Catastrophes Linked To Climate Change May Cause $158 Trillion Damage By 2050

[Trakar]

Catastrophes Linked To Climate Change May Cause $158 Trillion Damage By 2050

According to a World Bank report, 1.3 billion people are expected to suffer the effects of climate changes in the next three decades
http://businessworld.in/article/Cat...158-Trillion-Damage-By-2050/22-05-2016-98276/

Climate change related disasters are expected to put at risk 1.3 billion people and destroy physical assets to the tune of $158 trillion by 2050, according to the World Bank.

The development bank's disaster mitigation arm Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) made these revelations on Monday in a published report.

To put things in perspective, the population at peril is similar to India's, the second most populous country in the world and the financial risk is double the size of the world economy today...

...The report also asserted that the annual damage has risen from $14 bn between 1976-1985 to $140 bn between 2005-2014. The yearly figure was derived by averaging out the damages over a ten year period. The number of people affected every year almost trebled from 60 to 170 million people during this period.

The poorer countries are more precarious today and need substantial help from the developed and rich countries in form of aid, technology and advisory to embrace consequential climate mitigation policies. Developing countries need a whopping $4.1 trillion dollars to control carbon emissions globally as envisaged in the Paris Climate deal. Building disaster resilient infrastructure and adapt by this time dense and planning devoid urban sprawls in developing countries will add remarkably to the already monumental figure of $4.1 trillion.

2050, roughly 34 years from now, The US has larger and more heavily developed coastlines, lots of agriculture and a large and growing population if our costs are only 1/4 of this amount that would leave us with a roughly (averaged) 4.5T$/year debt, if we assume a dramatically lower share of the expenses, say 1/10th, that would lower our (averaged) annual debt at around ~$440B/year.

Prevention is usually cheaper than response repair costs, so what would be a reasonable, preventative public policy to adapt to the changing climate, where should we be focusing our efforts and how much should we be investing to deal with the changes headed our way due to the symptoms of AGW?

I've seen a range of numbers on this issue in terms of costs both due to climate change symptoms and therapy, I'm not immutably wedded to these numbers, but if you going to offer dramatically lower or high numbers from the range I present above, please support those numbers with a referenced study so that we can see where they come from and the considerations involved in deriving those numbers.

The making of a riskier future: How our decisions are shaping future disaster risk
https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/Riskier Future.pdf

 

[Tony Stark]

Yet you say you may vote for Trump, a guy who says that climate change was made up by the Chinese to hurt American industry.

 

[casebro]

Okay, so we will have an economic boom time while we build dikes, new ports, etc. Just as the social security trust fund gets depleted. Whoop-eee!

 

[BrooklynBaby]

This is nothing but a wealth transfer scheme. Everything Al Gore predicted didn't happen, and the "proof" of recent "global warming" is the lefties cooking the historic temperature data books and the "mainstream" media letting them get away with it.

Vote for Trump and get rid of "global warming".

 

[Beerina]

Humanity will adapt, and will do so faster than problems become drags on society, and the average health and wealth of human populations will continue to increase. But that is only guaranteed in an economically free society. If this is used as an argument for a massive command-and-control economy, forget it.

 

[Trakar]

Yet you say you may vote for Trump, a guy who says that climate change was made up by the Chinese to hurt American industry.

No, I said that insipid Hillary sycophants may convince me to vote for Trump by November, but that is neither relevant nor topical to this thread.

 

[Tony Stark]

No, I said that insipid Hillary sycophants may convince me to vote for Trump by November, but that is neither relevant nor topical to this thread.

You're going to pretend that you haven't argued that it would be better if he wins?

 

[Trakar]

Okay, so we will have an economic boom time while we build dikes, new ports, etc. Just as the social security trust fund gets depleted. Whoop-eee!

Actually, lots of jobs and infrastructure projects would add funds to social security so, while the benefits and drawbacks side of such public policy are certainly relevant, until we actually determine what the scale of the project needs to be, and how such will be budgeted and paid, talking about such potential benefits and drawbacks is probably premature.

If we need more references to provide a wider range of considerations, I'd be happy to list several studies that have been put out by the insurance industry, and various other impacted industries?

I'm just trying to explore reasoned public policy paths to address the issues our nation faces over the next handful of decades and on into the future.

 

[Trakar]

This is nothing but a wealth transfer scheme. Everything Al Gore predicted didn't happen, and the "proof" of recent "global warming" is the lefties cooking the historic temperature data books and the "mainstream" media letting them get away with it.

Vote for Trump and get rid of "global warming".

Your solution does not address reality. If this is your serious consideration, then you have no further substantive relevant input to this thread.

 

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Humanity will adapt, and will do so faster than problems become drags on society, and the average health and wealth of human populations will continue to increase. But that is only guaranteed in an economically free society. If this is used as an argument for a massive command-and-control economy, forget it.

