER COLLECTIVE BY THE NUMBERS

By Nina Strochlic 200 1,000

From India to Bolivia, it was always the Liters used daily by the Ma- Liters used daily by the
women who knew exactly how much water saeed family—plus 7,800 Gilbertson family in
their family needed. additional liters for its 700 New York City, bottom left
sheep—in Jordan, top left
When photographer Ashley Gilbertson
sat down in households across six countries
to document water access for UNICEF, he’d
ask them to tally their daily usage. Then
he’d display the total amount used in plas-
tic containers filled from the local source.

Although it was wives and daughters who
gathered, purified, cooked, and cleaned
with the water, their husbands or fathers
answered first. “The men would often have
no idea how difficult it was to get the water
or how much water was being used,” he
recalls. “I’d say, ‘I think we should talk to
your wife,’ and she’d start laughing.”

The inequality of the chore shocked
Gilbertson. Some women he met walked
for miles to reach the nearest source.
Every day, women and children around the
world spend a collective 125 million hours
gathering water, according to Water.org.

“Water is a very gendered subject,” says
Lesley Pories, the institutional partner-
ships manager at Water.org. “In a society
where water comes only at certain times of
a day, one’s whole day is likely to revolve
around water collection.” The task, she
adds, becomes “an obstacle to paid work
or education.”

Gilbertson also wanted to photograph
water usage in the developed world. When
he came home to New York City, he decided
it was only fair to use himself as the sub-
ject. He and his wife tracked their water
usage—the 1,000 daily liters “astonished”
them—and posed with the bottles.

“I turn on the tap; water comes out,” Gil-
bertson says. “When you work with people
who have to collect that water, you really
feel the value of that resource. You actually
feel it: It’s really heavy to carry.”

220 60 NATGEO.COM/PHOTOGRAPHY
Photographer Ashley Gilbertson also
Liters used daily Liters used daily by documented water usage by families in
by the Sarker family the Mahamadou family Bolivia, Malawi, and Myanmar. See more of
in India, top right in Niger, bottom right his work on National Geographic’s website.

PHOTOS: ASHLEY GILBERTSON, UNICEF/VII/REDUX

| EXPLORE | WATER

A WATERY SHRINE supply 10 million liters of water a year To mitigate the impact of
and irrigate 25 acres of land. climate change on pop-
By Nina Strochlic ulations in the Himalaya,
Word of his project has reached engineer Sonam Wangchuk
High in the Himalaya, a desert is turn- mountaintops across the world. Last is building ice stupas like
ing green. year he built Europe’s first ice stupa, in the one seen above.
the Swiss Alps, and this year he’ll work
Climate change in the Indian region on refreezing a glacial lake in India to
of Ladakh has shrunk glaciers and made halt flash floods.
rainfall and temperatures unpredictable.
Water is needed to irrigate the fields of The inventor—whose past projects
barley, apples, and other crops in spring, include solar-powered buildings and ef-
but the glacial melt doesn’t arrive until ficient cookstoves—won a Rolex Award
summer. To spare farmers a barren yield, for Enterprise in 2016. He is using the
engineer Sonam Wangchuk has invented winnings to establish a pan-Himalayan
a way to bring the glaciers to the people. research university that will address
the region’s environmental concerns.
In 2015, with $125,000 raised on a
crowdfunding site, Wangchuk built a “The water shortage is a huge prob-
64-foot-tall “ice stupa”—an artificial lem,” said Tsering Spalzes, a local farmer,
glacier made by piping mountain streams in a video for the crowdfunding cam-
into a Ladakhi village. The water spouts paign. “In the future our children will
geyser-like from a vertical pipe, freezing find it impossible to continue farming.”
into a cone of ice shaped like a Buddhist
shrine. It’s designed to stay frozen until Wangchuk hopes that if locals adapt
the spring sun warms the fields. now, their descendants won’t become
climate refugees. “We in the mountains
Sure enough, Wangchuk’s prototype are minorities, not just ethnically but
began to melt in April, watering a field climatewise,” he says. “Things that work
of newly planted poplar trees. By June, in New York or New Delhi do not work
when the regular glacial melt began to in the mountains. We have to find our
flow, the ice stupa was mostly gone. own solutions for our problems.”

Now Wangchuk is laying a pipeline National Geographic produced this article as
to build 50 more ice stupas. Each will part of a partnership with the Rolex Awards
for Enterprise.

