What is the worst case scenario for climate change over 5 to 10 years?

[Unbalance]

Obviously it is all gathering speed fast. But densely, I just can't really picture what will happen, in terms of well everything? There are so many factors at play.

Fresh water scarcity concerns me most. Is this the biggest threat to the most people over the next few years, as in will kill the most people in a short space of time?

Or if not water - what is the biggest threat if shtf completely?

What can governments do to prepare for worst case scenarios?

I did a botany degree in the 90's.
Increased temperatures affect plants. Some can't photosynthesis if the temperature is wrong for them.
We were told about it then. 30 years ago.
And nothing changed.
So crops will fail. Food will become even more expensive.
Genetic engineering will have to be done.

Politics is a short term thing. They look at the next election. Not the future of the planet.

It could have been very different.

But is there any proof it will, there are computer charts and diagrams galore, but the computers are fed with current accurate data and supposed data from times before routine measurement, more models used to make models.

The charts are the conveniently coloured in using varying densities of red and orange, strange they don't use other colours, but if they did quite a lot might be blue or green, and that wouldn't help them shift those solar panels that came round the world in a container from a smoking great factory in China.

Well I can't personally change fuck all can I @Plicovic ???

So there is nothing I can personally do, and I'm not even convinced that climate change really has much to do with human behaviour, but what? You expect me to torture myself with the bloody awful things that are happening that I can do jack shit about? I'm sorry but right now I'm mentally torturing myself with many other things and I just don't have the space.

So the fires in Europe, disappearing glaciers, marine heat waves, dying reefs, Antarctica ice loss, I could go on for hours, none of that is real? It's happening so quickly, I've followed this topic for 40 years, it's unravelling before our eyes. I'm intrigued, do you really not believe any of it? Not that it makes any difference whether you believe it or not it's happening all around you.

I honestly get that I really do

The global temperature was 1.5°c higher during the Roman Empire than it is today. There were vineyards in Yorkshire. There will always be climate changes, ice ages, global warming etc.

That's not to say fossil fuels and plastic has done the planet any favours. However, volcanoes, melting ice and rising sea levels is always going to happen during certain phases. Then it might be extreme the other way and then optimum climate again.

Not really sure if there is anything that can be done to stop a naturally occurring thing.

Massive carbon release causing extinction event (I think linked to melting ice caps)
https://news.mit.edu/2019/carbon-threshold-mass-extinction-0708

Anyone claiming it is not human related is anti-science and in disagreement with 99.9% of scientists (the only .1% being funded by oil companies, follow the money trail, it’s never usually hard).

Do you not trust NASA? New Scientist? Scientific American? BBC? Guardian?

Just google the ‘hockey stick climate effect [+ reputable source, eg NASA]’ for straightforward evidence that carbon in the atmosphere has increased at an unprecedented, exponential rate since the industrial revolution. As NASA also quite basically explains, previous global warmings have been caused gradually by tilts in the earth’s axis and are uniform yet completely different to our current situation when charted.

scientists have been sounding the alarm since the 70s but oil companies have been funding obfuscation ever since. Much like the cigarette companies before that.

individually, we can fly less and eat less [red] meat. But we’re pissing in the wind without the government legislating for it (eg carbon credits; investment in wind and solar; cessation of oil drilling, etc).

Totally agree with all your post.

The hockey stick - have you seen the film The Trick? It's brilliant, about the scientist who developed the theory.

Always look at the full spectrum of science people advocate for. The same people being hysterical about climate emergency also tell us that a man can be a woman. The science is selective. For political ends.

Thanks pilcovic, I will check that out.

Sadly even this thread shows that we’re living in a post-truth society (and just the fact people are even addressing Troyton’s post is distressing proof of that).

Wasn’t it Michael Gove who said during the Brexit campaign ‘people in this country have had enough of experts’ ?

We’ve evolved so far, against all the odds, and yet this is our undoing. Just crazy really.

(PS I did see a BBC article years ago showing that the vast majority of climate-related tweets were traced to bot accounts and something like 80% of those were denialist).

I'm sorry but people still need to live their lives. People in the Uk are struggling to keep a roof over their heads and feed their children and give them some sort of a life.

I don't know what you expect people to do I really don't.

People can't even get essential health care right now.

@Swrigh1234 wtf are you on about?! Which science is concerned with the theory of gender and sexuality?

@TRexTara most of today’s problems really will pale into insignificance within a few years. I’ve got kids too. It’s exactly why my husband (a climate scientist) didn’t want us to have kids.

@Nellynoowhoareyou well my kids are here right now and my grandchild is on the way. They all need certain things in order to survive. There is fuck all I can do about climate change.

Yes exactly @TRexTara but what will our kids and grandkids think of us in a few years, as the last generation that could have stopped it, but didn’t?

for as long as we are fighting amongst ourselves, and the oil companies are keeping an element of uncertainty in circulation, the government doesn’t need to act. We can’t do anything without demanding it from the people in power.

I'm sorry but I gave up on government a few years ago. They don't care about us. Most of them are bloody psychopaths. I haven't voted for a couple years.

Right now there isn't a single political party that represents me. That's why I haven't voted. Labour , the Lib Dem's, and the Green Party have all done horrible things to women's rights. Labour no longer represents their working class voters. So I'm left with conservative. For the first time in my adult life I have no option but voting conservative. How any of this helps the climate I do not know, but I do know that the Green Party are liars and they are fucked because if it.

The biggest problem is gonna be mass migration. Millions of displaced people flooding into Europe because their country is uninhabitable. We will be faced with a choice between allowing them to overwhelm and destroy us, or defending our borders with lethal force.

I think we are nearly already at that point.

There will also be an increase in pestilence as crops become scarce. Insects will eat remaining crops, rodents in cities, to get access to food and water, etc.

I’m as GC as they come but I don’t think this is the case. If anything the left are still in we can let everyone in territory.

It’s going to be hard to be humanitarian when people really start moving.

It’s the people realising defence and border control will be top priority, I doubt they they in the same part of the Venn diagram as gender ideologists

The thread has descended into a strange mix of hysteria, denialism and conspiracy theory.
The evidence for man made climate change is pretty compelling. We WILL have more extreme weather events. However, it is also true that people are seeking to make profit from this. It's an attractive idea to many middle class people that they can buy their way out of this and so maintain their current standard of living. They just have to replace everything with a 'green' alternative. The environmental movement has been completely hijacked by this idea, because it is a much easier sell than telling people the real truth: you have to live with less. Much less. Your standard of living must reduce.
Old Greens like myself didn't get very far with this message, of course. People like to think they can buy their way out.
Eventually, this lower standard of living will be imposed on us by high prices. This is what will happen in the next decade, I believe.