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Average Person Will Be 40% Poorer If World Warms By 4C, New Research Shows (theguardian.com) 118

Economic models have systematically underestimated how global heating will affect people's wealth, according to a new study that finds 4C warming will make the average person 40% poorer -- an almost four-fold increase on some estimates. The Guardian: The study by Australian scientists suggests average per person GDP across the globe will be reduced by 16% even if warming is kept to 2C above pre-industrial levels. This is a much greater reduction than previous estimates, which found the reduction would be 1.4%.

Scientists now estimate global temperatures will rise by 2.1C even if countries hit short-term and long-term climate targets. Criticisms have mounted in recent years that a set of economic tools known as integrated assessment models (IAM) -- used to guide how much governments should invest in cutting greenhouse gas emissions -- have failed to capture major risks from climate change, particularly extreme weather events. The new study, in the journal Environmental Research Letters, took one of the most popular economic models and enhanced it with climate change forecasts to capture the impacts of extreme weather events across global supply chains.

Average Person Will Be 40% Poorer If World Warms By 4C, New Research Shows

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  • by zawarski ( 1381571 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @10:08AM (#65273747)
    I have no idea how hot 4C is.
  • by serafean ( 4896143 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @10:13AM (#65273755)

    Actuaries, the people assessing risk for insurers, say the same. The report is here: https://actuaries.org.uk/plane... [actuaries.org.uk]

    Economists essentially said "anything with a roof won't be affected" . And won the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for it. And now thanks to Nordhaus, we're screwed policy-wise.

  • That's OK. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by nightflameauto ( 6607976 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @10:14AM (#65273759)

    A few billionaires will continue to increase their net worth, so it all works out just fine. We all need to suffer so the uber-wealthy can continue to prosper.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Right, I was going to say that 40% is an underestimate because billionaires will exploit climate change to become richer still.

      The important thing is to know that decision makers are not average, they are rich. The rich do not care about climate change or how much the average person suffers, they care about what they get out of it. Many of them view life as zero sum, that the average person suffering means they are getting ahead.

  • after 4 years of Trump's presidency ? NB: I am talking about the common man, not one of his billionaire mates.

  • LAMBO (Score:4, Funny)

    by dankstick ( 788385 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @10:21AM (#65273779) Homepage
    So if we cool the earth by 4C, will we be all 40% richer? What's the temperature need to be for everyone to get a lambo?
    • Sorry, but you've seen Happy Days - you only get a motorbike.
    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      Our education system has truly failed.

    • Cold enough to flash-freeze Davos during the WEF? :-P

    • A somewhat more serious answer to this: While there is unfortunately no temperature that will selectively stop our capitalist overlords from bleeding our civilizations dry, there are ideal temperatures for human labor and industrial processes. A relevant study:

      https://laislanetwork.org/what... [laislanetwork.org]

    • So if we cool the earth by 4C, will we be all 40% richer? What's the temperature need to be for everyone to get a lambo?

      Just maintaining progress and not having to waste a lot of money on climate mitigation would kind of naturally take care of that. If you look at first Lamborghini, in 1964, and compare its performance to what you can get for a middling new car price now... other than status, I'll bet you'd rather have the modern middling-priced new car.

    • It's a rate of change problem. Changing the average annual temperature quickly is difficult for our economy to adapt to. Mostly our agriculture economy.

      • by HiThere ( 15173 )

        It's more than rate of change. Well, unless you're talking about multiple-millennia. Different crops have different temperature preferences and different moisture preferences. Raising papayas in Arkansas wouldn't even help compensate for it being too hot to raise wheat in Kansas. (OTOH, corn would probably continue to do well.)

        A hotter world is probably going to require a switch from wheat to corn and rice. But corn requires lots of extra fertilizers, and rice seems to require a lot more water. (I say

        • in some range of temperatures you can find the necessary humidity, temperature, an soil moisture to grow a crop. If we keep moving where that is, then we're constantly searching for new farm land because our old farm land is no longer suitable.

