Climate change and civilizational collapse

Last updated
This 1902 article attributes to Swedish Nobel laureate (for chemistry) Svante Arrhenius a theory that coal combustion could eventually lead to a degree of global warming causing human extinction. 19021015 Hint to Coal Consumers - Svante Arrhenius - The Selma Morning Times - Global warming.jpg
This 1902 article attributes to Swedish Nobel laureate (for chemistry) Svante Arrhenius a theory that coal combustion could eventually lead to a degree of global warming causing human extinction.

Climate change and civilizational collapse refers to a hypothetical risk of the impacts of climate change reducing global socioeconomic complexity to the point complex human civilization effectively ends around the world, with humanity reduced to a less developed state. This hypothetical risk is typically associated with the idea of a massive reduction of human population caused by the direct and indirect impacts of climate change, and often, it is also associated with a permanent reduction of the Earth's carrying capacity. Finally, it is sometimes suggested that a civilizational collapse caused by climate change would soon be followed by human extinction.

Contents

Some researchers connect historical examples of societal collapse with adverse changes in local and/or global weather patterns. In particular, the 4.2-kiloyear event, a millennial-scale megadrought which took place in Africa and Asia between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago, has been linked with the collapse of the Old Kingdom in Egypt, the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia, the Liangzhu culture in the lower Yangtze River area and the Indus Valley Civilization. [2] [3] In Europe, the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, which was defined by events such as crop failure and the Thirty Years' War, took place during the Little Ice Age. In 2011, a general connection was proposed between adverse climate variations and long-term societal crises during the preindustrial times. [4] However, all of these events were limited to individual human societies: a collapse of the entire human civilization would be historically unprecedented.

Some of the more extreme warnings of civilizational collapse caused by climate change, such as a claim that civilization is highly likely to end by 2050, have attracted strong rebutals from scientists. [5] [6] The 2022 IPCC Sixth Assessment Report projects that human population would be in a range between 8.5 billion and 11 billion people by 2050. By the year 2100, the median population projection is at 11 billion people, while the maximum population projection is close to 16 billion people. The lowest projection for 2100 is around 7 billion, and this decline from present levels is primarily attributed to "rapid development and investment in education", with those projections associated with some of the highest levels of economic growth. [7] However, a minority of climate scientists have argued that higher levels of warming—between about 3 °C (5.4 °F) to 5 °C (9.0 °F) over preindustrial temperatures—may be incompatible with civilization, or that the lives of several billion people could no longer be sustained in such a world. [8] [9] [10] [11] In 2022, they have called for a so-called "climate endgame" research agenda into the probability of these risks, which had attracted significant media attention and some scientific controversy. [12] [13] [14]

Some of the most high-profile writing on climate change and civilizational collapse has been written by non-scientists. Notable examples include "The Uninhabitable Earth" [15] by David Wallace-Wells and "What if we stopped pretending?" by Jonathan Franzen, [16] which were both criticized for scientific inaccuracy. [17] [18] Climate change in popular culture is commonly represented in a highly exaggerated manner as well. Opinion polling has provided evidence that people across the world believe that the outcomes of civilizational collapse or human extinction are much more likely than the scientists believe them to be. [19] [20]

Suggested historical examples

This section is an excerpt from Societal collapse § Natural disasters and climate change.[ edit ]

Archeologists identified signs of a megadrought for a millennium between 5,000 and 4,000 years ago in Africa and Asia. The drying of the Green Sahara not only turned it into a desert but also disrupted the monsoon seasons in South and Southeast Asia and caused flooding in East Asia, which prevented successful harvest and the development of complex culture. It coincided with and may have caused the decline and the fall of the Akkadian Empire in Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley Civilization. [21] The dramatic shift in climate is known as the 4.2-kiloyear event. [22]

The highly advanced Indus Valley Civilization took roots around 3000 BC in what is now northwestern India and Pakistan and collapsed around 1700 BC. Since the Indus script has yet to be deciphered, the causes of its de-urbanization [23] remain a mystery, but there is some evidence pointing to natural disasters. [24] Signs of a gradual decline began to emerge in 1900 BC, and two centuries later, most of the cities had been abandoned. Archeological evidence suggests an increase in interpersonal violence and in infectious diseases like leprosy and tuberculosis. [25] [26] Historians and archeologists believe that severe and long-lasting drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia caused the collapse. [27] Evidence for earthquakes has also been discovered. Sea level changes are also found at two possible seaport sites along the Makran coast which are now inland. Earthquakes may have contributed to decline of several sites by direct shaking damage or by changes in sea level or in water supply. [28] [29] [30]

More generally, recent research pointed to climate change as a key player in the decline and fall of historical societies in China, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas. In fact, paleoclimatogical temperature reconstruction suggests that historical periods of social unrest, societal collapse, and population crash and significant climate change often occurred simultaneously. A team of researchers from Mainland China and Hong Kong were able to establish a causal connection between climate change and large-scale human crises in pre-industrial times. Short-term crises may be caused by social problems, but climate change was the ultimate cause of major crises, starting with economic depressions. [31] Moreover, since agriculture is highly dependent on climate, any changes to the regional climate from the optimum can induce crop failures. [32]

