Can someone give me a summary of what will happen to the human race if we burn all of earth fossil fuels?
How will it affect daily life? I've never seen it put in these terms and frankly it seems daily life would stay the same. Wouldn't mind being proved wrong.
1. Food prices will go up, probably by quite a lot.
2. Your chance of contracting an infectious disease that used to only live in the tropics will be higher.
3. Depending on where you live it will either be much dryer or much wetter rather than more temperate.
4. Obviously, at that point, energy prices will have to be much higher as there won't be as many fossil fuels. Or else we would have transitioned to renewable sources/nuclear by then.
5. If we're talking about even more worse case scenarios, there's the death of large chunks of life in the ocean as corals will have been bleached and the fish that live there died. Also runaway algae blooms, deaths of birds and other animals that used to live on those now dead fish.
6. Areas near the equator, like the middle east, that supply important resources will be basically uninhabitable for large parts of the year if not the entire year.
7. Areas in the far north that are covered in permafrost will turn into swamps/bogs instead. Also, in some projections, places in Europe that are warmed by the N. Atlantic stream may end up being much cooler and similar to other places at similar latitudes (e.g. Canada/Russia).
But again, many of these are unlikely to happen until late in the 21st century, so you're likely going to not be alive then anyways.
So it seems that with a one time move you could avoid 4/5 of these?
Not including the fish one since it doesn't really affect daily life IMO, or the oil price one since that is just what happens when you run out of something and not a consequence of GW, IMO.
Seems like only daily life effect of GW (assuming you migrated to somewhere else over the course of 50 years) will be higher food prices. Though I'm also curious if over time innovation will make that change rather insignificant.
Consider this. Where I grew up there were birds around every summer that laid eggs. They need a certain temperature range. If it grows hotter or colder they need to migrate south/north.
What happens if the landscape north/south doesn't have any craggy mountains where these birds can build nest? It's all ocean, both northwards and southwards.
Ditto the fish the fishermen used to fish. In principle it can migrate a few kilometers, but the ocean is different a bit further north. Can't swim from the surface to the bottom.
Quite a lot of species get yanked hard by having to move a little. And when 99% of a some species birds disappear, that affects their predators, and it affects the other species preyed upon by the same predators. Before you know it, the grass changes because the grazing species do, and there are landslides where none used to be.
The house where I spent my first month might be at risk of a rock slide. The spot has been safe for a millenium, but might not be any more.
Or the rains flow off differently towards the rivers because of the vegetation changes, and you get droughts where none used to be, or flash floods.
Or, or, or... a few degrees of extra heat and there are a lot of things that can have a surprisingly large impact. We will need a lot of luck to avoid all of the badness.
How will it affect daily life? I've never seen it put in these terms and frankly it seems daily life would stay the same. Wouldn't mind being proved wrong.