alt Hacker NewsIt's hysterical claims like this that cause so many problems for climate researchers and policy makers when the doomsday scenario fails to materialize. And then that's when you get newspaper clippings about the melting of the arctic sea ice by the year 2000 and everyone laughs and then discounts the whole thing.
Please don't do this. It is not an "existential threat" outside of various fundraising pamphlets and political organizations, and they exploit science for political gain at the cost of the credibility of the whole enterprise.
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It is 100% an existential threat, but the existential bit happens in 100 years so of course you're not going to see it materialize over night
I've never been able to decide whether it is or not. I'm still vaguely scared of the clathrate gun, permafrost releasing extra CO2, and phytoplankton shrinking under ocean acidification so we can't have as much oxygen as we're accustomed to.
Edit: one of those crossfire situations where the downvotes could be coming from either direction. I'm going to assume they mean "don't be scared".
I don't think you're qualified to make this assessment. If a large majority of the scientific community is treating it and calling it an existential threat, I'm tempted to agree. In fact, I think most widely held scientific stances on this are meant to be balanced and as agreeable as possible, so I personally believe it's likely to be worse than the mainstream opinion.
Climate migration is already an issue. Extreme climate events are already increasingly problematic. Will civilization collapse in the next 50 years. Almost certainly not, but will we be better off then than we are now? Unless we rapidly increase the rate at which we address this issue, I don't see how that happens either.