A mural in Glasgow, Scotland, designed before the 26th UN Climate Change Conference (NRDC)

The possibility of a global collapse and human extinction has been “dangerously underexplored," climate scientists have warned – calling this catastrophe the “climate endgame".

Due to inadequate risk management, the scientists claimed that there were sufficient reasons to expect an apocalyptic scenario as a result of global heating, which they projected to begin with the “four horsemen” of the climate endgame: famine, extreme weather, war, and disease.

What the reports are showing

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that the current level of 1.5°C is an alarming cause for public concern, arguing further that the consequences of global warming beyond 3°C have been underestimated.

A small surge in global temperature, known as a tipping point, is distressing as it results in a big change in the climate, such as carbon emissions released from droughts and fires in the Amazon rainforest. Tipping points could set off a domino effect with some changes remaining under-examined, including the sudden loss of stratocumulus cloud decks, provoking an additional 8°C of global warming, according to the researchers.

Political tensions to escalate imminent disasters

The researchers advised that climate breakdown could escalate or instigate international conflicts, ecosystem destruction, or global pandemics and deteriorate existing vulnerabilities like poverty, agricultural failures, and water deficiencies. The analysis suggests the likelihood of superpowers conflicting over geoengineering plans to reflect sunlight or the right to emit carbon.

“There is a striking overlap between currently vulnerable states and future areas of extreme warming,” the scientists said, urging that if current political tensions do not decrease significantly in the following decades, a chain of complications leading to even more instability could be inevitable.

A new strategy in the analysis demonstrates that 2 billion people are at risk of being under threat by 2070 due to extreme heat, characterized by an annual average temperature of more than 29°C if carbon emissions persist.

Chi Xu, a member of the research team at Nanjing University in China, pointed out that these temperatures already impact around 30 million people in the areas of the Sahara and Gulf Coast. “By 2070," he said, "these temperatures and the social and political consequences will directly affect two nuclear powers, and seven maximum containment laboratories housing the most dangerous pathogens. There is serious potential for disastrous knock-on effects.”