          Corn grows on the equator. It's something we'll be growing a great deal of when we face higher global temperatures. But corn fields might have to move to a higher elevation to grow it with some milder temperatures and better rainfall. So you lose a lot of farmland in

    • by leonbev ( 111395 )

      Make sure the factor in the added tariff costs of that Lambo in the US while you're doing those climate change calculations, as they're about to cost 25% more than they did a month ago.

  • April 1 (Score:2, Funny)

    by Cpt_Kirks ( 37296 )

    These April Fools threads are getting out of hand.

  • by greytree ( 7124971 ) on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @10:26AM (#65273797)
    Global warming is indeed the biggest current threat to mankind (*), but it is always sensible to ignore any post that begins "according to a new study".

    (*) Although Trump and Musk are working hard on this.
    • by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      Global warming is indeed the biggest current threat to mankind (*), but it is always sensible to ignore any post that begins "according to a new study".

      Too bad I don't have mod points, this is insightful.

      The way science works is, don't credit a result until it's replicated, or at a minimum has withstood scrutiny by people knowledgable about the field.

      (And... the phrase "people knowledgable about the field" is not synonymous with "people posting on slashdot".)

      • So ... people knowledgeable about the field say that people knowledgeable about the field say that people not knowledgeable about the field should not trust unreplicated results.
    • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Tuesday April 01, 2025 @11:53AM (#65274013) Journal

      Global warming is indeed the biggest current threat to mankind

      It's not. Climate change is a threat to our wealth and has the potential to reduce human population by a non-trivial percentage, but it doesn't really threaten us with extinction, unlike some other threats. For a good overview of existential threats to humanity (including climate change) I recommend The Precipice [amazon.com].

      Although Trump and Musk are working hard on this.

      Although they're doing a lot of damage, they really don't rate on the scale of threats to humanity. They're part of a global ongoing decline in democracy which is very harmful but not existential -- and far easier to reverse than climate change.

      • I think global warming has a good chance of collapsing Western societies.
        I call that a large threat to mankind. I did not say "existential threat".

        Trump and Musk are playing crazy games that could end in World War 3.
        • Good thing I don't live in a western society
        • I think global warming has a good chance of collapsing Western societies. I call that a large threat to mankind. I did not say "existential threat".

          You did say "biggest", and it can't be bigger than existential threats with even moderate probability.

          Also, I disagree that climate change might collapse Western societies. Western societies are actually the ones best equipped to protect themselves from it... and from the waves of refugees from regions that aren't so well off.

          Trump and Musk are playing crazy games that could end in World War 3.

          Agreed. However, I think nuclear war is less likely to end humanity than AI, though civilization probably wouldn't survive. Einstein's quote about WW IV comes to mind.

      • While I agree that asteroids, AI. pandemics, nuclear war etc all loom large, climate change is the only one that is here right now, that we can see, and that has a roadmap.
        • While I agree that asteroids, AI. pandemics, nuclear war etc all loom large, climate change is the only one that is here right now, that we can see, and that has a roadmap.

          AI has a roadmap, we just don't know the timeframe (could be months, is more likely at least a few years, almost certainly isn't more than a decade or three), and don't know if some deus ex machina might save us. Though I think that last possibility is very unlikely.

          Nuclear war, sadly, is looking dramatically more likely. With Trump making threatening noises against NATO allies, it's clear that Europe can no longer count on the US nuclear umbrella, which means that France and the UK will need to change th

    • According to a new study, we're boned!

      Q.E.D

  • April Fool's Day jokes are indistinguishable from regular The Guardian content.

  • if things warm to 4 degrees above normal most life will be extinct.
    But nobody ever said The Guardian was a reputable rag.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      That's a gross misstatement. It is, however, quite plausible that most life we care about will go extinct. I doubt that Chordata or even Mammalia will be endangered. For that matter, I doubt that Homo Sapiens will be endangered. But they may lose a significant fraction of their numbers. (If civilization collapses because of climate stress, probably over 90%. But probably less than 98%.)

  • The wealthy will see it as an opportunity to buy up more real estate from their air conditioned, mini reactor powered, island bunkers.

