

Yes the speed is remarkable but it has still been much warmer or colder over a longer period.
This is precisely the point that comic is making tho. Yes, our planet has been a lot warmer than it is now, but as far as we know the changes we’re currently making to the climate are by far the most rapid in human history and this is bound to cause some civilization-scale issues. Even ignoring all the usual problems that will happen again due to a warmer climate (sea level rise, desertification etc), there are some novel ones. There will be no time for ecosystems and societies to adapt to different agricultural conditions, leading to widespread ecosystem and crop failures, cascading down to every aspect of human life.






I’m sorry to say that but it’s kinda “too late” already, to some definition. Even if we stop burning fossil fuels right now, human societies will not escape unharmed, there will be more crop failure leading to more famine leading to more war, even ignoring the “minutia” such as heat-related deaths and so on. Of course that’s not to say we shouldn’t fix our shit right now, because we still can reduce the impact and try to save our global “civilization” (or whatever you want to call the sum of human knowledge, connections, industry, material culture etc).
On a more hopeful level, I also think that pretty much whatever happens, homo sapiens as a species will probably survive. As primates, we are excellent at organizing in small groups and adapting our environments to suit us, however hostile they may be. Earth is huge, its flora and fauna is diverse, and even at +6-8℃ there will be some areas with ecosystems sturdy enough to sustain small populations of hunters-gatherers and even basic agricultural societies. And then, in a few thousands or tens of thousands of years, as the nature recoils from the shock and more and more land becomes habitable for humans again, they will rebuild. Since there won’t be any easily accessible oil or gas in the ground anymore, the new industrial revolution will naturally have to be more sustainable than ours.