Catastrophic climate change outcomes like human extinction 'not being taken seriously'

https://www.rawstory.com/scientists-call-for-more-research-into-climate-endgame/

In 2022, the rising effects of climate change are really being felt now globally- from massive heat waves in Europe to Australia’s historic Bushfire season and the recent extreme flood events in the U.S. A group of top climate scientists have come forward to argue that more indepth research is urgently needed into worst-case scenarios, which they call a “climate endgame.” Let’s listen to Dr. Luke Kemp, one of the paper’s authors, discusses what he and his colleagues are warning in the new analysis.

‘Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios’ was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and is authored by eleven researchers from around the world. They put forward a research agenda into the consequences of global warming, specifically the worst-case scenarios they claim have been understudied.

They define such warming as a temperature increase of 3°C or above pre-industrial levels, which is well within the current scope of possibility by the end of the century. Most current climate models are based on an increase of up to 2°C. Under the 2015 Paris Agreement, countries agreed to cut greenhouse gas emissions to hold the global average temperature to well below 2°C with a goal to limit the temperature increase to only 1.5°C.

The authors explain why additional research on more catastrophic climate scenarios is needed, arguing that, “Understanding extreme risks is important for robust decision-making, from preparation to consideration of emergency responses. This requires exploring not just higher temperature scenarios but also the potential for climate change impacts to contribute to systemic risk and other cascades. We suggest that it is time to seriously scrutinize the best way to expand our research horizons to cover this field.”

The paper provides a range of plausible ways in which climate change could tip society into more precarious outcomes than what has previously been presented to the public, and proposes a rigorous academic research agenda for conducting an “integrated catastrophe assessment.” Citizens around the globe are already collectively feeling the effects of climate change and may not want to hear scientists are now predicting an even more catastrophic scenario.

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