Actuaries are probably the world’s foremost experts on risk. The Institute & Faculty of Actuaries has weighed in on the likely effects of climate change (pdf):
They expect this between 2050 and 2070, but it appears to be based on reaching over 2 degrees increase. I’d personally expect it sooner. Whatever the case, 2 billion deaths is one of the more extreme numbers I’ve seen from a mainstream source. (I personally expect at least half of the world’s population to die.)
By 2070 to 2090 they expect as much as a 50% loss of GDP.
The global economy could face a 50% loss in GDP between 2070 and 2090, unless immediate policy action on risks posed by the climate crisis is taken. Populations are already impacted by food system shocks, water insecurity, heat stress and infectious diseases. If unchecked, mass mortality, mass displacement, severe economic contraction and conflict become more likely.
I think the simplest and most important quote is this one:
Our society and economy fundamentally depend on the Earth system which provides essentials such as food, water, energy and raw materials.
A lot of people seem to miss that the economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment. Mother nature has the final say on everything.
As long as we’re banging on about climate change, this lovely little chart shows the effects on precipitation of climate change. (Hotter air means more water in the air, and thus more rain and snow.) In other words, expect more floods, mudslides and so on. Notice that the slope appears to be accelerating.
Remember, realism is not pessimism.
Joan
I live in a cold place (-34C/-30F today). The winter of 2022-23 was my first one after moving, and the city hit their all-time record for snowfall.
I was confused, thinking surely they’d hit records of all-time *little* snowfall with climate change. But the locals seemed to believe they got that much snow (4m/12ft) because it was actually super warm compared to their normal winters. Usually snow was an autumn & spring event, not winter. By the time winter sets in, it gets so cold it stops snowing.
ella
I drove back from New Orleans a couple of days ago, New Orleans which got 10 inches of snow the other day. I drove into Houston which got 3 inches on the same day. On the Gulf of Mexico coast where snow is supposed to be a once in a 10 year thing, if that. I suppose there being more moisture in the air during cold fronts (more moisture because of climate change) should result in snow accumulations where those rarely happened before. Lucky I like snowfall
BlizzardOfOz
Here’s my prediction:
“Some bad stuff will happen some time in the next 50 years. I’m managerial-class flunky.”
How are those luxury oceanfront properties doing, that are on borrowed time? Prices will plummet any day now, no doubt.
different clue
If two billion people die, I hope that every global warming denialist is among those two billion. And especially most of all I hope that every Merchant of BullFUD on the issue is among those two billion.
mago
Sounds like an accurate forecast Blizz.
Glad you’re still kicking it.
Revelo
Fear mongering. Sulfur dioxide injection into the stratosphere is a proven method of cooling the planet. Proven to work by repeated experiments on a global scale every time a big volcano erupts. Cost is manageable already and getting more manageable each year due to advances with reusable rockets. Only serious side effect any one discusses is possible slowed repair of the ozone hole over Antarctica, but that can be offset by cracking down more harshly on CFCs that are still being used in places.
And there are huge advances taking place right now in bioengineering, cheap desalination of sea water, nuclear power, solar power, batteries, etc. If anything, we will likely have a collapse in prices of commodity foods (grains, etc) due to these advances. Combined with stabilized population, hunger is unlikely, though diets likely to remain grain heavy for most of humanity.
Note that while SO2 is guaranteed to cool the overall planet, it is not guaranteed to restore the climate to what it was in 1950 or whenever. So the Gulf Stream (AMOC) might still stop and cause an ice age in northwest Europe and there might be other massive local changes, and including huge shifts in precipitation.
david lamy
“Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain.”
A national anthem that is both honest and easy to sing!
Ian Welsh
I don’t think we’re going to have any choice but to use geo-engineering. But it’s not as clear cut as all that and people act as if temperature is the only issue, which is not the case, which is why I usually say “climate change and ecological collapse.” We’re likely to leave it too late, in any case. Also, once started, we can basically never stop unless we use other methods to mass-remove carbon.
Other tech fixes assume competence and ability to rapidly build infrastructure, as well. And competence is in short supply. The only country I’d trust do this stuff and not fuck it up completely is China, maybe.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/08/geoengineering-global-warming-ipcc
“There are doubts also over effectiveness. While the aerosols might constrain temperature rises, they would not stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the acidification of the oceans. What happens when this “temporary measure” is halted is also an area of concern, as the planetary system might suddenly be hit by a surge in temperature.
The IPCC says these uncertainties constrain the ability to implement solar radiation management in the near future. But with the 1.5C target current on course to be overshot at some point between 2030 and 2052, the urgency is likely to grow.
Johan Rockström, coauthor of the recent Hothouse Earth study, said the IPCC report was likely to stimulate discussion of these extreme emergency measures.
“I think this will raise solar radiation management to the highest political level. We currently have no framework for this,” he said. “I’m very scared of this technology but we need to turn every stone now.”
James Hansen said the tipping point in public opinion was more likely to come at a slightly higher temperature, but by then it may already be too late.
