Editor's Note: (CNN columnist John D. Sutter is spending the rest of the year reporting on a tiny number -- 2 degrees -- that may have a huge effect on the future of the planet. He'd like your help. Subscribe to the "2 degrees" newsletter or follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. You can shape his coverage.)
(CNN) The votes are in -- and the first story I'll report for CNN's new "2 degrees" series is on rising sea levels and the coming "climate refugee" crisis.
You selected that topic in a Facebook poll that closed at 5 p.m. ET Monday.
We asked you to choose from six story ideas, all of which originated with readers.
The winning topic came from Kelly, a 48-year-old in San Jose, California.
"I feel like I won the lottery," she said. "Who would have guessed."
Kelly is a little Internet shy, so she asked me not to use her full name or occupation.
"I saw your request for questions on climate change, but I don't have a Facebook account, so I'm using this route," she wrote in an April 18 e-mail.
"Many of the naysayers I know fail to make a connection between the health of the natural environment and quality of life for humans," she continued. "They seem to think the people who do care about climate change care more about plants and animals than humans."
That humans-are-impacted-too sentiment led to her question about climate refugees.
"What happens if thousands or tens of thousands are displaced due to rising sea levels or desertification? Where do they go?" she asked. "Can their own countries absorb them or do they end up in refugee camps across a border? If they end up in refugee camps, what kinds of racial/religious tensions result?"
That question got 3,602 votes, the most of any of the reader-suggested topics. In total, 11,408 people cast ballots on Facebook as part of this little exercise in democratic journalism.
Here's how the rest of the votes shook out:
- Animal extinction: 3,257
- Arctic sea-ice loss: 1,876
- California's drought: 1,256
- Most vulnerable country: 975
- Crop failure: 442
I'm encouraged by these results.
Apparently, the Internet cares about more than just animals.
I don't know where exactly where Kelly's question on climate refugees will take me, but I'll get back to you with details when I have them. I'll report on sea level rise and refugees throughout May.
If you have ideas for me, please leave them in the comments section below this post.
As part of this "2 degrees" series, I'll be exploring what a world warmed by 2 degrees Celsius would look like -- and how we can cut greenhouse gas emissions to stop short. More than 100 countries, including the United States, have agreed to try to limit warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), which is when certain effects of climate change are expected to get especially dangerous.
That temperature increase is measured starting in the late 1800s during the Industrial Revolution.
Humans already have helped warm the climate by 0.85 degrees.
For more on 2 degrees, check out last week's column on common questions about the number.
Effects of global warming around the world
The consequences of climate change go far beyond warming temperatures, which scientists say are melting the polar ice caps and raising sea levels. Click through the gallery for a look at 10 other key effects of climate change, some of which may surprise you.
In the coming decades climate change will unleash megadroughts lasting 10 years or more, according to
a new report by scholars at Cornell University, the University of Arizona and the U.S. Geological Survey. We're seeing hints of this already in many arid parts of the world and even in California, which has been rationing water amid record drought. In this 2012 photo, a man places his hand on parched soil in the Greater Upper Nile region of northeastern South Sudan.
There's not a direct link between climate change and wildfires, exactly. But many scientists believe the increase in wildfires in the Western United States is partly the result of tinder-dry forests parched by warming temperatures. This photo shows a wildfire as it approaches the shore of Bass Lake, California, in mid-September.
Scientists say the oceans' temperatures
have risen by more than 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century. It doesn't sound like much, but it's been enough to affect the fragile ecosystems of coral reefs, which have been bleaching and dying off in recent decades. This photo shows dead coral off the coast of St. Martin's Island in Bangladesh.
A U.N. panel found in March that climate change -- mostly drought -- is already affecting the global agricultural supply and will likely drive up
food prices. Here, in 2010, workers on combines harvest soybeans in northern Brazil. Global food experts have warned that climate change could double grain prices by 2050.
Are you sneezing more often these days? Climate change may be to blame for that, too. Recent studies show that rising temperatures and carbon dioxide levels promote the growth of weedy plant species that produce allergenic pollen. The worst place in the United States for spring allergies in 2014, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America?
Louisville, Kentucky.
Climate change has not been kind to the world's
forests. Invasive species such as the bark beetle, which thrive in warmer temperatures, have attacked trees across the North American west, from Mexico to the Yukon.
University of Colorado researchers have found that some populations of mountain pine beetles now produce two generations per year, dramatically boosting the bugs' threat to lodgepole and ponderosa pines. In this 2009 photo, dead spruces of the Yukon's Alsek River valley attest to the devastation wrought by the beetles.
The snows capping majestic Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa's highest peak, once inspired Ernest Hemingway. Now they're in danger of melting away altogether. Studies suggest that if the mountain's snowcap continues to evaporate at its current rate, it could be gone in 15 years. Here, a Kilimanjaro glacier is viewed from Uhuru Peak in December 2010.
Polar bears may be the poster child for climate change's effect on animals. But scientists say climate change is wreaking havoc on many other species -- including birds and reptiles -- that are sensitive to fluctuations in temperatures. One, this golden toad of Costa Rica and other Central American countries, has already gone extinct.
It's not your imagination: Some animals -- mostly birds -- are migrating earlier and earlier every year because of warming global temperatures. Scholars from the University of East Anglia found that Icelandic black-tailed godwits have advanced their migration by two weeks over the past two decades. Researchers also have found that many species are migrating to higher elevations as temperatures climb.
The planet could see as many as 20 more hurricanes and tropical storms each year by the end of the century because of climate change, according to
a 2013 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. This image shows Superstorm Sandy bearing down on the New Jersey coast in 2012.
Thanks very much to everyone who voted in the poll and who submitted questions. I was overwhelmed by the volume and intelligence of much of the response. There were far too many excellent ideas to include in the poll, but they might surface later this year.
I'll be reporting on 2 degrees and what it means to the future of our planet for the rest of the year, in the lead-up to U.N. climate talks this December in Paris.
Please be in touch! I need your help to make this work.
Email questions to: climate (at) cnn (dot) com.
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