Study Worst Case: 1/3 Of Humans Will Face Heat Matching/Exceeding The Sahara w/i 50 Years

[muriel_volestrangler]

9. No, it does *NOT* assume desertification

It points out the average temperature in many places would be that only seen till now in the Sahara. But it doesn't talk about desertification at all. Here's what the paper has to say about the temperature problems:

First, an estimated 50% of the global population depends on smallholder farming (19), and much of the energy input in such systems comes from physical work carried out by farmers, which can be strongly affected by extreme temperatures (20). Second, high temperatures have strong impacts (21?–23), affecting not only physical labor capacity but also mood, behavior, and mental health through heat exhaustion and effects on cognitive and psychological performance (20, 24, 25). The third, and perhaps most striking, indication for causality behind the temperature optimum we find is that it coincides with the optimum for economic productivity found in a study of climate-related dynamics in 166 countries (12). To eliminate confounding effects of historical, cultural, and political differences, that study focused on the relation within countries between year-to-year differences in economic productivity and temperature anomalies. The ?13 °C optimum in MAT they find holds globally across agricultural and nonagricultural activity in rich and poor countries. Thus, based on an entirely different set of data, that economic study independently points to the same temperature optimum we infer.

https://www.pnas.org/content/early/2020/04/28/19101141171