The IPCC’s own worst case climate change example from 2018 - a 3°C rise by 2100 - can’t happen any more on the 1.7°C path
This is an old blog post that I’m copying over here because I can no longer edit the original because of limits on length of post in Quora. I had to rewrite the start of it to take account of progress since I first wrote this in 2018. Although only a small change Quora no longer lets me edit posts that I could in the past because of this new text limit.
Original here: The IPCC’s own worst case climate change example from 2018 - a 3°C rise by 2100 - can’t happen any more on the 1.7°C path
Let’s get behind the journalistic embellishments, click bait titles and junk science, and look at what the IPCC actually said is a possible worst case. At that time there seemed a possibility that the Paris agreement could fall apart due to a failure to agree on the “rule book” for emissions in autumn 2018. This didn’t happen. There were a few tricky moments but eventually governments agreed the “rule book” essential for keeping it on track in autumn 2018. There is now surely no possibility of abandoning it altogether.
This is one of their scenarios from chapter 3 of the 2018 report. There is nothing remotely like extinction or end of civilization in this scenario. We can still feed everyone as well, though with less food security. It is still a world with much of our natural world still here, the majority of the species survive, not a desert. However it is a world we would not want to head for, with the corals nearly all gone, many areas of the world facing problems, severe loss of biodiversity and increasing rather than decreasing world poverty by 2100.
We are also working on climate resilience, retaining nature’s services, biodiversity, sustainable development, and adaptation. The more we do that, the better our world will be, whether the temperature rise is 1.5°C, or 3°C.
The worst case here is one where all that stops as well. Not likely.This is my attempt at updating it based on the AR6 physical basis report in 2021 (didn't seem to include an equivalent)
As of 2024 we now have many pledges to net zero in many countries. We are headed for 1.7°C with current pledges which are realistic ones that countries can keep and most big emitters can be expected to equal or almost equal or exceed their pledges.
2018 STUDY EXAMPLE WORST CASE SCENARIO
You might wonder why their worst case isn’t “Business as usual”, keeping at our current emission levels through to 2100, and a nearly 5°C rise. However, how likely is that, that we do nothing at all all the way through? It is useful for climate modeling, but not very plausible as a scenario.
Instead their worst case is one in which we do act, but only later in the century. In this future, the Paris agreement falls apart by 2020, and though there are many initiatives locally and nationally they are not enough to make much of a difference. There is little work on climate resilience either, or mitigation, and it’s not until the late 2030s that we start to step up our activity in earnest, with various uncoordinated emergency responses. Sadly, it’s too little, too late, we end up at 3°C by 2100, and then they describe what the world would be like in that scenario.
Before reading this article, which is looking at the worst case, do look at the good side of this. We need to act now and act quickly. And we are.
Most of the journalists don’t mention this, but it’s amazing what we have done already! Right now we are at 1°C 2100 above pre-industrial. In just over three years of action, since the start of the Paris agreement, we already have enough policies and unconditional pledges to be able to target 3°C. by 2100 (down from the “business as usual” projection of close to 5°C.).
I would never have guessed we would pull together, and so quickly. Even in the US, climate change is already a major election issue for the 2020 elections with the leading Democrat candidates pledging to 1.5 C compatible targets. It was hardly mentioned in 2016. Major changes are underway in Europe too, with the recent “Green wave” in the EU elections.
This sort of thing is surely going to become stronger, not weaker, as changes due to global warming become more noticeable.
The young children doing “School striking” around the world today are tomorrow’s voters and politicians.
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We should see a greatly changed politics they grow up to maturity. We aren’t there yet, not nearly, but with more and more ambitious new policies in the next decade, we can target 1.5°C. Some countries are already. For more of this positive background, read my:
Also
. 24 ways the world is getting better - good news journalists rarely share
and for biodiversity,
. Let's Save A Million Species, And Make Biodiversity Great Again, UN Report Shows How
The IPCC’s worst case scenario from 2018 didn’t happen but on their rather implausible scenario where all of this got forgotten in 2018 and for the next few decades, and the Paris agreement completely falls apart, what is the worst kind of future the IPCC imagined for us by 2100?
At 3°C , the climate will change, yes. If you live in Miami - then it may get as hot and dry as parts of Mexico. We can get an idea from the climate analogue project, which attempts to match cities with their climate analogues due to climate change, for public education. This is for high emissions, which is more like 4.9°C, so it won’t be as bad as this at 3°C:
There are many possible scenarios. Myles Allen put it like this:
Bad stuff is already happening and every half a degree of warming matters, but the IPCC does not draw a “planetary boundary” at 1.5°C beyond which lie climate dragons.
Why protesters should be wary of ‘12 years to climate breakdown’ rhetoric - by Myles Allen
We can do that. Whether we do or not depends on us individually and on our politicians and the governments we elect.
So, on this rather implausible scenario where all of this gets forgotten for the next few decades, and the Paris agreement completely falls apart, what is the worst kind of future the IPCC imagined for us by 2100?