A more recent example is the General Crisis of the Seventeenth Century in Europe, which was a period of inclement weather, crop failure, economic hardship, extreme intergroup violence, and high mortality because of the Little Ice Age. The Maunder Minimum involved sunspots being exceedingly rare. Episodes of social instability track the cooling with a time lap of up to 15 years, and many developed into armed conflicts, such as the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), [31] which started as a war of succession to the Bohemian throne. Animosity between Protestants and Catholics in the Holy Roman Empire (in modern-day Germany) added fuel to the fire. Soon, it escalated to a huge conflict that involved all major European powers and devastated much of Germany. When the war had ended, some regions of the empire had seen their populations drop by as much as 70%. [33] [34] However, not all societies faced crises during this period. Tropical countries with high carrying capacities and trading economies did not suffer much because the changing climate did not induce an economic depression in those places. [31]

Modern discussion

2000s

As early as in 2004, a book titled Ecocriticism explored the connection between apocalypticism as expressed in religious contexts, and the secular apocalyptic interpretations of climate and environmental issues. [35] It argued that the tragic (preordained, with clearly delineated morality) or comic (focused on human flaws as opposed to inherent inevitability) apocalyptic framing was seen in the past works on environment, such as Rachel Carson's Silent Spring (1962), Paul and Anne Ehrlich's The Population Bomb (1972), and Al Gore's Earth in the Balance (1992). [36] [37]

In the mid-2000s, James Lovelock gave predictions to the British newspapers The Independent and The Guardian, where he suggested that much of Europe will have turned to desert and "billions of us will die and the few breeding pairs of people that survive will be in the Arctic where the climate remains tolerable" by the end of the 21st century. [38] [39] In 2008, he was quoted in The Guardian as saying that 80% of humans will perish by 2100, and that the climate change responsible for that will last 100,000 years. [40] By 2012, he admitted that climate change had proceeded slower than he expected. [41]

2010s-present

In late 2010s, several articles have attracted attention for their predictions of apocalyptic impacts caused by climate change. Firstly, there was "The Uninhabitable Earth", [15] a July 2017 New York magazine article by David Wallace-Wells, which had become the most-read story in the history of the magazine, [42] and was later adapted into a book. Another was "What if we stopped pretending?", an article written for The New Yorker by Jonathan Franzen in September 2019. [16] Both articles were heavily criticized by the fact-checking organization Climate Feedback for the numerous inaccuracies about tipping points in the climate system and other aspects of climate change research. [17] [18]

Other examples of this genre include "What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy?", a year 2022 article for TIME magazine by Parag Khanna, which had asserted that hundreds of millions of people dying in the upcoming years and the global population standing at 6 billion by the year 2050 was a plausible worst-case scenario. [43] Further, some reports, such as "the 2050 scenario" from the Australian Breakthrough – National Centre for Climate Restoration [44] and the self-published Deep Adaptation paper by Jem Bendell [45] had attracted substantial media coverage by making allegations that the outcomes of climate change are underestimated by the conventional scientific process. [46] [47] [48] [49] [50] [51] Those reports did not go through the peer review process, and the scientific assessment of these works finds them of very low credibility. [5] [52]

Notably, subsequent writing by David Wallace-Wells had stepped back from the claims he made in either version of The Uninhabitable Earth. In 2022, he authored a feature article for The New York Times, which was titled "Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View". [53] The following year, Kyle Paoletta argued in Harper's Magazine that the shift in tone made by David Wallace-Wells was indicative of a larger trend in media coverage of climate change taking place. [54]

Scientific consensus and controversy

The IPCC Sixth Assessment Report projects that human population would be in a range between 8.5 billion and 11 billion people by 2050; the median population projection for the year 2100 is at 11 billion people, while the maximum population projection is close to 16 billion people. The lowest projection for 2100 is around 7 billion, and this decline from present levels is primarily attributed to "rapid development and investment in education", with those projections associated with some of the highest levels of economic growth. [7] In November 2021, Nature surveyed the authors of the first part of the IPCC assessment report: out of 92 respondents, 88% have agreed that the world is experiencing a "climate crisis", yet when asked if they experience "anxiety, grief or other distress because of concerns over climate change?" just 40% answered "Yes, infrequently", with a further 21% responding "Yes, frequently", and the remaining 39% answering "No". [55] Similarly, when a high-profile paper warning of "the challenges of avoiding a ghastly future" was published in Frontiers in Conservation Science, its authors have noted that "even if major catastrophes occur during this interval, they would unlikely affect the population trajectory until well into the 22nd Century", and "there is no way—ethically or otherwise (barring extreme and unprecedented increases in human mortality)—to avoid rising human numbers and the accompanying overconsumption." [56] [57]

Only a minority of publishing scientists have been more open to apocalyptic rhetoric. In 2009, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the Emeritus Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, stated that if global warming reached 4 °C (7.2 °F) over the present levels, then the human population would likely be reduced to 1 billion. [8] In 2015, he complained that this remark was frequently misinterpreted as a call for active human population control rather than a prediction. [58] In a January 2019 interview for The Ecologist , he claimed that if we find reasons to give up on action, then there's a very big risk of things turning to an outright catastrophe, with the civilization ending and almost everything which had been built up over the past two thousand years destroyed. [9]

