4BD Launch Event – 4 Billion Dead

[H simmens]

Roger Hallam is launching a new group claiming 4 billion people are at risk of dying by mid-century at 1 PM EST. 

I’m not a big fan of making claims like that. But those who know Roger know he has detailed theories of change to guide his actions.  

And no one can doubt his obvious courage and conviction. As well as his organizational successes. 

The well-known British climate scientist Bill Maguire will be joining him. 

Registration is at the link below. 

Roger is supportive of global cooling so it will be important to see whether and how much he, Bill and other speakers emphasize this dimension of the Climate Triad. As well as what other interventions they will argue for. 

I had sent a detailed direct message to Roger on Twitter several years ago making the case for cooling and urging him to come out in support. 

A few hours later he did so for what I believe was the first time. 

I think the timing was coincidental but you never know.

Herb

https://4billiondead.org/4bd-launch-event/

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

[Dr. Soumitra Das]

Herb, thanks for sharing. The University of Exeter and IOFA report suggests the same. Sometimes, I refer them during my workshops.

Soumitra Das

Chairman and Executive Director, HCI USA

Chairman, HCI India

https://healthyclimateinitiative.org/

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[rob de laet]

Hi Herb, 

it is likely based on the planetary solvency report, which the UK actuarians, led by Sandy Trust (whom you know from Exeter) wrote https://actuaries.org.uk/media/wqeftma1/planetary-solvency-finding-our-balance-with-nature.pdf

Best, 

Rob de Laet 

Project Lead Cooling the Climate

Member of the EcoRestoration Alliance

Fellow of Global Evergreening Alliance

Fellow fo the Schumacher Institute

Planetary Solvency Taskforce

Co-founder of Senang Eco Services

WhatsApp: +55 71 992617846

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[robert...@gmail.com]

I've registered but I have a prior commitment this evening.  I'm hoping it'll be recorded and streamed so I can watch it later.

Regards

Robert

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/1247886832.6179303.1772901431804%40mail.yahoo.com.

[Robert Chris]

Does anyone have the pass code for the Zoom session?

Regards

Robert

[H simmens]

I didn’t need one from my laptop. It is being recorded and will be distributed. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 7, 2026, at 1:06 PM, Robert Chris <robert...@gmail.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/326ff9ca-cf4a-41d9-9ea0-a00cc4ff5a7a%40gmail.com.

[Michael MacCracken]

I have same problem.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/326ff9ca-cf4a-41d9-9ea0-a00cc4ff5a7a%40gmail.com.

[David Spratt]

Re: 4 billion dead figure.

• The Planetary Insolvency report in figure 12 includes estimates of deaths at 2C of >2 billion  and at 3C of >4 billion people.

• The caption said the table contained "outputs contained in previous sections” of the report. But this was NOT the case.  There were no relevant ”outputs”.

• Then it was said that it came from the Climate Endgame paper, but its author said this was not the case. A person associated with the Solvency report told me:

• "They come from a definition of terms table in Luke Kemp's Climate Endgame paper - I mentioned this to Luke the other day, he confirmed that he does NOT make any forecasts about mortality in the paper." 

• As the caption to figure 12 says, it is a risk assessment matrix that illustrates general levels of risk, and the authors have now privately clarified that they "are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions and we don't use them as such”. 

• So either it was too subtle in its distinctions, and/or it was a bit of a stuff up in that it was assumed that the 4 billion figure came from somewhere but it did not. So there is still a question of how the 4 billion figure was derived.

• I suggested to some people associated with the paper that  a correction or clarification be issued, at least repeating what they had said privately, that  the figures  "are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions and we don't use them as such”. This has not been done.

• I had conversations with people working with Roger on his four billion dead project outlining the story above, and suggesting that going out with numbers pretending they have some scientific credence when they have none and even the authors have said they are not forecast or predictions and should not be used as such, was not a great idea.  It just feeds into claims of scientifically illiterate doomism. My advice didn’t get far. 

David Spratt

[Paul Beckwith]

David, what is your estimate or guess? Put a number out there yourself:)!!