At 3°C , the climate will change, yes. If you live in Miami - then it may get as hot and dry as parts of Mexico. We can get an idea from the climate analogue project, which attempts to match cities with their climate analogues due to climate change, for public education. This is for high emissions, which is more like 4.9°C, so it won’t be as bad as this at 3°C:
Climate Change usually means a change to a climate someone already has, example, Florida to Mexico
In the higher latitudes agriculture actually gets better with a warmer climate. There are higher crop yields due to the warming temperatures so long as we are careful with irrigation, soil health etc. But in the tropics yields are predicted to fall already at 2°C due to combined factors, including drought and heat. You can adapt but is it economically worthwhile?
For this reason, the IPCC predict that there will be many millions of climate refugee migrants wanting to emigrate. On average they travel by more than a thousand kilometers, from the tropics to the subtropics, or to cooler parts of their own country, for instance to North India or cooler parts of China. They would need to move this distance in less than a century.
Displacement: At 2°C of warming, there is a potential for significant population displacement concentrated in the tropics. Tropical populations may have to move distances greater than 1000 km if global mean temperature rises by 2°C from 2011–2030 to the end of the century. A disproportionately rapid evacuation from the tropics could lead to a concentration of population in tropical margins and the subtropics, where population densities could increase by 300% or more
The paper about it is here:
“Here we show that in order to preserve their annual mean temperatures, tropical populations would have to travel distances greater than 1000 km over less than a century if global mean temperature rises by 2 °C over the same period. The disproportionately rapid evacuation of the tropics under such a scenario would cause migrants to concentrate in tropical margins and the subtropics, where population densities would increase 300% or more.”
The subtropics would be under a lot of pressure a temporary increase to four times the population they had before. That surely would affect us all in that scenario.
According to Climate Action Tracker our current policies keep us within 3.3 °C, while the unconditional pledges and targets keep us within 3. 0 °C with a 66% or greater chance of remaining within 3.2 °C. That is the same as the IPCC worst case scenario -but of course with existing pledges and policies, rather than after a last minute emergency action mid century. We expect to step up on them.
This is their summary graphic
.“In the absence of policies global warming is expected, to reach 4.1 °C – 4.8 °C above pre-industrial by the end of the century. ... Current policies presently in place around the world are projected to … result in about 3.3°C warming above pre-industrial levels. The unconditional pledges and targets that governments have made, including NDCs 2 as of December 2018, would limit warming to about 3.0°C above pre-industrial levels, or in probabilistic terms, likely (66% or greater chance) limit warming below 3.2°C.” Temperatures | Climate Action Tracker
They keep track of most of the pledges including all the largest emitters, and how well they are achieving. It is frequently updated, and is perhaps the best source on this. They conclude:
"If all governments achieved their Paris Agreement commitments the world will likely warm 3.0°C—twice the 1.5°C limit they agreed in Paris."
Their methodology is described here
The IPCC’s summary table in chapter 3 of the 2018 report shows the numbers affected at various temperature increases. The last column, at 3 °C, is where we are headed with current policies ,and also the IPCC “worst case” example.
You need to look at the multi-sector exposure, which is most likely to lead to climate migrants.
Figure 3.4 page 246 of chapter 3 of the IPCC report in 2018.
The population with two indicators increases from 203 million at 1.5°C to 707 million at 3°C and with three indicators, from 7 million to 237 million at 3°C. Also notice that crop yield change severely affects 406 million by 3°C, and only 8 million at at 1.5°C.
As soon as we stop emissions - that's it as far as temperature increases go, with perhaps a small overshoot by a fraction of a degree due to removing the masking effect of SO2 aerosols. But the world then cools down only slowly, over centuries. (See Anthropogenic aerosols in my booklet)
In this 3°C warner world, there are hardly any coral reefs left (though a few may survive that were preadapted to warmer conditions). They are replaced not by deserts but by seaweeds, non branching corals, and sponges. These have their own biodiversity.
“While it is unlikely that sponge-dominated reefs would provide the same resources to humans as coral reefs, they offer habitat and food for some reef species. They are also responsible for nutrient recycling and contribute to structural complexity that should have positive effects on reef biodiversity. “
These are still rich habitats, related to the corals much as savannah is to a tropical jungle, not the incredible variety of the jungle or coral but not a desert at all.
In the Carribean, corals were replaced by a mix of seaweeds and sponges making a sponge / seaweed reef with some hardy corals still remaining.
This is a good 20 minutes video exploring some of the Carribean reefs after the transition from corals to sponges - with lots of huge barrel sponges replacing the corals, not piles of rubble!:
Paper about the transitions here, macroalge are seaweeds:
Parts of the Amazon rainforest will be lost. But these also are not lost to a desert. Rather, they transform into a savanna; grassland with scattered bushes. Like the Cerrado:
Composite of these images from Wikimedia commons: Cerrado. :Índios isolados no Acre 5, Ara maca , Emperor Tamarin, Physalaemus nattereri in deimatic behavior
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Large areas of Brazil are already Cerrado which has its own rich wildlife.