In May 2019, The Guardian interviewed several climate scientists about a world where 4 °C (7.2 °F) of warming over the preindustrial has occurred by 2100: one of them was Johan Rockström, who was reported to state "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that" in such a scenario. [10] Around the same time, similar claims were made by the Extinction Rebellion activist Roger Hallam, who said in a 2019 interview that climate change may "kill 6 billion people by 2100"—a remark which was soon questioned by the BBC News presenter Andrew Neil [59] and criticized as scientifically unfounded by Climate Feedback. [6] In November 2019, The Guardian article was corrected, acknowledging that Rockström was misquoted and his real remarks were "It’s difficult to see how we could accommodate eight billion people or maybe even half of that". [10]

Climate endgame

In August 2022, Schellnhuber, Rockström and several other researchers, many of whom were associated with Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, have published a paper in PNAS which argued that a lack of what they called "integrated catastrophe assessment" meant that the risk of societal collapse, or even eventual human extinction caused by climate change and its interrelated impacts such as famine (crop loss, drought), extreme weather (hurricanes, floods), war (caused by the scarce resources), systemic risk (relating to migration, famine, or conflict), and disease was "dangerously underexplored". [13] [12] The paper suggested that the following terms should be actively used in the future research.

Conceptual causal loop diagram of cascading global climate failure used in the "Climate endgame" paper. Cascading global climate failure.jpg
Conceptual causal loop diagram of cascading global climate failure used in the "Climate endgame" paper.
Defining key terms in the Climate Endgame agenda [12]
TermDefinition
Latent riskRisk that is dormant under one set of conditions but becomes active under another set of conditions.
Risk cascadeChains of risk occurring when an adverse impact triggers a set of linked risks.
Systemic riskThe potential for individual disruptions or failures to cascade into a system-wide failure.
Extreme climate changeMean global surface temperature rise of 3 °C (5.4 °F) or more above preindustrial levels by 2100.
Extinction riskThe probability of human extinction within a given timeframe.
Extinction threatA plausible and significant contributor to total extinction risk.
Societal fragilityThe potential for smaller damages to spiral into global catastrophic or extinction risk due to societal vulnerabilities, risk cascades, and maladaptive responses.
Societal collapseSignificant sociopolitical fragmentation and/or state failure along with the relatively rapid, enduring, and significant loss capital, and systems identity; this can lead to large-scale increases in mortality and morbidity.
Global catastrophic riskThe probability of a loss of 25% of the global population and the severe disruption of global critical systems (such as food) within a given timeframe (years or decades).
Global catastrophic threatA plausible and significant contributor to global catastrophic risk; the potential for climate change to be a global catastrophic threat can be referred to as "catastrophic climate change".
Global decimation riskThe probability of a loss of 10% (or more) of global population and the severe disruption of global critical systems (such as food) within a given timeframe (years or decades).
Global decimation threatA plausible and significant contributor to global decimation risk.
Endgame territoryLevels of global warming and societal fragility that are judged sufficiently probable to constitute climate change as an extinction threat.
Worst-case warmingThe highest empirically and theoretically plausible level of global warming.
Overlap between state fragility, extreme heat, and nuclear and biological catastrophic hazards.jpg
Overlap between state fragility, extreme heat, and nuclear and biological catastrophic hazards according to the "Endgame" paper [12]
Overlap between future population distribution and extreme heat.jpg
Overlap between future population distribution and extreme heat according to the same paper [12] This graphic was criticized for using a scenario considered unlikely and worse than the present trajectory. [14]

The paper was very high-profile, receiving extensive media coverage [13] [60] and over 180,000 page views by 2023. It was also the subject of several response papers from other scientists, all of which were also published at PNAS. Most have welcomed its proposals while disagreeing on some of the details of the suggested agenda. [61] [62] [63] [64] However, a response paper authored by Roger Pielke Jr. and fellow University of Colorado Boulder researchers Matthew Burgess and Justin Ritchie was far more critical. They have argued that one of the paper's main arguments—the supposed lack of research into higher levels of global warming—was baseless, as on the contrary, the scenarios of highest global warming called RCP 8.5 and SSP5-8.5 have accounted for around half of all mentions in the "impacts" section of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report, and SSP3-7, the scenario of slightly lower warming used in some of the paper's graphics, had also assumed greater emissions and more extensive coal use than what had been projected by the International Energy Agency. They have also argued that just as the past projections of overpopulation were used to justify one-child policy in China, a disproportionate focus on apocalyptic scenarios may be used to justify despotism and fascist policies. [14] In response, the authors of the original paper wrote that in their view, catastrophic risks may occur even at lower levels of warming due to risks involving human responses and societal fragility. They also suggested that instead of the one-child policy, a better metaphor for responses to extreme risks research would be the 1980s exploration of the impacts of nuclear winter, which had spurred nuclear disarmament efforts. [65]

"Youth vs Apocalypse" banner seen at San Francisco Youth Climate Strike in 2019 San Francisco Youth Climate Strike - March 15, 2019 - 29.jpg
"Youth vs Apocalypse" banner seen at San Francisco Youth Climate Strike in 2019

