A group of top scientists claim that experts are ignoring the worst possible climate change catastrophic scenarios.
A group of scientists from around the world are calling on the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to do a special report on "catastrophic climate change." They raised the idea of human extinction and worldwide societal collapse in the third sentence of their perspective piece.
The scientists are not saying that the worst will happen. The world needs those calculations to battle global warming because nobody knows how likely or unlikely it is.
The Center for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge says that it is highly unlikely that humans will be extinct in the next century. If we have a 1% chance of a global catastrophe, that is way too high.
Kemp said that catastrophic climate scenarios can lead to prevention and warning systems.
Study authors said that good risk analyses consider both what's most likely and what's worst. Tim Lenton, director of the Global Systems Institute, said that mainstream climate science has concentrated on looking at what's most likely because of the push back from non-scientists who reject climate change.
Lenton said that there wasn't enough emphasis on how things could go wrong.
Lenton likened it to an airplane. It's almost certain that it will land safely, but it was important to figure out how to avoid a crash. He said that climate change isn't being done enough to research what could go wrong.
University of Michigan environment dean Jonathan Overpeck said that the stakes may be higher than they thought. He is concerned that the world may not be aware of the risks of climate change.
Extreme weather, higher temperatures, melting ice sheets, rising seas and plant and animal extinctions are some of the things that global science organizations look at when looking at climate change. They aren't taking into account how these affect human societies and interact with existing problems.
"If we don't look at the intersecting risks, we'll be very surprised," said University of Washington public health and climate professor Kristie Ebi, a co-author of Lenton's book.
Ebi said that it was a mistake for health professionals to assess the possibility of a Pandemic. They didn't talk about supply chain problems or spiraling economies.
Climate change is linked to societal collapse more than the physical changes to Earth itself, according to a study.
Climate scientists and risk experts welcomed the idea of focusing on the worst of the worst, even though many don't like the idea.
Andrew Weaver is a climate scientist at the University of Victoria and a former British Columbia legislator for the Green Party. Our societies that have urbanized and are supported by rural agriculture won't survive.
Climate scientists have used future scenarios of greatly increasing carbon pollution when the world is no longer on those paths to more rapid warming as a reason to criticize them. He said it makes sense to look at catastrophic scenarios as long as we don't confuse the worst case with the most probable outcome.
Talking about extinction of humans is not a very effective way to communicate. People tend to think that it's just arm waving or doomsday mongering.
She said that what's happening short of extinction is not good.
"Maybe it's that you can thoroughly rule out a number of these bad scenarios," said Tim Lenton, co-author of the book. That's a really good thing to do. We should all be happy.
More information: Luke Kemp et al, Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2022). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108146119 Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe Associated Press was published in 1992. All rights belong to the person. The material may not be published, broadcast, or redistributed.
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