Global warming: “Humanity will disappear”, warns group of researchers

“If nothing more is done about climate change, 10% of the world’s population … or even all of humanity could disappear,” an international team of researchers led by the University of Cambridge warned today.

Luke Kemp of the University of Cambridge’s Center for Existential Risk Studies recalls, “There are many reasons to believe that climate change will be catastrophic even at moderate levels of warming.

Under his guidance, a team of English, German, Dutch, American, Chinese and Australian researchers published the warning in the prestigious American journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).

Layer of effects

Rather than wanting to play Cassandra, researchers worry: Not only is the cascade of events likely to result from global warming highly uncertain, but the temperature rise may be worse than expected.

For them, it is urgent to consider what the worst-case scenarios could be. The direct impacts of higher temperatures are not limited to extreme weather events.

They point out that we may have to reckon with financial crises and conflicts, new epidemics, famine and malnutrition, rising inequalities, the collapse of democracy, not to mention a nuclear war.

Disaster scenarios are understood

A study published earlier in the year led by Luke Kemp has already indicated that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) ignores scenarios of warming of more than 3°C due to low probability.

Thus, scenarios that bet on limited warming between 1.5°C and 2°C (higher in line with international climate agreements and less of concern to the general public) are overrepresented in their work.

They are therefore calling on the IPCC to dedicate an upcoming special report to catastrophic climate change, to encourage research and inform the public.

A better understanding of the risks will make it possible to tighten the requirements of international climate agreements. But to study the impact of possible solutions such as solar radiation management, which injects aerosols into the stratosphere to deflect the sun’s rays.