Public opinion

Some public polling shows that beliefs in civilizational collapse or even human extinction have become widespread amongst the general population in many countries. In 2021, a publication in The Lancet surveyed 10,000 people aged 16–25 years in ten countries (Australia, Brazil, Finland, France, India, Nigeria, Philippines, Portugal, the UK, and the US): one of its findings was 55% of respondents agreeing with the statement "humanity is doomed". [19]

In 2020, a survey by a French think tank Jean Jaurès Foundation found that in five developed countries (France, Germany, Italy, the UK and the US), a significant fraction of the population agreed with the statement that "civilization as we know it will collapse in the years to come"; the percentages ranged from 39% in Germany and 52% or 56% in the US and the UK to 65% in France and 71% in Italy. [20]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Holocene extinction</span> Ongoing extinction event caused by human activity

The Holocene extinction, or Anthropocene extinction, is the ongoing extinction event caused by humans during the Holocene epoch. These extinctions span numerous families of plants and animals, including mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates, and affecting not just terrestrial species but also large sectors of marine life. With widespread degradation of biodiversity hotspots, such as coral reefs and rainforests, as well as other areas, the vast majority of these extinctions are thought to be undocumented, as the species are undiscovered at the time of their extinction, which goes unrecorded. The current rate of extinction of species is estimated at 100 to 1,000 times higher than natural background extinction rates and is increasing. During the past 100–200 years, biodiversity loss and species extinction have accelerated, to the point that most conservation biologists now believe that human activity has either produced a period of mass extinction, or is on the cusp of doing so. As such, after the "Big Five" mass extinctions, the Holocene extinction event has also been referred to as the sixth mass extinction or sixth extinction; given the recent recognition of the Capitanian mass extinction, the term seventh mass extinction has also been proposed for the Holocene extinction event.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tundra</span> Biome where plant growth is hindered by frigid temperatures

In physical geography, tundra is a type of biome where tree growth is hindered by frigid temperatures and short growing seasons. The term is a Russian word adapted from Sámi languages. There are three regions and associated types of tundra: Arctic tundra, alpine tundra, and Antarctic tundra.

An ecological or environmental crisis occurs when changes to the environment of a species or population destabilizes its continued survival. Some of the important causes include:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">West Antarctic Ice Sheet</span> Segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West (or Lesser) Antarctica

The West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is the segment of the continental ice sheet that covers West Antarctica, the portion of Antarctica on the side of the Transantarctic Mountains that lies in the Western Hemisphere. It is classified as a marine-based ice sheet, meaning that its bed lies well below sea level and its edges flow into floating ice shelves. The WAIS is bounded by the Ross Ice Shelf, the Ronne Ice Shelf, and outlet glaciers that drain into the Amundsen Sea.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Human extinction</span> Hypothetical end of the human species

Human extinction is the hypothetical end of the human species, either by population decline due to extraneous natural causes, such as an asteroid impact or large-scale volcanism, or via anthropogenic destruction (self-extinction), for example by sub-replacement fertility.

Human overpopulation describes a concern that human populations may become too large to be sustained by their environment or resources in the long term. The topic is usually discussed in the context of world population, though it may concern individual nations, regions, and cities.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Extinction risk from climate change</span> Risk of plant or animal species becoming extinct due to climate change

There are several plausible pathways that could lead to an increased extinction risk from climate change. Every plant and animal species has evolved to exist within a certain ecological niche. But climate change leads to changes of temperature and average weather patterns. These changes can push climatic conditions outside of the species' niche, and ultimately render it extinct. Normally, species faced with changing conditions can either adapt in place through microevolution or move to another habitat with suitable conditions. However, the speed of recent climate change is very fast. Due to this rapid change, for example cold-blooded animals may struggle to find a suitable habitat within 50 km of their current location at the end of this century.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tipping points in the climate system</span> Large and possibly irreversible changes in the climate system

In climate science, a tipping point is a critical threshold that, when crossed, leads to large, accelerating and often irreversible changes in the climate system. If tipping points are crossed, they are likely to have severe impacts on human society and may accelerate global warming. Tipping behavior is found across the climate system, for example in ice sheets, mountain glaciers, circulation patterns in the ocean, in ecosystems, and the atmosphere. Examples of tipping points include thawing permafrost, which will release methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, or melting ice sheets and glaciers reducing Earth's albedo, which would warm the planet faster.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in California</span>

Climate change in California has resulted in higher than average temperatures, leading to increased occurrences of drought and wildfires. During the next few decades in California, climate change is likely to further reduce water availability, increase wildfire risk, decrease agricultural productivity, and threaten coastal ecosystems. The state will also be impacted economically due to the rising cost of providing water to its residents along with revenue and job loss in the agricultural sector. California has taken a number of steps to mitigate impacts of climate change in the state.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Effects of climate change on plant biodiversity</span>

There is an ongoing decline in plant biodiversity, just like there is ongoing biodiversity loss for many other life forms. One of the causes for this decline is climate change. Environmental conditions play a key role in defining the function and geographic distributions of plants, in combination with other factors, thereby modifying patterns of biodiversity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sea level rise</span> Rise in sea levels due to climate change

