Hi all,
At the moment I'm putting out a call out for any good papers you know of that summarise the "I" for Instability.
INSTABILITY sums up climate impacts on economic prosperity and lifestyles including mundane - even petty things - like price rises in luxury goods (chocolate, coffee) through to major economic impacts, radicalisation of domestic politics, and the fact that climate change may just spark regional wars.
There's an argument that climate change acted as the last straw that broke the back of Syrian stability. Or to mix metaphors - climate change lit the spark that was Syria after all the Iraqi refugees fled the second Gulf War.
So I'm interested in domestic politics and economics and lifestyle changes - through to the very worst case scenarios.
THE WORST CASE SCENARIO - (not what this whole thread should be about!)
This is crazy stuff. Scientific - backed by peer-reviewed papers - but still crazy. It's not the sort of stuff you talk about at polite dinner parties. The Pentagon calls climate change a "Threat Multiplier". I think they should call it the "Ultimate Threat Multiplier" if there's a chance of this next scenario breaking out. If climate change provokes full scale nuclear war, the worst thing about climate change is it might provoke us to our worst.
The latest climate science from studying Australia's 2019 mega-fires casts new light on how 'black carbon' in soot behaves up in the stratosphere. The sun's rays keep it floating around like a hot air balloon. This prolongs the nuclear winter - making it so, so much worse.
Here's the crazy bit - the bit you don't talk about at parties.
The northern hemisphere may just starve back to 1% of their original population! (Xia et al,
August 2022).
The following short Youtube is based on that Xia et al paper. It's truly horrific - the worst thing on my blog.
Over 5 billion may starve.
In the worst case scenario - only 1% of the Northern Hemisphere survives. Think about that! The USA's 330 million down to 3.3 million - if that. They go from being a super-power to half the size of Sydney - Australia! Check the map. Even YELLOW is horrific - meaning your government has had to decide which of your 25% to 50% of your population had to starve and who survives! No country would be the same after something like that - not for generations. Light GREEN is horrific - 1% to 25% - up to a quarter of your population starving.
But orange and brown? Forget it. Gone.
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Warmer oceans down south help shield Australia and Argentina somewhat. After reading a few of these papers and thinking it through with my social sciences background - my guess is that after the skies cleared 5 to 10 years later, Australia and Argentina would probably emerge as the new super-powers in a catastrophically reduced world. But that's just an introduction to the very worst case scenario.
I is for Instability.
I'm still interested in the smaller stuff - like increased prices, reduced lifestyles, inflamed politics, etc.
Do you have good references for papers like that - or a particular area that you care about?
(This post edited after some negative feedback in the thread below.)