“It would be some consolation for the feebleness of our selves and our works if all things should perish as slowly as they come into being; but as it is, increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Stoic philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Six hundred million people in Nigeria and India already have hot enough temperatures to push them out of their climate niche. That niche can be described as the Goldilocks zone, where temperatures are not too cold or hot and not too dry or wet for humans and wildlife to survive. But the rest of the planet will not escape warming’s unprecedented temperatures as the climate humanity evolved in continues to unravel due to the burning of fossil fuels creating hothouse earth on our watch.
Professor Tim Lenton is a professor, Director of the Global Systems Institute, and Chair of Climate Change and Earth System Science at the University of Exeter; he led the research focused on the human element of global warming rather than the hit to the global economy or collapse, if you prefer a more succinct word to describe the near-term future, we will undoubtedly face.
With current climate plans (which need to be implemented, but that is not happening, at least not at the scale required), the temperature will rise to 2.7 Celsius, almost five degrees Fahrenheit above the pre-industrial baseline established by the Paris Climate Accords.
“Economic estimates almost always value the rich more than the poor, because they have more assets to lose, and they tend to value those alive now over those living in the future. We’re considering all people as equal in this study.”The 2.7 C temperature rise will mean two billion people will experience average annual temperatures of 29 C or 85 degrees Fahrenheit. The world's habitable zones will be tested.
The article published in The Guardian notes that if we get to work and hold temperatures to 1.5 degrees, only 700 million will experience temperatures hot enough to force migration. This year, we will likely pass 1.5 C with hotter oceans and El Nino. But holding that temperature to even that unsafe rise will never happen. A 2.7 C rise will probably not be within our grasp as CO2, Methane, and other greenhouse gas concentrations are skyrocketing. The damage to the biosphere is always worse than what we are told.
Damien Carrington writes in The Guardian:
Prof Chi Xu, at Nanjing University in China, and also part of the research team, said: “Such high temperatures [outside the niche] have been linked to issues including increased mortality, decreased labour productivity, decreased cognitive performance, impaired learning, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased crop yield, increased conflict and infectious disease spread.”
Prof Marten Scheffer at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and a senior author of the study, said those pushed outside the climate niche might consider migrating to cooler places: “Not just migration of tens of millions of people but it might be a billion or so.”
The idea of climate niches for wild animals and plants is well established but the new study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, identified the climate conditions in which human societies have thrived.
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There are 60 million people living outside the niche and exposed to dangerous heat, the researchers said. But with each rise of 0.1C in global temperature above the 1.2C of human-caused global heating already seen today, an extra 140 million people are driven outside the niche.
In the modeled worst-case scenario of a 3.6 C rise, half of the world population will be outside a survivable climate niche.
James E Hansen wrote a bone-chilling email:
Global Warming in the Pipeline 19 May 2023 James Hansen
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Many animal species have specific climatic conditions in which they can survive. These conditions involve particular temperature ranges, levels of precipitation, and availability of food and water. If the climate changes and crosses these thresholds, these species may struggle to survive. For example, polar bears rely on sea ice to hunt; if the ice melts too early in the year due to rising temperatures, they have less time to find food and reproduce.
Similar to animals, plants also have specific climatic conditions that allow them to thrive. They may not be able to survive or reproduce effectively if temperatures rise beyond a certain point, or if there are changes in precipitation patterns. Changes in climate can also make plants more susceptible to diseases, pests, and wildfires. For instance, warmer winters might not kill off pests like pine beetles, leading to large-scale tree mortality.
Climate change can lead to a variety of environmental tipping points. This includes melting of polar ice caps and glaciers, which contributes to rising sea levels and potential flooding of coastal communities. Changes in ocean temperatures can lead to coral bleaching, a phenomenon that can devastate coral reefs and the marine species that rely on them. Warmer temperatures can also lead to more frequent and severe weather events, such as hurricanes, heatwaves, and droughts.
Climate change can also lead to tipping points through interactions between species. For instance, changes in the availability of a particular plant species can affect the herbivores that rely on them for food, which in turn can impact predators. Changes in one part of an ecosystem can have cascading effects that lead to broader ecosystem changes.