  • During the Ice Age!!!!
  • I'm sure the economic models are just as accurate as the climate models.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      Based on historic evidence, economic models are considerably less accurate than the climate models. Both have been repeatedly tweaked to be excessively optimistic.

  • Without even looking at the study I'm going to make the guess that the study assumes negative impacts from climate change and assumes humanity and the economy have no way to adjust to these changes and that the warming will not, for example, allow farming and a reduced need for heating in more Northern areas. I'm also going to guess the study assumes there will be no improvements in technology, farming or transportation in the next 50 years.
    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      It's a plausible wild guess, but wrong. The economic study modeled things like the GDP, and didn't consider individual humans. The climate study did silly things like assuming that countries would keep they pledged change.


  • I really do love these sort of figures. Often based on shoddy data, inaccurate assessments or just plain wrong in considering life is static.

    Remember when the internet was going to run out of bandwidth? If bandwidth demand continued to grow at rate X and supply is rate Y which is lower than X then congestion, everything gets "stuck"...but it didn't happen.

    This is like a bath. If you keep filling water at a constant rate the bath will overflow at some point. Of course as we notice some signs of issues we
  • Both pretty much guaranteed at this point. I hope modern civilization can survive anyway and not go off the rails and fall into some bizarre post-apocalyptic dark age (again).

  • What amazes me is that some people still think that emitting CO2 should be unlimited and free. With that logic people will continue to use coal to generate electricity even if it's dumb.

    • People will even continue to breathe.

      • Breathing is not causing global warming. The burning of fossil fuel is. At the same time it's causing many problems such as reducing air quality. You know, the air people want to continue to breathe.

    • by HiThere ( 15173 )

      It's traditional. People have been burning things since before they were people. Trying to change something that traditional (and which has that many obvious benefits) is difficult.

      The costs don't show up until you scale things WAY up.

      • I'm not saying it should be banned. I'm just saying it should not be free. And yes, it is difficult to implement, but must still be done.

  • Ftom TFA:

    But Neal said global heating would hit countries everywhere, because global economies are linked by trade.

    "Not any more." - D. J. Trump

  • It will be even worse once you factor in necessary bribes to the still climate change denying, fascist government.

  • The summary left out a critical detail: that 40% estimate is for what the effect will be in the year 2100. They only estimated short term effects, but it doesn't stop then. In the long term, 4C of warming will lead to at least 5-10 meters of sea level rise, and possibly much more. That will annihilate whole countries and force almost all coastal communities to be abandoned. Many parts of the tropics will experience regular heat waves that surpass the maximum survivable temperature for humans and most ot

  • Now I treasure these regular posts of nonsense for the entertainment value. If it's Tuesday, we get a Guardian cross-post. Somebody has to pay the bills around here.

  • The easiest way around this is to buy stock in solar panel and windmill companies.
    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      I'm going to buy futures in the Yanomami Sovereign Wealth fund. With all the foreign direct investment they are getting for not cutting down trees, it's bound to skyrocket in value any time now.

  • All conjecture - all speculation. These papers are pre-determined results that look for corroborating data and discount any factors that might deter the conclusion. These types of papers are why many people no longer trust scientists and do more harm than good when their speculation is eventually proven erroneous.
  • ...especially about the future.
    In times of normal technological advances, it's really hard to predict the future.
    As AI increases in power and adoption, the future is becoming increasingly impossible to predict.
    One definition of the tech "singularity" is the point at which the future becomes unpredictable.
    That point is now

  • ... warmer weather will make guys junk bigger. Verified scientifically by jumping into swimming pools of varying temperatures.

  • wealth inequality some folks are worried about.

  • Everyone being "worth 40% less" means money is worth 40% less. Labor is the root of all money. Assets are worth nothing without labor. AI needs massive data from people to train on so you can't replace labor with AI.
  • Just thought I should mention that. "You will own nothing . . .
  • Stupid study published in a propaganda rag. Big shock, it's worthless BS.

    The Guardian is not a news outlet, they abandoned that pretense years ago and you can see it at the bottom of every page.

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