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Because higher temperatures aren’t the problem, the rate of change is. I assume the worst because we’ve seen it before in the fossil record. The best comparison is the Triassic-Permian extinction. Rapid change in temperatures led to global ecological collapse and the death of 85% of all life on earth. Now, during the Triassic-Permian extinction CO2 levels rose from 400 ppm to ~2500 ppm over the course of ~50,000 years, with an estimated rate of change of around .05 ppm per year. We’re starting out lower at 280 ppm before the industrial revolution, but we’ve already hit 420, and we’re now adding about 2.5 ppm every year, with that number increasing every year. So we’re currently experiencing warming that’s 50 times faster than the most devastating extinction event in Earth’s history.
The fact that our entire food industry is based around genetically engineered monocultures is just another point of failure. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse to continually keep each generation of plants protected against changing diseases and pests, and because the vast majority of the seed is coming from one company, if something does adapt to overcome the engineered defenses, it’s devastating to the entire global population of that crop.
Temperature is not the problem. No climate scientist has ever worried that plants won’t produce well in higher temperatures. Acting like they’re ‘exploring the consequences of climate change’ is a smokescreen, it’s a way of making it seem like the fears are overblown. They’re testing a hypothesis with an obvious conclusion that’s somewhat related to global warming, while conveniently ignoring the things real scientists are actually worried about.
The fears come from the other effects of rising temperature and greenhouse gasses. Most of the real scary stuff is happening in the oceans. Things like the potential for massive amounts of algal death and the loss of potentially 60% of the oxygen creating organisms on earth. Plants are gonna grow great when oxygen levels drop to 15% and people have to wear breathing masks anytime they venture to the surface.
We are absolutely not a hardy or fast growing species. It takes years, for our children to be remotely self sufficient, and over a decade to reach sexual maturity. We have a similar growth pattern to elephants, outside of whales, we’re some of the slowest growing animals alive. We can’t survive extreme temperature swings, radiation, loss of oxygen. We’ve created things to overcome our physical mediocrity, but those things can very quickly disappear for most of the population when the infrastructure supporting global shipping and manufacturing collapses. The fact that we make up such a huge portion of mammal biomass mostly just means we’ll be a great food source for whatever bugs evolve to eat us. Keep in mind that we may be about 30% of mammal biomass, but livestock make up more than 60%. That’s not because they’re small and adaptable, it’s because they’re food.
This is a ‘transition period’ on a geologic scale. We’re talking about the next 50,000 years at best, it’s not something we’re just to ride out and things go back to normal.