Meterological opinion on climate/temperature trend says:
"they are almost unanimous in the view that the trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century.”
I just quoted from a 40 year-old report about
global cooling. (link)
The point is that a global temperature change in EITHER DIRECTION is catastrophic -- according to the experts then and the experts now. Or will somebody say that global cooling is ok?
I wonder if you have actually read the article you are linking to. I summarise for other readers (and for you in case you have had trouble understanding it):-
This is a 2014 article in Slate magazine, by a science writer called Peter Gwynne, about another article he had written in Newsweek in 1975, some 40 odd years ago. This old article had spoken of a cooling of the climate, which was one theory in the mid 70s, apparently. The 2014 article notes that Gwynne's 1975 article seems to have become - 40 years on - a
cause celebre, among those looking for reasons to pooh-pooh the modern theory of climate change. The piece is devoted to pointing out - at some length - why it is stupid and/or disingenuous to use it in that way.
Returning to the main subject, the hazard we face is called "climate
change". Change. A rapid change in either direction, or indeed a change to a climate with
greater extremes in conditions, regardless of the mean temperature, would be likely to have adverse impacts on the human population of this planet. This is because a lot of people live in areas that are sensitive to climate change, for a number of reasons: sea level, rainfall pattern, resistance of crops and livestock to extreme heat or frost, etc.
This is also the reason why references to past climatic conditions on Earth (e.g. ice ages or warm interglacials, millions of years ago), which took place before the rise of humanity and were very slow changes over thousands of years, are irrelevant to the issue. The issue we now face is rapid change, over a mere century or two, which can be expected to disrupt human populations.
This disruption to people is likely to take the form of mass movements of population that overload neighbouring areas, and wars over resources (water, crops) that become regionally scarce as a result of climate changes. This is likely to happen happen irrespective of whether or not the total food production or amount of habitable space alters. Such developments will affect everyone on the planet.
That is the minimum risk. The maximum risk is that a runaway process sets in.