Between 1901 and 2018, average global sea level rose by 15–25 cm (6–10 in), an average of 1–2 mm (0.039–0.079 in) per year. This rate accelerated to 4.62 mm (0.182 in)/yr for the decade 2013–2022. Climate change due to human activities is the main cause. Between 1993 and 2018, thermal expansion of water accounted for 42% of sea level rise. Melting temperate glaciers accounted for 21%, while polar glaciers in Greenland accounted for 15% and those in Antarctica for 8%. Sea level rise lags changes in the Earth's temperature, and sea level rise will therefore continue to accelerate between now and 2050 in response to warming that has already happened. What happens after that depends on human greenhouse gas emissions. Sea level rise may slow down between 2050 and 2100 if there are deep cuts in emissions. It could then reach slightly over 30 cm (1 ft) from now by 2100. With high emissions it may accelerate. It could rise by 1 m or even 2 m by then. In the long run, sea level rise would amount to 2–3 m (7–10 ft) over the next 2000 years if warming amounts to 1.5 °C (2.7 °F). It would be 19–22 metres (62–72 ft) if warming peaks at 5 °C (9.0 °F).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global catastrophic risk</span> Potentially harmful worldwide events

A global catastrophic risk or a doomsday scenario is a hypothetical event that could damage human well-being on a global scale, even endangering or destroying modern civilization. An event that could cause human extinction or permanently and drastically curtail humanity's existence or potential is known as an "existential risk."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Permafrost carbon cycle</span> Sub-cycle of the larger global carbon cycle

The permafrost carbon cycle or Arctic carbon cycle is a sub-cycle of the larger global carbon cycle. Permafrost is defined as subsurface material that remains below 0o C for at least two consecutive years. Because permafrost soils remain frozen for long periods of time, they store large amounts of carbon and other nutrients within their frozen framework during that time. Permafrost represents a large carbon reservoir, one which was often neglected in the initial research determining global terrestrial carbon reservoirs. Since the start of the 2000s, however, far more attention has been paid to the subject, with an enormous growth both in general attention and in the scientific research output.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Representative Concentration Pathway</span> Projections used in climate change modeling

A Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) is a greenhouse gas concentration trajectory adopted by the IPCC. Four pathways were used for climate modeling and research for the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) in 2014. The pathways describe different climate change scenarios, all of which are considered possible depending on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted in the years to come. The RCPs – originally RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 – are labelled after a possible range of radiative forcing values in the year 2100. The higher values mean higher greenhouse gas emissions and therefore higher global temperatures and more pronounced effects of climate change. The lower RCP values, on the other hand, are more desirable for humans but require more stringent climate change mitigation efforts to achieve them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change in Antarctica</span> Impacts of climate change on Antarctica

Climate change caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities occurs everywhere on Earth, and while Antarctica is less vulnerable to it than any other continent, climate change in Antarctica has already been observed. There has been an average temperature increase of >0.05 °C/decade since 1957 across the continent, although it had been uneven. While West Antarctica warmed by over 0.1 °C/decade from the 1950s to the 2000s and the exposed Antarctic Peninsula has warmed by 3 °C (5.4 °F) since the mid-20th century, the colder and more stable East Antarctica had been experiencing cooling until the 2000s. Around Antarctica, the Southern Ocean has absorbed more heat than any other ocean, with particularly strong warming at depths below 2,000 m (6,600 ft) and around the West Antarctic, which has warmed by 1 °C (1.8 °F) since 1955.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Biodiversity loss</span> Extinction of species or loss of species in a given habitat

Biodiversity loss happens when plant or animal species disappear completely from Earth (extinction) or when there is a decrease or disappearance of species in a specific area. Biodiversity loss means that there is a reduction in biological diversity in a given area. The decrease can be temporary or permanent. It is temporary if the damage that led to the loss is reversible in time, for example through ecological restoration. If this is not possible, then the decrease is permanent. The cause of most of the biodiversity loss is, generally speaking, human activities that push the planetary boundaries too far. These activities include habitat destruction and land use intensification. Further problem areas are air and water pollution, over-exploitation, invasive species and climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate apocalypse</span> Term to describe possible catastrophic events due to climate change

A climate apocalypse is a term used to denote a predicted scenario involving the global collapse of human civilization due to climate change. Such collapse could theoretically arrive through a set of interrelated concurrent factors such as famine, extreme weather, war and conflict, and disease. There are many similar terms in use such as climate dystopia, collapse, endgame, and catastrophe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Climate change and birds</span>

Significant work has gone into analyzing the effects of climate change on birds. Like other animal groups, birds are affected by anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change. The research includes tracking the changes in species' life cycles over decades in response to the changing world, evaluating the role of differing evolutionary pressures and even comparing museum specimens with modern birds to track changes in appearance and body structure. Predictions of range shifts caused by the direct and indirect impacts of climate change on bird species are amongst the most important, as they are crucial for informing animal conservation work, required to minimize extinction risk from climate change.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Global catastrophe scenarios</span> Scenarios in which a global catastrophe creates harm

Scenarios in which a global catastrophic risk creates harm have been widely discussed. Some sources of catastrophic risk are anthropogenic, such as global warming, environmental degradation, and nuclear war. Others are non-anthropogenic or natural, such as meteor impacts or supervolcanoes. The impact of these scenarios can vary widely, depending on the cause and the severity of the event, ranging from temporary economic disruption to human extinction. Many societal collapses have already happened throughout human history.

