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.
Except that these things aren't becoming more extreme. And just calling any disaster a "climate change linked disaster" does not make it that. The Great Barrier Reef is doing fine, so I'm not sure where you get this info that coral reefs have "almost completely died out". That's a bizarre statement.
Desertification is accelerating? Maybe, but last I heard, parts of the Sahara were greening, so...
We used to have malaria in Canada prior to 1900, and northern Europe as well, so that's nothing new. Medical advances took care of that.
On the whole, food production is up every year, there are less people living in poverty every year, and life is generally improving for most people on the planet. Every year. The biggest barrier to this is wars and corrupt governments. This is hardly a doom and gloom scenario.
I can understand why people are concerned though. Especially when every time you turn in the news, you hear about how bad it MIGHT become.
Most sources I can find (Smithsonian, NASA, UN etc) forecast coral reefs will be gone within the next 50 years or so, we’ve already lost around 50% of reefs globally since oceans started warming. I’d be interested to know where you got the idea that the Great Barrier Reef is ‘doing fine’.
yes, desertification is accelerating. Sure, it might be good news that some areas are greening, but is it really a good strategy to bank on some incidental positive side effects of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
Solving climate change is not rocket science, it isn’t even that difficult or disruptive from a technical standpoint. The ‘doom and gloom’ you’re referring to is mainly the absolute disbelief that there doesn’t appear to be any political leadership or will on the issue.
We’re facing a situation that will make life on this planet far more challenging for future generations, and we cannot find a way to act collectively with any long-term vision. This is why young people are mad. Because there are a millions of people who buy into the propaganda of the most profitable and powerful industries on earth (energy), believing that David Attenborough is lying to them; that every single scientific institution, oceanic, geological, space agencies, defense research, university, etc. are all part of a communist plot to sell solar panels? The sheer and utter stupidity of it all - that’s where the frustration comes from.
And if there’s ever been an issue that we SHOULD be ‘alarmist’ about, it’s this. The planet is our spaceship, we don’t have a back-up if anything happens to this one. We should be assuming the worst-case scenario, not nitpicking for inconsistencies in the wording of the scientists who are sounding the alarm.
The doom and gloom I'm referring to is precisely these "projections" that you mentioned. You can project all you want, we've seen how meaningless they are. Everything goes in cycles. We've also seen how laughable it is when politicians come up with a new emissions target that we all know will be a failure within a few short months.
It's not "the science" that's the problem here - it's our response to it.
Well now I’m completely confused. I’ve been following your blog, and your commentary on climate change has mostly been that it’s nothing to worry about because the scientists are all wrong. Now you’re saying that the problem is not with science, but with our response to it?
Well that’s the point I”VE been trying to make!
I completely agree that it’s “laughable it is when politicians come up with a new emissions target that we all know will be a failure within a few short months” (though ‘laughable’ is not the word I’d use).
This is the reason for the ‘doom and gloom’, and the constant need to remind people what the f**k is happening. When there’s repeatedly no action taken on a situation which is becoming increasingly dire, what else are we supposed to do? It’s maddening.
If 50% of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared, that’s not a projection. If July has been confirmed as the hottest month ever, that's not a projection. Weather events have become more extreme, not a projection. The projections haven’t been wrong, and they certainly aren’t meaningless. If you go to the doctor and he says the cancer is spreading, wouldn’t you want a projection? Isn’t that important information?
There is no need to restrict Co2 emissions. Every ice core sample ever recorded shows that Co2 is a product of changes in temperature, it reflects changes in temperature with a delay of 300 years. Co2 isn't the cause for the changes. Co2 isn't even correlated at present as Co2 concentrations have risen substantially while temperatures haven't matched them whatsoever. Nothing but good comes from rising Co2 concentrations. Forests and vegetation have expanded and grown by more than 37% worldwide since 1950 alone. Every living plant on earth can now survive on 6% less water than yesterday's plants directly attributed to the rise in Co2. We are in a Co2 drought. We could use five times more Co2. Plants are starving for Co2. You'll know when we have enough Co2, when you can put a Co2 detector in the middle of an actively growing mature corn field in mid day and Co2 concentrations aren't sucked down by more than half. Concentrations return to normal at sunset when photosynthesis stops. Why would we wish that reduce the productivity of every plant on earth by more than 50%? The Earth isn't dying it is blooming, not in spite of our Co2 emissions but because of them. Celebrate the non-toxic, inert, invisible life giving plant nutrient Co2.
Yes, we’ve all heard the denialist arguments about the benefits of CO2 before, and I wish what you were saying were true, it would be highly convenient. If all we had to be concerned about was how well our corn grows, that would be great. Unfortunately though, things are more complicated.
