Six degrees? No, this is not the distance between you and everyone you might know in the world. It’s a National Geographic show, “Six Degrees Could Change the World,” based on the book Six Degrees: Our Future on a Hotter Planet by Mark Lynas. The author uses “six” in the title to reference the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) claim that the earth will warm between 1.4 and 5.8 degrees Celsius by the end of the century.

The show and its interactive website talk about various scientific models that claim that global daily average temperature shifts of 6 Celsius (or 10.9 F) could bring about massive changes on Earth, including oceans rising, extreme temperatures, massive fires, and cities becoming dustbowls, among other things. As hyped and exaggerated as these ideas and images may sound, the show brings climate change home to viewers in a new way. It is no longer merely a list of facts or charts that we should worry about. It’s a concrete visual that shows how each single degree increase in temperature could devastate the Earth within the next 100 years.

Fascinating show; check out the book and DVD, too!