Climate-changing human activity could lead to 1 billion deaths over the next century, according to new study
Climate-changing human activity could lead to 1 billion deaths over the next century, according to new study
If global warming reaches or exceeds two degrees Celsius by 2100, University of Western Ontario's Joshua Pearce says it is likely that mainly richer humans will be responsible for the death of roughly one billion mainly poorer humans over the next century.
I'm 38 and I think I'll see this in my lifetime.
It's a brutal contrast of the world we grew up in , the only certainty seems to be that the next year will be worse than the last , and death . Which doesn't seem so bad all things considered.
Same! Woooo! Let's ride this turd to hell!
Reminds me of a bit that George Carlin did regarding climate change: “The planet’s gonna be fine. The people are FUCKED!”
Just want to point out for all the people who say things like "We didn't know how bad it would be..." George did that bit in 1992, and everybody knew exactly what he meant. Jimmy Carter warned of climate change while he was president.
We've known for nearly 50 years, and we did almost nothing to stop it.
Sounds conservative to me. I feel like to cap it to a billion we'd need massive agriculture overhaul and renewable energy investment, and neither of those are valued in profit or political capital.
It will be a few more than that. The global demand for fresh water will be 40% over capacity by 2030, if we even make it that long.
We're losing massive amounts of polar ice daily and if the next 5 years are as hot as 2023, the Blue Ocean Event will happen in 2027.
27,000 deaths a day approximately. According to the WHO 150,000 people die every day right now. 385,000 people are born every day. I mean it sounds bad, but in this context it doesn't sound that bad....
Exactly, and it's not like it's going to be me dying. It will be someone else. Thanks to denial, I'm immortal.
Don't look up
Yeah, honestly I think the estimate may be low, or perhaps white the death toll is not what is expected the actual quality of life is going to take a huge bit.
@ConfuzedAZ "385,000 people are born every day"
For now
Causing 15% of deaths is a big deal. Maybe not as much a big deal as Doomsday Next Tuesday, but a big deal nevertheless.
I can't imagine that birth rate keeping up much longer.
What are the most likely causes of death? Are we talking average life expectancy drops by a couple of years, but quality of life remains constant? Or are we talking famine and war due to a loss of areable land?
I assume it’s a little of both, but it’s useful to know which sides the scales tip.
It's an estimate of premature deaths based on CO2 emissions.
"Pearce and Parncutt found the peer-reviewed literature on the human mortality costs of carbon emissions converged on the "1,000-ton rule," which is an estimate that one future premature death is caused every time approximately 1,000 tons of fossil carbon are burned.
"Energy numbers like megawatts mean something to energy engineers like me, but not to most people. Similarly, when climate scientists talk about parts per million of carbon dioxide, that doesn't mean anything to most people. A few degrees of average temperature rise are not intuitive either. Body count, however, is something we all understand," said Pearce, a Western Engineering and Ivey Business School professor.
"If you take the scientific consensus of the 1,000-ton rule seriously, and run the numbers, anthropogenic global warming equates to a billion premature dead bodies over the next century. Obviously, we have to act. And we have to act fast.""
Afaikt the paper refernced in the article is The Human Cost of Anthropogenic Global Warming: Semi-Quantitative Prediction and the 1,000-Tonne Rule. .
From the abstract:
The carbon budget for 2°C AGW (roughly 10^12 tonnes carbon) will indirectly cause roughly 10^9 future premature deaths (10% of projected maximum global population), spread over one to two centuries.
The key part of this being that it specifies 2C of warming. According to the climate action tracker, with current policies are on track for 2.7 degrees of warming by 2100. So assuming no further polices to move back to 2C or less, the 1 billion deaths could be larger.
This doesn't account for the fear of rich humans as the poorer humans aggressively seek relief and/or completely justified revenge.
That sounds low enough to ensure a dystopian future. It could be much higher and still get there easily.