Extinction Rebellion group activists. Credit: Ana Fernandez/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty
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How bad will climate change be? Well: I’m writing this in the middle of an absolutely biblical rainstorm. It is hammering it down. Weather is not the same as climate and all that, but it is very easy to believe in climate change when north London appears to be experiencing a monsoon.
The argument over whether man-made climate change “caused” it is a grimly philosophical one that very quickly gets lost in the weeds of what it means to “cause” something. If I put weights in a die, so that it’s more likely to roll a six, and then I roll a six, did the weights cause the six? It might have rolled a six anyway. But what most of us will agree is that climate change is not only making the world warmer – each of the last three decades has been the hottest on record – it’s also making unusual weather more likely: droughts in some places, floods in others; higher average temperatures and more frequent extreme heatwaves. This is uncontroversial among climate scientists; it’s all from the 2018 IPCC special report.
What’s also relatively uncontroversial is that it’s going to carry on. Again referring to the IPCC report: if we literally stop producing any carbon emissions next year, then it is likely that the global mean surface temperature will continue to rise about another 0.5°C, to a total of around 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. That’s not going to happen, so we’ll probably see a rise of about 2°C, perhaps more. The warming will likely be greatest in the high northern latitudes, so the Arctic ice sheet will suffer, more than it already has. Sea levels will rise. Weather patterns will change, causing unseasonal droughts and floods, affecting ecosystems and crop growth. Again, this is all pretty uncontroversial – have a read of the IPCC special report’s summary for policymakers.
The 2014 IPCC report warns that coastal areas will face greater risks of flooding and submergence. Many species and ecosystems will come under pressure as species move with the new climate. While some crop growth may be positively affected – warmer temperatures and greater carbon dioxide concentrations will help some plants – more will be negatively affected. It is likely that heat waves and fires, drought and starvation, and new disease vectors will kill many people. Migration, and wars over newly scarce resources, could kill people as well.
I’m stressing that this is all from the IPCC predictions. When people refer to “the science”, they’re usually referring to the IPCC; I don’t know if predictions of war are “science” exactly, but they’re reasonable forecasts made by respected domain experts. And it is bad; the very likely outcome is that climate change will have devastating impacts on humans.
But the question I think is worth asking is: how devastating? How many people will die? There was a ridiculous claim by Roger Hallam of Extinction Rebellion the other day that “the science” says six billion people will be killed by climate change this century. That is not something supported by mainstream forecasts.
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Subscribe“Dad, what did you do in the great killer heat apocalypse of July 2022? – You never talk about it”
“Ah Son – you wouldn’t talk about it if you’d seen what I saw… I saw things on those beaches – things no man should ever see…” “Bodies, thousands of ’em. Just lying there. Whole limbs, bent, and slightly sunburned. Rivers of spilt Coca Cola streaming down the sand, turning the sea slightly brown at the edge. And the shells… Oh God, all the shells! They scratched my toes to pieces. ”
“But you know the worst thing son? It was the noise, the incessant organ grinding of the ice cream vans and the roar of their exhausts – it never stopped. They came in waves… It just went on, and on, and on… I watched good men scrambling desperately for a 99 flake for their kids… facing volley after volley of “The sun has got his hat on…” I hate that tune now – It still gives me goose bumps to hear it, to this day. It was a bad time, Son, the Great heat Apocalypse…”