this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Edit: Downvoters please reply. For clarification, I am just arguing against the claim that climate change will "kill us all" in the literal sense.
Cold weather still kills way more people than hot weather. Warming has decreased the overall temperature-related deaths. 650,000 fewer people die per year than in the 80s and 90s. 18 million die per year from cold weather, 2.2 million from hot weather.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/?sh=135860881d88
World population has grown (4x) but natural disaster deaths have decreased to a fraction (less than 1/10th or less than 5,000 per year). This is because we are better prepared. A 40+x increase is required to reach 1920 levels per capita. And that 50,000 per year would still not be able to beat the 650,000 fewer people dying from temperature per year.
not the most well read dude, but my understanding is that as there is more energy in the atmosphere, there will be more unstable weather patterns - and will lead to crop failures.
this will most likely hit the global south and nations that are less developed (exploited nations such as the global south) harder than the developed nations. people migrating because they can't live in the deadly heat, or not having enough food, or something about florida going underwater (iirc they won't insure houses in florida anymore because of global warming and rising sea temperatures.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-climate-change-impact-assessment-1.6964662#:~:text=By%20the%202080s%2C%20the%20report,average%20of%20about%2016%20days.
edit i don't think people will want to lay down and die from the inhospitable environment, they will probably move - i don't think looking at the death toll and saying "see there are less deaths from the climate therefore climate change is not significant" is a good form of analysis, it seems like a bit of a kneejerk reaction, that needs more inspection - like quality of life, crop failures, if you can go outside without heatstroke, these things are gradually ramped up on a scale
Changes in the climate might decrease yields, however CO2 concentration directly increases them. This should recover 60% to over 100% (wheat increased, soybean fully recovered) of the losses due to climate change depending on the crop from 2000-2080 according to NASA.
So if you take the 50% loss of corn due to lack of moisture stated in your report, recovered by 60%. It should be ~20% decrease (time period probably starts from 2020s in the report, so this calculation is off), while wheat will increase by 10% overall according to NASA.
Farmers may switch to the more productive crops to compensate.
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasa-study-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-will-help-and-hurt-crops/