Everybody else on this channel? Don’t just be an observer, put out an estimate or guess yourself.

Mortality versus temperature…

You may even star in one of my future videos:) 

No pressure…

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/703075D4-1E12-46A0-8C06-95CFAD3A0815%40bigpond.net.au.

[David Spratt]

Anyone can guess a number.  What does that show?  Perhaps is could be an expert elicitation if it came from a 4C-impact expert, but I am certainly none one, and I doubt if anyone on this list is.

 

James Lovelock,  Schellnhuber , Kevin Anderson and others have all has something to say about it (see below).

 

My point is that Hallam assumed that there was a substantial report justifying the number, when there was no such thing.

The French Govt did a 4C report in 2025:

https://www.adaptation-changement-climatique.gouv.fr/comprendre/strategie/plan-national-dadaptation0  

In 2019, Johan Rockström, the head of one of Europe’s leading research institutes, warned that in a 4°C-warmer world it would be ”difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that… There will be a rich minority of people who survive with modern lifestyles, no doubt, but it will be a turbulent, conflict-ridden world” 

Source: Gaia, V. (2019, 19 May 2019). The heat is on over the climate crisis. Only radical measures will work. The Guardian.

I did a primer on 4 degrees  fourteen years ago:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kiXgVnehPbYZ8BGaDoESX3073IRw1O0F

Here is the relevant text from 2012, so a litte jaded:

A 4C global average rise means on average about 5.5–6C warmer over land, especially

away from the coast. Where people could actually live with land suitable for growing

food (with the much greater evaporation rates implicit at +6C), and above existing deltas

and flood plains as sea-levels rise, would be limited. On 30 November 2007, Reuters

reported:

Children born today in countries such as Spain and Italy will witness a 7 degrees Celsius

rise in summer temperatures by the end of their lives, the European Union’s environment

watchdog warned on Tuesday.

Much of the tropics would be too hot, much of the temperate regions desertified.

The “4 degrees and beyond” conference heard that 4C could render half of the world

uninhabitable. Populations would be driven towards the poles, and practically-speaking

that means the north pole. How many would survive? On 29 September 2009, at the

conclusion of the “4 degrees and beyond” conference, “The Scotsman” reported:

Professor Kevin Anderson, director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, believes only

around 10 per cent of the planet’s population – around half a billion people – will survive if

global temperatures rise by 4C...

Current Met Office projections reveal that the lack of action in the intervening 17 years – in

which emissions of climate changing gases such as carbon dioxide have soared – has set

the world on a path towards potential 4C rises as early as 2060, and 6C rises by the end of

the century.

Anderson, who advises the government on climate change, said the consequences were

“terrifying”. “For humanity it’s a matter of life or death,” he said. “We will not make all human

beings extinct as a few people with the right sort of resources may put themselves in the

right parts of the world and survive. But I think it’s extremely unlikely that we wouldn’t have

mass death at 4C. If you have got a population of nine billion by 2050 and you hit 4C, 5C or

6C, you might have half a billion people surviving.”

Earlier, in March 2009, at the Copenhagen science conference, Professor Hans Joachim

Schellnhuber, director of the Potsdam Institute, and one of Europe’s most eminent

climate scientists, told his audience that at 4C, population “... carrying capacity

estimates (are) below 1 billion people.”

Three years earlier, in 2006, James Lovelock — scientist extraordinaire, inventor of the

microwave oven and propounder of the Gaia thesis — told an audience that the Earth

has a fever that could boost temperatures by up to 8C (more on this later), making large

parts of the surface uninhabitable and threatening billions of peoples’ lives. He said a

traumatised Earth might only be able to support less than a tenth of its six billion people:

“We are not all doomed. An awful lot of people will die, but I don’t see the species dying

out... A hot Earth couldn’t support much over 500 million.”

Sources

http://climatecongress.ku.dk/speakers/schellnhuber-plenaryspeaker-12march2009.pdf

http://news.scotsman.com/latestnews/Warming-will-39wipe-out-billions39.5867379.jp

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28841108.htm

http://in.reuters.com/article/idINIndia-53238020101130

David Spratt

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/CABHiWwHao%2Bf8EM_NxJtpsJg25gRP-CQigD__3pshg-NN2Qvn0w%40mail.gmail.com.