“2C would force geoengineering on today’s young people. Geoengineering, if global temperature passes 2C, would start, at the latest, once ice sheet collapse begins,” he told the Guardian. “Unfortunately, because of the inertia of the system, geoengineering then would probably be too late to prevent locking in the eventual loss of coastal cities.””
Mel
Has anybody got an estimate on the effects of reduced insolation on plant growth?
It seems certain that if we reduce the amount of radiant energy to reach earth, then we reduce the amount of infrared radiation that has to escape through the atmospheric blanket so as to keep temperatures down.
But it seems like cutting insolation also reduces the energy that plants need to power their growth. How much? Agriculture and biological carbon capture would both be affected.
different clue
@Revelo,
The root cause of at least two problems is carbon skyflooding and skycarbon buildup. Global warming and its resultant climate d’chaos decay is one outcome. Ocean acidation is the other outcome. ( There may be yet other outcomes I don’t know of).
Sulfur dioxide planet shading is a permission structure to keep skydumping carbon. That will keep driving the ocean acidation problem.
The solution would be carbon skydumping reduction and skycarbon re-suckdown and surfacesphere fixation, in soil, biomass, or wherever.
The ChinaGov won’t wait around much longer. Either China or China and India both ( ” Chindia”) will begin massive sulfur dioxide planet shading any old time now. With or without “permission” from anyone else. The merchants of fossil carbon and their fossil-captured US government will quietly approve and give quiet green-lights even as they might pretend to object in public.
If one were an adventurous speculator, one might speculate on thousands of cans of fish and figure out how to hold them at 33 degrees Fahrenheit for the next few decades until ocean acidation and other eco-collapses exterminate all the edible fish in the sea. Then one could start selling those cans of fish at a thousand dollars a can, or maybe one bitcoin per can, or a fistful of $Trumpcoins per can, or whatever other price one cares to name.
Or if one is a crypto long-gamer, one could keep those cans of fish and use them to back a crypto-currency. One could call it FishCoins or FishBux or whatever one wants to call it.
ella
Different clue’s got the gist of it. What we want is permission to continue our comfy lifestyles burning whatever fuel is cheapest, so dump some sulfur dioxide, cross your into the stratosphere, cross your fingers and party on.
While the sources of at least half of the oxygen we breath (the oceans) are acidifying to the point where plankton could have a mass dieoff. It’s happened before and reduced the animal population very drastically. Read all about the history of oxygen at the politically incorrect NIH website https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8960603/. Wonder when this info will be forbidden; guess the new administration hasn’t quite got around to it, so read fast.
Ian Welsh
Ella, excellent, thank you. I read years about oxygen issues, but had been unable to find a good source since then and always get dismissed when I mention it.
bruce wilder
Human beings collectively have barely begun to think about the implications of the industrial revolution(s) for the economics of the global ecosphere. I went looking for IPCC 2014 reports in order to present some evidence for how stupid the economic analysis was in official establishment channels as late as ten years, but the archiving has been done incompetently and it proved to be too much effort. The main point is that the Report the OP here is drawing attention to is spot on with regard to projecting economic decline. Yeah, yeah GDP is a wrong measure, useful here only for a headline of alarm, but perfectly sensible as an incredulous response to the stupidity of professional economists whose theory of economic growth is to lay a straightedge on graph paper and draw a pencil.
“Lesser evil” political posturing has a lot of people embracing good intensions and baseless optimism instead of really pondering realistically what it would take to really think thru what it would take to avoid ecological collapse. Transitioning to electric vehicles, as an example of one focus of enthusiasm, does not accomplish much. Not much that any powerful figures have proposed or touted accomplish much or even do a sophisticated job of identifying more than one or two major issues. That additions of carbon to the carbon cycle imply both atmospheric warming and ocean acidification, is advanced thinking by current standards of the public discourse, but barely scratches the surface of complex issues of accumulating toxins and pollutants of unknown effect. And, the insight that all economic activity generates waste and unconstrained, exhibits Jevons paradox with reagard to advances in technical efficiency, implying that technology will not save us, absent fundamental reform of economic principles and social organization. (AI may kill us off — so there’s that hopeful prospect.)
different clue
@ella,
There is also a blog about the ongoing dieoff of trees and forests all over the world, with the attendant loss of the oxygen they also release. It is called Wit’s End. It has some chunks of links to science about this, including the generally unacknowledge role of ground-level ozone pollution in exterminating tree life. Beyond that, the blogger has fallen into a pit of despair and she has turned her blog into a death-of-all-life-watch blog. If you want to feel the pain and share the despair, Wit’s End is the blog for you.
But I will offer a link to the science-y part, posted before she gave up all hope of hope.
https://witsendnj.blogspot.com/p/basic-premise.html
Kevin
A great book that goes heavily into the way the atmosphere could change drastically due to climate change, in ways similar to past major earth extinction events but on an accelerated timescale is ‘under a green sky’. It makes clear that there is no more important issue.