Global cooling could be worse. But the danger from either comes from the speed with which it happens, and inflexible sociopolitical structures, more than the absolute difference in temperature. Rapid change doesn't permit gradual adaptation like relocation to more habitable areas. The danger from the current global warming trend comes from it's incredible rapidity compared to historical trends.

Given time, humans and other animals will move toward the poles or toward the equator to find habitable zones. Put that on a rush schedule and everyone suffers.

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CalRobert 3 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?

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arjunchint 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

there are no guarantees in life, can look up any random day and see a meteor streaking across the sky and realize that this is the end regardless of "sociopolitical structures".

All that matters is sociotechnological progress to be able to progress further enough to overcome these tests of existence.

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timschmidt 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> look up any random day and see a meteor streaking across the sky

That's happened rather more times in Earth's history than most folks are comfortable admitting. Tunguska would have leveled any major metropolitan city on the planet. I still think an impact is one of the more likely initiators of the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling and worldwide ~100M sealevel rise ~12,000 years ago. Conspicuously aligned with the oldest surviving traces of city living, agriculture, etc. It's increasingly accepted that a large portion of human history is 100M underwater on the continental shelves, estuaries, and other coastal areas where humans would have liked to live.

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vkou 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Sea level rise was much faster before the cooling of the Younger Dryas.

	▲	timschmidt 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You're right, and here's a graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Pos... It's possible the sea level rise could have initiated the cooling. But there is much disagreement as to what exactly initiated the de-glaciation which caused the sealevel rise.