Global warming is not an existential threat if you consider the studies that look at existential threats in general. It's not even in the top 10.
Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.
I wish you didn't get downvoted for saying this. You are wrong, but it's a fair perspective because most people wouldn't know why an extra 4-10 C is such a problem.
There are a lot of reasons such as whether food or water scarcity might trigger nuclear war. But the biggest reason is that it puts us into the territory of previous mass extinction events on Earth. This article does a good job of illustrating the worst possible outcome. It does belong up with the others on the existential threat scale.
1) You'll notice I didn't put nuclear war in my list of existential threats. That's because it also will likely not cause human extinction.
2) We are probably already in a mass extinction event. That also has little change of causing human extinction - we're the most adaptable species this planet has ever seen.
Did you read the article I linked? It's not talking about the extinction of rhinos, tigers and polar bears. It's talking about the mechanics of the end-Permian mass extinction. To quote Wikipedia:
"known colloquially as the Great Dying... approximately 252 million years ago. It is the Earth's most severe known extinction event, with up to 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct."
Seriously, it's a good article and quite short. I think you'd find it interesting food for thought and I'm honestly interested to hear your response to it, not some cheap dismissals.
Edit: if you really don't have time to read the whole thing, at least let me know what you think of the figure on page 6
I really hope you'll change your mind, specifically about that last sentence. Probably billions of the world's poorest people are likely to see their environment become unlivable. That's not a problem a little AC and migration will easily solve.
Just look how poorly rich countries are reacting to the current levels of migration from less rich countries.
I'm not going to change my mind just because of mindless downvotes. If you want to show that global warming could cause the end of the human race, you have to give some plausible argument.
I think there's a difference in what people consider "bad" - millions or billions dying from disaster or their regions becoming uninhabitable isn't the extinction the human race, but for me it's at the threshold of "bad" that I'd like to do something about it. Am I worried about all the human race being eradicated? No, we're cockroaches. But I'd rather untold numbers don't have to suffer.
I think you might be overestimating the resilience of your food network. It's understandable, everything is currently set-up to insulate you from the origins of your food.
Plants, rainfall, and harvests are susceptible to changes in climate.
Globally, though, I'd be surprised if we could last a single year if every food crop failed. You can already see what this looks like in Africa and the Middle East - famine affects entire countries at a time. Imagine if there was a string of bad years - say 10 or 15.
As a kind-of related example, most of the US would starve within a week if there were no oil to power trucks. Our current globalized food production/transportation network is extremely fragile.
Of the top of my head, asteroids, bio weapons, disease, the Sun, AI and authoritarianism are more serious. Especially AI - not being the dominate species anymore will be dangerous. But 10°C more? That just requires AC and migration.