Photo from the LA Public Library Photo Collection

Rising sea levels will not extinguish humanity, but they will transform human life as we know it. A NASA astrobiologist explains what our world will look like.

Peter D. Ward is a professor of biology and earth and space sciences at the University of Washington in Seattle. He also serves as an astrobiologist with NASA. Ward is the author of more than a dozen books, including the highly acclaimed Rare Earth: Why Complex Life Is Uncommon in the Universe with Donald Brownlee and Out of Thin Air: Dinosaurs, Birds, and Earth's Ancient Atmosphere. He lives in Seattle, Washington.

Margot Roosevelt has covered environmental news for the Los Angeles Times since 2007. Before that she was an environmental reporter at the Washington Post and went on to cover Congress and politics, and serve as New York bureau chief. After the Post, she joined Time Magazine where she was a foreign correspondent, based in Paris, and a national correspondent, based in Los Angeles.