CNN columnist John D. Sutter is reporting on a tiny number -- 2 degrees -- that may have a huge effect on the future. He'd like your help. Subscribe to the "2 degrees" newsletter or follow him on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. He's jdsutter on Snapchat. You can shape this coverage.

(CNN) I'm recently back from the Marshall Islands -- one of the low-lying Pacific island nations that literally could be wiped off the map by climate change and rising seas.

Climate change gets couched, especially by skeptics, as an intangible, far-off issue. But meet people who are terrified their country -- everything they know -- will be drowned beneath the waves, and you can see that this is a crisis, and one that must be addressed immediately.

I'll write more soon about my time on the islands -- and about the surprising U.S. community where some Marshallese people already are taking refuge from floods. These are topics, by the way, you voted for me to explore as part of my "2 degrees" series on climate change . For now, here's a look at some of the scariest data about how much ocean levels could rise, and when.

We're talking about the future here, so estimates vary by source, but the bottom line is this: Our actions today will create the world future generations will have to inhabit.

I hope that's a world that includes the Marshall Islands and Miami, Bangladesh and London.

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