[Lorento]

Human life? Is it? Remember famines that used to regularly wipe out the peasants in most civilizations? It's been a while since disasters on those scales happened in most countries. Climate change doesn't sound so bad when you compare it to normal life a few centuries ago.

[saiya-jin]

yes and no... climate change is not about having +2 degrees globally, we can handle that easily even if sea rises significantly. Not even about extinction of a lot of species, which will trash some foodchains around the world. It's more about longer perspective - some effects are cascading, and in longer uncontroleld run, we might end up with pretty much inhabitable planet (at least for mankind). Life itself will handle this easily, mass extinctions happened many times in the past for various reasons, mankind in its current level of evolution would be probably over.

[DennisP]

For a look at what's actually projected for the climate, read the book Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read about 3,000 peer-reviewed papers and summarized them, with extensive references. It's quite frightening, and far beyond anything that human civilization has ever experienced, even at +2C. If we go all the way to +6 it's hard to imagine anyone surviving. Somewhere between +2 and +3, climate feedbacks kick in and take it several degrees further with no more help from us. Right now we're at +0.8.

[hyperbovine]

I didn't say anything about humans, but even the most anthropocentric among us can see that killing everything in sight serves to hasten our own demise. And yes, it is. Read the latest predictions, they are really that bad.