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Comment by yawpitch | Hacker News Reader

Ok, $100 USD says that a crop failure resulting in at least 2 million excess deaths happens within the next 20 years, let’s round to <= 31st December, 2042.

Of course by then $100 USD will have the purchasing power of ~$10 USD, so it’s not the riskiest bet on my part.

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So these will be starvation deaths? I like looking at excess deaths, so we need to look at the base rate of starvation, and I'd like to go per capita, as I expect population to continue to increase substantially and more people to die of all causes year over year as a result. Can we do $10k?

Most of them will probably have disease as the proximate cause. Dysentery and/or infectious diseases that in well-nourished populations isn't too much of a problem.

Some of them may have armed conflict as the proximate cause. The civil war in Syria had as one of its triggers a prolonged drought with associated crop failures, partly attributed to climate change.

Right, I think we can come up with an agreeable or used an established definition of famine deaths that includes these. I'm taking a closer look at this our world in data page to try to come up with well-defined terms.

https://ourworldindata.org/famines

During the Little Ice Age in Europe there generally was a higher death rate (shorter life expectancy). Food production per capita declined, and while most people didn't outright starve to death they became weaker and more vulnerable to disease.

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