[H simmens]

Hi David,

That backstory is really helpful. 

It is more than concerning that such a number was apparently included in the report with such a lack of clarity regarding its origin and meaning.

I shared portions of the Exeter / Actuaries report with several AI agents and found that the agents themselves are in disagreement with each other as to the meaning of the 4 billion number! 

At the webinar today Roger indicated from what I could hear that the report had called the 4 Billion a prediction. I winced when I heard that. 

One thing is clear is that whatever the confusion may be about the origin there is nothing in the report that suggests that it should be considered a prediction. 

There is and cannot be any reliable means to predict with any level of certainty how many people will die decades from now. And doing so in my opinion - whether the numbers are low or high - does a disservice to efforts to address the interlocking aspects of the poly crisis. 

What is needed - and is in short supply-  at least publicly - are well thought out scenarios developed with the participation of a broad range of experts from various disciplines as well as ordinary people. The scenarios should be distributed widely and presented to policy makers everywhere. 

These scenarios can be extremely useful and indeed are absolutely necessary to identify the forces at work, the assumptions often unconscious or implicit, and the interactions and second and third order effects of the various dimensions of the poly crisis. 

The reports by Exeter and the Actuaries are an important step in that direction, as well as the reports that you and your colleagues have been issuing for many years - well before anyone else as far as I know. 

For those who may not be aware the reports that David and his colleagues issued around 2017 became the primary source of information that my partner and I at the Climate Mobilization used to convince our county government of 1 million people to declare the first climate emergency in the United States and set the toughest greenhouse gas standards anywhere. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 7, 2026, at 4:12 PM, 'David Spratt' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Re: 4 billion dead figure.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/703075D4-1E12-46A0-8C06-95CFAD3A0815%40bigpond.net.au.

[Michael MacCracken]

Hi David and Herb, particularly--

On severe weather forecasts here in the US, say of tornado outbreaks, they color in some large, sort of general region about where the severe weather will form and then add up the population in that zone, say 60 million, and say they are at risk of life-threatening tornadoes. In doing this they are not saying that many will die, but that many are at severe risk, and typically, as happened in the past few days, 4 or 6 die due to falling trees, blown apart homes, etc. And then the next day the storms have moved on at least somewhat and say 50 million (including some overlap) are at risk. Might we be interpreting what is being said incorrectly, so that what they are saying is that half or so of the global population will be at risk of climate-change induced events (heat waves, drenching rains and flooding, etc.) capable of killing them--not that that many may be killed by these events. 

If that is what they are meaning, and I did not get to listen to their announcement, then the question to ask would be what number of people are at risk of being exposed to potential life-threatening events today. Given typhoons, other tropical cyclones. drenching rains, intense heat waves without the availability of air conditioned retreats, that number could easily be 2-3 billion of so--so the issue is how many more people that now are going to be exposed to very severe weather, etc.

And the other question would be if these deaths are going to be reducing deaths in other categories. So, with 8 billion people on the planet, something like 2.5-3 billion will die during this time of well-documented causes like cancer, old age, heart attacks, etc. I these people now die even one day earlier due to extreme weather, is that being counted in their totals and so causes by other factors would come down as the causes due to extreme weather events (or climate change caused disease) go up. To avoid this problem, what should really be counted is lost days (or years) of life due to extreme climate change--and it would be useful to also have the age distribution of those passing away.

Overall, in addition to apparently having no correct source for their number, how they are expressing it is pretty inadequate and uninformative--though admittedly catchy..

Mike MacCracken

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/703075D4-1E12-46A0-8C06-95CFAD3A0815%40bigpond.net.au.

[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi folks

This is the question that got me into climate change 25 years ago.  I think the 'mortality vs. temperature' metric is seriously misguided.  If only it were that simple!

