Maximilian Kotz, Anders Levermann and Leonie Wenz, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, Potsdam, Germany | - nature
Stephan: I am beginning to see in the science literature a really serious analysis of the economic damage that is going to be wrought by climate change, and it is alarming. This paper in nature is quite technical but I decided to bring it to your attention to make this point. While the Republican/TCP cretins in the House behave like children fighting in kindergarten, the clock is ticking and the U.S. is not responding properly to protect social wellbeing damage this nature paper describes.
Abstract
Global projections of macroeconomic climate-change damages typically consider impacts from average annual and national temperatures over long time horizons1,2,3,4,5,6. Here we use recent empirical findings from more than 1,600 regions worldwide over the past 40 years to project sub-national damages from temperature and precipitation, including daily variability and extremes7,8. Using an empirical approach that provides a robust lower bound on the persistence of impacts on economic growth, we find that the world economy is committed to an income reduction of 19% within the next 26 years independent of future emission choices (relative to a baseline without climate impacts, likely range of 11–29% accounting for physical climate and empirical uncertainty). These damages already outweigh the mitigation costs required to limit global warming to 2 °C by sixfold over this near-term time frame and thereafter diverge strongly dependent on emission choices. Committed damages arise predominantly through changes in average temperature, but accounting for further climatic components raises estimates by approximately 50% and leads to stronger regional heterogeneity. Committed losses are projected for all regions except [...]
