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But in the South and Southwest, other damages stack up. Some counties in eastern Texas could see agricultural yields fall by more than 50 percent. West Texas and Arizona may see energy costs rise by 20 percent. How Climate Change Will Change Agriculture and Public Health by 208o Two maps from the study show how projected high temperatures and changes in precipitation will change agricultural yields and mortality rates. (Kopp, Hsiang, et al.) Simultaneously, the study finds that some regions may reap moderate economic benefits from global warming. New England, the Pacific Northwest, and the Great Lake states may all prosper as growing seasons lengthen, and the number of frigid, deadly winter days decrease. In the most optimistic scenarios, some counties could see their incomes rise by 10 percent by the middle of the century. This may make some Americans scratch their heads. The high costs of climate change will fall on many of the places where people today seem least worried about the phenomenon. "Most of the risk maps show that climate change is going to be terrible for Trump country. Like, it's not clear at all —from these maps —why reducing climate change is not a more urgent issue for Republicans, purely as a matter of representing their people," said Joseph Majkut, the director of climate policy at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, in an email. He was not connected to the study. Hsiang explained the disparity as a consequence of the hot places getting hotter. "If you're in a hot location already, then increasing the temperature tends to be much more damaging than if you're somewhere that is cooler. Moving from 70 to 75 [degrees Fahrenheit] is not as big a deal as going from 90 to 95," he told me. "The South, today, is already very hot. So as the country warms up, the South is disproportionately bearing the burden." In fact, the only factor of climate change that doesn't specifically hurt the South is a projected rise in property crime associated with climate change. The incidence of nonviolent property crime doesn't rise on summer days, but it tends to fall on the coldest days. "It's hard to burgle houses or steal cars when there's a lot of snow on the ground," said Hsiang, laughing. As the North's winters get less icy, the region will see property -crime rates increase. But scorching summer days won't alter the South's crime rates. This is, however, a very small factor, Hsiang cautioned. He also warned that the paper's economic projections end in 2099. If climate change continues unabated into the 22nd century, the North will likely eventually "flip over" into much higher temperatures and more severe economic damages, Hsiang said. The Science paper is the first product of the Climate Impact Lab, a 25- person consortium of economists and policy experts led by researchers from the University of California, the University of Chicago, Rutgers University, and the Rhodium Group. This study is the first part of their new global assessment of the economic costs of human - caused climate change. "What has happened over the last 10 years is there's been a revolution in our ability to measure the relationship between the climate and the economy, partly out of new, real -world data," Hsiang told me. "This paper somewhat came out of the realization that all that new research wasn't going anywhere. It wasn't informing how we think about climate and the economy because those older models weren't built in a way to absorb new findings." Their new program is called SEAGLAS. It's designed to integrate new research into the regional and local effects of policy into a larger, holistic view of a certain country or part of the world. So while this study focused on U.S. county -level data about crime, human health, agriculture, labor supply, and energy demand, the researchers intend to fold new sectors and data sources into it in the future.