I am reminded of the two books that got me going.  One was one of Lovelock's Gaia books in which he posited that by 2100 the global human population would be down to around a billion or so.  The second was Straw Dogs by John Gray (Professor of lots of stuff at London School of Economics and until a few years ago a regular speaker on BBC radio on cultural and philosophical issues).  He takes a deliberately provocative view of humanity as just another species and notes that population spikes are quite common in the living world.  Typically, they come off as quickly as they arise and usually return to their prior stable level before the spike started building.  In humanity's case that implied returning to a billion by 2200 or thereabouts.

In both cases the authors attributed the drop in population to a wise range of causes including, war, civil unrest, pandemics, pestilence, pollution, flood, drought, starvation, sea level rise, mass migration and so on.  The central point is that the collapse is systemic.  The causes feed on each other so it's not meaningful to attribute them to any single cause.  Just because temperatures rise doesn’t mean that what follows is directly attributable to world being hotter.  We have choices as to how we respond.

Finally, in this very brief note, the issue is not about four billion being dead.  The fact is, and this is a fact, all 8 billion alive today are going to die.  The question is not how many deaths there'll be, we know that for certain.  The questions are to what extent will present and future life expectancy be reduced as a result of the various perils, and at what level will the population then stabilise.  We need to remember that there is nothing sacrosanct about any particular level of population.  It isn't planned.  It's an emergent property of the state of civilisation.  Gray might be right; our 8 billion is just a typical spike and before long we'll get back to somewhere close the the 1 billion people there were in 1800.  Civilisation will adjust accordingly.

The transition to that new equilibrium will be messy and unpleasant for those living through it.  But for those born after, who knows, it might be close to paradise!

These questions are interesting philosophically but they are completely irrelevant from a policy perspective.  We don't need answers to these questions to know that we have to reverse global warming.  That ought to be blindingly obvious to everyone by now, although sadly, it doesn't appear to be.  Policymakers just need to focus on the practicalities of delivering cooling.  How much cooling is also irrelevant for today's policymakers.  Their task is to get the ball rolling.  It'll be for future policymakers to decide how to control the size and speed of the ball.  All the rest of this discourse is now little more than a distraction.

Regards

RobertC

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/8fdbfec5-2dc6-47a0-be4d-052e6499ce08%40comcast.net.

[H simmens]

Until the Exeter report came out Roger was relying on the following 2023 paper to justify his previous assertion of 1 billion people dying as the world reaches 2° C above pre-industrial. 

This paper was coauthored by an expert on photovoltaics and a music theorist. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 7, 2026, at 4:49 PM, 'Michael MacCracken' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/8fdbfec5-2dc6-47a0-be4d-052e6499ce08%40comcast.net.

[Paul Beckwith]

A reminder chart for timelines is attached.

Now we just need to add mortality estimates. Simple, right!

A mortality estimate, although largely a guess, is important to give, subject to revision frequently, since it is something the public understands.

Ottawa weather regularly swings 20 C in a day, as do all mid- and high latitude places. Only the tropics has really low daily variation in temperature, maybe a few degrees C. Sometimes in the equatorial regions the daily high and low temperatures are the same.

So why should any of us expect a 1.5 C, 2 C, 2.5 C, etc cause any anxiety for the public?? 

They do understand death. We all do. The scary thing is not death of a few, but simultaneous death of millions+

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/8fdbfec5-2dc6-47a0-be4d-052e6499ce08%40comcast.net.

[Robert Chris]

Typo: 'wide range' not 'wise range'!

Regards

RobertC

[robert...@gmail.com]

Paul, don't abuse the averages!  On land, temperatures will rise much more than the global average because of the oceans that cover 70% of Earth's surface having much high thermal capacity.  In addition, humans depend on a wide range of ecosystems for a range of services that sustain them.  Warming of even 1.5^oC, if sustained for lengthy periods, will dramatically impact those ecosystems services.  That's what'll cause the loss of food and water, the mass migration that will provoke widespread unrest and even war, as the dominoes collide to render the systems that sustain 8 billion people no longer capable of doing so.  The problem with global warming is not the relatively few people that'll die due to exposure to high wet bulb temperatures. 

Regards

RobertC

[H simmens]

Let’s not forget the extraordinary role that various systems of adaptation have had in reducing the number of deaths over the past few decades. 

