Sure. There are any number of ways that climate change could destroy civilization. It could do it directly. For example, weather could get so extreme that it could directly destroy our infrastructure faster than we can rebuild it. Weather anomalies could destroy our ability to produce enough food to feed everyone. A catastrophic melting of the Greenland ice cap could raise sea levels to the point where all of the world's coastal cities would be inundated, and it could happen much faster than we could rebuild elsewhere (to say nothing of the fact that global commerce currently depends crucially on stable coast lines so we can have ports).
But much more likely is not the direct destruction of civilization, but rather increased political and economic tensions leading to nuclear war. Climate change is going to lead to a global game of musical chairs as the world's powers vie for ownership of what used to be arctic tundra but is soon to be prime farmland, or what used to be polar ice cap and is soon to be rich oil fields. People are already starting to quibble over who owns the northwest passage (is it an international waterway, or does it belong to Canada?) That didn't matter when you couldn't get through because it was filled with ice. When the ice clears and it becomes a prime shipping route, it matters a lot.
>But much more likely is not the direct destruction of civilization, but rather increased political and economic tensions leading to nuclear war.
Ah, I see that you and I actually do agree that the much more likely case is not a Mad Max scenario, and I agree political tension is the greatest danger. The worst case scenario is we see innocent people needlessly die due to the actions of other people--whether it be squabbling over who caused climate change, or over newly found resources it created, or migrations of peoples whose homelands have been destroyed. I really don't want that to happen.
>Weather anomalies could destroy our ability to produce enough food to feed everyone.
That is a good point, and a great reason why we should stop altering the global environment. It may not be that the ability to produce food is destroyed in the long run, but in the short run we struggle to adapt quickly enough to a changing environment--a topic for debate but certainly one for worry. While I concede there's no evidence this will necessarily happen, the fact is we simply don't know what we're doing when it comes to global climate science, and we're historically great at screwing up the planet with unintended consequences. So we should stop.
>weather could get so extreme that it could directly destroy our infrastructure faster than we can rebuild it.
While of course anything is possible, can you link me to scientific evidence that this will happen. Of course, there is in fact evidence that weather extremes will increase, the likelihood of this scenario where we literally cannot sustain infrastructure on the planet anymore, that would require very extreme weather and a loss of current technology (there already exists technology to build infrastructure which can withstand harsh weather and earthquakes).
I don't have a problem with the science, but the doomsday or "Mad Max" alarmist scenarios are not based in science, and that kind of irrational thinking may do more harm than good--leading to even more irrational thinking.
> the much more likely case is not a Mad Max scenario
I'd say Mad Max is the worst case. Possible, but certainly not inevitable. How likely it is depends on what we choose to do (or not do). But we have to stop talking about turning Earth into Venus or destroying all life or even humans going extinct. None of those are going to happen.
> The worst case scenario is we see innocent people needlessly die due to the actions of other people
The worst case scenario is the collapse of modern technological civilization with the resulting deaths of billions of innocent people. The worst case is really, really bad. So arguments like this:
> we simply don't know what we're doing when it comes to global climate science
don't carry a lot of weight with me. It's true that there is a lot of uncertainty. But that uncertainty cuts both ways. We might be erring in either direction, and the consequences of getting this wrong are very, very serious. So we ought to err on the conservative side. Because the only way to know for sure whether the worst case is possible is to actually make it happen.
> While of course anything is possible, can you link me to scientific evidence that this will happen.
No, of course not. But I can probably find some papers that show that it's possible.
The worst case scenario is we see innocent people needlessly die due to the actions of other people
There's a good case to be made that we're in that situation right now. Look at all the migrants fleeing the Syrian civil war (a conflict arguably driven by climate change as crops failed repeatedly in that area). The flow of said migrants has already resulted in a good deal of avoidable death and political conflict, and that's set to rise with the President of Turkey threatening to use flows of desperate people as a political weapon.
I don't have a problem with the science, but the doomsday or "Mad Max" alarmist scenarios are not based in science
A nuclear exchange would put us in Mad Max territory pretty quickly if you ask me. It's one of a number of unlikely but far from impossible scenarios that we should consider.
Oh yes. The Syrian conflict is due to climate change.
NOT to the political instability in the area caused by USA military interventions, that caused the societal destruction of Iraq and Libya and the rise of ISIS;
NOT to the fact that the CIA armed and trained rebels to topple the local government;
NOT to the American obsession that "Assad must go";
NOT to the fact that Israel favours weak neighbours, in order to have an upper hand in regional economics and conflicts (see for example Golan Heights);
NOT to the fact that Saudi Arabia and Turkey would like to replace the Shiite government with a Sunni one and win a proxy war against Iran.
No, it's becauz climate change. A strange one that follows borders very closely, since Israel seems to be doing absolutely fine.
The closest anyone above came to saying the Syrian conflict was due to climate change was "a conflict arguably driven by climate change as crops failed repeatedly in that area". Note the word "arguably" and the words "driven by" rather than "caused by"; the poster acknowledges that it is at most a contributing factor.
> Poor planning and management, wasteful irrigation systems, intensive wheat and cotton farming and a rapidly growing population are straining water resources in Syria in a year which has seen unprecedented internal displacement as a result of drought in eastern and northeastern parts of the country.
