Is it rising ocean levels? That’s what I seem to hear about the most. Or is there something else that’s going to be worse?
What about property damage? Won’t climate change cause endless trillions in property damage from destruction of coastal real estate?
Or is that the same category as rising ocean levels?
Acidification of the ocean is also a concern, carbon dioxide dissolves in the ocean and reduces pH.
The two main things will be:
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More extreme weather. Stronger tornadoes, stronger hurricanes, etc. The flooding of the East Coast and Hurricane Katrina are both, potentially, results of climate change. This is problematic since we tend to build things based on the level of calamity that we expect to actually encounter. If the level of calamity rises, we have a lot of structures that aren’t engineered to handle it.
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A changing globe. Dry regions will become more dry. Ideal growing zones will migrate North. Shipping lanes may open up North of Canada. And so on. For countries around the Sahara, this will potentially be a major, possibly famine-causing problem. For Canada and Russia, it might end up a good thing. But on the whole, it will be disruptive to the world’s status quo. Marketplaces will shift around, making some locations no longer profitable while others require steep investment to get up to production requirements. The strategic importance of certain places (like the Panama Canal) might go away, meaning that new locations will need to found and fought over - with the potential for armed conflict occurring each time there’s a struggle.
I remember how the ones investigating the issue call that the “**other ** equally evil twin” when talking about the most expected consequences.
Just another reason why it will be more expensive to wait doing something about the issue that is the result of treating our atmosphere as a sewer.
running coach gave the in-depth answer but I’ll give the simple one: changing weather patterns could wreck havoc on our farms. Imagine what will happen to our food supply if the Great Plains and the Sonoran Desert switch rainfall patterns.
Sage Rat’s #2. In the end, Earth will be much the same, but arid and arable regions will wander all over the political map and cause untold havoc in war, famine, and political strife.
You do know that the food megacorps are buying up water rights in the northern part of North America - vast tracts of them, for nickels, and for no immediate purpose. “Ice Pirates” may not seem so absurd in 50 years.
This is one that is most overlooked. At the current acidification rate, we’re expected to reduce marine life by 30% by 2100.
The other is the feedback loops created by warming at the poles, which has begun to melt permafrost and release massive amounts of methane into the atmosphere. Methane is, as I’m sure you know, 23 times more potent as a green house gas in the short term and will dangerously accelerate global warming.
I that climate refugees could also be a major problem as patterns of agriculture change and in areas which simply get too hot or too far underwater for a population to stay put.
Ocean acidification for sure. If the pH of the oceans were to change over a long period of time it might be possible that evolution could compensate. On the time scales caused by climate change, no chance. This will be catastrophic to marine life and this can have domino effects.
In second place (by a slim margin in my view), would have to be changes to soil arability. Such changes can negatively impact crop production at a local level and global distribution simply isn’t a reality. There is already a severe food shortage predicted by 2050, and many of the crop production models do not take into account climate change. Those that do are grim. A local food shortage (negative food security) impacts socio-political stability and so has the capability to have far reaching impact.
Something that will effect coastal areas that are above the mean sea level rise is saltwater incursion into freshwater aquifers so even locations that aren’t underwater may not have fresh water to drink.
Water wars.
That we are divided when we need to be united …
Speculatively, the worst potential GW consequence is the firing of the clathrate gun.
True, the worst possible outcome of climate change is an extinction event. We would be looking at things like these:
While no one currently thinks that we’re at risk for any of these, fundamentally we don’t know where the tipping point is at which the global ecosystem suddenly flips into kill mode. So while we think we’re safe, it’s really a crap shoot.
Loss of our food supply.
Let’s stab through this canard. Due to simple geometry, fertile regions would shrink over much of the Earth’s land, and also the oceans. Loss of the Amazon (and African) rain forests is imminent and there is no major replacement in sight. And of course, the warmed Earth will have less hospitable weather. Mr. Gigo? I’m sure I missed several of the rebuttals for Mr. Amateur’s claim.
Yes, those who cite that climate jumps have occurred in the past, overlook that many of those jumps were slower than this one. And primates don’t have millions of years, not even hundreds of years, to react or evolve.
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Loss of our food supply.
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Yes, high human population makes ecological changes more threatening (if human numbers are to be maintained).
That’s Mr. Barbarian, to you.
I don’t disagree - but the immediate and fairly short-term movement of arable regions and available water will spark horrific geopolitical clashes long before reductions in food production reach major effect. The OP is “worst single consequence” and I think global warfare of unprecedented ferocity and savage nature fits that bill. For one thing, it will effectively prohibit any meaningful efforts to correct or adapt to the other problems on a meaningful scale, so a planet that ultimately can only support a billion people will be of little concern to the 500 million survivors.
Not really. This has happened before and the Earth is still here.
Or rather, it depends upon the timescale. If you’re looking at 50-100 years, then yes, great changes may happen, but in 1000 years time, even if the worst happens, it will just be noted as another population migration.
Then name a worse consequence of GW.
“The Earth is still here” is a peculiar standard. The Earth was once struck by a Mars sized planet named Theia and it’s still here. Destroying the Earth is pretty hard. To do that would require something like it falling into the sun or being consumed by a rogue black hole.