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Recent research suggests climate change will lead to troubling social and economic damages, including a severe drop in global GDP.
What will a planet plagued by escalating climate change look like? No one really knows. But speaking at EmTech MIT 2016, Solomon Hsiang, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, presented results based on his recent analysis of economic and climate data that begin to more clearly define what the world might look like as it gets hotter.
It's not a pretty picture. Rising temperatures will dramatically damage agricultural yields and human health, and will significantly reduce overall economic growth. In fact, Hsiang said, data suggests global GDP will be reduced by 23 percent by the end of the century if climate change progresses largely unabated, compared to a world without global warming.
That decrease in economic output will hit the poorest 60 percent of the population disproportionately hard, said Hsiang. In doing so, it will surely exacerbate inequality, as many rich regions of the world that have lower average annual temperatures, such as northern Europe, benefit from the changes. Hotter areas around the tropics, including large parts of south Asia and Africa, already tend to be poorer and will suffer.
(Score: 4, Informative) by butthurt on Monday October 24 2016, @08:38AM
> Because human society will not make the rudimentary changes necessary to adapt to climate change?
The new research calculated the highest tolerable "wet-bulb" temperature that humans can withstand.
"The wet-bulb limit is basically the point at which one would overheat even if they were naked in the shade, soaking wet and standing in front of a large fan," says study lead author Steven Sherwood of the University of New South Wales in Sydney.
-- http://content.usatoday.com/communities/sciencefair/post/2010/05/report-climate-change-could-render-much-of-world-uninhabitable/1 [usatoday.com]
The dangerously muggy summer conditions predicted for places near the warm waters of the gulf could overwhelm the ability of the human body to reduce its temperature through sweating and ventilation. That threatens anyone without air-conditioning, including the poor, but also those who work outdoors in professions like agriculture and construction.
-- http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/science/intolerable-heat-may-hit-the-middle-east-by-the-end-of-the-century.html [nytimes.com]
With just a few rudimentary changes it'll be fine. Ha.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @09:37AM
Ah, but khallow isn't poor or a farmer, so he won't care. And the food, of course, comes from the local supermarket, so who needs farmers?
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @02:36PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @03:01PM
> I'm not interesting in this fantasy crap, but a preponderance of evidence.
And yet you are a case study in fantasy crap. Any evidence is dismissed with extreme contortions of logic.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @04:34PM
And yet you are a case study in fantasy crap. Any evidence is dismissed with extreme contortions of logic.
Says who with what supporting argument? Can't you be bothered to reason? A short list of fallacies (observation bias, confirmation bias, argument from authority, argument from obfuscation, and argument from ignorance) covers most of the arguments for dramatic and urgent mitigation of climate change. And all of the arguments for catastrophic climate change have to be walked back once actual evidence is looked at (such as the recent hubbub over bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef which was far less severe than claimed).
Sorry, but should there ever be solid evidence for catastrophic climate change and an urgent need to mitigate that climate change right now, I'll hear about it.
(Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @02:31PM
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday October 24 2016, @02:36PM
That's pretty extreme and misleading. They are specifically talking about 100% humidity areas combined with new higher temperatures. At one point in my work life i was drinking 15 liters of water during a 12 hour shift and then even more afterwards. It was 110F in the shade. I could cook a cup o' noodles just by holding it for 10 min or so. Couldn't pee enough to fill a coffee mug and what did come out was brown. Did that for months. Each day i'd take my uniform off and it was like a cicada shell it was so encrusted with sweat. Where i live now summers often peak over 100F and very high humidity. You'd be amazed what the body can handle. Those articles were talking about 100% humidity and ~114F (had to guess because they don't actually say) temp. That's probably very rare.
That being said, heat waves kill so many people already. It kills them "Because human society will not make the rudimentary changes necessary to adapt to climate". I dropped the "change" part off because it simply isn't necessary. If people fail to heat/cool their house to a survivable temperature then they'll probably die. This seems to happen because people are only prepared for the norm and not the extremes. If extremes became more of the norm i would expect more people to plan for them. Though people will still die, i'm sure. Just like now.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday October 25 2016, @04:22AM
> That's pretty extreme and misleading.
The USA Today article starts off by noting that they're talking about "a worst-case scenario." Perhaps I should have done the same.
> Those articles were talking about 100% humidity and ~114F (had to guess because they don't actually say) temp. That's probably very rare.
They both mention a wet-bulb temperature of 95 degrees Fahrenheit or 35 degrees Celsius. With very high humidity, the wet- and dry-bulb temperatures ought to be similar; the dry-bulb temperatures they're talking about would be no less than 95 degrees Fahrenheit.
From the New York Times article (quoting a climatologist):
You can heat up a Finnish sauna up to 100 degrees Celsius [212 Fahrenheit] since it is bone dry and the body efficiently cools down by excessive sweating even at ambient temperatures far higher than the body temperature. In a Turkish bath, on the other hand, with almost 100 percent relative humidity, you want to keep the temperatures well below 40 degrees Celsius [104 Fahrenheit] since the body cannot get rid of the heat by sweating and starts to accumulate heat.
> Each day i'd take my uniform off and it was like a cicada shell it was so encrusted with sweat.
It sounds as though you worked in hot, dry conditions, more like a Finnish sauna than a Turkish bath.
> Where i live now summers often peak over 100F and very high humidity.
That, but "sustained for six hours or more," seems to be what they're talking about. The USA Today article says that doesn't happen anywhere now.