Its too late weve passed the brink, and the timeframe

is 100 years
Jonathan O'Callaghan, writer for Daily Mail. 19 June 2015 "Will YOUR child
witness the end of humanity? Mankind will be extinct in 100 years because of
climate change, warns expert" www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article3131160/Will-child-witness-end-humanity-Mankind-extinct-100-years-climatechange-warns-expert.html
Humans will be extinct in 100 years due to overcrowding, declining resources and climate
change, according to a prominent scientist. The comments were first made by Australian
microbiologist Dr Frank Fenner in 2010, but engineer and science writer David
Auerbach has reiterated the doom-laden warning in his latest article. He criticises the recent
G7 summit for failing to deal with the problems facing the survival of humanity, such as
global warming and exhausting Earth's resources. Mr Auerbach goes on to say that experts have
predicted that 21st century civilisation faces a similar fate to the inhabitants of
Easter Island, who went extinct when they overexploited their natural
habitat. A lot of other animals will, too. It's an irreversible situation . 'I think it's
too late. I try not to express that because people are trying to do something, but they keep putting it off.
At the G7 talks in Bonn in Germany earlier this month, governments failed to come up with a clear plan to

gas cuts
will fail to achieve a peak in energy-related emissions by 2030. This will likely result in
a temperature rise of 2.6C by the end of the century, the International Energy Agency said.
When the G7 called on Monday for all countries to reduce carbon emissions
to zero in the next 85 years, the scientific reaction was unanimous: Thats
far too late, Mr Auerbach wrote. At this point, lowering emissions is just half the story - the easy
cut emissions in the coming years. It emerged that countries' current pledges for greenhouse

half. The harder half will be an aggressive effort to find the technologies needed to reverse the climate
apocalypse that has already begun. He noted that dangerous climate change was already here, but the

The widely agreed

goal is that global temperatures must be kept below a rice of 2C by the end
of the century. A 5C increase, as predicted to occur by 2100 at the moment,
would cause widespread flooding, famine, drought and mass extinction. Even
question now was whether catastrophic climate change could be avoided.

the 2C figure predicts more than a metres rise in sea levels by 2100, enough to displace millions, Mr

current targets are simply not

enough to keep under this 2C target. The US has suggested cutting emissions by up to 28
Auerbach noted in his Reuters article. But he said that

per cent by 2025 from 2005 levels, the EU 40 per cent from 1990 to 2030, and China an unspecified
amount. Ultimately, we need a Cold War-level of investment in research into new technologies to mitigate
the coming effects of global warming, he concluded. Without it, the UNs work is a nice gesture, but
hardly a meaningful one.

Warming is inevitable means adaptation is the only way

to solve.
Trisolini 14 Katherine Trisolini, Associate Professor of Law, Loyola Law
School, Los Angeles. J.D. Stanford Law School; M.A. Political Science,
University of California at Berkeley; B.A. Oberlin College, (HOLISTIC CLIMATE
CHANGE GOVERNANCE: TOWARDS MITIGATION AND ADAPTATION
SYNTHESIS, University of Colorado Law Review, July 18, 2014, Available at:
http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/?, Accessed on: 7/18/2014)

Unfortunately, the need for climate change adaptation can no longer be

ignored. While scientists admonish us that GHG [*618] production trajectories must be cut deeply and quickly to
avoid the worst impacts, past emissions already have committed the planet to at
least some further warming. Consequently, even under the best emissions scenarios, this century will
n2

n3

see more frequent and severe storms, flooding, heat waves, droughts, and fires. n4 Sea level is anticipated to rise, possibly
abruptly, although projections vary dramatically. n5 Researchers expect that these changes will exacerbate security risks,
alter food production, shift disease vectors, and prompt human migrations, among other phenomena. n6 In light of these

effective climate change governance requires

fundamentally rethinking physical and regulatory infrastructure that was
designed for historically more stable climatic conditions. The legal system
should direct investment toward adaptive and adaptable infrastructure that
reduces human risks, decreases reliance on complex networks, and curbs (or at least does not exacerbate) the
impending changes, this Article argues that

degree of scientific uncertainty that legislators and administrative agencies will face while regulating in an unfamiliar and
evolving physical environment. Part of this rethinking process asks whether legal mechanisms designed to mitigate
climate change by incentivizing GHG emissions reductions will aid or hinder adaptation. The most effective policy will
synthesize both efforts, favoring coordinated over unilateral approaches to either issue. Initially ,

legal
scholarship on climate change focused heavily on mitigation. Although not a subject
of analysis until [*619] recently, and by some accounts a formerly "taboo" topic, scholars have begun
turning attention to strategies for adapting to a changed climate. While
mitigation aims to limit the extent of global warming (for example, by reducing fossil fuel
combustion or sequestering carbon dioxide), adaptation reduces harm to humans, animals,
and ecosystems from the warming that does occur. Adaptation measures could include, for
example, shifting populations away from coastal areas that are vulnerable to rising seas. The increasing
attention to adaptation likely stems from recognition that some degree of
warming and ecosystem change is now inevitable; hence mitigation can
limit, but not eliminate, adverse impacts. Analyses of mitigation and adaptation in the United
n7

States have largely occurred on parallel tracks. n10 Scholars have extensively debated the best design of mitigation
regimes - focusing predominantly on proposals to incentivize GHG emissions reductions through market mechanisms such

scholarship, academics have asked

how to promote ecosystem resilience and reduce harm to human
populations. n12They have also evaluated how environmental and natural
resources law should change to give agencies new decision-making tool s and
as cap-and-trade.

