In many arenas, strong statements are made about the consequences of climate change. I often hear even that climate change could even end humanity. I wonder what were the best pieces of science that could back such doomed future for humanity?
Thanks in advance for your input.
There are a few pieces of evidence to consider, here are a few examples:
1. Displacement of people, societies and cultures because of rising water levels. This will swallow some islands around the world and make them uninhabitable. It will also make some coastal areas uninhabitable with the same results.
2. Changes in food-webs in oceans, caused by changes in temperatures and ocean currents. Can cause shortages of food and money issues in places which rely on the ocean to survive.
3. Changes in temperatures will also melt the permafrost in higher latitudes and release a lot of stored methane, and increase temperatures further.
4. Changes in weather patterns, especially rain-patterns, which could cause a lot of food-shortages around the world, both short and long term.
5. Desertification caused by deserts and the movement of material from deserts. If there are no plants present at the location, because of increasing temperatures or changed rain-patterns, then there will not be anything to stop deserts from spreading.
6. Increasing temperatures can also cause a disconnect between local flora and pollinators, with the flora being able to adapt to flower earlier but the pollinators might have a problem adapting, hence less pollination of food crops might also cause food-shortages.
7. Changes to temperatures and rain-patterns might cause vectors of disease (like mosquitoes) to flourish in areas where they earlier couldn't, which could endanger people to dangerous diseases.
8. Changes in weather-patterns are more likely to cause extreme weather events, with it's own issues connected to it.
Carl Alexander Frisk Thanks for your answer. However, I would not say these are piece of evidence of the catastrophe to come. They introduce serious risks for sure but how do we know they will translate into a disastrous situation for humanity?
Nicolas Salliou The discussion isn't about proving that a catastrophe will come, it is about modelling the risks that climate change will bring and how likely these risks are. It is about smaller changes accumulating over time and not about sudden events. A 0.1 % drop in food production isn't world ending in a year but the accumulation of negative changes are. It is also about the difficulty of reversing the changes once they are getting worse, if this is even possible at all. Even the most positive climate predictions forecast negative effects.
Carl Alexander Frisk All right, get your point. And what would be your best piece of scientific research that would explore this effect of long-term accumulation of negative changes and related consequences?
Nicolas Salliou I would recommend the IPCC document The Physical Science Basis from the Fifth Assessment Report or maybe the Synthesis which is a summary from the same report, both referenced below.
IPCC, 2013: Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change[Stocker, T.F., D. Qin, G.-K. Plattner, M. Tignor, S.K. Allen, J. Boschung, A. Nauels, Y. Xia, V. Bex and P.M. Midgley (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, 1535 pp.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/wg1/
IPCC, 2014: Climate Change 2014: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Core Writing Team, R.K. Pachauri and L.A. Meyer (eds.)]. IPCC, Geneva, Switzerland, 151 pp.
https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/syr/
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