Today in graphics that should make your palms sweat: Nate Silver, the 538.com numbers nerd who brought the world minute-by-minute election coverage, is now delivering a detailed vision of global climate-induced dystopia.

The back story: The American Scene is home to an ongoing debate over the costs and benefits of Waxman-Markey, the climate change bill that recently passed in the House and is now headed for the Senate. In arguing against it, commentator Jim Manzi points to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimate that warming would decrease global GDP by 5 percent, saying that's pretty marginal compared to the economic impact of the proposed legislation. But a good portion of the world's countries register mere blips on counts of total global GDP, even though they account for much of its population. How much, exactly? Into the fray jumps Mr. Silver and his map:

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That’s pronounced “Wee-gur,” just so you know. By now you’ve probably read about this Muslim minority in China, who are clashing with Han Chinese in the country’s remote Xinjiang province. While this is mainly a political story about Chinese repression of ethnic minorities, it has some important economic lessons. For starters, Xinjiang is an area rich in oil and minerals--not incidental to the fact that the Chinese authorities are eager to make sure it stays part of China. But second and more importantly, the ethnic violence reflects what may be the biggest deterrent to Chinese growth--autocracy. I recently saw a very interesting study by the Carnegie Endowment looking at the connection between political freedom and economic growth within society. The link is strong. The study found that countries like China, Iran, Venezuela, and the like, which have become more repressive over the last few years, have also experienced sharp decreases in consumption. Basically, if people don’t feel secure, they don’t spend, and economies don’t grow as fast.

China has so far been able to offset this effect with its massive exports. But with Western economies in decline, that era is coming to an end. And there are many economists who believe that the treatment of the Uighers, as well as China’s stance toward Tibet, and its general repression of its entire population, are a growing economic risk factor. Yesterday, I got a report from Capital Economics in London entitled “Is political stability assured in China?” Their answer was no. While China has so far done well in terms of political stability relative to its neighbors with similar per capita GDPs, Capital noted that past performance was a poor indicator for the future given that Chinese leadership is so opaque. “The form that any institutional change could take is as hard to predict as the timing,” notes the report. What’s more, there’s an assumption that a more democratic China would continue to support economic reform. Not necessarily so. If the Chinese could all vote, the rural population would rule--and they may be much less supportive of the industry-led model that has made the coasts (and many Western investors) rich over the last two decades. The upshot: China may well be less politically stable, and thus less economically secure, than we think.

GoldmanGate is certainly bringing out the inner spook in people. Over at Cryptogon, a blog I had never heard of with a penchant for conspiracy theories, the author set up a honey trap to lure web surfers trying to find the top-secret trading algorithm stolen from Goldman Sachs. By cleverly toying with his headlines and text, he set up one of his blog posts so that it would appear in Google results as a link to the stolen trading platform. When seekers click on the link and visit his site, he finds out a smidgen of information about the seeker, often including the place of employment.

So who's hunting around for the illicit code?

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