The decline of wild mammal populations globally has been an occurrence spanning over the past 50,000 years, at the same time as the populations of humans and livestock have increased. Nowadays, the total biomass of wild mammals on land is believed to be seven times lower than its prehistoric values, while the biomass of marine mammals had declined fivefold. At the same time, the biomass of humans is "an order of magnitude higher than that of all wild mammals", and the biomass of livestock mammals like pigs and cattle is even larger than that. Even as wild mammals had declined, the growth in the numbers of humans and livestock had increased total mammal biomass fourfold. Only 4% of that increased number are wild mammals, while livestock and humans amount to 60% and 36%. Alongside the simultaneous halving of plant biomass, these striking declines are considered part of the prehistoric phase of the Holocene extinction.

References

  1. ↑ "Hint to Coal Consumers". The Selma Morning Times. Selma, Alabama, US. October 15, 1902. p. 4."Carbonic acid" refers to carbon dioxide when dissolved in water.
  2. ↑ Gibbons, Ann (1993). "How the Akkadian Empire Was Hung Out to Dry". Science. 261 (5124): 985. Bibcode:1993Sci...261..985G. doi:10.1126/science.261.5124.985. PMID   17739611.
  3. ↑ Li, Chun-Hai; Li, Yong-Xiang; Zheng, Yun-Fei; Yu, Shi-Yong; Tang, Ling-Yu; Li, Bei-Bei; Cui, Qiao-Yu (August 2018). "A high-resolution pollen record from East China reveals large climate variability near the Northgrippian-Meghalayan boundary (around 4200 years ago) exerted societal influence". Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology. 512: 156–165. Bibcode:2018PPP...512..156L. doi:10.1016/j.palaeo.2018.07.031. ISSN   0031-0182. S2CID   133896325.
  4. ↑ Zhang, David D.; Lee, Harry F.; Wang, Cong; Li, Baosheng; Pei, Qing; Zhang, Jane; An, Yulun (18 October 2011). "The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (42): 17296–17301. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1104268108 . PMC   3198350 . PMID   21969578. S2CID   33451915.
  5. 1 2 "Claim that human civilization could end in 30 years is speculative, not supported with evidence". Climate Feedback. June 4, 2019. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  6. 1 2 "Prediction by Extinction Rebellion's Roger Hallam that climate change will kill 6 billion people by 2100 is unsupported". Climate Feedback. August 22, 2019. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  7. 1 2 Mycoo, M., M. Wairiu, D. Campbell, V. Duvat, Y. Golbuu, S. Maharaj, J. Nalau, P. Nunn, J. Pinnegar, and O. Warrick, 2022: Chapter 3: Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals. In Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change [ K. Riahi, R.Schaeffer, J.Arango, K. Calvin, C. Guivarch, T. Hasegawa, K. Jiang, E. Kriegler, R. Matthews, G. P. Peters, A. Rao, S. Robertson, A. M. Sebbit, J. Steinberger, M. Tavoni, D. P. van Vuuren]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 463–464 |doi= 10.1017/9781009157926.005
  8. 1 2 Kanter, James (13 March 2009). "Scientist: Warming Could Cut Population to 1 Billion". The New York Times. Retrieved 4 May 2010.
  9. 1 2 "'It's nonlinearity - stupid!'". The Ecologist. 3 January 2019. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
  10. 1 2 3 Vince, Gaia (May 18, 2019). "The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will work". The Observer. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  11. ↑ Carrington, Damian (30 September 2023). "We're not doomed yet': climate scientist Michael Mann on our last chance to save human civilisation". The Guardian. Retrieved 2023-10-19.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kemp, Luke; Xu, Chi; Depledge, Joanna; Ebi, Kristie L.; Gibbins, Goodwin; Kohler, Timothy A.; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Steffen, Will; Lenton, Timothy M. (23 August 2022). "Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (34): e2108146119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11908146K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2108146119 . PMC   9407216 . PMID   35914185. CC-BY icon.svg Text was copied from this source, which is available under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
  13. 1 2 3 "Climate endgame: risk of human extinction 'dangerously underexplored'". The Guardian. 1 August 2022. Retrieved 15 September 2022.
  14. 1 2 3 Burgess, Matthew G.; Pielke Jr., Roger; Ritchie, Justin (October 10, 2022). "Catastrophic climate risks should be neither understated nor overstated" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (42): e2214347119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11914347B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2214347119 . PMID   36215483.
  15. 1 2 David Wallace-Wells (July 10, 2017). "The Uninhabitable Earth". New York . Retrieved July 11, 2017.
  16. 1 2 Franzen, Jonathan (2019-09-08). "What if We Stopped Pretending the Climate Apocalypse Can Be Stopped?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 2020-01-02.
  17. 1 2 "Scientists explain what New York Magazine article on "The Uninhabitable Earth" gets wrong". Climate Feedback. July 12, 2017. Retrieved July 13, 2017.