Unless humans "adapt" to sweat money, things will get fairly rough if we don't take preventative action.

 

[Trebuchet]

Okay, so we will have an economic boom time while we build dikes, new ports, etc. Just as the social security trust fund gets depleted. Whoop-eee!

This is nothing but a wealth transfer scheme. Everything Al Gore predicted didn't happen, and the "proof" of recent "global warming" is the lefties cooking the historic temperature data books and the "mainstream" media letting them get away with it.

Vote for Trump and get rid of "global warming".

Humanity will adapt, and will do so faster than problems become drags on society, and the average health and wealth of human populations will continue to increase. But that is only guaranteed in an economically free society. If this is used as an argument for a massive command-and-control economy, forget it.

It's not just a river in Egypt!

 

[Trakar]

You're going to pretend that you haven't argued that it would be better if he wins?

There are a lot of undesirable short-term courses of action that might yield greater medium and long-term benefit, that doesn't make the undesirous any more desirable,...again, however, this is irrelevant and off-topic in this thread. Do you have any relevant contributions to make to this discussion?

 

[Hlafordlaes]

Humanity will adapt, and will do so faster than problems become drags on society, and the average health and wealth of human populations will continue to increase. But that is only guaranteed in an economically free society. If this is used as an argument for a massive command-and-control economy, forget it.

This lacks the critical systems thinking component. When you hold all other things constant, they are quite easy to ignore. 'Economic freedom,' as used here, implies an anti-regulation stance. That in itself is already partial, ignoring other broader constraints.

So let me pose this question: If a voting public agrees in the majority, say, that child slave labor is not allowed, even if it is readily available as a labor input, this acts to increase the prices of the products made using regulated labor, now paid a wage. Is this a distortion of free markets?

ETA: The implications of this argument have bearing on the response to AGW, which I mention in case this is not readily apparent.

 

[Arcade22]

That just means there's 158 trillion dollars worth of repairs to be made. Don't worry, the free market will fix it.

 

[sunmaster14]

Catastrophes Linked To Climate Change May Cause $158 Trillion Damage By 2050

According to a World Bank report, 1.3 billion people are expected to suffer the effects of climate changes in the next three decades
http://businessworld.in/article/Cat...158-Trillion-Damage-By-2050/22-05-2016-98276/



2050, roughly 34 years from now, The US has larger and more heavily developed coastlines, lots of agriculture and a large and growing population if our costs are only 1/4 of this amount that would leave us with a roughly (averaged) 4.5T$/year debt, if we assume a dramatically lower share of the expenses, say 1/10th, that would lower our (averaged) annual debt at around ~$440B/year.

Prevention is usually cheaper than response repair costs, so what would be a reasonable, preventative public policy to adapt to the changing climate, where should we be focusing our efforts and how much should we be investing to deal with the changes headed our way due to the symptoms of AGW?

I've seen a range of numbers on this issue in terms of costs both due to climate change symptoms and therapy, I'm not immutably wedded to these numbers, but if you going to offer dramatically lower or high numbers from the range I present above, please support those numbers with a referenced study so that we can see where they come from and the considerations involved in deriving those numbers.

The making of a riskier future: How our decisions are shaping future disaster risk
https://www.gfdrr.org/sites/default/files/publication/Riskier Future.pdf

Your headline is incorrect. The $158T number is not all due to climate change, or even mostly. If climate were to suddenly stop changing, that number would not be substantially smaller. Admittedly, you have propagated an error originally made by Business World, but the fact that you have propagated it shows that you hadn't read (or at least understood) the article about disaster risk (your second link).

Additionally, your math is wrong.

 

[Trakar]

That just means there's 158 trillion dollars worth of repairs to be made. Don't worry, the free market will fix it.

The free market doesn't pay for infrastructure, the people do through taxes or costs, arguments over whether public or private is cheaper or more efficient really don't much matter to my considerations in this thread. If you want to discuss a plan to levy taxes to address these issues, or to encourage industry to pay for this benefit to society and allow them to worry about how to charge to pay for it that is up to you. Personally, I'm just trying to figure out how to get from the present to the future while minimizing the death and destruction attending past and present side-effects of our civilization.

 

[Beerina]

It's not just a river in Egypt!

Not denying it. Just denying the inevitable attempts at a power grab. It will be worse than adaptation.

 

[Cain]

This is funny. You guys are as blind to the left-wing bias in the media as you are to the even more biased insurance industry.

 

[bytewizard]

I will be dead by 2050, am already near broke, and have no descendants. Although I do have a wood burning stove.

 

[Trakar]

Not denying it. Just denying the inevitable attempts at a power grab. It will be worse than adaptation.

Unplanned adaptation is expensive and inefficient. What leads you to believe that this type of adaptation would be either successful or worth the effort?