Also the Amazonian rainforest will not convert to savanna all at once. It is biodiverse and varied and different patches have different species in them. In a warming world at 3°C, some will be more resilient than others and will remain, with a change in the balance of species, while others turn to savanna like the Cerrado.
Earlier studies didn't take account of the effect of the mix of species some of which are more resistant to heat changes than others. See this paper in Nature from 2016
There would be a lot of tropical rainforest still at 3 °C or even at the higher temperatures of “business as usual”. Also parts of it seem to be much more resilient, especially the western part of the Amazon rainforest, and this is how it survived previous warm periods, so it’s now thought most of it would survive this time too. See this paper in Nature for some of the recent research from 2018:
In this warmer world, there would still be enough food for everyone. However, the worst case is to have large numbers of people in conditons of extreme poverty and hardship, and reduced food security, by 2100, when there is no need for this.
Right now, at 1°C we already have some climate migrants. Even in the US sea level rise has lead to a small number of people having to leave their homes.
In a warmer world if we get as far as a 1.8 meter sea level rise, then according to one study, there would likely be 2.5 million Florida residents migrate away undera a 1.8 meter sea level rise, most from Miami. 250,000 would likely leave San Franciso and nearby areas. Meanwhile Texas could see an additional 1.5 million immigrants, just because of the sea level rise.
'We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration is here
The US has had at least some climate related damage, and harvests lost. Let’s take the example of frost damaged trees losing their fruit. The problem is that the trees blossom earlier, sadly often before the last frosts of the year. They lose their blossoms which are much more sensitive to frost than twigs, and so do not fruit:
They need to breed new varieties, that blossom at the right time of year, but can’t just import varieties from a lower latitude (the day length hasn’t changed, just the temperature).
Meanwhile some are using mitigation methods to grow the same fruit as before, but protecting them from the frost. That’s mentioned in this podcast:
There are many groups involved in working on climate resilience, For the US: Climate Resilience Portal | Center for Climate and Energy Solutions
All this is nothing you can't adapt to in a wealthy country and poor countries can too, more easily with some assistance from wealthier countries. But our climate is already permanently changed to some extent.
Not damaged particularly. Not worse. There have been larger changes more rapidly during ice ages when the climate is far less stable than in an interglacial.
Just changed. To get temperatures a few degrees warmer, and drier conditions and needing to grow new crops sometimes, all that takes some adjusting to.
It’s the change rather than the final climate that's the problem. The new generations of fruit tree will be fine, so long as they can blossom at the right time of year. Birds may need to nest at different times to synchronize with caterpillars. Your agriculture may need to adapt, you may need to be more careful about wildfires like someone living in a hotter country, you may need buildings that are more resistant to hurricanes and so on.
More of that happens at 1.5°C, more at 2°C and much more at 3°C. It is only at 4°C that some parts of China, India, Persian gulf become so hot that farmers can't work in their fields during the hottest heat waves, literally is impossible because after a day of working at such temperatures out of doors without air conditioning, even the fittest person would be dead.
At 3°C then it is possible to work out of doors everywhere even in heat waves. It is just very uncomfortable in the very hottest places. It eventually becomes uneconomic to grow crops in the very hottest places, due to the drought, heat, difficulty of working out of doors, combined factors and the expense of continuing in their ancestral homelands leads to people migrating, often more than a thousand kilometers.
A good analogy for our worst case future might be the drought refugees in the US in the 1930s during the drought and the dustbowl crisis when a lot of good agriculture turned to dust and blew away in the wind.
Drought refugees from Bowman, North Dakota. Montana
Drought refugee living in a ditch bank camp. Imperial County, California
That was sad, and personally devastating for those families. However, it was not the end of the story for the dustbowl. Farmers drilled for water aquifers which they now use to last through drought periods.
The circular fields here are especially distinctive, piping water from deep wells:
The aquifers are being replenished in some places depleted in others, and it might be some of these regions of intensive agriculture need to revert to light grazing to continue. Most of it, in grey, has insignificant changes. This map is from 1995 so is not up to date, it is just to give the idea, blue is for increasing reserves and red for decreasing reserves:
Dustbowl Adaptations: Conservation, Irrigation - Terra Central
This is a more modern map from 2012 of the same area, again blue is for increasing and red for decreasing aquifer reserves:
There groundbanking is the main measure they suggest (2012 paper) - this means storing water underground instead of on the surface to reduce evaporation and supply it during drier conditions
With global warming, in drier conditions, these areas of the US are developing dustbowl conditions again.
There is a risk of long droughts -multi-decade droughts in the US are possible with global warming. Droughts not as in no rain but very little rain.
This sort of thing will be happening in many parts of our world, in one way or another, at 3°C.
We are not going to see these conditions everywhere, there will be many different responses. Some areas get wetter. Higher latitudes have longer growing seasons.