  18. 1 2 "2°C is not known to be a "point of no return", as Jonathan Franzen claims". Climate Feedback. September 17, 2019. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  19. 1 2 Hickman, Caroline; Marks, Elizabeth; Pihkala, Panu; Clayton, Susan; Lewandowski, Eric; Mayall, Elouise E; Wray, Britt; Mellor, Catriona; van Susteren, Lise (1 December 2021). "Climate anxiety in children and young people and their beliefs about government responses to climate change: a global survey" . The Lancet Planetary Health. 5 (12): e863–e873. doi:10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00278-3. PMID   34895496. S2CID   263447086.
  20. 1 2 Spinney, Laura (October 11, 2020). "'Humans weren't always here. We could disappear': meet the collapsologists". The Guardian. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  21. ↑ Choi, Charles (24 August 2020). "Ancient megadrought may explain civilization's 'missing millennia' in Southeast Asia". Science Magazine. Retrieved 31 August 2020.
  22. ↑ "Collapse of civilizations worldwide defines youngest unit of the Geologic Time Scale". News and Meetings. International Commission on Stratigraphy. Retrieved 15 July 2018.
  23. ↑ Pillalamarri, Akhilesh (2 June 2016). "Revealed: The Truth Behind the Indus Valley Civilization's 'Collapse'". The Diplomat – The Diplomat is a current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific, with news and analysis on politics, security, business, technology and life across the region. Retrieved 10 April 2022.
  24. ↑ National Geographic 2007, pp. 48–49.
  25. ↑ Robbins-Schug, G.; Gray, K.M.; Mushrif, V.; Sankhyan, A.R. (November 2012). "A Peaceful Realm? Trauma and Social Differentiation at Harappa" (PDF). International Journal of Paleopathology. 2 (2–3): 136–147. doi:10.1016/j.ijpp.2012.09.012. PMID   29539378. S2CID   3933522.
  26. ↑ Robbins-Schug, G.; Blevins, K. Elaine; Cox, Brett; Gray, Kelsey; Mushrif-Tripathy, Veena (December 2013). "Infection, Disease, and Biosocial Process at the End of the Indus Civilization". PLOS ONE. 0084814 (12): e84814. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...884814R. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0084814 . PMC   3866234 . PMID   24358372.
  27. ↑ Lawler, A. (6 June 2008). "Indus Collapse: The End or the Beginning of an Asian Culture?". Science Magazine. 320 (5881): 1282–1283. doi:10.1126/science.320.5881.1281. PMID   18535222. S2CID   206580637.
  28. ↑ Grijalva, K.A.; Kovach, L.R.; Nur, A.M. (1 December 2006). "Evidence for Tectonic Activity During the Mature Harappan Civilization, 2600-1800 BCE". AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2006: T51D–1553. Bibcode:2006AGUFM.T51D1553G.
  29. ↑ Prasad, Manika; Nur, Amos (1 December 2001). "Tectonic Activity during the Harappan Civilization". AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts. 2001: U52B–07. Bibcode:2001AGUFM.U52B..07P.
  30. ↑ Kovach, Robert L.; Grijalva, Kelly; Nur, Amos (1 October 2010). Earthquakes and civilizations of the Indus Valley: A challenge for archaeoseismology. Geological Society of America Special Papers. Vol. 471. pp. 119–127. doi:10.1130/2010.2471(11). ISBN   978-0-8137-2471-3.
  31. 1 2 3 Zhang, David D.; Lee, Harry F.; Wang, Cong; Li, Baosheng; Pei, Qing; Zhang, Jane; An, Yulun (18 October 2011). "The causality analysis of climate change and large-scale human crisis". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 108 (42): 17296–17301. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1104268108 . PMC   3198350 . PMID   21969578. S2CID   33451915.
  32. ↑ Zhang, David D.; Brecke, Peter; Lee, Harry F.; He, Yuan-Qing; Zhang, Jane (4 December 2007). Ehrlich, Paul R. (ed.). "Global climate change, war, and population decline in recent human history". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 104 (49): 19214–19219. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10419214Z. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0703073104 . PMC   2148270 . PMID   18048343.
  33. ↑ National Geographic 2007, pp. 190–191.
  34. ↑ See the end of the section 'Demographic dynamics' for a chart of the death rate (per 100,000) of the Thirty Years' War compared to other armed conflicts between 1400 and 2000.
  35. ↑ Garrard, Greg (2004). Ecocriticism. New York, New York: Routledge. pp. 85–87. ISBN   9780415196925.
  36. ↑ Garrard, Greg (2004). Ecocriticism. New York, New York: Routledge. pp. 93–104. ISBN   9780415196925.
  37. ↑ Foust, Christina R.; O'Shannon Murphy, William (2009). "Revealing and Reframing Apocalyptic Tragedy in Global Warming Discourse". Environmental Communication. 3 (2): 151–167. Bibcode:2009Ecomm...3..151F. doi: 10.1080/17524030902916624 . S2CID   144658834.
  38. ↑ Lovelock J (16 January 2006). "The Earth is about to catch a morbid fever that may last as long as 100,000 years". The Independent . Archived from the original on 8 April 2006. Retrieved 4 October 2007.
  39. ↑ Jeffries S (15 March 2007). "We should be scared stiff". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 July 2022. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  40. ↑ Aitkenhead D (1 March 2008). "James Lovelock: 'Enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan'". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 28 July 2022. Retrieved 28 July 2022.
  41. ↑ Johnston I (23 April 2012). "'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change". MSNBC. Archived from the original on 24 April 2012. Retrieved 12 November 2016.
