Yes, Climate Change Is Probably Going to Kill You

&gt; What are some second and third-order impacts? ... food shortages, lack of fresh water, disease, heat stress, mass migration and conflicts.<p>The current IPCC estimate for say crop yields change is quite low, less than 10% for &lt;2.4C warming [1]. What they miss out are the actual higher-order effects. Food shortages are already leading to export bans, for example by India with corresponding global effects [2]. And as the situation worsens, the dark political forces that will emerge will cause the real problems. Tit-for-tat export bans of food can cause 10% food shortage to famine in certain areas, to war and other sorts of conflicts. Self-imposed breakdown of global supply chains can be catastrophic<p>IPCC and climate scientists cannot do a game theoretic analysis of how countries will behave. The real danger lies, where as expected, everyone defects.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;report&#x2F;ar6&#x2F;syr&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;report&#x2F;IPCC_AR6_SYR_FullVolume.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ipcc.ch&#x2F;report&#x2F;ar6&#x2F;syr&#x2F;downloads&#x2F;report&#x2F;IPCC_AR6...</a> Page 16<p>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aljazeera.com&#x2F;economy&#x2F;2023&#x2F;8&#x2F;16&#x2F;how-indias-ban-on-some-rice-exports-is-ricocheting-around-the-world" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.aljazeera.com&#x2F;economy&#x2F;2023&#x2F;8&#x2F;16&#x2F;how-indias-ban-o...</a>

Very nicely written! I would like to emphasize two things:<p>1. We have passed 1.5C last year, that&#x27;s something we have measured. And because of this &quot;lag effect&quot; (inertia), this is the result of the emissions from decades ago. Which means that even if we stop emitting entirely tomorrow, it will keep on warming for decades.<p>2. We all know that the dinosaurs disappeared. What we don&#x27;t always realise, though, is that the climate change that drove their extinction happened orders of magnitude <i>slower</i> than what we are measuring now. Some like to refer to something catastrophic as &quot;what happened to the dinosaurs&quot;... well what we are measuring now is a lot worse.

While I agree with the general thrust of the piece, many details seem wrong.<p>Food shortages will not kill you.[1] Nor will mass migration per se.<p>But the author omits global thermonuclear war--the biggest, most dangerous risk, as it always has been--being made more likely by climate change induced stresses.<p>Water and&#x2F;or electricity shortages and&#x2F;or heat stress or wildfires or conflict may well kill millions who live in countries or states with incapable governments (those that are corrupt, or nepotistic, or otherwise have key personnel not selected for competence alone).<p>The author seems to think &quot;reserves&quot; is a meaningful figure for metals and other minerals. Reserves is a figure for the amount that companies have found and that they are are prepared to go through the process of developing within (approximately) the next 20 years (the standard permitting, financing and construction timetable). When they get to 20 years&#x27; worth, companies stop looking.<p>1. I have lived through at least two food price supercycles, with peaks in the 1970s and the 2005-2008 period. Food price cycles are self-correcting. There is a lot of slack in the food production and distribution system - think of all the corn grown for e-85 gasoline, for instance.

Well we have no one to blame but ourselves. Pres. Carter tried to get this on the radar 50 years ago, but the Reagan fully went anti-science and brought the GOP with him. At one time the GOP used science for some of their polices, not anymore.<p>It is too bad, but that article does detail potential problems of Climate Change. The next 4 years we all know what little Climate Cbhange support the US Gov had will probably be cancelled.

Why this submission is [flagged]? It fits all the HN guidelines, and is pretty interesting (to me) for the arguments they present.

Worst case scenario is that we eat food grown in greenhouses and use desalinated water. It&#x27;s horrendously more expensive, but not out of reach of consumers in developed countries.<p>People don&#x27;t understand food economics. We use approximately all the arable land in the world to grow food because that&#x27;s the cheapest way to grow enough food. If we had less usable farm land we won&#x27;t grow less food, we&#x27;ll use more intensive methods to grow the same amount of food at higher prices.<p>Climate change is going to be horrible enough without this nonsense. If we lose 90% of species, that&#x27;s going to be terrible. The human species will be part of the 10% that survives.

Oh nooooooooooo!

Alarmist nonsense.