I’m not sure you’ve understood how I’m calculating my figures, so let me show how we can set a really conservative upper bound for the number of people who would move to Greenland.
Based on current numbers, 3.5% of world population are migrants, and 6% are in deserts. So that means less than 3.5/9.5=37% of desert populations have migrated. Even if half of those had migrated because of the weather, that would be less than 20% of all desert populations. Moreover, even if people migrated uniformly according to land area, only 1.4% of migrants would move to Greenland (that’s the fraction of land area occupied by Greenland). So an ultra-conservative upper bound for the number of people migrating to Greenland would be 1B*.37*.2*.014=1M.
So my initial status-quo estimate was 1e3, and my ultra-conservative estimate was 1e6. It seems pretty likely to me that the true figure will be 1e3-1e6, whereas 5e7 is certainly not a realistic estimate.
Hmm this is interesting. I think I broadly agree with you. I think a key consideration is that humans have a good-ish track record of living/surviving in deserts, and I would expect this to continue.
I’m not sure you’ve understood how I’m calculating my figures, so let me show how we can set a really conservative upper bound for the number of people who would move to Greenland.
Based on current numbers, 3.5% of world population are migrants, and 6% are in deserts. So that means less than 3.5/9.5=37% of desert populations have migrated. Even if half of those had migrated because of the weather, that would be less than 20% of all desert populations. Moreover, even if people migrated uniformly according to land area, only 1.4% of migrants would move to Greenland (that’s the fraction of land area occupied by Greenland). So an ultra-conservative upper bound for the number of people migrating to Greenland would be 1B*.37*.2*.014=1M.
So my initial status-quo estimate was 1e3, and my ultra-conservative estimate was 1e6. It seems pretty likely to me that the true figure will be 1e3-1e6, whereas 5e7 is certainly not a realistic estimate.
Hmm this is interesting. I think I broadly agree with you. I think a key consideration is that humans have a good-ish track record of living/surviving in deserts, and I would expect this to continue.