Climate Change? Catastrophic? Hardly......

Is global warming a major threat to humanity? A new report suggests just the opposite. As I and others have been saying for a long time, we're on the wrong track regarding global warming and climate change. We're being badly misled. Consider the following. Are we headed for climate change catatastrophe? The evidence sure does not support it.
Peter


We Are Weathering The Weather Better Than Ever......
A superb analysis of weather-related deaths has just been published, the ‘Civil Society Report on Climate Change’ (produced by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, November 2007). I would encourage everybody to read this document immediately. It places the forthcoming Bali jamboree in the reality spotlight. The full .pdf version can be downloaded free here (direct .pdf download), or from here, or from here [bottom of page].

This well-researched report throws a gigantic snowball at the claims that ‘global warming’ is causing more weather-related deaths. As I have long suspected, precisely the opposite is the case, with the number of people killed each year by weather-related disasters declining dramatically.

It appears that weather-related deaths peaked in the 1920s, at around 500,000 per annum. In stark contrast, the death toll during the period 2000-2006 averaged only 19,900 (thank goodness, one might add). Indeed, the average annual number of deaths from weather-related events during the period 1990-2006 (when ‘global warming’ is supposed to have been at its most severe) is down by the staggering figure of 87% on the 1900-89 average. Moreover, the mortality rate from catastrophes, measured in deaths per million people, dropped by no less than 93%.

These simple statistics demonstrate all too clearly the nonsensical claims that have been made about the likely impacts of ‘global warming’. The study also shows that the richer a country, the fewer the weather-related deaths. Development, not emission caps, is the way ahead.

Once again, therefore, we see that the true danger of the ‘global warming’ trope is the unscrupulous hype employed to undermine the very economics that are reducing the number of deaths from the weather. The morality stinks.

Weathering this hype should now be our top priority.

‘Blogotariat’ helpfully summarises the main conclusions of the report, as follows:

(a) Kyoto 2 is the wrong solution. Such a treaty would harm billions of poor people, making energy and energy-dependent technologies, such as clean water, more expensive, and would perpetuate poverty by retarding growth;

(b) Mortality from extreme weather events is far more strongly affected by the technologies deployed by humans - such as the construction of houses, roads, and dams - than by climate;

(c) Human ecology and human behaviour are the key determinants of the transmission of infectious diseases. Obsessive emphasis on climate is unwarranted;

(d) If adaptation is not unduly restricted, production of food and other agricultural products, as well as forestry products, will keep pace with growing human demands (so much for the Neo-Malthusian pessimists);

(e) Foreign aid is being used as a ‘carrot’ to induce poor countries to restrict their emissions. But aid has mostly been wasted, or even counterproductive; and,

(f) The stick of trade sanctions has been threatened as a means of enforcing global emissions caps [see also: ‘Kyoto Cant’, December 1] - yet such sanctions harm both parties - a clear ‘lose - lose scenario’.

Our rich Northern ecochondria is a neo-colonialism too far. Let’s hope that the developing world put the cap on Bali.

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