  42. ↑ Miller, Laura (26 July 2017). "What Kind of Novel Do You Write When You Believe Civilization Is Doomed?". Slate Magazine. Retrieved 23 May 2020. 'The Uninhabitable Earth,' the most-read story in New York magazine's history
  43. ↑ Khanna, Parag (August 15, 2022). "What Comes After the Coming Climate Anarchy?". TIME. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  44. ↑ Spratt, David; Dunlop, Ian T. (May 2019). "Existential climate-related security risk: A scenario approach". breakthroughonline.org.au. Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration.
  45. ↑ Bendell, Jem (27 July 2018). "Deep adaptation: a map for navigating climate tragedy". Occasional Papers. Ambleside, UK: University of Cumbria. 2: 1–31.
  46. ↑ Hunter, Jack (16 March 2020). "The 'climate doomers' preparing for society to fall apart". BBC News. Retrieved 8 October 2020.
  47. ↑ "'High likelihood of human civilisation coming to end' by 2050, report finds". The Independent. 2019-06-04. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
  48. ↑ Hollingsworth, Julia (4 June 2019). "Global warming could devastate civilization by 2050: report". CNN. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
  49. ↑ Ahmed, Nahfeez (November 22, 2019). "The Collapse of Civilization May have Already Begun". VICE. Retrieved October 8, 2021.
  50. ↑ Best, Shivali (2019-06-05). "Human civilisation 'will collapse by 2050' if we don't tackle climate change". mirror. Retrieved 2019-12-21.
  51. ↑ Bromwich, Jonah E. (26 December 2020). "The Darkest Timeline". The New York Times. Retrieved October 8, 2021.
  52. ↑ Nicholas, Thomas; Hall, Galen; Schmidt, Colleen (14 July 2020). "The faulty science, doomism, and flawed conclusions of Deep Adaptation". openDemocracy. Retrieved 8 October 2021.
  53. ↑ Wallace-Wells, David (October 26, 2022). "Beyond Catastrophe: A New Climate Reality Is Coming Into View". New York Times. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  54. ↑ Paoletta, Kyle (April 2023). "The Incredible Disappearing Doomsday". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved 5 October 2023.
  55. ↑ "Top climate scientists are sceptical that nations will rein in global warming". Nature . 1 November 2021. Archived from the original on 2 November 2021. Retrieved 4 October 2023.
  56. ↑ Bradshaw, Corey J. A.; Ehrlich, Paul R.; Beattie, Andrew; Ceballos, Gerardo; Crist, Eileen; Diamond, Joan; Dirzo, Rodolfo; Ehrlich, Anne H.; Harte, John; Harte, Mary Ellen; Pyke, Graham; Raven, Peter H.; Ripple, William J.; Saltré, Frédérik; Turnbull, Christine; Wackernagel, Mathis; Blumstein, Daniel T. (2021). "Underestimating the Challenges of Avoiding a Ghastly Future". Frontiers in Conservation Science. 1. doi: 10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419 .
  57. ↑ Weston, Phoebe (January 13, 2021). "Top Scientists Warn of 'Ghastly Future of Mass Extinction' and Climate Disruption". The Guardian . Retrieved February 13, 2021.
  58. ↑ Pentin, Edward (June 19, 2015). "German Climatologist Refutes Claims He Promotes Population Control". National Catholic Register. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  59. ↑ Adedokun, Naomi (October 19, 2019). "Andrew Neil dismantles Extinction Rebellion's claim that 'billions of children would die'". Daily Express. Retrieved January 20, 2023.
  60. ↑ Kraus, Tina; Lee, Ian (3 August 2022). "Scientists say the world needs to think about a worst-case "climate endgame"". CBS News. Retrieved 11 August 2022.
  61. ↑ Steel, Daniel; DesRoches, C. Tyler; Mintz-Woo, Kian (October 6, 2022). "Climate change and the threat to civilization". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (42): e2210525119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11910525S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2210525119 . hdl: 10468/13756 .
  62. ↑ Kelman, Ilan (October 10, 2022). "Connecting disciplines and decades". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (42): e2213953119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11913953K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2213953119 . PMID   36215476.
  63. ↑ Bhowmik, Avit; McCaffrey, Mark S.; Roon Varga, Juliette (November 2, 2022). "From Climate Endgame to Climate Long Game". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (45): e2214975119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11914975B. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2214975119 . PMC   9659379 . PMID   36322727.
  64. ↑ Ruhl, J. B.; Craig, Robin Kundis (November 29, 2022). "Designing extreme climate change scenarios for anticipatory governance". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (49): e2216155119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11916155R. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2216155119 . PMC   9894176 . PMID   36445959.
  65. ↑ Kemp, Luke; Xu, Chi; Depledge, Joanna; Ebi, Kristie L.; Gibbins, Goodwin; Kohler, Timothy A.; Rockström, Johan; Scheffer, Marten; Schellnhuber, Hans Joachim; Steffen, Will; Lenton, Timothy M. (October 10, 2022). "Reply to Burgess et al: Catastrophic climate risks are neglected, plausible, and safe to study". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 119 (42): e2214884119. Bibcode:2022PNAS..11914884K. doi: 10.1073/pnas.2214884119 . PMC   9586271 . PMID   36215481.

Works cited

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.