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Global Investment Firm Warns 7.8 Degrees of Global Warming Is Possible (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A leading British global investment firm has a warning for its clients: If we keep consuming oil and gas at current rates, our planet is on course to experience a rise in global average temperatures of nearly 8 Celsius (14 Fahrenheit) by the end of the century. This would make Earth basically uninhabitable for humans. Although this is the darkest scenario we've seen so far, there's reason for cautious optimism: the new projections point out that it's unlikely investors will simply ignore this risk, meaning that our present level of fossil fuel consumption could decrease. Still, by current climate research standards, this is a pretty wild number. It is four times as high as the "safe limit" for increasing temperatures caused by climate change, internationally recognized to be around 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Schroders, the British investment firm which controls assets worth $542 billion, released this forecast as part of a range of potential scenarios in its "Climate Progress Dashboard" in late July.
Investment firms are neither notable climate experts nor are they noted for their devotion to selfless ethics. Follow the money. I'll bet that they have huge positions in "green" companies and/or renewable energy, and they are hoping to drive those markets higher.
Alternatively (or maybe additionally), they may think that this will get them more publicity than standard advertising, and hence a lot of new clients who believe that your investment strategy can save you from an uninhabitable planet.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
I don't know about this particular investment firm, but investment and insurance firms are actually quite well equipped to think about risk, which is really what climate change is about from a financial perspective. They inherently need to be able to think rationally about climate predictions, assess the statistics/uncertainties behind them, and come to conclusions about where and how to invest in the long run. For example, what's the risk/reward for an investment firm to invest in an African company if there's an X% chance that company's location will be uninhabitable in 50 years? Or if climate change leads to social/political instability in the area?
For insurance companies, climate predictions tell them how much risk is involved in, for example, real estate purchases on the Florida coast as sea levels rise and extreme weather events increase in frequency.
For them it's all about probabilities - what is the probability that climate scientists are qualitatively right, and if they are, what are the chances of the particular predicted consequences being accurate (and how accurate). Actuaries crunch those numbers and advise their companies to make risk/reward decisions based off of them. One of the hardest parts about these predictions isn't the actual environmental impact, but the social consequences of it, which can have massive financial impacts.
In terms of what the companies know specifically about climate change, I'm guessing they have scientific consultant teams that provide the expertise they need.
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
Mod Fail.
The AC is correct. Doomsday predictions do seem to be a one upsmanship game, as evidenced by this article and Algore.
The surest way to undermine your position is to make outrageous claims that can't be substantiated.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The more appropriate extinction event to compare with is the End-Permian Extinction. That was caused by essentially burning fossil fuels, because lava got in contact with much of the then-existing seams of coal.
Right now we are adding CO2 to the atmosphere at a faster pace than the volcanism did back then, and we are less likely to accidentally leave rich coal seams untouched.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
Nobody disagrees the Earth will make it through this.
It's modern human society we're less confident of.
What you're seeing there in the 20's/30's is the dust bowl that wreaked havoc on the central US during that time (high heat, vast drought). It is really interesting to see that. But it was a regional effect. Globally the story is different.
A related important point was well explained recently by NYT: extreme high temperature events are increasing in frequency.
https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
The best way to predict the future is to invent it.
It's 12 fucking paragraphs until the article admits the real prediction from the source is only 4.1 degrees. Which, by the way, comes from an (unweighted!) average of 12 different scenarios which aren't even described meaningfully, let alone are the methods for arriving at the numbers explained. The entire point of this seems to be to give people a scary chart to include in their powerpoint presentations.
Just the fact that there is zero attempt to assign any probability to any of the 12 scenarios to actually come up with a meaningful prediction tells me this is garbage compiled by someone with no clue.