We don’t actually know if this is the case or not.

The recent IPCC Sixth Assessment Report states that there’s high confidence that the equilibrium climate sensitivity (how much the temperature will rise long-term if a doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide occurs) lies between 2.5-4C, with a best estimate being 3C. Several models predict a higher sensitivity than that, 4+, and have been disregarded for being too extreme and not aligning with historical data.

The major difference between these hotter models compared to the older ones is in the way they model cloud processes and their effect on the overall climate system. So, recent claims have been made that historical climate data is compatible with the hotter models (specifically an ECS of 4.8 ± 1.2C) when taking these new cloud models into account.

Which basically means that all our worst-case scenarios for climate change might actually be too optimistic, and we should be doing significantly more than we actively are right now.

The thing is, the things we need to do are costly, diminish quality of life, and won’t be directly beneficial to the economy. We’re going to have to sow proverbial trees whose shade we’ll never sit under. Going by historical data, that won’t happen. We’ve known that carbon dioxide affects the climate since the 1800s. We’ve known that humanity’s extreme carbon emissions have an effect on the climate since the early-mid 1900s. We’ve done fuck all about it.

We might only have a couple of decades before the area around the equator becomes more or less uninhabitable. What do you think will happen when billions of climate refugees travel north in search of succor?