But farmers will often find that in one way or another the methods of agriculture that used to be possible no longer work. They may also need new crops or varieties.
With our modern understanding they may be able to do preventative action, and adapt. Dig for deep aquifers, improve irrigation, grow different crops and grasses that need less water, conserve and collect water in wet periods for dry periods and so on.
Here are some of the ways that farmers help save water to cope with droughts
10 Ways Farmers Are Saving Water
Also you get measures to conserve water in cities, treatment of waste water which then can be a source of water, planting drought resistant crops. A lot of water in the US is shared amongst different states with different reservoirs for them, so you have large scale plans to make sure the people most in need of the water get it.
We have a better understanding than they had in the 1930s, for instance native grasses are better able to withstand the dry conditions, leading to The Great Basin Native Plant Project. This is a different region of the States but similar problems. It is not like the Great Plains was, a major agricultural region but it is important for pollinators and for water reserves, The Great Basin is now getting wildfires, burning the invasive cheatgrass, which is only useful as fodder for a few weeks when it is young.
One of the solutions is to collect native wild seeds - but retain the genetic variety so that the result is more resilient to climate change than a monoculture.
Present-day greenhouse gases could cause more frequent and longer Dust Bowl heatwaves
However, especially with high emissions scenarios, for some farmers, millions of them worldwide, eventually the combination of many factors including deteriorating conditions for agriculture in their homeland may lead to climate migrants, much like the climate migrants for the US dustbowl.
Meanwhile, parts of Siberia / Canada open up to conventional agriculture at 3°C so it is not all bad.
This figure is from: Northward shift of the agricultural climate zone under 21st-century global climate change - it doesn’t explain clearly what scenario this is to non specialists, but it is a high emissions scenario.
The region between the magenta and blue lines is the extra area that could open up to small cereal crops, such as barley and oat, and used to describe the minimal climatic requirements for agriculture, It’s based on Growing degree-days - a calculation involving the amount of the temperature above a base (here 5 C) over the year, where e.g. an average of 8 C for a day would be 3 growing degree days. The lines are for GDD’s above 1200 C per year which is considered feasible for small cereal crops.
For more on this see my
And we can feed everyone in all the scenarios through to 2100. See my
Just as in the dust bowl, there will be other places for them to migrate to. The whole world isn’t going to turn into a desert.
In the best case then this is mitigated through reduced emissions, we build in climate resilience, and we adapt to the effects. This is compatible with living the lifestyles we are used to, and compatible with GDP growth and increasing prosperity. It is not a future of poverty but of prosperity, and of much more prosperity by 2100 than if we don't do this and of increasing prosperity over the present.
The IPCC found that our future GDP is improved if we keep global warming below 2 C with medium confidence and that there is a possibility it is improved below 1.5 C. (That's from chapter 3, section 3.5.2.4, RCF 4 - Global Aggregate impacts)
A 2018 paper came to a stronger conclusion, that "there is a 75% chance that keeping global warming to a 1.5°C rise ... will leave the world better off than letting it run to a 2°C rise. The probable savings: a cumulative US $20-trillion increase in world GDP by the end of the century. (Global GDP in 2016 was about $76 trillion.)"
The IPCC’s worst case is one where responses are uncoordinated and many people are living in conditions of poverty and hardship by 2100, reversing some of the progress we made so far in increasing food security, reducing child poverty, etc.
With this background, here is the IPCC worst case scenario:
IPCC WORST CASE
Box 8 of chapter 3 of the 2018 IPCC report has a possible future 3°C storyline worked out in great detail based on other parts of the report. I have removed the cites to other sections of the report for readability.
Note, repeating what I said in the intro: although this is a 3°C scenario - it is also a particularly chaotic one, with decisions made late and in an uncoordinated way, with not much built in resilience and not much mitigation of the effects. Not all 3°C scenarios will be the same. It would be possible to get there while preserving much of our biodiversity, with climate resilience built in and preadapted to prevent many of the worst impacts, and with the temperature levelling off before 2100 and already starting to decrease by then. That of course would be a far better future than this, though not as good as the 2°C or 1.5°C ones.
The text quoted from Box 8 will be indented and I add comments in square brackets unindented. The various things that they imagine going wrong in this future world are things that are happening already in a smaller way so I have intercut examples from our present day world.
“Scenario 3 [one possible storyline among worst-case scenarios]:Mitigation: uncoordinated action, major actions late in the 21st century, 3°C of warming in 2100
“Internal climate variability: unusual (ca. 10%) best-case scenario for one decade, followed by normal internal climate variability”
“In 2020, despite past pledges, the international support for the Paris Agreement starts to wane.”
[This seems unlikely, especially after the agreement on the rulebook on how to account for CO2 emissions which came after this report. This was vital for success of the agreement. It was a difficult negotiation but eventually they agreed on the rules. With that in place there is nothing now to derail it. Individual countries may renege on pledges but many of them are doing the opposite, increasing them.]
