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posted by janrinok on Monday October 24 2016, @03:43AM   Printer-friendly
from the buy-shares-in-suntan-lotion-and-guns dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by khallow on Monday October 24 2016, @02:36PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 24 2016, @02:36PM (#418156) Journal
    I'm not interesting in this fantasy crap, but a preponderance of evidence. Come up with that and then we'll talk. In the meantime, exaggerated harm based on exaggerated climate models is not a serious argument.
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @03:01PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 24 2016, @03:01PM (#418169)

    > 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

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Monday October 24 2016, @04:34PM (#418205) Journal

      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.