Let’s take flooding for example. 

It is estimated that somewhere between a half million and 1 million people avoided death from flooding in the past 50 years as a result of increasingly more effective early warning systems, building standard changes and other measures. 

The number of people dying from flooding every year now is about 80 to 90% less than died in the 1970s even as the world population has ballooned and with it people living near water bodies. 

This is even as the number of floods and their extent has increased significantly. 

Will this extremely favorable trend reverse itself and if so when and why? 

No one knows how much adaptation and untapped resilience is still available to limit death and injury from flooding and other first, second and third order consequences of the poly crisis. 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 7, 2026, at 5:18 PM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:



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[robert...@gmail.com]

Herb

You're absolutely right.  We have choices about how we respond to the increasing threats from climate induced perils.  What makes this conversation slightly silly is that there is no way we can predict which perils will arise, to what degree, when and where, nor how we will respond when they happen.  I wasn't aware of the flood data you mention below.  It illustrates that we can get some things right!   (Are they Us data or global?)  Hallelujah!  The problem is that as warming gathers pace we must expect the perils to come more frequently and more severely.  We also have the threat of the dreaded tipping points, in particular AMOC shutdown, that would have dramatic and widespread environmental impacts that would impact peoples lives at scale.  Your implication that the 'extremely favorable trend' in reducing flood deaths might be indicative of our responses to all other potential perils globally, is stretching logic a little too far!

The point I made in an earlier post this evening is that mithering over the minutiae of all this is just a distraction.  We know we're headed in the wrong direction.  We know we're heading there at ever increasing pace.  We know the risks are growing (and by risk I mean both the likelihood of perils arising and the extent of the harms they cause when they do).  We know that there are only two interventions that will reverse this path to collapse a) increasing reflected sunlight to reduce absorbed solar radiation, and b) reducing the atmospheric concentration of GHGs to increase outgoing infrared radiation.  There are lots of ways that each of these could be done.  We need to find the mix that reduces overall risk to the greatest possible extent (and here, overall risk balances the risks of action and inaction and isn't limited to the climate impacts - forced rapid closure of the O&G sector would be great for the climate but would have some very undesirable socioeconomic consequences).  The rest is irrelevant.

Again, you are absolutely right that 'No one knows how much adaptation and untapped resilience is still available to limit death and injury ...'.  That is not a sound argument for engendering complacency by suggesting that things might not be as bad as we fear.  It is precisely that mindset that has created the problem we now have.  Had policymakers reacted more wisely back in the 1990s when climate change became  'a thing', we'd be in a very different place today.

Regards

RobertC

[John Nissen]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Paul Klinkman <paulkl...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Mar 8, 2026 at 11:29 AM
Subject: [prag] Re: 4BD Launch Event – 4 Billion Dead
To: Planetary Restoration <planetary-...@googlegroups.com>

I'm telling the community that this is a phishing attempt.  That's why it sounds like clickbait.  A fake verification site asked me to open my own computer's DOS window, paste some instructions into that DOS window and run them.  WARNING!  

Hackers, I care not if you delete this as long as it says "message deleted".

On Sunday, March 8, 2026 at 6:18:55 AM UTC-4 dsp...@bigpond.net.au wrote:

The 4 billion dead figure has little credence.

• The Planetary Insolvency report in figure 12 includes estimates of deaths at 2C of >2 billion  and at 3C of >4 billion people.

• The caption said the table contained "outputs contained in previous sections” of the report. But this was NOT the case.  There were no relevant ”outputs”.

• Then it was said that it came from the Climate Endgame paper, but its author said this was not the case. A person associated with the Solvency report told me:

• "They come from a definition of terms table in Luke Kemp's Climate Endgame paper - I mentioned this to Luke the other day, he confirmed that he does NOT make any forecasts about mortality in the paper." 

• As the caption to figure 12 says, it is a risk assessment matrix that illustrates general levels of risk, and the authors have now privately clarified that they "are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions and we don't use them as such”. 

