Alien Apocalypse: Can Any Civilization Make it Through Climate Change? – University of Rochester
Four scenarios for the fate of civilizations and their planets, based on mathematical models developed by Adam Frank and his collaborators. The black line shows the trajectory of the civilization’s population and the red line shows the co-evolving trajectory of the planet’s state (a proxy for temperature). Credit: University of Rochester illustration / Michael Osadciw
Article Synopsis – A new study using mathematical models has tried to answer the question of how climate change affects the sustainability of a civilization, and found it to be catastrophic in all but one scenario. In the first scenario, the “die-off”, as global temperatures rise, the population declines until it reaches a fraction of its previous population. In the second scenario, “sustainability”, the population switches to low-impact resources in time to prevent catastrophic population declines. In the third scenario, “collapse without resource change”, temperature and population rise rapidly until population hits a peak and then drastically drops until civilization collapses. In the last scenario, “collapse with resource change”, the population switches to low-impact resources, but not in time to prevent the collapse of civilization. To read the actual article click here.