So? What's the worse that can happen? Some cities slowly get flooded and some storms become more frequent? The worst case of nuclear war is all cities get destroyed and humanity is sent back to the stone age. They aren't even comparable.

Roman Empire closed shop when grain production in Mediterranean basin became no more due to the warming up of the climate. At the same time the rest of Europe warmed up and dried up a bit so it stopped being a cold swamp, and it allowed for the European civilization to get started. During the peak of heat 1000 years ago the Mediterranean basin belonged to Caliphates - the world leading, at the time, in many respects civilization which came out of dry and hot Arabia and which was significantly pushed back by Europeans during the next several hundreds years of cooling down. That cooling down became Little Ice Age during which we have Black Death, famines, etc. with European population getting decimated from time to time. Whole human history is basically history of changing climate and its effects upon empires/cultures/civilizations. Viking Age. Mongols ruling all the connected space covered with grasses - ie. where cavalry is unstoppable - during period with just enough rain/snow for such a huge space to balance between swamp and desert, and the period of such delicate balance was naturally relatively short with Pan-Mongolia splitting relatively quickly into pieces separated by deserts/rivers/swamps. Or check out the Late Bronze Age collapse for example.

The point here is that couple degrees change over several centuries have very profound effect upon human civilization. These days we've stepped into the territory of couple degrees (and probably more with the process having significant chances to become runaway) over several decades. That is bound to result in dramatic changes.

One can try to argue that our civilization today is well insulated from climate changes. And that one will be wrong. Just consider the very recent examples. 198x were the coldest point in the 80 years cycle and that resulted in low grain yields in USSR. It coincided with low oil prices thus resulting in food shortages in USSR, and as result the USSR just disappeared as the hungry people couldn't care less. The same thing with Arab Spring which was triggered by the drought and resulting food shortages : https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-an...

So :

1. human civilization is very vulnerable to climate change effects and

2. the climate change, more severe than the ones which have destroyed civilizations in the past, is happening now orders of magnitude faster than those climate changes of the past.

Your theories on the rise and fall of civilizations is pretty speculative. I've heard dozens of theories of why Rome fell. Everyone and their brother has a pet theory.

But even if you are right, it's irrelevant. Yeah, ancient civilizations were sensitive to famines and climate. We are way past that. Some of our biggest cities are in regions that were near uninhabitable before air conditioning or insecticides. Our modern irrigiation technology give us the ability to grow crops in areas that used to be desolate. We produce several times more food than we actually need. If the absolute worst case scenarios of climate change happened, our civilization would easily continue.

> it's irrelevant. Yeah, ancient civilizations were sensitive to famines and climate. We are way past that. Some of our biggest cities are in regions that were near uninhabitable before air conditioning or insecticides. Our modern irrigiation technology give us the ability to grow crops in areas that used to be desolate. We produce several times more food than we actually need. If the absolute worst case scenarios of climate change happened, our civilization would easily continue. Our modern irrigiation technology give us the ability to grow crops in areas that used to be desolate. We produce several times more food than we actually need. If the absolute worst case scenarios of climate change happened, our civilization would easily continue.

tell those triumphal words of our civilization glory to the 800M people today who is officially live in hunger. Or to the next couple of billions who will quickly find themselves deep in the extreme poverty/hunger if economy gets noticeably worse, food price increase and/or some shortage of food/water/etc. happens.

I suppose that you, like me, is in the top 5-10% of the global Pareto distribution of our civilization goodies, and even if there are severe food/water/energy/etc. shortage and/or food prices increase even 10 times, we'd still not be going to bed hungry even though we'd possibly have to give up some of the less necessary things. So from our point of view "civilization would easily continue". Not so to the majority of the world population though.

First of all, you are arguing against a straw man. I never said "climate change wouldn't be bad". I said it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as a full nuclear war. You can't even compare the two.

Anyway I'm sick of this meme that we should care about everything that happens to the third world. Look at Africa. Their population is growing exponentially. It's already far above of any reasonably sustainable size. And their economy is actually deindustrializing. They are going to suffer no matter what happens. Climate change is the least of their problems. And there is nothing we can do the help them.

>First of all, you are arguing against a straw man. I never said "climate change wouldn't be bad". I said it wouldn't be anywhere near as bad as a full nuclear war. You can't even compare the two.

my point is that nuclear war is a straw man while climate change presents clear and imminent planet-scale danger to our civilization.

>Anyway I'm sick of this meme that we should care about everything that happens to the third world.

Well, beside that caring about weak and less fortunate is our normal human trait, we brought the climate change upon the whole planet, so we should bear at least some responsibility. Anyway, hunger and poverty isn't limited to the third world - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_in_the_United_States

"Research from the USDA found that 14.9% of American households were food insecure during at least some of 2011, with 5.7% suffering from very low food security.[3] Journalists and charity workers have reported further increased demand for emergency food aid during 2012 and 2013."

>Look at Africa. Their population is growing exponentially. It's already far above of any reasonably sustainable size.

Africa is big and with a lot of resources. It can sustain much bigger population.

>And their economy is actually deindustrializing.

there is a bunch of very different countries with very different population, economy, society. Some countries have recently or currently have civil wars and as result are in chaos. The same is Syria which was pretty highly developed country just 7 years ago.

>Climate change is the least of their problems.

it is one of the major causes of the current (Arab Spring) and future civil (and may be between states) wars which would wreak havoc upon the involved countries/societies.