“In the years that follow, CO2 emissions are reduced at the local and national level but efforts are limited and not always successful. Radiative forcing increases and, due to chance, the most extreme events tend to happen in less populated regions and thus do not increase global concerns.”
[Starving polar bear - in this scenario the worst effects, by chance all happen in less habited parts of the world, like the Arctic and there is little call to action.]
“Nonetheless, there are more frequent heatwaves in several cities and less snow in mountain resorts in the Alps, Rockies and Andes.”
“Global warming of 1.5°C is reached by 2030 but no major changes in policies occur.”
“Starting with an intense El Niño–La Niña phase in the 2030s, several catastrophic years occur while global warming starts to approach 2°C. There are major heatwaves on all continents, with deadly consequences in tropical regions and Asian megacities, especially for those ill-equipped for protecting themselves and their communities from the effects of extreme temperatures.”
“Droughts occur in regions bordering the Mediterranean Sea, central North America, the Amazon region and southern Australia, some of which are due to natural variability and others to enhanced greenhouse gas forcing.”
“Intense flooding occurs in high-latitude and tropical regions, in particular in Asia, following increases in heavy precipitation events.”
“Major ecosystems (coral reefs, wetlands, forests) are destroyed over that period, with massive disruption to local livelihoods.”
“An unprecedented drought leads to large impacts on the Amazon rainforest, which is also affected by deforestation.”
[The line of white trees here are the result of a surface fire encroaching on the Amazon rainforest from an open area during the September 2010 drought.
NASA finds Amazon drought leaves long legacy of damage – Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet]
“A hurricane with intense rainfall and associated with high storm surges destroys a large part of Miami.
“A two-year drought in the Great Plains in the USA and a concomitant drought in eastern Europe and Russia decrease global crop production, resulting in major increases in food prices and eroding food security”
[We have an emergency food fund to deal with these emergencies at present, of $1 billion a year - originally it was $50 million, then increased to $500 million and this was doubled in December 2016 in the UN resolution A/RES/71/127. Who We Are | CERF]
“Poverty levels increase to a very large scale, and the risk and incidence of starvation increase considerably as food stores dwindle in most countries; human health suffers.”
[The food stores are currently high. For all cereals the stock to use ratio is 30%. I.e. if we had a world shortfall of 30% in one year, we could supply it with left over cereals from previous years. FAO Cereal Supply and Demand Brief and more extensive summary for two year period ending]
[This is presumably a future where the world is not co-ordinated enough to solve this by food rationing. We can save huge amounts of agricultural produce by eating less meat, or reducing food waste. In a future where our food stores are low, we could replenish them in a single year by rationing meat and with a short term moratorium on biofuels. It is not likely to come to this, but it is something we can do in an emergency, just as the US and UK did in WWII]
[This map shows how much of agricultural crops (e.g. maize) is grown directly for human consumption, and how much is grown to feed to animals which we then eat - the red areas are all places where we grow large amounts of crops for animals raised for meat, instead of for humans:]
[I got those details here: Redefining agricultural yields: from tonnes to people nourished per hectare. The authors of that map and paper concluded from its analysis that if those calories were all used for human consumption instead of feeding our livestock, or other uses (such as biofuels) they could potentially feed approximately 4 billion extra people.]
“There are high levels of public unrest and political destabilization due to the increasing climatic pressures, resulting in some countries becoming dysfunctional. The main countries responsible for the CO2 emissions design rapidly conceived mitigation plans and try to install plants for carbon capture and storage, in some cases without sufficient prior testing.”
“Massive investments in renewable energy often happen too late and are uncoordinated; energy prices soar as a result of the high demand and lack of infrastructure. In some cases, demand cannot be met, leading to further delays.”
[This part of their scenario seems a little implausible to me, since at present we have soaring investment in renewables. Especially, China aims to produce 20% of its power from renewables by 2030 and is expected to increase this ambition to 35% in the near future. It now supplies low cost solar panels to much of Asia and beyond. In many places including Australia and southern US, renewables based power stations already produce power at lower cost than fossil fuel based stations.]
[The costs of solar panels particularly continue to fall rapidly and we have vast areas of desert where we can place them, as well as the roofs of houses, they can also be combined with agricultural land too, providing shade for livestock in hot places. This is something that no single country could stop - it would need co-ordinated worldwide policies to prevent renewables investment]
[That’s a ten-fold reduction in price from the mid 1990s to the mid 2010s - from this 2018 paper Evaluating the causes of cost reduction in photovoltaic modules]
[See also my Do renewables for power generation take up more land area than fossil fuels? Well - not really!]
“Some countries propose to consider sulphate-aerosol based Solar Radiation Modification; however, intensive international negotiations on the topic take substantial time and are inconclusive because of overwhelming concerns about potential impacts on monsoon rainfall and risks in case of termination.”