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| EXPLORE | BASIC INSTINCTS

WHEN SEX IS SO
RIGHT (OR LEFT)

By Patricia Edmonds

The fish’s eyes are ideally suited to help- anatomical quirk. The female’s genital FOUR-EYED FISH
ing it thrive and propagate. The fish’s opening and the male’s sex organ—
loins, on the other hand, are a somewhat a pipelike modified fin called a gono- HABITAT/RANGE
trickier fit (literally) for that purpose. podium—are turned to the right on some
fish and to the left on others. This means )UHVK RU EUDFNLVK ZDWHUV
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called a four-eyed fish, but it actually only with a lefty female, and vice versa— &HQWUDO 6RXWK $PHULFD
has only two. They look like four because which statistically halves the chances of
a horizontal band of tissue splits the eye finding a compatible mate. “I can’t tell CONSERVATION STATUS
into two lobes, each with its own pupil you any advantage to that,” Kalen says.
and separate vision. Swimming near the 1RW \HW DVVHVVHG IRU
surface as it typically does, the fish can At his zoo’s four-eyed-fish exhibit, he WKH ,8&1 5HG /LVW
see in and out of water simultaneously. says, “it’s mass pandemonium when we
get into breeding season.” Keepers moni- OTHER FACTS
“It’s pretty awesome how they can tor “which males are left-erect and which
differentiate a predator under and above are right-erect and who’s breeding with 2QO\ WKUHH VSHFLHV
the water at the same time and process who.” Kalen has sometimes seen a male in A. anableps’V IDPLO\
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But that trait isn’t A. anableps’s only

Carbon dioxide
measured on October 24, 2014
in parts per million

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in degrees Fahrenheit The heat in 2016 broke the historic record set in 2015,
which broke the one from 2014. Last year’s average
1901-2000 global surface temperature, compiled from measure-
average ments made by thousands of weather stations, buoys,
and ships, was 1.69 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than
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+HPLVSKHUH DUH FOHDUO\ YLVLEOH

Change7 THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW
We need energy—food, fuel, electricity—to lead
modern lives. Billions of people need more of it. But
how we get energy is changing the Earth in ways that
threaten us all. Can we find a better way? Climate
change isn’t a hoax or a scientific conspiracy, it’s a
grand challenge. Here are the facts.

400
2016

350
1987

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2 IT’S BECAUSE OF US. 3 WE’RE SURE.

El Niño added to last year’s record by temporarily More than nine out of 10 climate scientists agree:
releasing heat from the Pacific. But no natural cause Carbon emissions cause global warming. We’ve known
explains the half-century warming trend. The sun’s about the greenhouse effect since the 1800s. Swedish
output cycles up and down every 11 years; volcanic physicist Svante Arrhenius even predicted in 1896 that
eruptions sporadically cool the planet. Meanwhile carbon dioxide from coal burning would warm the
human-emitted greenhouse gases form a steadily planet. He saw it as a good thing—and just how bad
thickening blanket that traps heat at Earth’s surface. it will be is debatable. But it’s real, and it’s dangerous.

31

4 Ice Is HOW FAST CAN
Melting ICE SHEETS FAIL?
Fast.
A red-suited researcher explores blue
LAST SUMMER the Crystal Serenity, a large cruise pools of meltwater on the Greenland
ship, sailed through the ice-free Northwest Passage. ice sheet (above); since 2002 it has lost
Days after it passed, researchers of King William an average of 287 billion metric tons of
Island found the long-lost wreck of H.M.S. Terror, ice a year, according to NASA satellites.
of Britain’s Franklin expedition—which had gotten Antarctica is losing less, but it’s vulnera-
trapped in the ice in 1846 while searching for the ble: Much of the West Antarctic ice sheet
passage. The Arctic has warmed dramatically, and sits on the seabed, and the floating ice
its ice cover has thinned and shrunk (graph, below). shelves that buttress it are eroding in a
That loss speeds the warming, as sunlight is absorbed warmer ocean—as the calving of a 44-
by dark ocean instead of reflected into space by ice. square-mile iceberg into Pine Island Bay
illustrates (right). A glacial collapse that
Melting sea ice doesn’t raise sea level—it’s already would raise sea level several feet could
in the water—but melting land ice does. Mountain take centuries. Or maybe just decades.
glaciers are in global retreat. The total sea level rise
of eight or nine inches since 1900 has contributed
to a sharp increase in flooding along coasts. During
Superstorm Sandy, for example, floods and winds
caused $68 billion in damage on the U.S. East Coast.