• So either it was too subtle in its distinctions, and/or it was a bit of a stuff up in that it was assumed that the 4 billion figure came from somewhere but it did not. So there is still a question of how the 4 billion figure was derived.

• I suggested to some people associated with the paper that  a correction or clarification be issued, at least repeating what they had said privately, that  the figures  "are absolutely NOT forecasts or predictions and we don't use them as such”. This has not been done.

• I had conversations with people working with Roger on his four billion dead project outlining the story above, and suggesting that going out with numbers pretending they have some scientific credence when they have none and even the authors have said they are not forecast or predictions and should not be used as such, was not a great idea.  It just feeds into claims of scientifically illiterate doomism. My advice didn’t get far. 

David Spratt

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[David Spratt]

I don’t understand why this crazy, non-sensical message about a "phishing attempt” in response to a legitimate post of mine (and a subsequent discussion on this list) is being copied from a PRAG list and send to the HPAC list.  This does not seem appropriate.

David Spratt

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[Rebecca personal em]

Thank you David, I agree.  I wonder if Paul Klinkman’s message is spam.  I’ll ask the Steering Circle to look at what’s happening.

Thanks for your ongoing substantive contributions to our discussions.

Kind regards,

Rebecca Bishop.  

On 9 Mar 2026, at 7:59 am, 'David Spratt' via Healthy Planet Action Coalition (HPAC) <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

I don’t understand why this crazy, non-sensical message about a "phishing attempt” in response to a legitimate post of mine (and a subsequent discussion on this list) is being copied from a PRAG list and send to the HPAC list.  This does not seem appropriate.

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/23CA6A44-0E5A-42C0-A522-E8E577E11511%40bigpond.net.au.

[John Nissen]

Hi David,

Thanks for the attachment.  On page 7, the text by the diagram says:

The average global temperature is likely to be 4C higher than in pre-industrial times by 2055 if greenhouse gas emissions are not slowed – that means a 16C rise in the Arctic (Source: Met Office Hadley Centre)

This was from 2010ish.  The 4C by 2055 is amazingly pessimistic.  The linear projections by Foster and Rahmstorf in 2025 (see Paul Beckwith posting), using a current warming rate of 1.46C per decade, are: 2C by 2037, 3C by 2060 and 4C by 2084, assuming CO2 emissions do not come down significantly - a pretty safe assumption!  I shall use these figures for the PRAG submission to the EU.

There may not be 4 billion deaths, but, with the Arctic meltdown unabated, there are likely to be 4 billion people attempting to migrate because of sea level rise and/or climate change, even before 4C is reached, and 16C in the Arctic (confirmed from your diagram).  The strain is liable to start WW3, if Trump hasn't started it already.

Cheers, John

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[br...@chesdata.com]

The link  “https://4billiondead.org/4bd-launch-event/” is phishing attempt.  Under no circumstances should you follow the instructions.

 

 

Followed by

 

 

David Spratt

o    "They come from a definition of terms table in Luke Kemp's Climate Endgame paper - I mentioned this to Luke the other day, he confirmed that he does NOT make any forecasts about mortality in the paper." 

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Paul Klinkman’s message is not spam.  He is not suggesting that David Spratt’s message is phishing, but as Bruce Parker has also noted, that the four billion event link shared by Herb Simmens goes to a page that looks like phishing.  It is strange as Herb and others appear to have been able to go to the four billion event while others including me get the weird link Paul warned against.

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Rebecca personal em

Sent: Monday, 9 March 2026 8:17 AM
To: David Spratt <dsp...@bigpond.net.au>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

 

David Spratt

o   "They come from a definition of terms table in Luke Kemp's Climate Endgame paper - I mentioned this to Luke the other day, he confirmed that he does NOT make any forecasts about mortality in the paper." 

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/healthy-planet-action-coalition/BA7EA68B-FBBB-4CCF-A702-C8E711E39487%40gmail.com.