[This video describes some of those concerns. If you inject the SO2 into the stratosphere in the northern hemisphere, it causes droughts in the Sahel region - sub-saharan Africa]
[If you inject sulfur dioxide into the southern hemisphere you get a strong greening effect of sub Saharan Africa which is good - but the monsoon rains shift further north, with more rain over the Sahel but less over the Amazon and parts of Brazil.]
“Global and regional temperatures continue to increase strongly while mitigation solutions are being developed and implemented.”
[FROM HERE ON, THIS IS THE WORLD POST 2100 IN THE 3 C SCENARIO]
“Global mean warming reaches 3°C by 2100 but is not yet stabilized despite major decreases in yearly CO2 emissions, as a net zero CO2 emissions budget could not yet be achieved and because of the long lifetime of CO2 concentrations.”
“The world as it was in 2020 is no longer recognizable, with decreasing life expectancy, reduced outdoor labour productivity, and lower quality of life in many regions because of too frequent heatwaves and other climate extremes.”
“Droughts and stress on water resources renders agriculture economically unviable in some regions and contributes to increases in poverty. Progress on the sustainable development goals is largely undone and poverty rates reach new highs.”
These are the first six of the goals:
Graphics for the first six of the seventeen Sustainable Development Goals
We are making considerable progress, for instance here is what's happening to under 5 and neonatal death rates (a neonatal death is a death during the first 28 days of life).
Progress report for goal 3: Good health and well-being.
For more data like that on the goals see
The Sustainable Development Goals Report, 2019
The risk here is that we stop making progress and they get rolled back.
“Major conflicts take place. Almost all ecosystems experience irreversible impacts, species extinction rates are high in all regions, forest fires escalate, and biodiversity strongly decreases, resulting in extensive losses to ecosystem services.”
“These losses exacerbate poverty and reduce quality of life. Life for many indigenous and rural groups becomes untenable in their ancestral lands. The retreat of the West Antarctic ice sheet accelerates, leading to more rapid sea level rise.”
[Most places can keep the sea out with dams as for the Netherlands. These can be very high, this is 300 meter high earthfill embankment dam (same technology as is used for the Netherlands).]
[However, Florida is made up of limestone so you can’t keep out the sea with a sea wall. The sea is tidal of course. This is only for the very highest tides. Either storm surges or a King tide. Let’s show the effect of rapid sea level rise on Trump’s “Mar a Lago” estate:]
[It’s an interactive graphic, you can try moving the slider for yourself here:]
[This is for the new “Extreme” level of sea level rise added by NOAA to its projections in 2017, corresponding to the unlikely but now increasingly plausible possibility that some parts of the Antarctic ice sheet may begin to collapse much sooner than scientists previously thought Robert Walker's answer to When will Mar-a-Lago be underwater as the sea level rises due to global warming?]
“Several small island states give up hope of survival in their locations and look to an increasingly fragmented global community for refuge. Aggregate economic damages are substantial, owing to the combined effects of climate changes, political instability, and losses of ecosystem services.”
“The general health and well-being of people is substantially reduced compared to the conditions in 2020 and continues to worsen over the following decades.”
“Cross-Chapter Box 8, Table 2, page 280 of chapter 3, Impacts of 1.5°C global warming on natural and human systems.”
So there we have it, one example “worst case scenario” and by the experts who wrote this report. It is carefully thought through in great detail and I think has far more credibility than the various journalistic speculations.
NO RISK OF EXTINCTION
We are listed as of "least concern" in the The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. There are many habitats we survive in, and our population is increasing.
Pic by Neil Palmer (CIAT). A rice farmer in Kantuta, near Caranavi, Bolivia
Our natural habitats include: "Grassland, Artificial/Terrestrial, Forest, Shrubland, Desert, Rocky areas (eg. inland cliffs, mountain peaks), Savanna".
I have used the entry for humans in The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and added a photo of a rice farmer to it.
With minimal technology / clothing / fire / housing we can live anywhere from the Kalahari desert to the Arctic. We are warm blooded omnivores which means we an eat almost anything and live almost anywhere especially with our technology.
Our technology is so good, we could even have a reasonably self sustaining habitat in space, where there is no nature at all, not even an atmosphere
It is not just us. Our sheep, cows, dogs, cats, pet rabbits, goldfish, they aren’t going to go extinct either, because we look after them. Also all our crops, domesticated insects like honey bees, our garden plants, as long as we have gardeners we’ll have gardens.
We can use ideas from space habitats to support ourselves in deserts, in a self sustaining way, using only the desert sands, sea water and the air.
The sea water is used as a source of water. The desert sunlight evaporates the water, which cools down the greenhouses.
Diagrams by Raffa be from wikipedia SG phase II)
These ideas could be used to reverse desertification in the Sahara desert and other deserts. In this design, hot dry dusty air from the desert blows through a honeycomb wall soaked in sea water.
The air becomes humid, blows across the growing area and then some of it condenses on a second panel. The moist air then blows out of the greenhouse leading to benefits to the desert outside as well, plants may grow outside downwind of the greenhouse.
