Back in 2009, it was 200 million climate refugees according to this article in the NYT:
There could be 200 million of these climate refugees by 2050, according to a new policy paper by the International Organization for Migration, depending on the degree of climate disturbances.
Now the claim is up to 5 times that by 2050 in the space of five years, at this rate of increase, the entire world population will be ‘climate refugees’ by 2050.
From Smithsonian Magazine by Jerry Adler:
The Reality of a Hotter World is Already Here
As global warming makes sizzling temperatures more common, will human beings be able to keep their cool? New research suggests not
The various environmental effects of greenhouse gases are potentially devastating, as we have often heard. The latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, made public in March, underscored the danger of widespread hunger, even starvation, resulting from crop failures. Other health threats have been enumerated by Robert Repetto, a United Nations Foundation economist, who says climate change will intensify smog, leading to “increased outbreaks of asthma and allergies,” and “exacerbate vector-borne diseases such as hantavirus, West Nile virus, Lyme disease and dengue fever.” Repetto also worries about the “extreme weather events” that some researchers say climate change will engender. “Biological systems and engineering systems are all designed for a range of climatic conditions,” he says. “Within those limits, we’re OK, …but outside those limits, the damage increases rapidly and becomes catastrophic, and we’re going outside those limits.” Heat waves themselves pose a health risk, especially for young children and the elderly—and world-class athletes. Temperatures at the Australian Open in January reached 104 degrees for four consecutive days, a condition that one tennis player called “inhumane” after competitors collapsed on the court.
(Gosh, it gets hot in Australia in summer? Who knew?)
…
There may be hordes of climate refugees, fleeing homes on islands and coasts made uninhabitable by climate change—anywhere from 25 million to 1 billion people by 2050, according to the International Organization for Migration. Even people who don’t have to move will experience a bewildering sense of dislocation as the environment changes around them—as Northern winters start to be measured in weeks rather than months. Glenn Albrecht, an Australian philosopher, coined the term “solastalgia” for this emotion, a kind of homesickness you can experience without leaving home.
“We will see the emergence of novel climates, environments we’ve not seen before in human times, and the extinction of others, around the Arctic and in high Alpine regions,” says Laurence C. Smith, a professor of geography at UCLA and author of The World in 2050. Smith says cities, industry and agriculture may benefit in places such as Canada and Scandinavia, though at some cost in psychological and cultural disruption. “Very bitterly cold winters will be less common in some places,” he says, “but instead of a nice blanket of white snow, they will have slush.” And people who move north for the weather, or for jobs that may open up as the Arctic melts, will discover that climate change doesn’t make the winter nights any shorter.
Richard Tol said
‘…reinterpreted the estimates’
Lots of other ‘re’ words also come to mind as regards to some of these reports.
Revise. Re-evaluate. Revamp.
However proper’ re-search’ is not one of them
tonyb
I have to say that when I hear these things nowadays, I get sad. All these great institutions are beginning to look like mediaeval priests sounding the whip och inquisition. Chastise the heretics and scarring the rest with the fire of hell on earth.
I’m not a believer myself but by the looks of it, a lot of the so called liberals out there are clearly craving for whatever religion they can get their hands on as long as they can point a finger at anybody and let the the thin air of the high moral ground let their heads spin.
the folks from Brighton, England might prefer to be CAGW refugees than to live under the Greens!
note: butties/butty is english slang for sandwiches/sandwich:
26 April: UK Daily Mail: Ian Birrell: Lunacy of the town that turned green: A ban on bacon butties. Traffic-calming sheep. Transgender toilets. Sounds like a send-up? In fact, it’s the all-too-real story of how Britain’s loopiest party took over Brighton…
Brighton Pavilion is the Green Party’s only seat in Parliament
Idealism and environmental improvements have gone down well
Other stunts like Meat-free Monday and transgender toilets, not so much
In addition, the party’s inexperience in power has left them struggling
A rising tide of splits, stunts, U-turns, gaffes and divisive industrial disputes has alienated voters and angered businesses here in a city better known for its bohemian tolerance, while outlandish proposals for a ban on bacon butties and plans to use sheep for traffic calming have earned only derision.
