Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock
Topics: Climate Change, Health, Environment
William Morgan
Startling research about the effects of climate change over the next quarter of a century has revealed the terrifying impact that the warming world will have on human populations, as well as how many will start to die each year as a result.
Scientists examining just the impact of more frequent high temperatures across the globe, modeled on 20 years of climate data from 156 countries, found that these higher average heats will have deadly consequences for mankind.
Without accounting for increased freak weather events and the migration of millions of people due to rising sea levels and disappearing coastlines, academics from the Catholic University of Argentina used this climate data to predict what life will look like in 2050.
As if things weren't looking hairy already, the team's model found that every month where average temperatures exceed 27.8C (82F) will ruin people's health, cause thousands of deaths, and wreak havoc on what remains of the global economy.
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The researchers said: "Rising temperatures are projected to increase the prevalence of physical inactivity, translating into additional premature deaths and productivity losses, especially in tropical regions."
Terrifyingly, this will cause between 470,000 and 700,000 additional deaths every year.
While this is a large number, to visualize what it would be like to live through this hot hellscape, that is roughly how many people died around the world from Covid in the first eight months of the pandemic. If this doesn't seem too bad, just remember that there's no vaccine for heatstroke and these temperatures will be here to stay.
If the human cost of these continuously warm months was not enough to stimulate governments to take further action to prevent the climate from heating further, the scientists also estimated that productivity losses alone would slash $3.6 billion from global productivity.
Publishing their findings in The Lancet Global Health, the team's lead Christian García–Witulski explained: "Heat exposure imposes physiological constraints through elevated cardiovascular strain and heightened perceived exertion, creating substantial barriers to outdoor physical activity."
These impacts of climate change will be felt hardest in the countries that are least well-equipped to adapt to higher temperatures, with models showing that low and middle-income nations will grapple with the worst effects.
While many parts of Africa can expect deaths and economic inactivity to increase alongside temperatures, the scientists' paper suggests that the most-impacted region of the world will be Latin America and the Caribbean, where every month over 82F will increase the amount of people unable to work, or who simply die.
"The implications for global health are immediate," they wrote.
"Without stronger mitigation, rising temperatures alone could undermine – or even reverse – a substantial share of WHO's target of cutting global physical inactivity by 15 percent by 2030, while simultaneously slowing economic growth through heat-related drops in worker productivity."
With these temperature changes all but locked in due to worldwide failures to lower carbon emissions, the Argentinian scientists suggested a number of measures to mitigate the worst impacts of the hot hellscape that 2050 promises to be.
The scientists advised: "Prioritising heat–adaptive urban design, subsidised climate–controlled exercise facilities, and targeted heat–risk communication is essential to mitigate these emerging health and economic burdens, in addition to ambitious emissions reductions."