= new reply since forum marked as read
just smaller.
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But we can't allow it to run us over roughshod, either: remember, it's always been the pragmatic optimists who've gotten things done, more than anyone else. This was just as true in 1995 as it is in 2015. Only the players have changed a little. 
Unfortunately, it seems that some folks around here seem to have quite a hard time distinguishing between not having one's hair on fire and actual denial of climate change.....and that's just sad. Do we on the left *always* have to shoot ourselves in the foot, over every little thing? Really? 
For one, there would be a good chance that Antarctica really *could* lose all the ice it once had.....but what about the surviving cities?
I live not far from Dallas, Texas, and it's already hot in the summer.....average high temp in July is about 95*F.....but a 10*C rise in temperature could, unfortunately, essentially turn us into the next Phoenix: a high temperature of 107-108 or so would likely be the new norm for that month. The original Phoenix? Might as well be the new Death Valley!
Agriculture would be rather small-scale in most of North America, with maybe the Peace River Valley in Canada and the Cascadian valleys as a couple of rare exceptions to the rule, and there probably wouldn't be a lot of fishing: the Gulf of Mexico probably would be largely lifeless, even if mainly thru too much heat, rather than acidification so much.....and Miami might well be steaming in July high temps inching past a hundred degrees so there wouldn't be a lot of fishers anyway.
And even in the Arctic North, even with winters not as bitterly cold and with much more pleasant summers, there would be many problems; polar bears are probably extinct in the wild by now and many of the traditional aquatic species have likely been crowded out by others fleeing the warming waters elsewhere. The permafrost is probably mostly, if not entirely gone, and many areas were probably abandoned for a time, especially places like Wainwright and Barrow in the North Slope area of Alaska, or Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories in Canada.
And that's just our neck of the woods; North Africa and most of the Middle East would be the closest thing to a living hell one could imagine and even northern Russia and Scandinavia will have many, many problems to deal with. This would be a truly damaged world that could only certainly support maybe a couple of billion at best, and this assumes that technologies have been developed for humanity to cope(such as hydroponic farming, etc.).....but if it's Mad Max? Maybe a billion, possibly only half a billion.
So, although this scenario is actually extremely unlikely, it still does us no good to stick our heads in the sand. Better to have acted and maybe suffered a small amount of temporary hardship, than to do nothing, and have put humanity in much more danger than we are now.
I'm a realist who looks at things thru a historical lense: it seems highly unlikely that the worst case scenarios will come to pass.....they very rarely ever do. And a better future for humanity is possible. But at what cost will it come? That's the question.