The serious side of politics has suffered, too – a demonstration of the dangers that await when protest parties win power. A doomed attempt to impose the biggest council tax rise in the country ended with humiliating warnings that Whitehall could be forced to take over the Town Hall.
Welcome to the Green Republic of Brighton and Hove…
At last month’s council meeting, a Green member accused a former Tory leader of wearing a swastika. She wasn’t. It turned out to be a traditional Irish emblem on her necklace…
Graham Cox, a Tory councillor and former head of Sussex CID, said the Green council promoted an image of Brighton as a place of protest and alternative lifestyles that welcomed the homeless.
‘They don’t care about things like cutting the grass and keeping flower-beds tidy, so our town is getting scruffier. They are basically ***hippies who don’t give a damn about such things.’…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2613905/Lunacy-town-turned-green-A-ban-bacon-butties-Traffic-calming-sheep-Transgender-toilets-Sounds-like-send-In-fact-real-story-Britains-loopiest-party-took-Brighton.html
I’m amazed that they’re basically saying that evolution doesn’t exist and that all humans are essentially stupid and can’t adapt to anything.
The homo sapiens has adapted to this non-linear, chaotic system called “climate” for almost 200,000 years. Successfully so. There are humans everywhere. In every single climate zone.
And before the homo sapiens the early hominids have done the same. They have adapted. Not to mention all life on the planet. Life has gone through extinction phases were almost all of it was wiped out, yet, a few lifeforms always prevailed and survived. They adapted.
I wonder what life on this planet will do with “global warming”. Hmm… It can’t be that humans, other animals and plants will adapt, right? I mean, that’s not possible, right? The whole thing of how hominids survived the Ice Age is a myth, correct?
I’m seeing more and more similarities between the AGW crowd and creationists.
Perhaps it will be like a ‘staycation’. The whole world will be climate migrants, we’ll just do it at home.
let’s see– 50m – low ball figures, add 25% – multiply by the numbers of papers (4).
Voila 250 million affected.
So, we should expect climate refugees from hot places.
And, we know that areas around the Sahara are greening due to increased CO2. (and other arid regions around the planet as well of course)
So I thought, can we already see this in agricultural yields. There’s little data about that; gapminder unfortunately has no time series of average yields per country.
But I found this from Algeria, which is one of the bigger countries in the area.
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/algeria/cereal-yield-kg-per-hectare-wb-data.html
Big fluctuations, and a short series, only 8 years, but doesn’t look bad at all.
So the climate refugees, are they running away from big harvests?
@richard Tol (@richardTol) on April 30, 2014 at 1:01 am
Thank you for the valuable detective work! It’s fascinating to see these kinds of claims traced back to source and learn how they can be distorted and bolstered by outright fabrication. It’s also sad that regardless of the truth about CAGW, once the shrill alarmism dies down, any reputation for reliability in large areas of science (particularly climate related) will have been left in tatters, having allowed themselves to be co-opted by special interest groups interested only in furthering a political agenda (be it humanitarian or selfish). It’s heartening to see a tiny minority like you risk a beating and take a stand against this.
JB
“As global warming makes sizzling temperatures more common,…”. How’s that going then?
My family are climate refugees – generally to Florida – for two weeks every year. The rest of the time we put up with what we’re given and get on with it.
I’m really worried about the world class athletes, having to compete for millions of dollars of prizemoney and sponsorships in tennis centres with multi million dollar roofs and free water coolers. How can they cope?
They are all wrong. It’s even worse than that.
Although the refugee numbers are admittedly very low in this (very) modeled scenario.
“Temperatures at the Australian Open in January reached 104 degrees for four consecutive days, a condition that one tennis player called “inhumane” after competitors collapsed on the court.”
In December of 1962 I went to take the second level of high school public examinations (Leaving, it was called in those far-off days) in the Wayville show grounds in Adelaide. This meant sitting in huge, steel roofed, agricultural exhibition buildings for several hours, several days in a row. No air conditioning, of course. You could get a drink of water, if you asked. Most of the time the temp was over 100F. One day it reached 111F. So don’t come whining to me about your measly 104.