The big threat is the ice sheets covering Greenland
and Antarctica. They hold enough ice to raise seas
more than 200 feet—and they’re losing it. When
Earth was just a bit warmer, 125,000 years ago, they
seem to have lost a lot: Sea levels were 20 to 30 feet
higher. Such a rise today would swamp coastal cities.

DWINDLING ARCTIC ICE

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1979
2.78

Extent of Arctic ice, 2016
September average 1.82
in millions of square miles

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5 Weather
Is Getting
Intense.

IN THE CRAPSHOOT that is our weather, climate
change loads the dice. It doesn’t cause a particular
drought or storm, but it makes such events more or
less likely—and in the case of heat waves, a lot more
likely. The extraordinary heat wave that killed some
70,000 people in Europe in 2003 should have been
a once-in-500-years event; at the current level of
global warming, it has become a once-in-40-years
event, according to a study published last year. In
Paris alone, that analysis found, climate change
caused 506 excess deaths in 2003. If it continues
unchecked, another recent study said, by late this
century people living along the Persian Gulf may face
many days so hot that it will be unsafe to go outside.

It’s not just the heat: Global warming adds mois-
ture to the air, removing it from land and ocean.
Where rain is lacking, it makes the drought worse.
When rain or snow falls, it’s more likely to be ex-
treme; think of the 2016 floods in Paris or Houston.
How climate change afects hurricanes and other
tropical cyclones is less certain. But by heating the
ocean—the storms’ energy source—it’s likely to
make them more intense, if less frequent.

UNNATURAL DISASTERS THE CHANGES
MAT TER
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6 Wildlife
Is Already
Hurting.

CLIMATE CHANGE SPELLS TROUBLE for far more UNNATUR AL
than just the Arctic’s iconic predator, the polar SELECTION
bear. In 2016 scientists announced that the last
Bramble Cay melomys, a ratlike rodent found on A polar bear swims past melting sea ice
one low-lying island in Australia’s Torres Strait, outside Naujaat, an Inuit hunting village
had vanished, the victim of forces including rising in Nunavut Territory, Canada. A 2017
seas. It’s being called the first documented case of U.S. government report says greenhouse
a mammal being driven to extinction by climate gas emissions are the top reason polar
change. More will surely follow (figures, below). bears will likely be gone from much
of their range by 2050. Meanwhile,
Rising temperatures are depressing some plant the Great Barrier Reef experienced its
and animal populations, driving species toward the largest recorded coral die-off in 2016.
poles, shifting migrations and behavior. Populations Prolonged bleaching killed about 67
of Adélie penguins on the Antarctic Peninsula have percent of corals in one 430-mile
plummeted. An Arctic shorebird called the red knot stretch. Between March 21 (right) and
is getting smaller. Ice loss is forcing walruses by May 15 (far right), warm water decimated
the thousands onto land in Alaska. Entire regions coral colonies off Lizard Island.
are being transformed: Alpine ecosystems from
the Rockies to the Swiss Alps are being squeezed
of mountaintops. The exceptional ocean warmth
of the past few years has triggered coral bleaching
and die-ofs at reefs around the world.

There will be winners. For now, humpback whales
are thriving in newly ice-free waters of Antarctica.
Sea urchins too are proving to be resilient. But
climate change isn’t the only threat that spreading
human populations impose on other species; we’re
also fragmenting and destroying natural habitats.
Some species will adapt to the jarring changes in
their world—but how many, and for how long?

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We Can Do
Something
About It.

FREE MARKETS are often lauded for their eicient ONE PROBLEM,
results. In this connected age, there’s something MANY SOLUTIONS
like a free market of ideas. So ask yourself: If climate
change weren’t a serious danger, would 195 coun- The 300-megawatt wind farm near
tries have signed the Paris Agreement, pledging to Tarfaya, Morocco (above), is one of the
try to keep the warming below 2°C (3.6°F)? largest in Africa—which has a chance
to leapfrog part of the carbon era. Wind
Though shadowed by the new U.S. administra- and solar use a lot of land, though, so
tion’s threat to withdraw from it, the agreement Japan is putting solar panels on ponds
stands as one hopeful sign. The graph below shows (right) as well as rooftops. Nuclear pow-
another: The cost of solar energy is plummeting. er uses less land and runs 24/7, but has
Even without a carbon tax—the most eicient way to safety and waste concerns. Two new
wean an economy of fossil fuels—renewables soon reactors being built at the Vogtle plant
may be cheaper sources of electricity. Worldwide in Georgia (far right) are among the first
they accounted for more than half the new generat- in the U.S. since the 1979 Three Mile
ing capacity in 2015. In the U.S., solar now employs Island accident. The photo shows the
more people than coal, oil, and gas combined. containment structure for one reactor.