So, it not only lets you grow crops in the greenhouses - it can also help make the surrounding areas more habitable, so you’d get trees and crops growing in an area around the greenhouses as well.
Seawater Greenhouse in Tenerife two years after being installed
All this vegetation has grown spontaneously around the Tenerife seawater greenhouse due to the moist air, just two years after it was installed:
This is what it was like before:
It’s not going to be a world without roses, or peonies or carrots or asparagus.
We also have an additional seed bank at Svalbard as an extra backup of all the world’s agricultural crops
Svalbard Global Seed Vault - Crop Trust
There are seeds there to restore the world’s agriculture even if there were no other seeds left in the entire world. Not just the main crops but numerous wild varieties for each one. Our seed crops are not going to go extinct.
The Millennium Seed Bank is another major seed bank, largest seed bank in the world, with an aim to have 25% of the world's seeds by 2020. It already has all the UK's seeds apart from a few either too rare to collect the seeds, or that have seeds that can't be preserved.
There are a few seeds that can’t be preserved like that, some tropical fruits such as mangos can’t be freeze dried and have to be grown every year. But apart from those the entire plant kingdom can be restored from these seed banks.
The coral reefs are important for the fish and other creatures that depend on them. However, there are many other shallow water ecosystems in the sea. I cover a couple of the others here:
We live in a world with a more diverse range of ecosystems than the dinosaurs
Relative positions of the continents during the time of the dinosaurs. A warmer world with no land near either poles and no polar ice caps. It was a world which didn’t really know winter, especially since the planet was also warmer than now, basically tropical. Where Did Dinosaurs Live?
You get extinctions anyway if you merge together two ecosystems that evolved separately. For instance, 54 million years from now Australia will crash into China.
From this video:
Even if humans had evolved, this future collision would mix together Australian and Chinese species that had never encountered each other before - so that would then lead to many extinctions.
But the resulting ecosystem in China / Australia, though with fewer species in total, would likely be a richer ecosystem than the separate ones are now.
One interesting biologist, Chris Thomas argues that this is a good analogy to most of what is going on right now. It is much like merging of continents via tectonic plate movement, except that humans are doing the merging by moving things about across the sea, rather than continents.
I go into this in more detail here
Nor will any major ecosystems go extinct, except potentially the corals. You'd barely notice this extinction in the fossil record a few million years from now. Kelp forests, sea grasses, even deep water corals, they won’t go extinct. They have a vast range from near the poles to equatorial regions, many different species and unlike corals they can’t go extinct.
The corals won’t all go extinct either. As it gets warmer, they could survive by migrating to cooler places or by evolving to adapt to warmer conditions. The problem is that with global warming, the seas get warm too quickly for that. However, there are some places with corals that are already adapted to warmer conditions than they are in already, such as the northern Red Sea corals;
We can also transfer adult corals from warmer temperatures. According to Mikhail Matz, professor of integrative biology at the University of TExas:
“Averting coral extinction can begin with something as simple as exchange of coral immigrants across latitudes, which will happen naturally through larval dispersal but can be jump-started by humans moving adult corals. … This is occasion for hope and optimism about coral reefs and the marine life that thrive there.”
26 June: Corals already have the genes to adapt to warmer oceans
We can reverse desertification and create gardens where only dust and sand was before
We can also use waste water from cities to grow crops in deserts. We can make a huge difference by reducing food waste.
Our population is set to level off at 11 billion by 2100 with the middle of the range projections, and 9 billion by 2050 with more optimistic projections. That is because of the way birth rates fall due to prosperity, not scarcity. Indeed we have already almost reached peak child. The population continues to grow because we are living longer.
Our population is growing still mainly because we are living longer, between ten and twenty years longer than 50 years ago (sometimes more than twenty years longer in the poorer countries).
For more on this see my
As a species we are more adaptable than the dinosaurs were. After all we are descended from the survivors of the dinosaur extinction.
With our technology we can even watch out for asteroids like the one that ended the dinosaur era, it comes to asteroids like the one that ended the dinosaur era. We can even deflect them in the remote chance a big one is headed our way in the next few centuries. We already know all the Near Earth Objects of ten kilometers and larger, none are a threat for millennia. We have nearly completed the survey at one kilometeres and larger too (large enough to have some global effects such as a “year without a summer), it is 95% done with no significant risk for many centuries, plenty of time to deflect.
GREAT PROMISE FOR THE FUTURE
We are acting together on these issues in a way that is already remarkable. We can continue to do this.
When I saw the school striking children and the climate activists, in 2019, I saw great hope for the future. They are the ones who will be voting for new initiatives and decisions in the 20s and 30s. They also include our future politicians; some may be future presidents of the great countries in the world, and world leaders.
As time goes on and the effects of climate change become more and more obvious, surely these children as they grow to adulthood are going to be more motivated to work on it, not less. Surely we are headed to a world where more is done about climate change, not less.
