This is the second of a series of rap lectures about climate change. The focus here is on the consequences of global warming.

LYRICS
The CO2 we’ve dumped into the atmosphere won’t disappear
It’s gonna last a hundred years while trappin’ heat up in the air
The reason temperature’s up less than one degree
Is the climate’s inertia it responds slowly,

Oceans two miles deep and water’s high specific heat
Means oceans have absorbed the heat what a feat and
heat absorbing ice over Greenland and the poles
absorbs more heat it’s kept things under control

And keep in mind the notion that the ocean is a huge carbon sink
Keepin’ CO2 levels just below the brink
But it’s lookin’ like the seas, with their dying coral reefs can’t
absorb more CO2, what we gonna do?

Emissions over nine billion tons a year and rising
Is there a tipping point over the horizon?
Is there an increase, that will release
Positive feedback, with no turning back?

CHORUS
Keep those fossil fuels in the ground!
We don’t need that carbon up there!
Keep those fossil fuels in the ground!
Keep ’em buried For another couple million years!
Keep those fossil fuels in the ground!
It’s time to protect the atmosphere!
Keep those fossil fuels in the ground!
Act like you care!

I mean one degree C seems fine no one’s dyin’ from the heat (except sometimes)
What’s the big deal if we go up four or five degrees
it’s just warmth we’ll all survive
Summer’s fun! Who likes cold? Maybe we’ll thrive!

Life’s sweet in hot Iberia, in tropical Liberia,
The Russians would love a warmer Siberia
But wait! Up one degree, we’re melting Arctic seas.
Note the glaciers’ in retreat if you please

Arctic sea ice cover fell way down in ’07,
With a repeat performance in two thousand eleven
And the thickness of the ice is declining faster,
A harbinger of climatological disaster.

CHORUS

If emissions keep rising at expected rates,
There’ll be no summer sea ice in few decades,
We’ll see permafrost melting, with potential gain
of billions of tons of released methane.

Which traps 20 times the heat of CO2
If that methane escapes,the climate is screwed!
As positive feedback unleashes more warming,
We need to act now on this 1 degree warning.

BRIDGE
If we let CO2 levels keep rising
The effects will be hardly surprising
Flooded coastlines, habitats in disarray
We know this all NOW, we gotta act today!

Not to mention the danger of sea level rise,
From thermal expansion and melting glacial ice
It could be many meters, or maybe one or two,
But they’re not gonna like it in Tuvalu!

To avoid a future where most wildlife dies,
We need (we got to) stop this temperature rise
And CO2’s effect isn’t just in degrees,
Yeah CO2 has increased ocean acidity!

That right, pH falling, ocean life filled with grief
At the relentless demise of the Earth’s coral reefs
A system on which half a billion depend,
Reefs, heatwaves, ocean’s rising part of a trend

Of damage unleashed by a one degree gain,
If we go up two or three or four imagine the pain!
So let’s stop the warming, let’s do it now,
Hang on for the next part where we can see how!

WATCH NEXT

Prince Ea – Dear Future Generations: Sorry