The switch from fossil fuels is still just beginning.
Every little bit matters: Every ton of CO² we emit
melts 32 square feet of Arctic ice, according to a 2016
study, which means the average American melts 525
square feet a year. Every energy-saving building,
retired gas-guzzler, and acre of preserved forest
helps. But none of it will help much if the world
doesn’t switch to a carbon-free energy supply soon.

CLEAN ENERGY, EVER CHEAPER

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2045

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LIKE ANY OTHER SPECIES, WE
ARE THE PRODUCT OF MILLIONS
OF YEARS OF EVOLUTION.
NOW WE’RE TAKING MATTERS
INTO OUR OWN HANDS.
BY D. T. MAX
ILLUSTRATIONS BY OWEN FREEMAN

40



WHEN I MET THE CYBORG NEIL HARBISSON,

IN BARCELONA, HE LOOKED LIKE ANY LOCAL

HIPSTER, EXCEPT FOR THE BLACK ANTENNA

ARCHING IMPRESSIVELY FROM THE BACK OF

HIS SKULL OVER HIS MOP OF BLOND HAIR.

It was December, and Harbisson, 34, was wearing a zippered gray shirt under
a black peacoat, with narrow gray pants. Born in Belfast and raised in Spain,
he has a rare condition called achromatopsia; he cannot perceive color. His
antenna, which ends in a fiber-optic sensor that hovers right above his eyes,
has changed that.

Harbisson never felt that living in a black-and-white world was a dis-
ability. “I see longer distances. Also I memorize shapes more easily because
color doesn’t distract me,” he told me, in his careful, neutral English.

But he was deeply curious about what things looked like in color too.
Having trained as a musician, he had the idea in his late teens of trying
to discover color through sound. After some low-tech false starts, in his
early 20s he found a surgeon (who remains anonymous) who was willing
to implant a device, a cybernetic enhancement to his biological self.

The fiber-optic sensor picks up the colors in front of him, and a micro-
chip implanted in his skull converts their frequencies into vibrations on the
back of his head. Those become sound frequencies, turning his skull into
a sort of third ear. He correctly identified my blazer as blue and, pointing
his antenna at his friend Moon Ribas, a cyborg artist and dancer, said her
jacket was yellow—it was actually mustard yellow, but as he explained, in
Catalonia “we didn’t grow up with mustard.”

When I asked Harbisson how the doctor had attached the device, he
cheerfully parted the hair at the back of his head to show me the antenna’s
point of entry. The pinkish flesh was pressed down by a rectangular plate

42

with two anchors. A connected implant held the vibrating microchip, and EVOLUTION OF
another implant was a Bluetooth communication hub, so friends could
send him colors through his smartphone. HUMAN TRAITS

The antenna has been a revelation for Harbisson. The world is more Icons (above), which
exhilarating for him now. Over time, he said, the input has begun to feel appear throughout this
neither like sight nor hearing but a sixth sense.
story, depict cultural
The most intriguing part of the antenna, though, is that it gives him an and biological milestones
ability the rest of us don’t have. He looked at the lamps on the roof deck and
sensed that the infrared lights that activate them were of. He glanced at the in human evolution.
planters and could “see” the ultraviolet markings that show where nectar
is located at the centers of the flowers. He has not just matched ordinary
human skills; he has exceeded them.

He is, then, a first step toward the goal that visionary futurists have al-
ways had, an early example of what Ray Kurzweil in his well-known book
The Singularity Is Near calls “the vast expansion of human potential.”
Harbisson hadn’t particularly meant to jump-start Kurzweil’s dream—
his vision of the future is more sylvan than silicon. But since he became
the world’s first oicial cyborg (he persuaded the British government to
let him wear the antenna in his passport photo, arguing that it was not
an electronic device, but an extension of his brain), he has also become a
proselytizer. Ribas soon followed him into what is sometimes called trans-
humanism by having a seismic monitor in her phone connect to a vibrating
magnet buried in her upper arm. She gets real-time reports of earthquakes,

BEYOND HUMAN 43