[SwellJoe]

Already climate change is causing disease and death on an alarming (and growing) scale. Rich people, as always, have a buffer. We in the developed world will be the last to be hit by it and the least impacted.

But, Africans are already feeling it. The Zika virus, which was identified in the 40s, was never been considered a serious health crisis, until climate change enabled it to spread farther and faster. Anything that enables mosquitoes to live longer and breed faster is a death sentence for people in many parts of the world.

Drought-prone regions are also feeling it already. It isn't a matter of "just move to another place" when your wages are measured in single-digit dollars per week or month. So, as climate change progresses, more people go hungry.

And, I think what's most alarming about it is that it is progressing faster than even the most extreme (mainstream) projections predicted. Where small changes were expected over a long period of time, we seem to be seeing a domino effect, where slight rises in temperature trigger other events that cause faster change. So, we probably don't have a century to adjust, particularly in areas that already have challenging weather events; Florida and Louisiana because of hurricanes and flooding, Texas and California because of drought. Many of our food producing states will be forced to evolve rapidly...I doubt it will be a smooth transition. There's already constant political battles over water in some parts of California.

[mod]

Like the guy you replied to, I don't want any tone inferred into my question.

Those points you made, while worrisome, are not "civilization-ending" or catastrophic. Is there worse, or is that what you expect to continue?

[SwellJoe]

That's what I expect this decade. My concern is that it is all happening faster than even many of the most pessimistic scientists in the field expected, and it seems to be accelerating.

What I see when I try to extrapolate from what is happening today: Less food and clean water for more people, sometimes dramatically so in places that are already stressed for food and clean water (again, this will strike the poor far sooner than it will hit the developed world...but, that doesn't make it less horrifying, to me, and it is merely a leading indicator of what we will all experience). More forced migration, more refugee crises, more war over resources (including resources we don't yet generally currently consider worth going to war over, like water and arable land), more disease epidemics (and with no effective antibiotics to treat them), more mosquitoes, etc.

All of these things are already happening. We can see and measure them. And, they are trending in the wrong direction, and accelerating.

I just don't see how to interpret what we see happening as anything other than a slow moving disaster. There's only so much "relocation" can solve, when speaking of a world with billions of people. If you consider literally millions (or even billions) of people dying off to be a non-catastrophic event, I guess it's not catastrophic. But, it looks like a catastrophe, to me. And, when that many people are put at risk of starvation and disease, the likelihood of war, even world war, seems likely to increase remarkably.

Edit: A useful current article on the subject, with references: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/03/climat...

[tonmoy]

That seems like the current conclusion. But as people start dying, the population should decrease and that will limit global warming. Life as humans knew it has already ended, and civilization as we know it might end, but shouldn't mankind and civilization still survive pretty well? (Legitimate question)

[SwellJoe]

I'm not sure what to make of that question. I think part of what makes civilization "civil" is that we don't accept huge swaths of the human population dying horrible deaths so that a lucky and rich portion of the human population can survive.