I’m republishing this from yesterday. It’s important IMHO.
Unmitigated climate change to shrink global economy by 23 percent, researchers find
| BY BEN GRUBER
Berkeley, California (Reuters) When the world heats up, economies around the globe will cool down. That's according to a new study which predicts that rising temperatures due to climate change will wreak havoc on economic output.
"Our best estimate is that the global economy as a whole will be 23 percent smaller in 2100 than if we would avoid climate change entirely," said co-author of the study Solomon Hsiang, an associate professor of public policy at the University of California Berkeley.
The study looked at the relationship between temperature and economic activity in 166 countries over a 50 year period. The findings indicate climate change will widen global inequality, perhaps dramatically, because warming is good for cold countries, which tend to be richer, and more harmful for hot countries, which tend to be poorer. In the researchers' benchmark estimate, climate change will reduce average income in the poorest 40 percent of countries by 75 percent in 2100.
The magic number is 13 degrees Celsius or 55 degrees Fahrenheit, which is roughly the average temperature of the largest economies right now. But in 100 hundred years, if climate change goes unchecked, that could change dramatically.
"The guys that are at the top of the hill right now, places like the United States and China, they are going to start falling down the hill and performing poorly," said Hsiang.
Countries currently hotter than the optimal temperature zone, such as Brazil and most of Africa, will be even worse off than they are now, according to the report.
The influx of refugees into Europe we’re so aghast at now is probably just the first trickle that is likely to to turn into a flood by the end of this century, as climate refugees flee their increasingly impoverished countries across the Global South.
THIS IS VERY LIKELY TO BECOME THE MOST TUMULTUOUS CENTURY IN HUMAN HISTORY AS CLIMATE
CAUSED ECONOMIC DISRUPTIONS AND THE RESULTING MASS MIGRATIONS BECOME THE NORM.