Comment on Humanity will likely survive climate change, but the vast majority of humans won't.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
Maybe I’m naive but I don’t really see the dooms day
Climate change has some nasty consequences. However, I don’t see it wiping out 5 billion people.
Take the amount of calories that the world can produce per day. Divide by 1500. You got the upper limit the globe can support in a medium term
Crops are already failing due to droughts and floods. More and more land is turning into land that is not able to sustain crop growth
And that’s even completely ignoring a potential even bigger problem of clean water
Billions will die. Not in 5 or 10 years. But earlier than you’d think
Yeah I just don’t see it
Well then I suspect you don’t see much of anything. It’s happening before your eyes and you don’t see it? Do you see genocide in Palestine? Do you see fascism in America? Do you see plastic trash in waterways? Do you see homelessness? Do you see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer? How do you not see the obvious outcome? The only reason we’re still making enough food, is because of petroleum based fertilizer. Without that, we’d have lost billions of people already, or they never would have been born in the first place. That’s unsustainable. And as society breaks down, so does the economy that allowed those fertilizers to exist. Billions die, any way you look at it, billions die and civilization crumbles. Which happens first doesn’t really matter.
A large band around the equator will become unsurvivable. Hundreds of millions of people will flee to cooler climates. Countries will already be straining to provide food and water for their people. This will lead to wars for resources. Nations with nuclear capabilities will fracture and collapse, leaving their weapons in the hands of warlords and despots. Pandemics like COVID will become increasingly more common, not just for humans but for our livestock and crops. I hope you are right, but then again 5 billion might be a conservative estimate.
This will lead to wars for resources.
Have I got some bad news for you.
Correction - Has led, is leading, and will lead…
Bud, it’s just getting started. Wait till the Mississippi is inundated with salt water and flows north depending on the time of day.
You are under informed
,maybe if it something sudden like asteroid impact, like 10km wide made of iron, or a supervolcanoe eruption.
I love to see it, and I genuinely hope you’re right!
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Yeah, maybe you should look a little harder?
Wait until crops start dying en masse due to higher temperatures, too many bad insects, too few good insects, no more water.
Wait until you get your 50 degree celcius Summers, which apparently already started in select countries this year.
Wait until forest fires become so big that they simply can’t be controlled anymore and start burning down entire cities
Wait until drinkable water runs out due to us emptying all aquefiers, wells, etc.
Wait until water, food, etc scarcity due to climate change starts the bigger wars over the scraps that are left
You won’t have to wait long, we’re working hard on making these features a reality soon.
I’m not sure what will kill the most people, but I pity those that survive
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 weeks ago
I’m looking for more factual peer reviewed research.
I haven’t seen anything to suggest that billions will die. That seems very far fetched to me.
SinAdjetivos@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
It’s important to remember that science is inherently conservative and doubly so for climate change Erring on the Side of Least Drama.
If you read any of the IPCC reports you’ll note they are very careful to not really provide any death estimates or anything. However, [one can attempt to extrapolate a risk space from those descriptions] (link.springer.com/article/…/s10584-022-03430-y) from that we can analyze key takeaways from the WG2 report ^1^
Based on the existential risk model, that’s 3.3 billion currently facing some level of existential risks. If the impacts remain “at the high end of previous estimates”, which they very likely will, then that’s >3.3 Billion potential deaths.
^1: using Wikipedia summary because the report is 3675 pages long and ain’t nobody got time for that^
phoenixz@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
To expand.on this in a less than scientific way; one can only imagine what will happen when 1-3 billion people face existential threats. Think that a few tens of thousands of refugees is a problem?.wait until you have billions of them. What are you going to do, stop them at your borders?
Food and water scarcity will invite even more wars.
There is lots of fun ahead of us
basiclemmon98@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Let’s try a new game, the burden of proof is on you, as your the one saying we are all somehow being dramatic. So, go fetch us some credited peer reveiwed papers from the past 5 years that say we are being dramatic…
Muehe@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Kemp et al. 2022 - Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
TL;DR: Societal collapse seems possible, more research is needed.