I think the problem is that "catastrophic" is not well-defined. Will we all be back to caves and sticks? No. Will there be trillions of dollars of damages and massive societal upheaval from massive migrations of people? Yes. Will a billion people die? Probably not, unless a war breaks out and leads to nuclear destruction.

I would consider all of these to be "catastrophic" but some may not consider migrations + damagaes to be "catastrophic."

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gmuslera 12 hours ago | parent | next [-]

We have a working system. That's why our world's population is so large. And it improved over time, as in more efficient ways to grow food, more productivity, the green revolution, to feed more, then roads/cities/buildings tied to single spots improving efficiency, giving safe housing to billions, mass transport and global logistics.

So what will happen if that gets disrupted? And badly disrupted, while at it. And while that is happening, multiple other things pile up in different ways everywhere?

Thats the danger. You don't die from climate change. You may occasionally die from increasingly frequent extreme weather, a flood because rains, some dam break, extended forest fires and so on. But that is not a single catastrophic event that kill billions. What will kill billions are losing food security in big scale, no safe/climate controlled place to live, violence and wars, widespread diseases and no way to help. In some years to decades millions to billions may die by that combination of factors.

So no, it wont be a single day, sudden event that will kill billions. Is the breakup of the system that holds it together. Agriculture needs a stable climate, megacities need food, the economic system depend on more things, and everything else is packed together. And the first wave of deaths will be just the start.

	▲	JohnMakin 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		we arent replacing population either. food scarcity doesnt exactly help that.

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jsbisviewtiful 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Will a billion people die? Probably not

Really underestimating the amount of deaths that will occur when our food production systems start collapsing.

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epistasis 15 hours ago | parent | next [-]

During some of the worst starvation events in the 20th century, it was still only on the order of ~10 million people that died. And most of those deaths were because horrific totalitarian governments prevented outside aid to the affected regions.

I have not seen evidence that there will be food system collapse driven by climate change that would be worse than those events, but my ears are open if you have some.

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rickydroll 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

In the US, our domestic food production has started collapsing thanks to the massive deportations of farm workers. According to various reports, a tremendous amount of food went to waste in the fields last summer because farmers couldn't get workers to harvest it.

	▲	TheCoelacanth 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, but a big part of the reason for that is that we produce a huge surplus of food, so food prices are extremely low compared to how wealthy the US is. That means wages for farm workers are too low for typical Americans to want to do the job. If our food production goes down significantly, that will raise prices which will let wages for farm workers rise to the point where more people will be willing to do the job. Will it be unpleasant? Sure, but not to the point of famine, we'll just go back to spending a larger portion of our household budgets on food like we used to fifty years ago.

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lynndotpy 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, one plane crashing or one building falling, destroying something valuable and killing "only" a few dozen people is considered a catastrophe. I think we can say the bar for "catastrophe" is lower than that for "apocalypse".

The higher global average temperatures alone are already a yearly catastrophe, by this standard.