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by seveneightn9ne 2040 days ago
Fires, hurricanes, extreme heat, and drought are made more frequent & severe by climate change, and they certainly kill people. Climate change also disrupts food systems and will cause civil war and mass migrations. Millions will need to migrate just from coastal flooding, which I'd imagine will cause plenty of geopolitical strife and ultimately lead to many deaths.

"Existential threat" in my mind means humanity itself is threatened. The species will likely survive but millions if not billions will die due to climate change.
2 comments
rayiner 2040 days ago
Current projections of the effect of an RCP 8.5 scenario (a “do nothing” approach) suggest severe impacts to the Florida and gulf coasts, creating significant migrations inland. But the projected GDP hit will be an estimated 5%—i.e. losing a few years of growth.

It will be bad and disruptive and many people will die. But based on what we know about the “science” it’s not going to be “existential.” For example the wildfires on the west coast killed 35-40 people. We could have a dozen of those a year and it wouldn’t threaten the existence of humanity or really even civilization as we know it.

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lopmotr 2040 days ago
> more frequent & severe

If you don't quantify that, it's meaningless in relation to somebody's life expectancy.

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