[Tom Harris]

Hi,

It's a little old now (2019), but this paper might be relevant to the discussion when linked to emissions, carbon budgets and temperature predictions - It's the 1000 tonne rule: 

https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02323/full

Regards,

Tom

[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Tom

Interesting paper but one I don't find in the least convincing.  The abstract concludes:

As a clear political message, the “1,000-tonne rule” can be used to defend human rights, especially in developing countries, and to clarify that climate change is primarily a human rights issue.

Climate change is not primarily a human rights issue.  As currently framed by most policymakers, it's primarily an economic issue.  Whilst I'm all for interdisciplinary engagement in the climate discourse, it isn't clear how this author, who is a musicologist, is connected to it.

On the substantive point, I also don't think we should lend much credence to the premature death projections.  We can have no idea how those in the future will adapt to climate change so any such estimates are going to fraught with impenetrable uncertainty.  Moreover, they're irrelevant to current policy imperatives.  All we need to grasp is that the harms from global warming accelerate as it gets warmer.  What difference to current policy would it make if we knew with confidence that Policy A leads to 4 billion premature deaths by 2100 whereas Policy B leads to only 2 billion.  Obviously we'll choose Policy A.  But hold on!  What if Policy A costs us four times as much as Policy B?  Ah!  Well, that's different!  How much do I now care about those other 2 billion people that I don't know?

There is a different world where we'd be asking different questions.  But this is the one we're currently in.

Regards

RobertC

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[Tom Harris]

Hi

I agree with you completely. It also make no account of current or future adaptation activities. Costs and impacts are story lines at best.  

All the best,

Tom

[H simmens]

Tom and Robert,

Here’s a 2021 assessment projecting mortality per CO2 emissions from my book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future. 

I’m struck how relatively close these estimates are even though one is a top down and the other is a bottom up estimate. 

Bressler builds adaptation into his model by assuming that as wealth increases so does the means and success of adaptation. 

Mortality Cost of Carbon

In 2021, Daniel Bressler, a PhD student at Columbia University in

New York, estimated that every additional 4,400 metric tons of carbon

dioxide emitted will cause one heat-related death later this century.

He called this number the mortality cost of carbon. While the resul-

tant value of the calculation may vary considerably depending upon

assumptions, the intent behind developing the mortality cost of carbon

is admirable and important.”

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 10, 2026, at 12:35 PM, Tom Harris <hp...@tomharris.uk> wrote:

Hi

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[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Herb

This is where we need to distinguish between predictions and forecasts on the one hand, and speculations and conjectures on the other.  I can say with scientific confidence that there are no credible forecasts or predictions about how many extra deaths would be caused by however many extra tonnes of CO₂ emissions.  This relationship is not amenable to a rational analysis because it lacks a key ingredient - data!  To make a reliable forecast here you need a time machine to travel into the future to collect some data about how people will respond to future situations that we haven't yet conceived.  Do that, and then let's revisit this question!  Remember that your time machine also has to get you back here with the data.  But then, is there a possibility that you might find the future such a paradise that you'll chose to stay there?  If so, how then do we get that data?  You'd have to get Elon to design the time machine as an autonomous vehicle , so all you have to do is pop the data inside, and remotely send the machine on its way back to the present.

Bressler might well assume that as wealth increases so does the means and success of adaptation.  But what if it doesn't?  What about singularities and other non-linear path dependencies.

Regards

RobertC

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[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Mike

The point I’m making is that these key decisions are made to serve the short-term economic and power interests of the elite.  The moral questions emerging from considerations of intergenerational justice are not, in today’s world, primary considerations.  In Realpolitik, we just pay lip service to them, and often not even that.

As regards your question as to whether I’m for or against global de-population, I am neither.  I don’t regard this to be a meaningful choice.  Population size is an emergent property of human existence.  It isn’t something we can plan for.

Where does the quality of life enter into this?  Is lots of people living in deprivation better or worse than fewer people living well?  How can we know what future generations will do with the opportunities and threats they confront?  I think that Parfit (who I’ve mentioned here before) is probably right and we have no moral obligations to future people, however counterintuitive that might seem.

But we do have obligations to behave well.  There’s 3,000 years of philosophy on this topic so I’m not going to explore here what ‘behaving well’ might mean other than to claim we have an obligation to nurture planetary resources rather than deplete them.  Future generations can then make their own choices.

