Most scientists don’t expect a full collapse this century, but even a significant slowdown would have major climate consequences particularly for Europe and Africa.
If you stop collecting data, (y)our theories and models cannot be updated. So you end up being stuck in time with what you have already measured.
Imagine if in (your chosen profession) you were limited to the tools of 1970 to do the work expected of you. If you work in programming, could you have made an LLM, a complex database, or even modern reactive websites with the likes of cobol and fortran?
