Yes but climate disaster isn't a cult. There's the crazy guy who thinks Zeus is going to strike us all down and then there's the oceanographer out there with actual thermometers and log books saying hey this water is getting really damn warm.
Will be the end of life on earth? Not at all. Will it be the total extinction of humans? Probably not. Will it be far more war, starvation, death, and human suffering than we have collectively ever witnessed? Yes.
There is absolute nothing to suggest catastrophic or even rapid climate change. Yes we can detect human activity that is changing the planet and will have impacts on the climate. Preaching that it will result in any more suffering than the current or a previous state of the world is completely faith based without evidence.
Every credible scientist who studies this says the opposite, that climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of events impacting millions of people. Yes, things like natural disasters, famines, or wars caused by resource competition aren’t new but we’ve been seeing them intensified for at least a decade and there’s no reason to believe that trend will reverse.
That’s a very different claim then that climate change will not “result in any more suffering than the current or a previous state of the world”. As that editorial acknowledges, even the 2 degrees we’re tracked for will have plenty of catastrophic outcomes:
> We will have caused incalculable damage to ecosystems. We will have worsened droughts, floods, famines, heat waves. We will have bleached coral reefs, acidified the ocean, driven countless animal species to extinction. Millions, maybe tens of millions, of people will die from increased heat, and more will be killed by the indirect consequences of climate change. Far more yet will be forced to flee their homes or live lives of deep poverty or suffering.
It’s also worth remembering that the 4-5 degree predictions were the worst case forecasts assuming that we did nothing, and the more optimistic tone of that piece is recognizing the benefits of having made changes. While it’s true that we don’t want to give up hope it’s even more important that we don’t use the successes we have had to support the fossil fuel industry-funded siren calls for inaction. Our goals for the world we leave our children should be much higher than “humans are not reduced to roving post-apocalyptic bands of survivors”. A world where the population equivalents of large cities are dying from unprecedented weather events is still one where they’re going to wish we’d listened to climate scientists decades earlier.
Saying humanity will be extinct in X years is completely unsupported by even the most dramatic predictions. If you believe it, you are on equal footing with the people waiting for the four horseman to show up. Teaching that to children will probably be seen as child abuse by the children who are being taught it today.
Will be the end of life on earth? Not at all. Will it be the total extinction of humans? Probably not. Will it be far more war, starvation, death, and human suffering than we have collectively ever witnessed? Yes.