Experts predict the alarming number of deaths linked to climate change based on a number of rules, including the "1,000-ton rule."
In the future, global climate change could lead to more frequent wildfires, longer droughts and stronger storms. Photo: Mellimage/Shutterstock/Montree Hanlue/NASA
A new review published in the journal Energies, based on 180 articles on human mortality due to climate change, has come up with a worrying figure, Science Alert reported on August 30. By the next century, 1 billion people, or even more, could die due to climate disasters.
Like most predictions, this one is based on a number of assumptions and rules, including the “1,000-ton rule.” According to this, every 1,000 tons of carbon burned by humanity could indirectly sentence one person to death in the future.
If the world reaches 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial average global temperatures – which is likely to happen in the coming decades – then many more lives will be lost. For every 0.1 degree Celsius of warming from now, the world could suffer around 100 million additional deaths.
The human mortality rate from climate change is difficult to calculate, even in modern times. According to the United Nations, environmental factors kill about 13 million people each year, but it is unclear how many of those deaths are directly or indirectly due to climate change. Some experts say that abnormal temperatures kill about 5 million people each year, while others give lower estimates.
One of the reasons that calculations are difficult is that the effects of climate change are so varied. Crop failures, droughts, floods, extreme weather, wildfires and rising sea levels can all impact human life in complex ways.
Predicting the future death toll from these climate disasters is notoriously difficult, but the authors of the review, energy experts Joshua Pearce of the University of Western Ontario in Canada and Richard Parncutt of the University of Graz in Austria, say it’s worth investigating. Measuring emissions in human terms makes the data more accessible to the public and underscores the need for immediate action, they say.
Pearce and Parncutt applied the 1,000-ton rule to the Adani Carmichael coal mine in Australia, which is set to become the largest coal mine ever built. They found that burning the entire mine could result in about 3 million premature deaths in the future.
Technically, the 1,000-ton rule does not take into account climate feedback loops (the influence of one climate process on another, which in turn feeds back on to the original process). This could make the environmental consequences of carbon emissions even more severe and rapid in the future. The 1,000-ton rule is not a specific number but a range, meaning that between 0.1 and 10 people die per 1,000 tons of carbon burned. This means that worse scenarios are possible.
Thu Thao (According to Science Alert )
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