The world is on track for a climate catastrophe. Do you think it is? The global heating battle lines used to be clear: you either believed it was happening or you didn't. New battle lines are being drawn as the year on year breakdown of our once stable climate has become more apparent.
Climate change has kept it in the public eye, but it has also heightened tensions between those I call climate appeasers, who seek to minimize how bad climate breakdown will ultimately be, and others who are actually against it.
The growing and increasingly acrimonious dispute could have serious ramifications for all of us. Climate appeasers are considered to be as bad as deniers by some, who feel acceptance of their message, will ensure we are prepared if the climate breaks. On the other hand, there are a lot of people out there, including some climate scientists who call out doomers who are out of step with reality, and want nothing more than to scare us.
It's easy to understand why many of us might be scared about the future, as the extreme weather we've seen this summer shows. Doomer feelings are not just vague. Predicting bleak, climate-trashed futures is published in academic journals by some in the climate science community.
James Hansen and his co-authors advised that burning fossil fuels would cause runaway heating and severe hothouse conditions that would make most of the planet uninhabitable.
The study warned that we could cross a tipping point where no future actions would be able to prevent a march towards a "hothouse Earth".
A 2020 paper showed that the world was on a path similar to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's worst case scenario. We will drive a catastrophic temperature rise of 5C or more by the century's end if we don't change our behavior. We are not collectively stupid enough to not do something about emissions. Despite our poor understanding of the impact of the feedback loops that reinforce heating, it would be wise to plan for such an event.
The tension between doomers and appeasers has been strained by the publication of a paper whose authors have been thinking the unthinkable. They conclude that dire climate scenarios, such as societal collapse and the extinction of humankind, have so far been unexplored.
Climate appeasers don't like the idea of calling for action on emissions because it makes them feel like it's too late to stop global warming. Some appeasers have an optimistic outlook and are confident that humankind will overcome this problem. Both perspectives may make the situation worse.
It's problematic to settle on an approach that would satisfy both appeasers and doomers. The truth is that the more extreme climate breakdown scenarios are not likely to be realized. If we adhere to the precautionary principle we have a duty to address them.
It would be great if we were overplaying the threat of climate breakdown, but following an appeaser line would be disastrous. There seems to be a growing tendency to label anything outside of the current consensus as doomist. Being right doesn't mean consensus. Climate scientists are a tribe of which I am a member, and the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change underplay the speed and intensity of the breakdown.
Our understanding of tipping points and feedback effects is too limited for us to be confident of how severe the climate breakdown will be. Reducing the impact of climate breakdown is more likely to lead to increased reticence in relation to cutting emissions than exaggerating the likely end result.
There is only one sensible way to prepare for the worst, and that is to hope for the best.
The author of Hothouse Earth is a professor at the University College London.
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