Emily Cunningham

I agree with others that Roger Hallam is wrong when he says that "science predicts" six billion will die this century due to climate change. But the lack of scientific basis for this claim hides a more profound fact about how we do science. Thread. 1/https://twitter.com/BBCHARDtalk/status/1162309729735127040 …

My main point is that we have "scientists" willing to put economic cost projection figures on devastating climate change: that it will "cost" x% of GDP growth going forward. These are complete and utter bollocks - no one can predict all the costs of climate disasters. 2/

But that doesn't stop these figures being quoted in the press, repeated by scientific colleagues who should honestly know better, and even Nordhaus, the leader of this area, being awarded a Nobel Prize in economics last year. 3/

Yes, these numbers are "educated estimates" or "projections" or whatever, but still, just utter nonsense. Saying that one knows that 4 degrees of warming will result in x% of GDP costs, when it will make the tropics uninhabitable is just nonsense and should be treated as such. 4/

But that raises another question: what about the human costs of climate impacts? Surely we should be able to estimate those better? I mean those are based on real science, right? Like deaths from heat, hunger, flooding, disease spread, etc? Surely these could be estimated ... 5/

with much stronger scientific accuracy? And the answer here is really interesting, because it's both yes, no, and no one is supporting this area of research enough. Yes, some pathways between impacts and health are very well known. [Thread interruption due to family morning. TBC]

Looking forward to the rest of this thread. I'd never thought about this before, but yes, this is wack. If we're estimating financial loss (even if it's bollocks), why aren't we estimating death? I thought the IPCC did do this to some extent?

Or maybe it was that the IPCC said that food and water scarcity would effect X millions of people and then one could draw one's own conclusion? I'm forgetting...