I think the folks at, the US Navy, French Navy, Royal Navy etc. National Academy of Sciences (of every major nation), the Royal society (UK and NZ) the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the African Academy of Sciences, the UN, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, the US National Research Council, the European Academy of Sciences and the European Science Foundation, the InterAcademy Council, the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America, European Federation of Geologists, European Geosciences Union, Geological Society of America, Geological Society of Russia, of London, of Canada etc. the International Union of Geodesics and Geophysics, the American Meteorological Society, Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society,
Royal Meteorological Society (UK), World Meteorological Organization, American Quaternary Association, a long list of other scientific bodies from every single nation on Earth, every major energy company, every government, every major university including MIT, Harvard, Oxford etc. the major Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Russian major universities and research institutions, every military intelligence agency, every national and international Antarctic and polar research mission, the Russian, Indian, Chinese and European Space missions, NASA, to name a few
… I think they have a better handle on this than you or me, and certainly a better handle than the PR people who represented the tobacco industry and now put out the talking point you gave. (Yes, the same PR companies and in some cases the same individuals)
William Happer and Richard Lindzen have been dismantling this bullshit for years.
And please spare me the "they're just shills for Big Oil" nonsense. Those two guys know more about how this stuff works than most other climate scientists put together, so this is the science we should be responding to.
How does that work though? Why do two people who aren’t climate scientists ‘know more about how this stuff works than most climate scientists put together’?
This goes back to the cognitive dissonance thing, which I find perplexing. In what other aspect of life would you reject thousands of experts’ opinion on a matter, while completely accepting one or two that came to a different conclusion? Would you do that with medical doctors? With a mechanic examining your car? I honestly don’t believe you would.
Very interesting reading about those two gentlemen. Lindzen’s main claims to fame seem to be his comically bad predictions on global temperature increases, obsessive contrarianism and his insistence that tobacco smoke isn’t bad for you. Happer, on the other hand, is whose name you would find if you looked up the term “shill for big oil” in the dictionary. He doesn’t even seem interested in hiding his loyalty to his fossil fuel handlers.
Interestingly, both these men were found to be a little too ‘out there’ for the Trump administration. Lol
The one thing that you, me, and those two guys have in common though, is that none of us are climatologists.
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.
Except that these things aren't becoming more extreme. And just calling any disaster a "climate change linked disaster" does not make it that. The Great Barrier Reef is doing fine, so I'm not sure where you get this info that coral reefs have "almost completely died out". That's a bizarre statement.
Desertification is accelerating? Maybe, but last I heard, parts of the Sahara were greening, so...
We used to have malaria in Canada prior to 1900, and northern Europe as well, so that's nothing new. Medical advances took care of that.
On the whole, food production is up every year, there are less people living in poverty every year, and life is generally improving for most people on the planet. Every year. The biggest barrier to this is wars and corrupt governments. This is hardly a doom and gloom scenario.
I can understand why people are concerned though. Especially when every time you turn in the news, you hear about how bad it MIGHT become.
Most sources I can find (Smithsonian, NASA, UN etc) forecast coral reefs will be gone within the next 50 years or so, we’ve already lost around 50% of reefs globally since oceans started warming. I’d be interested to know where you got the idea that the Great Barrier Reef is ‘doing fine’.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-17710-7
yes, desertification is accelerating. Sure, it might be good news that some areas are greening, but is it really a good strategy to bank on some incidental positive side effects of pumping CO2 into the atmosphere?
Solving climate change is not rocket science, it isn’t even that difficult or disruptive from a technical standpoint. The ‘doom and gloom’ you’re referring to is mainly the absolute disbelief that there doesn’t appear to be any political leadership or will on the issue.
We’re facing a situation that will make life on this planet far more challenging for future generations, and we cannot find a way to act collectively with any long-term vision. This is why young people are mad. Because there are a millions of people who buy into the propaganda of the most profitable and powerful industries on earth (energy), believing that David Attenborough is lying to them; that every single scientific institution, oceanic, geological, space agencies, defense research, university, etc. are all part of a communist plot to sell solar panels? The sheer and utter stupidity of it all - that’s where the frustration comes from.
And if there’s ever been an issue that we SHOULD be ‘alarmist’ about, it’s this. The planet is our spaceship, we don’t have a back-up if anything happens to this one. We should be assuming the worst-case scenario, not nitpicking for inconsistencies in the wording of the scientists who are sounding the alarm.
The doom and gloom I'm referring to is precisely these "projections" that you mentioned. You can project all you want, we've seen how meaningless they are. Everything goes in cycles. We've also seen how laughable it is when politicians come up with a new emissions target that we all know will be a failure within a few short months.
It's not "the science" that's the problem here - it's our response to it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58073295
Well now I’m completely confused. I’ve been following your blog, and your commentary on climate change has mostly been that it’s nothing to worry about because the scientists are all wrong. Now you’re saying that the problem is not with science, but with our response to it?
Well that’s the point I”VE been trying to make!