“There may be hordes of climate refugees, fleeing homes on islands and coasts made uninhabitable by climate change—”
Then again, there may not.
I used this graphic in a story I did on what the Smithsonian is pushing in K-12 ed. http://www.smithsonianconference.org/shout/vgf-global-competence/
It’s now a captured institution driven by a desire to alter beliefs and perceptions about how the world works, not conduct research into what actually is. It’s hyping on AGW and its effects is just an excuse to bring in the behavioral scientists for social engineering.
“And people who move north for the weather, or for jobs that may open up as the Arctic melts, will discover that climate change doesn’t make the winter nights any shorter.”
Well, at least there’s one thing that ‘climate change’ doesn’t affect….
This article is laughable. a range of 25 million to 1 billion says they have NO idea what is going to happen.
Smithosian article
“His method had the elegance of all great science: He recruited a volunteer to stop her car at a green light and he counted the seconds until the driver behind honked the horn. He did this once a week from April to August, on days when the high temperature ranged from 84 degrees to 108, and he found that the thermometer accurately predicted how soon, and how many times, thwarted drivers would protest before the light changed”
Even on a winters day in London this happens.
I am looking for funding. My research objective is to confirm that 9 billion people will be climate weirding refugees by 2050. I will need a 2 million dollar grant to do my research as I will be making trips around the world on evil airplanes that use dirty oil. I plan on dropping historical temperatures by 5 degrees to make the current temps even worse than we thought. I just need a few million in grants to pay for my data adjustments so that they fit more inline with CO2. This will be a robust research campaign by me.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/03/dennis-jensen-mp-calls-for-audit-on-the-bom-and-csiro-data/
The Australian temperature records are not what they appear to be.
The BOM who controls, alters and substitute them flatly refuses to open them up to an independant audit.
Why?
Jo Nova and a hell of a lot of others has been on their case for years to hand them over.
So far with zero success.
The latest is a parliamentary request by mp dr Jenson.
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/07/boms-new-data-set-acorn-so-bad-it-should-be-withdrawn-954-min-temps-larger-than-the-max/
I knew one of the founding writers for the Smithsonian. He used to write many of the science articles then took on, “Around the Mall and Beyond” which was a regular piece he did until he died. He was an ex WW2 pilot who married an Aussie. I don’t think Teddy would have been very impressed with this bit of writing at all, as he was a stickler for back up figures How silly for the Smithsonian to get caught into the global warming group political think. Really, I used to believe the Smithsonian was the bees knees as far as accurate popular science went too. Oh dear ,another great icon hits the dust.
“25 million to 1 billion people by 2050”
In 2050 there are supposed to be 9 billion people in the world. So that is a range of .28% to 11% of the population. That’s a 40 fold range. Pretty big range.
Methinks this study lacks a bit of academic rigor. Lol!
The Smithsonian is much better than this, and will be again. At the moment Apocalyptic FeverTM has temporarily taken hold of scientific institutions. But it is only temporary.
“And people who move north for the weather, or for jobs that may open up as the Arctic melts, will discover that climate change doesn’t make the winter nights any shorter.”
Bitch, please! There’s NOTHING that global warming / climate change / airborne plant food doesn’t do, or can’t be blamed for, or hasn’t been speculated as a contributor to.
changes in the political climate will cause more dislocation then the real climate
As soon as I start reading I see this. The world’s surface hasn’t hotted up in 17 years. Are sizzling temperatures more common NOW or not? I maybe very wrong here but I thought that Homo sapiens are from tropical Africa and that most of the ‘global warming’ would take place at higher latitudes and towards the poles.
klem says:
April 30, 2014 at 3:44 am
“25 million to 1 billion people by 2050″
In 2050 there are supposed to be 9 billion people in the world. So that is a range of .28% to 11% of the population. That’s a 40 fold range. Pretty big range.
Methinks this study lacks a bit of academic rigor. Lol!
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My thoughts are the same. “25 million to 1 billion” is a spread of 975 million. With accuracy like that, how could anyone doubt the rest of the story.