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Ned Smith's avatar

Impossible to tell if this article is just long winded trolling or not, but we’ll give the benefit of the doubt and take it on good faith, which means that what we’re dealing with here is good old-fashioned ignorance. Easily fixed!

Deaths from non-optimal temperatures are not the primary concern in discussions of climate change and its adverse effects on the planet and humanity.

It’s fair to say that the tropics and subtropics are the natural habitat of human beings - we survive here just fine with food and water. Outside of this could reasonably be described as the death zone for humans, where the elements themselves are a persistent danger and we depend on life support systems just to survive. For example, where I live (in the tropics), if I (a 30-something man) accidentally lock myself out of my house in the middle of January wearing just my boxer shorts and am forced to spend the night outside, I’ll be fine (I may even take a nice night swim). Sure it gets hot in the daytime, but it's never life-threatening. If you accidentally lock yourself outside your house in January in Russia, or Denmark, or Canada etc. and are forced to spend the night outside, there’s a good chance you’ll die. Not from being eaten by a bear, but simply killed by the cold. Despite this, hundreds of millions of people live above and below these extreme latitudes, which explains the figures you gave on deaths from non-optimal temperatures.

The most worrying impacts of climate change are the extremes becoming more extreme, including natural disasters, and the collapse of ecosystems that provide food and life-supporting biodiversity. In 2022, just in the United States, the cost of these changes reached the hundreds of billions. Globally, millions have been killed just by climate-change-linked natural disasters, which are accelerating in intensity and frequency. Coral reefs, which support critical fisheries and biodiversity, have almost completely died out, and desertification of large areas is accelerating, water shortages, mosquito-borne, and other diseases are spreading much more easily, the list goes on. These are the things we’re concerned about.

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SymonPetliura538's avatar

Ken, what is the highest level of education you've attained?

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