It's beyond borderline insane how people make up these "billions of deaths" numbers with a straight face.
Billions of deaths at three degrees is probably overstating things, but three degrees does bring massive food shortages and hundreds of millions of refugees. At four degrees, billions of deaths doesn't look that unlikely, and it starts getting hard to imagine how modern civilization could survive. More than that is unthinkable.
The book is a decade old but more recent work hasn't improved the outlook at all.
No thanks. He's a journalist and political activist, reading his foregone conclusions from selected papers he claims to have read is a waste of time.
But of course, sticking with your own forgone conclusions is clearly better.
Instead, it would be gradual, over 20-25 years. But you are right that I am overstating things, when I write billions I think 'between 100 Millions and 1 Billion'. (Recalling that over 25 years, air pollution alone is responsible for around 100 millions deaths). It would depend on the exact temperature change: 3°C or 3.5C.
And total civilisation collapse in unlikely (I hope!), except if there is a feedback factor in global warming and we head for 4°C or more.
https://www.who.int/heli/risks/climate/climatechange/en/
Ten fold increase over the next century seems believable given that the projected effect has hardly started yet.
Good example for how these numbers are pulled out of thin air: take an old WHO estimate (which includes Malaria deaths), multiply by 10 for the heck of it and sum over 100 years...
If you want accurate numbers, could you first give accurate numbers of future dangers of nuclear? I want precise calculations based on reality. My hunch is that the number is zero, can you prove otherwise?
I would also appreciate numbers on things like why we have the time to dabble with renewables? Why it's going to be cost effective? How the power storage is solved? And how much land and natural resources are going to be used?