Analysis shows at least $2.8tn in damage from 2000 to 2019 through worsened storms, floods and heatwaves
The damage caused by the climate crisis through extreme weather has cost $16m (£13m) an hour for the past 20 years, according to a new estimate.
Storms, floods, heatwaves and droughts have taken many lives and destroyed swathes of property in recent decades, with global heating making the events more frequent and intense. The study is the first to calculate a global figure for the increased costs directly attributable to human-caused global heating.
It found average costs of $140bn (£115bn) a year from 2000 to 2019, although the figure varies significantly from year to year. The latest data shows $280bn in costs in 2022. The researchers said lack of data, particularly in low-income countries, meant the figures were likely to be seriously underestimated. Additional climate costs, such as from crop yield declines and sea level rise, were also not included.
We do have approximate world temperatures for a long time. If you look at the last 2000 years, we are currently experiencing a massive spike in temperatures and it does align quite well with the industrial revolution where we really started to pump out nasty amounts of CO2.
If you look at the charts for as far back as 11,000 years ago, it does look grim: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/were-screwed-11-000-years-worth-of-climate-data-prove-it/273870/
However, if you look back at the last 500 million years, we are actually in a cold-snap: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hottest-earths-ever-been
Just looking at those two points is extremely confusing for some people. My points of view on this are:
Climate change is and always has been a thing. It can change quite rapidly or quite slowly. It can be impacted by biology or other natural phenomenon.
The earth will absolutely survive huge swings in climate changes and has done so for millions of years. We, as humans, probably won’t though. However, we are generally intelligent when it comes to survival, so we have that going for us.
What some people don’t realize is that we are changing the world temperatures at an accelerated pace with no plan to mitigate it. The biology of the past has poisoned other life with excessive oxygen and also excessive CO2. Lots of things died and some things evolved. We are just doing the same thing on a much grander scale with more exotic ways to generate waste gasses.
We don’t really have any large CO2 sinks right now. Contrary to what some say, planting more trees won’t slow things down. While plants love CO2, anyone that has ran a greenhouse or grow tent with supplemental CO2 will tell you that it can be tricky to manage excess humidity while also keeping temperatures down. Higher temperatures are probably going to kill off a fuck ton of plant life, so there is that.
Charts are confusing and we need better ways to present data other than “average world temperatures over the last x years”. They simply do not tell the full story.
Additionally, people fail to realize the difference between seasonal weather and average climate. Unfortunately, people with good intentions also mix the two up. Also, It’s super easy to think “this year” has had the worst weather. Humans have really bad memories and do not hold detailed data points very well. One good year followed by one bad year just feeds extreme opinions and it’s seriously annoying.
Contrary to what some say, climate is changing. It always has and always will. Our tolerance as humans is quite good, actually. However, when you look at the big picture, we live in an extremely narrow band of survivability in our own atmosphere and fucking that up is very much possible.
Failure to understand data is why climate change deniers exist.
Your 11,000 and 500 million year charts show an important thing. You can absolutely put a bias on everything if just showing the window of data fitting to ones opinion and adding a fitting range on the y axis can change the message quite a bit.