Just as a thought experiment, what would be worse for humanity. Global warming or global cooling by the same amount of degrees C?
I'm in western Europe and really hope the AMOC will not collapse.
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Global cooling could be worse. But the danger from either comes from the speed with which it happens, and inflexible sociopolitical structures, more than the absolute difference in temperature. Rapid change doesn't permit gradual adaptation like relocation to more habitable areas. The danger from the current global warming trend comes from it's incredible rapidity compared to historical trends.
Given time, humans and other animals will move toward the poles or toward the equator to find habitable zones. Put that on a rush schedule and everyone suffers.
How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?
>How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?
Just fine. If the temperature would cooperate.
The land of the midnight sun actually has great yields for the few crops that tolerate the cool temperatures (low ground greens and vegetables basically, not staple grains or fruit). But because the season is so short temperature wise nobody really farms that stuff commercially up there.
> How does growing crops work when it's dark 6 months a year?
Have you noticed that all broadleaved trees and shrubs lose their leaves for half the year in temperate zones already?
Did you not wonder why that is?
They'll be fine. Annual crops are fine. Wildlife is fine if it's got somewhere to migrate to.
Tough for wildlife when there's nowhere to migrate to, though. But what's burning desert in summer might be just about tolerable hot tropics in winter.
The problem is that current tropical species can't handle the alternation of the seasons. You don't get seasons at the equator. Spring/summer/autumn/winter is a temperate-zones thing. Near the equator the sun rises and sets at the same time every day, and there are at best 2 seasons: the dry season, when it never rains, and the wet season, when it rains a lot all the time.
there are no guarantees in life, can look up any random day and see a meteor streaking across the sky and realize that this is the end regardless of "sociopolitical structures".
All that matters is sociotechnological progress to be able to progress further enough to overcome these tests of existence.
> look up any random day and see a meteor streaking across the sky
That's happened rather more times in Earth's history than most folks are comfortable admitting. Tunguska would have leveled any major metropolitan city on the planet. I still think an impact is one of the more likely initiators of the Younger Dryas abrupt cooling and worldwide ~100M sealevel rise ~12,000 years ago. Conspicuously aligned with the oldest surviving traces of city living, agriculture, etc. It's increasingly accepted that a large portion of human history is 100M underwater on the continental shelves, estuaries, and other coastal areas where humans would have liked to live.
It's increasingly accepted that a large portion of human history is 100M underwater on the continental shelves, estuaries, and other coastal areas where humans would have liked to live.
Any references for that? Genuine question.
Here's a review: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02773...
More:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1411762111
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08769-7
https://www.academia.edu/9737879/Land_Beneath_the_Waves_Subm...
https://pure.york.ac.uk/portal/en/publications/under-the-sea...
Much appreciated - living in the UK, I have heard of Doggerland and should have expected there would be plenty of similar areas worldwide - this is interesting stuff.
It's really amazing how much more connected the world was not very long ago. Take a look at 24k years ago here: https://sea-level.vercel.app/ Nearly every continent is one connected landmass. And all the most prime real estate is now under water.
The impact hypothesis for Younger Dryas isn’t really tenable. Among other things, the climate effects of a large bolide impact would be global, whereas Antarctica actually warmed during YD. This “Polar See-saw” pattern is easily explained by a northerly meltwater pulse hypothesis, but not a bolide.
Sea level rise was much faster before the cooling of the Younger Dryas.
You're right, and here's a graph: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Past_sea_level#/media/File:Pos...
It's possible the sea level rise could have initiated the cooling. But there is much disagreement as to what exactly initiated the de-glaciation which caused the sealevel rise.
> I'm in western Europe
Me too.
> and really hope the AMOC will not collapse.
It absolutely categorically will, probably in a decade or two.
However, as the rest of the planet rapidly warms, for a decade or so western Europe gets cooler and wetter. I only have 2 or 3 decades to live at best, so it's swings and roundabouts: some you lose, some you win.