Global heating will push billions outside ‘human climate niche’ World is on track for 2.7C and ‘phenomenal’ human suffering, scientists warn Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington Global heating will drive billions of people out of the “climate niche” in which humanity has flourished for millennia, a study has estimated, exposing them to unprecedented temperatures and extreme weather. The world is on track for 2.7C of heating with current action plans and this would mean 2 billion people experiencing average annual temperatures above 29C by 2030, a level at which very few communities have lived in the past. Up to 1 billion people could choose to migrate to cooler places, the scientists said, although those areas remaining within the climate niche would still experience more frequent heatwaves and droughts. However, urgent action to lower carbon emissions and keep global temperature rise to 1.5C would cut the number of people pushed outside the climate niche by 80%, to 400 million. The analysis is the first of its kind and is able to treat every citizen equally, unlike previous economic assessments of the damage of the climate crisis, which have been skewed towards the rich. In countries with large populations and already warm climates most people will be pushed outside the human climate niche, with India and Nigeria facing the worst changes. India is already suffering from extreme heatwaves, and a recent study found that more than a third of heat-related deaths in summer from 1991-2018 occurred as a direct result of human-caused global heating. Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter, UK, who led the new research, said: “The costs of global warming are often expressed in financial terms but our study highlights the phenomenal human cost of failing to tackle the climate emergency. “Economic estimates almost always value the rich more than the poor, because they have more assets to lose, and they tend to value those alive now over those living in the future. We’re considering all people as equal in this study.” Prof Chi Xu, at Nanjing University in China, and also part of the research team, said: “Such high temperatures [outside the niche] have been linked to issues including increased mortality, decreased labour productivity, decreased cognitive performance, impaired learning, adverse pregnancy outcomes, decreased crop yield, increased conflict and infectious disease spread.” Prof Marten Scheffer at Wageningen University, the Netherlands, and a senior author of the study, said those pushed outside the climate niche might consider migrating to cooler places: “Not just migration of tens of millions of people but it might be a billion or so.” The idea of climate niches for wild animals and plants is well established but the new study, published in the journal Nature Sustainability, identified the climate conditions in which human societies have thrived. It found most people lived in places with mean annual temperatures spread around 13C or 25C. Conditions outside those are too hot, too cold or too dry and associated with higher death rates, lower food production and lower economic growth. “The climate niche describes where people flourish and have flourished for centuries, if not millennia in the past,” Lenton said. “When people are outside [the niche], they don’t flourish.” Scheffer said: “We were surprised how sharply limited humans have remained when it comes to their distribution relative to climate – this is a fundamental thing we’ve put our finger on.” The scientists then used climate and population models to examine likely future changes in the number of people outside the climate niche, which they defined as above an annual average temperature of 29C. There are 60 million people living outside the niche and exposed to dangerous heat, the researchers said. But with each rise of 0.1C in global temperature above the 1.2C of human-caused global heating already seen today, an extra 140 million people are driven outside the niche. If global temperature continues to rise towards 2.7C, the heating combined with a growing global population will mean 2 billion people living outside the niche by 2030 and 3.7 billion by 2090. In a worst-case scenario, with the climate more sensitive to greenhouse gas rises than expected, global temperature would rise of 3.6C and leave almost half of the world’s population outside the climate niche. Rapid and deep cuts to emissions to keep heating to 1.5C would hugely reduce the number of people outside the niche, the researchers found. For example, 90 million people in India would live with an average temperature above 29C, compared with 600 million if global temperature rose to 2.7C. Other countries that would be severely affected by high temperatures include Indonesia, the Philippines and Pakistan. Lenton said the study emphasised the “huge inequality” of the climate emergency with those people with low emissions suffering the greatest changes in extreme heat exposure. He said the most practical and immediate option to adapt to high temperatures was to increase green spaces in cities: “This can shave 5C off extreme temperatures and provide shade – that’s huge.” Dr Richard Klein, at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Sweden, and not part of the team, said: “What this study shows very well is the direct human suffering that climate change could cause – living outside the niche means suffering due to an unbearably hot and possibly humid climate. Dr Laurence Wainwright at the University of Oxford, UK, said: “Humans have got used to living in particular areas at certain temperatures. When things change, serious problems arise, whether in terms of physical health, mental health, crime and social unrest.” https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/may/22/global-heating-human-climate-niche
"What if we destroyed the equatorial region by continuing to push bunk science and kept selling the world these products?" "What if we then bought up all property up north w/our oil gains and then rented the properties to all these refugees caused by our actions?"
