Cancun Climate Clowns: 'A Million Climate Change Deaths Each Year'

It's not all one big party down in Cancun. In between lavish soirees, the UN climate kooks are still also focusing on the business at hand: Namely making up wild claims about how may people will die if they don't do something soon and oh, by the way, it'll cost you a bundle.

BY 2030, climate change will indirectly cause nearly one million deaths a year and inflict $US157 billion ($161.21 billion) in damage in terms of today's economy, according to estimates presented at UN talks.

The biggest misery will be heaped on more than 50 of the world's poorest countries, but the United States will pay the highest economic bill, it said.

"In less than 20 years, almost all countries in the world will realise high vulnerability to climate impact as the planet heats up,'' the report warned.

The study, compiled by a humanitarian research organisation and climate-vulnerable countries, assessed how 184 nations will be affected in four areas: health, weather disasters, the loss of human habitat through desertification and rising seas, and economic stress.

Those facing "acute'' exposure are 54 poor or very poor countries, including India. They will suffer disproportionately to others, although they are least to blame for the man-made greenhouse gases that drive climate change, it said.

"Without corrective actions'' a press release accompanying the study said, the world is "headed for nearly one million deaths every single year by 2030.''

More than half of the $157 billion in economic losses will take place in industrialised countries, led by the United States, Japan and Germany

But the cost to their GDP will proportionately be far lower than for poor countries.

The peer-reviewed report was issued by DARA, a Madrid-based NGO, and by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a coalition of island nations and other countries that are most exposed to climate change.

Saleemul Huq, a researcher at a London-based thinktank, the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), said the findings spelled out the need to start shoring up defences against climate change now, rather than later.

"We are now entering into a highly vulnerable phase of our planet's existence and humanity's existence,'' Huq told a press conference.

Don't worry, though. They're just getting warmed up. They'll be living it up until December 10, so expect more calamitous headlines and dire warnings.