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Comment by randyrand | Hacker News Reader

The consensus is that unchecked GW would not be a human extinction event.

Correct, I don't believe that human extinction is in the cards from unchecked GW. Though it could well still be the greatest and most prolonged disaster in recorded history. There is an enormous gulf between minimum thresholds for, respectively:

  - "Not a big deal"
  - A catastrophe, comparable to World War II
  - The greatest catastrophe in recorded history
  - The extinction of industrialized civilization
  - The extinction of the human species
  - The extinction of multicellular life
  - The extinction of all Earthly life
  - The destruction of Earth as a planet

It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of those later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn't worry about AGW at all.

> It can be tricky to push back against hyperbole comparing AGW to some of those later-stage events without being mistaken for someone who doesn't care about AGW at all.

Yeah, the thing is, that your list roughly translates to:

  - Not a big deal
  - Many of us are dead
  - Most of us are dead
  - Almost of us are dead and everything is fucked
  - Remaining list items aren't even worth considering

Hyperbole is never good, but it's important to realize that anything above "Not a big deal" means at least a serious degradation of life quality for everyone on the planet.

So maybe let's rewrite the list to show how your and mine lives will look like:

  - Everything is much more expensive, no more extravagant meals
  - European refugee crisis, except you're the refugee
  - Like the above, except everyone wants to shoot you
  - The Walking Dead, just without the zombies
  - Everyone dies

Hyperbole is never good, but it's important to realize that anything above "Not a big deal" means at least a serious degradation of life quality for everyone on the planet.

Agreed! I believe that AGW could prove as disastrous for humanity as a large scale nuclear war. Its effects might even lay the ground for a nuclear war. It is not something to take lightly. Yet I can't resist an eyeball-roll toward comments like "human extinction on earth by 2030."

That being said, it makes little difference for me among the last 4/5 items in the list

Oh so it's not the end of the entirety of human beings, instead it's just the end of civilized modern society as we know it!

Phew THAT was close!

Unchecked GW may possibly very well kill millions of people, and destroy quality of life for millions more, but it won't be the end of civilization.

Define "civilization". I could see a return to the dark ages (or at least, pre-electricity civilization) as totally possible.)

It is possible infrastructure and agriculture destruction will create economic destabilization to the degree that it leaves populations without modern comforts, but the whole world returning to the dark ages is not going to happen.

So who will survive? And what will death look like for those who don't?

Starvation, mostly.

This also sadly seems like why little will be done in time. :(

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