What would be more dangerous?

[ChescoWx]

Adapted from one of my favorite professional meteorologists....

[GaWx]

I voted cooling. To this point extreme cold has killed more than extreme heat though heat related deaths are increasing. -4C cooling would be devastating to food supply, among other things, which could easily kill hundreds of millions. GW has lead to increased crop sizes to this point. 

[Typhoon Tip]

It depends.   In simple terms, the peril is not measured in merely "cooling" or "warming"   It is a result of

d(cooling)/dt

or

d(warming)/dt  

  ( those mean 'rate of change' with respect to change in time ) 

#1, The vitality of the natural order of this planet cannot be realized if either a 2-4C cooling, or warming of that same magnitude, were takes place at a rate of change that exceeds species adaptation capacity.        d(cooling)/dt  > than d(adaptation)/dt   = adaptation failure.   Here's an example of this in geological history:  https://phys.org/news/2025-07-fossils-earth-famous-extinction-climate.html     Biological science has already defined a current mass extinction is under way.  Goes by Holocene, even Anthropocene extinction event - the latter, because while others are cleverly denying, science has already mathematically proven that human activity, ranging from profligate resource sequestration ... annexing habitats that probably even morally shouldn't belong to us, and Climate change, ALL, are causing species to disappear at orders of magnitude greater than the previous archeologically defined rates that were associated with stable Earth-states. 

#2, Humans are perhaps the most adaptable organism known to this world.   Our capacity for innovation is why. The fact that we live and thrive everywhere on the planet, regardless of specific ecologically defined region, evinces that.  We do so, because we can. We invent the means.  

However, if #1 fails ... it is not abundantly clear that innovation will be able to "invent our way out of this crisis" - so to speak.  Maybe we will. Maybe we won't.  But that is an evolutionary gamble. That's the whole crisis.  Not just whether the temperature is rising or falling. The question of cooling or warming is less useful without that deeper frame of understanding ( just op ed'ing here for the general reader - )

Humans are at the moment still wholly dependent upon the vast known, and unknown, eukaryotic and prokaryotic biota. Not just for their (external to our) biological existence, but their robust existence. They recycle the air we breath ( and use to destroy them ) with oxygen for the combustion in our cells, and the combustion that powers civility. They replenish nutrients into the soil and seas, which eventually/ultimately supplement the foods we need.  All of it.

Humans cannot do what they do, not at that scales required in order to stop what comes next if critical temperature sensitive species, of either kingdom, catastrophically fail because they could not adapt in time.  

Perhaps there's a bit of a race implied there.  A gamble really is the best word.  A really, really fucking stupid gamble.  Because it's betting some eases of living pay back against extinction.  Those that deny or argue against CC ... really don't understand that.  They don't because they don't understand the premise farther above - one that is proven to really already have begun.  It is thus far more logical to cease and desist activity that will cause stressing the pan-dimensional health of  'Gaia' (for lack of better word) beyond the point of adaptation.   Until such time as compensating technological recourse' exist and are proven successful at mediating the health of an entire planet (Kardashev 1 civilization - We're not there yet) by alternate means, it is entirely academic what needs to be done.