I completely agree that it’s “laughable it is when politicians come up with a new emissions target that we all know will be a failure within a few short months” (though ‘laughable’ is not the word I’d use).
This is the reason for the ‘doom and gloom’, and the constant need to remind people what the f**k is happening. When there’s repeatedly no action taken on a situation which is becoming increasingly dire, what else are we supposed to do? It’s maddening.
If 50% of the world’s coral reefs have disappeared, that’s not a projection. If July has been confirmed as the hottest month ever, that's not a projection. Weather events have become more extreme, not a projection. The projections haven’t been wrong, and they certainly aren’t meaningless. If you go to the doctor and he says the cancer is spreading, wouldn’t you want a projection? Isn’t that important information?
There is no need to restrict Co2 emissions. Every ice core sample ever recorded shows that Co2 is a product of changes in temperature, it reflects changes in temperature with a delay of 300 years. Co2 isn't the cause for the changes. Co2 isn't even correlated at present as Co2 concentrations have risen substantially while temperatures haven't matched them whatsoever. Nothing but good comes from rising Co2 concentrations. Forests and vegetation have expanded and grown by more than 37% worldwide since 1950 alone. Every living plant on earth can now survive on 6% less water than yesterday's plants directly attributed to the rise in Co2. We are in a Co2 drought. We could use five times more Co2. Plants are starving for Co2. You'll know when we have enough Co2, when you can put a Co2 detector in the middle of an actively growing mature corn field in mid day and Co2 concentrations aren't sucked down by more than half. Concentrations return to normal at sunset when photosynthesis stops. Why would we wish that reduce the productivity of every plant on earth by more than 50%? The Earth isn't dying it is blooming, not in spite of our Co2 emissions but because of them. Celebrate the non-toxic, inert, invisible life giving plant nutrient Co2.
Couldn't agree with you more, Stephen.
Why do you think there are taxes and restrictions on CO2?
Yes, we’ve all heard the denialist arguments about the benefits of CO2 before, and I wish what you were saying were true, it would be highly convenient. If all we had to be concerned about was how well our corn grows, that would be great. Unfortunately though, things are more complicated.
I think the folks at, the US Navy, French Navy, Royal Navy etc. National Academy of Sciences (of every major nation), the Royal society (UK and NZ) the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, the African Academy of Sciences, the UN, the Federation of Australian Scientific and Technological Societies, the US National Research Council, the European Academy of Sciences and the European Science Foundation, the InterAcademy Council, the American Geophysical Union, the American Society of Agronomy and the Soil Science Society of America, European Federation of Geologists, European Geosciences Union, Geological Society of America, Geological Society of Russia, of London, of Canada etc. the International Union of Geodesics and Geophysics, the American Meteorological Society, Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society,
Royal Meteorological Society (UK), World Meteorological Organization, American Quaternary Association, a long list of other scientific bodies from every single nation on Earth, every major energy company, every government, every major university including MIT, Harvard, Oxford etc. the major Chinese, Indian, Brazilian, Russian major universities and research institutions, every military intelligence agency, every national and international Antarctic and polar research mission, the Russian, Indian, Chinese and European Space missions, NASA, to name a few
… I think they have a better handle on this than you or me, and certainly a better handle than the PR people who represented the tobacco industry and now put out the talking point you gave. (Yes, the same PR companies and in some cases the same individuals)
William Happer and Richard Lindzen have been dismantling this bullshit for years.
And please spare me the "they're just shills for Big Oil" nonsense. Those two guys know more about how this stuff works than most other climate scientists put together, so this is the science we should be responding to.
https://republicans.quora.com/Two-Princeton-MIT-Scientists-Say-EPA-Climate-Regulations-Based-on-a-Hoax?ch=10&oid=122685800&share=9055b84b&srid=SQQZK&target_type=post
You got that right!
How does that work though? Why do two people who aren’t climate scientists ‘know more about how this stuff works than most climate scientists put together’?
This goes back to the cognitive dissonance thing, which I find perplexing. In what other aspect of life would you reject thousands of experts’ opinion on a matter, while completely accepting one or two that came to a different conclusion? Would you do that with medical doctors? With a mechanic examining your car? I honestly don’t believe you would.
Very interesting reading about those two gentlemen. Lindzen’s main claims to fame seem to be his comically bad predictions on global temperature increases, obsessive contrarianism and his insistence that tobacco smoke isn’t bad for you. Happer, on the other hand, is whose name you would find if you looked up the term “shill for big oil” in the dictionary. He doesn’t even seem interested in hiding his loyalty to his fossil fuel handlers.
Interestingly, both these men were found to be a little too ‘out there’ for the Trump administration. Lol
The one thing that you, me, and those two guys have in common though, is that none of us are climatologists.
https://www.quora.com/Is-Richard-Lindzen-considered-credible-in-the-climate-change-debate
Ken, what is the highest level of education you've attained?