> “Population [estimated at 24 million in 2009] growth, urbanization and increased economic activity have contributed to the water crisis, as have climate change and mismanagement of the water sector,” said a local expert, who preferred anonymity.
> Blamed on a combination of climate change, man-made desertification and lack of irrigation, up to 60 percent of Syria's land and 1.3 million people (of a population of 22 million) are affected, according to the UN. Just over 800,000 people have lost their entire livelihood, according to the UN and IFRC.
[...]
> Aid agencies say a sustainable long-term plan for the affected areas is needed. "We need to do studies to identify a disaster risk reduction strategy on how to overcome climate change and have better farming practices," said Awad.
> Most studies currently describe climate change as a “threat multiplier” rather than a direct cause, just one of a host of interconnected factors – like poverty, exclusion of ethnic groups, government mismanagement, political instability and societal breakdown – that drive conflict.
It is incredibly easy to throw in "climate change" at the end of any list of factors to explain this or that event. Indeed, who is ever going to dispute it? Climate change is, by its very nature, everywhere- so everywhere it can be used as an explanation of something.
The links you provide follow this rule, listing many good reasons for the Syrian water scarcity (and not for the Syrian conflict)- such as dramatic population increase (83% increase in 23 years), land and water resources mismanagement, bad economic measures, wasteful agricultural practices- and throwing in climate change in the end, just to be safe.
In general, one could question how much sense does it make to even cite a far and dubious cause like climate change when more obvious causes are perfectly evident. My favourite example was a WHO report which calculated the future global health impact of climate change as an additional 250000 deaths per year. A huge number. And the method to get it was the following: given the current total number of deaths due to diarrohea, malaria and undernutrition (about 7 million deaths yearly- all of which in developing countries, therefore due to poverty and perfectly preventable), multiplying them by 3.5% (the projected impact of climate change on these issues) and voila... an excellent case for spending some 44 trillion dollars to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy. Or not?
You're arguing with people who have a religious view towards climate change. That poster, Smaug123, just came close to justifying the use of nuclear weapons in the other thread to the grandparent comment, don't take them seriously.
You've shown yourself to be insulting. You've shown yourself to argue for a case that the Syrian war is caused by climate change. You read a post where someone took an inflammatory meme out of context, and tries to make sense out of a situation where climate change could lead to nuclear war:
> "Guns don't kill people! People kill people!"
> Having climate change around sure makes it easier for people to work themselves into positions where they have to use the nukes.
And you defended it by insulting my intelligence. I am really not impressed.
I don't think my comment was ignorant at all. It might be that I just have a longer memory than you. In reality the US government gave a guarded but cautious welcome to Bashar Assad when he succeeded his father and carried himself like a reformist for a few years. But when poor harvests - among other factors - led to protests against the Syrian government, said government responded in a very repressive fashion, which in turn stirred up more opposition.
Clearly you think many other factors are more important, but if you think I'm 'dangerously ignorant' for considering food security as a factor then I'm not going to take your input very seriously.
Well, the US government was in excellent terms with Saddam Hussein, when he waged against Iran a war that killed between half a million and a million people.
Then invaded the country and had Saddam captured and killed on a false pretense, causing other 40 thousand deaths and plunging the country into civil war.
In Chile backed the coup of a bloodthirsty dictator that had thousands of opponents killed and tens of thousands tortured.
Is backing right now Saudi Arabia, one of the states with the worst human rights record on Earth, in the military repression of the Houtis rebellion in Yemen.
As for Syria, according to Wikipedia:
"The Assad government opposed the United States' invasion and occupation of Iraq. The Bush administration then began to destabilize the regime by increasing sectarian tensions, showcasing and publicising Syrian repression of Kurdish and Sunni groups, and financing political dissidents."
And "the main Syrian opposition body – the Syrian coalition – receives political, logistic and military support from the United States, Britain and France. Some Syrian rebels get training from the CIA at bases in Qatar, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Under the aegis of operation Timber Sycamore and other clandestine activities, CIA operatives and U.S. special operations troops have trained and armed nearly 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year since 2012."
Thus promoting and fuelling a civil war that has costed so far between 300 and 400 thousand deaths.
>A nuclear exchange would put us in Mad Max territory pretty quickly if you ask me. It's one of a number of unlikely but far from impossible scenarios that we should consider.
Climate change does not and can not create nuclear war. People create nuclear war.
I don't see why. You are ignoring the fact that many people simply don't share your value calculus, and that that group might include people who have control over nuclear weapons.
It's a mistake to assume everyone else has the same priorities and basic values that you do; their actions might seem illogical to you but actually be logical courses of actions if you knew what their starting premises were.
Oh give me a break. You are the very person going around insulting other's intelligence in this topic, telling people that disagree with you that you 'have a better memory than them,' or they 'have bad reading comprehension.'
Go ahead, keep justifying nuclear weapons on the basis of your presuppositions, whatever they are. The truth is given your reputation here, I'm not keen to give you the time of day to let my imagination run wild about what you are supposing if nuclear war is your answer.
Can you please substantiate this conclusion?