06 July 2007

Global Climate Change: Fuzzy Math? Al Gore on "The Big Idea"

Al Gore appeared on Donnie Deutsch's "The Big Idea" last night to promote tomorrow's "Live Earth" concerts. He was passionate, funny, and direct. (Where was that conviction 7 years ago?)

Does anyone know whether Al's answer to Donnie's question about the human costs was accurate? He said "A one meter rise in sea level will create 100 million climate refugees."

I'm not in a place where I can confirm or check his math, but it seems worth checking...can anyone confirm?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

The World Bank, in a working paper issued earlier this year, estimated "that even a one meter rise would turn at least 56 million people in the developing world into environmental refugees."

So, Ol' Al is only off by 44 million give or take...fuzzy math, indeed.

World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 4136, February 2007:
http://econ.worldbank.org/external/default/main?ImgPagePK=64202988&entityID=000016406_20070209161430&pagePK=64165259&theSitePK=469382&piPK=585673

The Green Skeptic said...

Thanks, Al.

Anonymous said...

Um, please read the text at the link! It clearly states: "Our results reveal that hundreds of millions of people in the developing world are likely to be displaced by SLR within this century".