However, we need to remember that humans are part of nature and subject to the same basic dynamics that apply to all living species.  Our population size is a function of the resources available to us.  If we squander those resources, the planet will support fewer future humans, or the same number of humans in worse average conditions. Reducing average quality of life and wellbeing will most probably lead to a population decline. 

Until we start behaving as responsible members of a highly complex adaptive system, we will continue to reduce the capacity of Earth to sustain the current human population other than by reducing its average quality of life and wellbeing.  The choice is not about population size, it’s about respecting planetary resources. 

Regards

RobertC

On 11/03/2026 00:25, Michael MacCracken wrote:

Hi Robert--Can I presume you really thought we'd obviously choose Policy B, or are you really for global de-population?

Best, Mike

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[rob...@rtulip.net]

Of course population size is something we can plan for.  Deploying technology to stabilise the climate will enable a larger human population.

 

 

From: healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of robert...@gmail.com

Sent: Wednesday, 11 March 2026 10:05 PM
To: Michael MacCracken <mmac...@comcast.net>
Cc: healthy-planet-action-coalition <healthy-planet-...@googlegroups.com>

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[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi RobertT

I don't think we're going to agree on this.  We have totally different and, at least in this regard, incompatible worldviews.  Your reductionist approach is at odds with my systems one.

Deploying technology may well enable a larger number of humans but enabling it and it actually happening are not the same thing.  Moreover, enabling it doesn't mean that they will have greater wellbeing in any terms that we'd understand.  Each generation develops a sense of 'a life worth living' that fits their circumstances.  It would be nonsense to claim that no one living before all the goodies that we now consider to be essential to a good life were available, had a life that wasn't worth living.

It would be nonsense to claim that the world is better place today simply by virtue of there being 8 billion people than it was when I was born and there were less than 3 billion.

Population size is, as I said earlier, an emergent property, and as such it is unpredictable and uncontrollable.  It is therefore not a moral or ethical question.  The moral and ethical questions concern the quality of the lives and the relationships between people.  Some would claim that that stretches across the generations binding the dead, the living and the yet to be born.  

The category that refers to those that believe that technology is the solution to all our ills is Prometheans.

Regards

RobertC

[Michael MacCracken]

I was commenting, perhaps not clearly enough, that you suggested that we would obviously choose Option A with its 4B deaths instead of Option B with 2B deaths. How is that obvious?

Mike

[robert...@gmail.com]

Hi Mike

Sorry.  Sorry.  Sorry.  I mis-spoke! Or whatever the equivalent is in writing!  Let me rewrite that:

Obviously we'll choose Policy B.  But hold on!  What if Policy B costs us four times as much as Policy A? 

I hope that settles this.  Apologies for the confusion.

Regards

Robert

[Robert Chris]

Hi all

Mike MacCracken has very kindly pointed to a serious error in my message below, one that needs correcting.  The sentence beginning 'Obviously...' and the following sentence should read:

Obviously we'll choose Policy B.  But hold on!  What if Policy B costs us four times as much as Policy A?  

Apologies for any confusion this might have caused.

Regards

Robert

[H simmens]

Hi Robert,

I’m not sure I understand your critique of the mortality cost of carbon presented by Mr. Bressler in 2021. 

He indicated as did I that it was an estimate as that is obviously all it could be. It seems to me that finding means  to express the consequences of climate change in ways that have greater salience is a critically important task. 

Ideally his approach would be tested in surveys and focus groups against other ways of conveying potential consequences of the crisis to determine which may be most effective in changing behavior towards climate action amongst various potential constituencies. 

Are you suggesting there is nothing that we can or should say about the future because it hasn’t arrived yet? 

And if you’re not saying that then what are you saying? 

Herb

Herb Simmens

Author  of A Climate Vocabulary of the Future

“A wonderful achievement, a SciencePoem, an Inspiration, a Prophecy, also hilarious, Dive in and see"

 Kim Stanley Robinson

@herbsimmens

On Mar 10, 2026, at 1:47 PM, robert...@gmail.com wrote:



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