I'm not sure I agree with you. The only widely cited quantitative guess at this scenario I could find in a brief trawl puts the chance of any "climate-driven existential catastrophe" this century at about 0.1 percent [1].
"Extinction" is a stricter outcome than “existential catastrophe", so I would imagine the odds this century are even lower than 0.1 percent. In other words: don't resign yourself to the extinction of humanity in your lifetime - it's highly unlikely, and you're just going to be feeding the defeatism that is so tempting when external events are so seemingly negative.
As sibling commenter to this post notes though, I would imagine that mass unrest, famines, death etc. in less-developed parts of the world will occur, with knock-on effects for the developed world.
I think you underestimate the resilience of the human race. We have a space station where people live outside of earth. We have people living in Antarctica. On small scales, we can completely control environments to make them hospitable.
The idea that all the humans will die off in the lifetime of anyone who is alive today, from something slow moving like climate change, is pretty far fetched.
IMO it's not a world ending crisis, but definitely a city/society ending one. Countries with thousands of islands are heavily affected. Many major cities are near the ocean, so we'll see a lot of damage.
I agree we're maybe past the point where we can stop the eventual extinction caused by climate change, but I think we still have (easily) at least 100 years left of more than 0 humans alive.
That said I think it will cause immense socio-political chaos and mass death in our lifetimes.
I think you are mistaken. In nature graphs are never linear. They are curves, special type of curvers. They start slow, then they can grow lineary for a while, and then they switch to exponental growth. This is the case w/ everything if you take a time to look. Epidemics, population growths, Vulcanos, even stars.
The very same thing start on Earth w/ climate change. Temp raises slowly, more CO2 (and more importantly, CH4) in atmosphere. Temp reises more. Atmosphere is hotter, can absorb more H2O vapors as well. Now, when you start hitting first threshold, hydrates (CH4) will be released from shallow ocean bottoms, more CH4 in atmosphere hotter.. cycle accelerates hitting runaway (exponental growth). KABOOM, earth might be doomed.
Its simplified model, not accounting for huge vulcanos on polar, with might explode and make nuclear winter with will block the heating. Complicated stuff, thats why we need scientists :)
ablation|5 months ago
"Extinction" is a stricter outcome than “existential catastrophe", so I would imagine the odds this century are even lower than 0.1 percent. In other words: don't resign yourself to the extinction of humanity in your lifetime - it's highly unlikely, and you're just going to be feeding the defeatism that is so tempting when external events are so seemingly negative.
As sibling commenter to this post notes though, I would imagine that mass unrest, famines, death etc. in less-developed parts of the world will occur, with knock-on effects for the developed world.
[1] https://www.tobyord.com/writing/the-precipice-revisited
al_borland|5 months ago
The idea that all the humans will die off in the lifetime of anyone who is alive today, from something slow moving like climate change, is pretty far fetched.
muzani|5 months ago
Some places will be more habitable, like Russia.
reverius42|5 months ago
That said I think it will cause immense socio-political chaos and mass death in our lifetimes.
Borg3|5 months ago
The very same thing start on Earth w/ climate change. Temp raises slowly, more CO2 (and more importantly, CH4) in atmosphere. Temp reises more. Atmosphere is hotter, can absorb more H2O vapors as well. Now, when you start hitting first threshold, hydrates (CH4) will be released from shallow ocean bottoms, more CH4 in atmosphere hotter.. cycle accelerates hitting runaway (exponental growth). KABOOM, earth might be doomed.
Its simplified model, not accounting for huge vulcanos on polar, with might explode and make nuclear winter with will block the heating. Complicated stuff, thats why we need scientists :)