You just reminded me, related via oil production, Alberta and Canada essentially the same, but even more depleted... U.S. Shale Production Is Set For A Rapid Decline By David Messler - May 20, 2023, 6:00 PM CDT While the EIA and others see U.S. shale production rising through the end of 2024, there are some worrying signs that production may already be slowing. The two main drivers of U.S. shale production, DUC withdrawals and the rig count, are in decline while 82% of wells drilled in 2022 were to replace legacy production. With analysts already warning of an oil price spike later this year, a dramatic drop in U.S. shale production will add significant upside to any rally. I have argued in several Oilprice articles, and most recently in February 2023, that the era of increasing output from shale wells did not have much more room to run absent a price signal that caused a huge increase in drilling. A price signal similar to the one the market received with the onset of the Ukraine invasion, that added 153 rigs in U.S. shale plays from January to June of 2022. Instead, as the market adapted to the loss of Russian oil and gas, and worries about the strength of the economy cast doubt on demand, prices began to soften throughout the rest of the year. As we approach the midpoint of 2023, WTI prices have mostly stayed in a $70-$80 range, continuing a pattern that established itself in late Q-4, 2022. There is nothing in the next few months that will interrupt this pattern, but if we look a little farther out, in the next six to eight months, we can make a case for a transformative drop in U.S. domestic production. Subtle changes in the U.S. E&P landscape The chart below is a little busy, so we will spend some time decoding it. The multi-colored, vertical bars show changes in the drawdown of Drilled, but Uncompleted (DUC) wells over the last four years. Low oil prices from 2019 through December, of 2021 drove a decline in DUCs from ~4,000 to 1,446, more than 75%. During this period, oil companies desperate for revenue and needing to control costs thanks to oil prices below $70 per barrel, turned to DUCs to maintain output. Post-January 2022, higher oil and gas prices drove a rapid increase in drilling, and attenuated the trend toward DUC activation as the year wore on. From January of 2023, both DUC withdrawals and drilling have declined and shale output has essentially flatlined around 9,300 mm BOPD, according to the monthly EIA-Drilling Productivity Report. The most recent results of which are captured in the graph below, along with rig data from Baker Hughes and frac spread count data from Primary Vision. One final point I’ll make regarding the graph above, and I will have to ask you to use your imagination as I didn’t graph this, but you will notice the slope of the decline curve for DUCs is largely a mirror image of the increase in production from January of 2021. The takeaway being that DUC withdrawal is responsible for much of the 1.7 mm BOEPD added since Jan-2021. Drilling doesn’t begin to pick up until June 2021 and it’s not until June 2022 that the rig count-dedicated to oil, rises above 600. The rate at which I estimate is necessary to grow production beyond the natural decline rate, ~40% annually, of shale typically. I discussed this in a recent Oilprice article. “We have had about 600 oil rigs turning to the right since the middle of last year. Since June 22, we have gone from 8.7 mm to 9.4 mm BOPD in shale output, or about 700K BOPD of increase. That's less than 58K per month of new production, meaning that about 82% of the ~14K wells drilled in 2022 were to replace legacy production. It only gets worse from here.” What happens from here? I’ll start with another graph. Beginning in January of 2023, you see a sharp decline in the rate of new oil added per month. This is consistent with the fact that the first DUCs Turned In Line-TIL’d since Jan-21, are watering out as production falls below 50 BOPD, just as the oil-rig count has dropped below 600. This means that the two drivers - DUC withdrawals and an increasing rig count - that have propelled production to post-Covid highs are in retreat, and there is only one outcome possible. Daily shale output is nearing an inflection point and may soon start a rapid decline, that will be impossible to reverse, absent a huge increase in the rate of drilling new wells that cannot be sustained in today’s market. Your takeaway The full effect of this decline in shale output is likely going to occur at the worst possible time if your interests coincide with low to moderate oil prices. Many large banking institutions are warning of a supply deficit later this year which will cause oil prices to spike, as noted in this OilPrice article. Noteworthy also is the surprise factor for the markets when, and if, my projections bear out. No one is forecasting a decline in shale production at this point, making me something of a heretic. The most recent EIA - Today in Energy forecasts shale production rising to 11 mm BOPD by year-end 2024. We can’t both be right. It’s not for me to make a determination about final outcomes. The observable trends support my thesis, and that creates an opportunity for investors looking for growth in their portfolios. As noted in the Oilprice article-Goldman Sachs: Oil Markets to Face Crisis in 2024, the energy sector is by far the cheapest of 11 market sectors tracked at a 5.7 PE. The article goes on to say- “Indeed, the energy sector is the cheapest of all 11 U.S. market sectors, with a current PE ratio of 5.7. In comparison, the next cheapest sector is Basic Materials with a PE valuation of 11.3 while Financials is third cheapest at a PE value of 12.4. For some perspective, the S&P 500 average PE ratio currently sits at 22.2. So, we can see that oil and gas stocks remain dirt cheap even after last year’s massive runup, thanks in large part to years of underperformance.” That should suggest possibilities in the upstream energy sector to investors willing to look past the day-to-day ups and downs currently being experienced in oil and gas prices. Scarcity exacerbates demand, which is already forecast to be strong, and should be very bullish for oil prices as we move through the year. By David Messler for Oilprice.com
"work from home" already wreaking havoc on west coast commercial RE (si valley a major one). Wait until people stop commuting en masse. We're going to see 6$/gallon.
Well, there are supply issues relating to peak oil, but a decline in commuting is demand destruction, right?
There is a discount in volume pricing. If big oil can't sell as much oil, they cap production (cue in OPEC cartel) and bring up pricing to keep up revenues. I'm not sure this is such a shock event as COVID was when volume was the same but demand destruction happened almost overnight.
Plane Nonsense The ridiculous claims that airlines and other corporations make about “carbon offsets.” https://slate.com/business/2023/06/delta-carbon-offsets-sued-airlines-pollution-climate.html