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Comment by chki | Hacker News Reader

Can you provide a source for that number? I didn't find it in the IPCC reports and googling the impact of climate change on GDP gives _very_ different results: https://www.reuters.com/world/climate-change-putting-4-globa...

Edit: to be clear, that's not the only thing dubious about your comment. The IPCC does not study climate change but aggregates climate change studies. Asteroids are obviously less "likely" than climate change which shouldn't even be a category because climate change is already happening and already has a real impact. "The world won't die in a fireball" is a red herring, the world will be fine but people will be far worse off, especially poor substance farmers in sub-saharan Africa, who also – to come back to you original point – don't contribute a lot to global GDP but are still humans that matter and shouldn't starve to death.

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https://financialpost.com/opinion/opinion-ipcc-global-warmin...

https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/2021-08-11-bjorn-l...

A few extracts (I got the date wrong its 2100 not 2050):

Because of economic development, the UN estimates that the average person in the world will become 450 per cent as well-off by 2100 as they are today. But climate change will have a cost, in that adaptation and challenges become somewhat harder. Because of climate change, the average person in 2100 will “only” be 436 per cent as well off as today.

Also:

This matters, because globally, many more people die from cold than from heat. A new study in the highly respected journal Lancet shows that about half a million people die annually from heat, but 4.5 million people die from cold. As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year. This fits the narrative, of course, and is what we have heard over and over again.

You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.

But it turns out that because global warming has also reduced cold waves, we now see 283,000 fewer cold deaths. You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.

The author of the opinion pieces you cited is apparently relying on this study regarding cold deaths:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

But his interpretation is dubious at best because the study is not about climate change! The reduction in deaths attributed to cold or heat might not be connected to climate change at all, the study doesn't say anything about it. That's solely the author's interpretation. From the actual study (which is also pure speculation because their method doesn't provide this causality): "The results indicate that global warming might slightly reduce the net temperature-related deaths, although, in the long run, climate change is expected to increase mortality burden."

He also doesn't provide a clear source for his claims on economic development, so I'm still sceptical.

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