One of the largest environmental protests ever is underway. It’s led by children.
Then with COVID19 we are working together in a most extraordinary way never seen before. The IMF trillion dollar war chest. The billions of dollars and people worldwide working to develop vaccines in record time. The vast multi-nation “solidarity trials” of new drugs. The governments and people working together to defeat COVID19, in solidarity.
I’ve never seen anything like it. Also the vast amounts being spent to save the health systems and the economies and the jobs of those in the countries with weaker healthsytems and weaker economies. The work being done to ensure that therapeutics for COVID19 is available to all. Including the vaccine, that we can vaccinate everyone - that’s the plan. A beacon for hope as the WHO put it. Eradicating COVID19 will open the door to eradicating many other diseases that have safe and effective vaccines.
We have already done so much in other areas e.g. conserved the great whales, completely stopped hunting, prevented starvation with the green revolution, and acted to stop the deterioration of the ozone layer and many other things.
We can stay within 1.5°C. The EU has already committed to 1.5 C as has the UK, California and several other US states and most recently South Korea.
India has this well within reach, mainly because it has such low per capita CO2 emissions already. It will help if it gets more international assistance to let it prioritize renewables more. The plummeting prices of solar panels should help too, a near certainty but one that can’t be assumed in climate pledges. China needs to increase its pledges hugely to stay within 1.5°C but it is headed in the right direction and has ten years to do this for the easiest way to stay within 1.5°C.
As for the US, they need to come on board some time before 2030 for the easiest way to stay within 1.5°C. However, the US CO2 emissions have already plateaued. Renewables are increasing there because they are able to compete economically with coal, and much of the US is already on board with the goals of the Paris agreement, including California, which would count as the world’s fifth largest economy if it was a separate country. California has already commited itself to produce 60% renewables by 2030 and all electricity from carbon-free sources by 2045
The US is not going to be far off meeting its original Paris pledges even without government support. In the future, with increasing evidence of climate change, even if all the presidents are like Trump, surely by Trump 3 or Trump 4 in 2030 then they re-engage on this matter, as the population of the US notices the effects more and more.
As the Paris agreement process continues it is definitely possible that the world as a whole has 1.5°C compatible pledges by 2030 . We can do this with the technology we already have, is politically feasible, and makes economic sense too.
As for what you can do individually, there are many things you can do, and probably are already doing. However one thing that few of us think of that makes a huge difference is to reduce food waste. In the developed world especially much of our food is wasted. That’s especially important for meat, even though only 20% is wasted, so much land is used for livestock, that it corresponds to 20% of the area of the Americas that is used for livestock that isn’t eaten but is wasted on the consumer’s plate. Reducing food waste is a simple way to help with both climate change and biodiversity.
Eating less meat also helps, also more efficient appliances, recycling, many things you can do on a personal level
We can definitely feed everyone, on all scenarios:
We can do this!
Then if you are worried about cosmological disasters, think about it. Your parents never encountered such a thing, or your grandparents, back and back, all the way back to the origins of humans, to homo erectus, for most of the things people worry about, then going back and back to when our distant ancestors were tiny shrew sized mammals scuttering up trees at the time of the dinosaurs.
So it should really come as no great surprise that if you look around our patch of the galaxy - it is a quiet suburb with nothing much going on especially on the centuries to millenium or even million year timescales.
And now we can study it very carefully. I looked at all the main things people worry about here:
The answer basically is “No” but have a read for yourself.
See also my
Yes our generation’s children are headed for a world with nature and wonder in it
Positive articles on climate change if you feel it is hopeless
Videos of good things that are happening in the world for climate change and biodiversity
24 ways the world is getting better - good news journalists rarely share
Let’s save a million species, and make biodiversity great again - UN report says we know how do it
SEVEN TIPS FOR DEALING WITH DOOMSDAY FEARS
If you are scared: Seven tips for dealing with doomsday fears which also talks about health professionals and how they can help.
If in the middle of a panic attack, see
Breathe in and out slowly and deeply and other ways to calm a panic attack
Tips from CBT - might help some of you to deal with doomsday anxieties
USEFUL LINKS TO BOOKMARK
Search Doomsday Debunked (Facebook)
Search Quora for articles by 'robert walker' (insert whoever you want to search for)
Tip, bookmark those links to search for debunks more easily. Here is a screenshot of my bookmarks
FACEBOOK SUPPORT GROUP
Facebook group Doomsday Debunked has been set up to help anyone who is scared by these fake doomsdays.
IF YOU NEED HELP
Do message me on Quora or PM me on Facebook if you need help.
There are many others in the group who are available to support scared people via PM and who can also debunk fake Doomsday “news” for you if you get scared of a story and are not sure if it is true. See our debunkers list
If you are suicidal don’t forget there’s always help a phone call away with the List of suicide crisis lines - Wikipedia
OUR PETITIONS
An oldie but a goodie. What were the new edits, or was this just a backup for when/if you need to update?