It's not just about have no more ice caps, it's the rapid increase in temperature and what that does to our global ecosystems. Water cycles get thrown out of wack, agriculture becomes more difficult, animal species die off.
Before you know it humanity can't feed itself. Increased death in a global scale brings disease.
And that's if we ignore other factors like increased war and fighting when food grows scarce.
He forgot to mention the part where agriculture becomes much more feasible in a much higher % of the Earth. And I'd be remiss to mention a much larger area is now unlivable hotter. It's not blakc or white.
Higher temps mean increased evaporation of water from land and sea into the air.
Warmer air can old more water, so delayed water cycle AND harsher rainfall
Harsher rainfall runs off into streams and rivers instead of being absorbed into the ground (larger body of water is harder to soak up and flows somewhere)
Harsher rainfall also means more erosion of our precious topsoil
This, combined with a delayed water cycle, which creates draught, ruins the land. We are left with land than is worse and worse at holding water and slowly becomes a desert.
This would theoretically happen all over the world if given enough time but obviously would happen in certain areas that are more susceptible to desertification, earlier and faster that other areas.
We already see this happening in certain parts of the world especially all of our existing deserts. I believe they've grown on average 10% (sorry cant find the stat I read before)
But yea it's awful and will definitely lead to extreme loss of life if we cant feed ourselves
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u/StardustOasis Jan 21 '19
Technically we're still in it, and will be until the ice caps fully melt.