David Wallace-Wells asks in his New York Times column, “How deadly can climate change be?” He begins by questioning an oft-repeated figure: “I don’t think it’s right to suggest that reaching 2°C of warming (which now looks very likely) will mean the deaths of a billion people.” He continues: “Any more rigorous estimates, while lower, are still quite shocking. Some calculations are easily in the tens of millions.” He concludes: “There may also be catastrophic surprises in store – extreme catastrophes, underestimated impacts, and quickly passed tipping points. But today’s science of climate mortality suggests a different experience, with even large-scale climate mortality softening into a kind of somber background noise, never quite deafening, no matter how loud.” (David Wallace-Wells, The New York Times, carbonbrief, more at nytimes.com)