n11

With the recent entry of adaptation into legal

increased flexibility. However, with few exceptions, scholars have not yet considered the intersection of these two issues.
Up to now, federal policymakers have similarly analyzed [*620] mitigation and adaptation separately. Given that
changing

Warming doesnt cause extinction their cards are

marginal worst case scenarios
Ridley 14 [Matt, 6/19/14, The Financial Post, Junk Science Week: IPCC
commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels
this century. Consensus is no,
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/19/ipcc-climate-change-warming/,
accessed 7/1/14]
The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is conducted, you would think that
only two positions are possible: that the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable. In fact

man-made
climate change is real but not likely to do much harm , let alone prove to be
the greatest crisis facing humankind this century. After more than 25 years reporting
there is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold, which is that

and commenting on this topic for various media organizations, and having started out alarmed, thats
where I have ended up. But it is not just I that hold this view. I share it with a very large international
organization, sponsored by the United Nations and supported by virtually all the worlds governments: the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) itself.

The IPCC commissioned four

different models of what might happen to the world economy, society and
technology in the 21st century and what each would mean for the climate,
given a certain assumption about the atmospheres sensitivity to carbon
dioxide. Three of the models show a moderate, slow and mild warming , the
hottest of which leaves the planet just 2 degrees Centigrade warmer than
today in 2081-2100. The coolest comes out just 0.8 degrees warmer. Now two
degrees is the threshold at which warming starts to turn dangerous, according to the scientific consensus.
That is to say, in three of the four scenarios considered by the IPCC, by the time my childrens children are

But what
about the fourth scenario? This is known as RCP8.5 , and it produces 3.5 degrees of
elderly, the earth will still not have experienced any harmful warming, let alone catastrophe.

warming in 2081-2100. Curious to know what assumptions lay behind this model, I decided to look up the

It is a world that
is very, very implausible. For a start, this is a world of continuously
increasing global population so that there are 12 billion on the planet. This is
more than a billion more than the United Nations expects, and flies in the
face of the fact that the world population growth rate has been falling for 50
years and is on course to reach zero i.e., stable population in around 2070.
More people mean more emissions. Second, the world is assumed in the RCP8.5
scenario to be burning an astonishing 10 times as much coal as today,
producing 50% of its primary energy from coal, compared with about 30%
today. Indeed, because oil is assumed to have become scarce, a lot of liquid fuel would then be derived
original papers describing the creation of this scenario. Frankly, I was gobsmacked.

from coal. Nuclear and renewable technologies contribute little, because of a slow pace of innovation and
hence fossil fuel technologies continue to dominate the primary energy portfolio over the entire time

These are highly

unlikely assumptions. With abundant natural gas displacing coal on a huge
scale in the United States today, with the price of solar power plummeting,
with nuclear power experiencing a revival , with gigantic methane-hydrate gas
resources being discovered on the seabed, with energy efficiency rocketing
upwards, and with population growth rates continuing to fall fast in virtually
every country in the world, the one thing we can say about RCP8.5 is that it is
very, very implausible. Notice, however, that even so, it is not a world of catastrophic pain. The
horizon of the RCP8.5 scenario. Energy efficiency has improved very little.

per capita income of the average human being in 2100 is three times what it is now. Poverty would be

We now have many

different studies of climate sensitivity based on observational data and they
all converge on the conclusion that it is much lower than assumed by the
IPCC in these models. It has to be, otherwise global temperatures would have risen much faster
history. So its hardly Armageddon. But theres an even more startling fact.

than they have over the past 50 years. As Ross McKitrick noted on this page earlier this week,

temperatures have not risen at all now for more than 17 years . With these much
more realistic estimates of sensitivity (known as transient climate response), even RCP8.5 cannot
produce dangerous warming. It manages just 2.1C of warming by 2081-2100. That is to say,
even if you pile crazy assumption upon crazy assumption till you have an
edifice of vanishingly small probability, you cannot even manage to make
climate change cause minor damage in the time of our grandchildren, let
alone catastrophe. Thats not me saying this its the IPCC itself.

Warming wont cause extinction

Barrett 7, professor of natural resource economics Columbia University
(Scott, Why Cooperate? The Incentive to Supply Global Public Goods,
introduction)
First,

climate change does not threaten the survival of the human species.5 If unchecked,

biodiversity is being depleted now

due to other reasons). It will alter critical ecosystems (though this is also
happening now, and for reasons unrelated to climate change). It will reduce land area
as the seas rise, and in the process displace human populations. Catastrophic climate change
is possible, but not certain. Moreover, and unlike an asteroid collision, large changes (such as
sea level rise of, say, ten meters) will likely take centuries to unfold, giving
societies time to adjust. Abrupt climate change is also possible, and will occur more rapidly,
perhaps over a decade or two. However, abrupt climate change (such as a weakening in the
North Atlantic circulation), though potentially very serious, is unlikely to be ruinous. Humanit will cause other species to become extinction (though

induced climate change is an experiment of planetary proportions, and we cannot be sur of its

Even in a worse case scenario, however, global climate change is

not the equivalent of the Earth being hit by mega-asteroid. Indeed, if it were as
damaging as this, and if we were sure that it would be this harmful , then our
incentive to address this threat would be overwhelming . The challenge would still be
consequences.

more difficult than asteroid defense, but we would have done much more about it by now.