Did you know??

Question

That cold weather kills more people than warm weather. I recently read someone's YA!! saying that currently global warming is killing 150,000 people per year. How do you justify someone dying b/c of global warming? Here is an article that states colder weather/climate kills more people than warmer weather.

http://www.co2science.org/scripts/CO2ScienceB2C/subject/h/summaries/samerhotvcold.jsp

This other article is about the heat wave of 2003 and how it is not related to global warming.
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/01/31/european-heat-wave-2003-a-global-perspective/
What I'm saying is how do you know when a heat wave, flood, or other natural occurrences are caused by global warming. Also that maybe a little warmth is better than cooler temps as far as the rate of people dying from either warmer or cooler weather. Just b/c you find a trend, doesn't mean you can account every natural disaster on GW.

Dana: How do you say GW kills 150,000 people on average? What constitutes someone dying b/c of GW. How do you figure that number?? Not saying living on the sun, just saying I'd rather see global warming than cooling.

Samantha: It's not about politics, it's about data and representing it right. You can't just throw a number out and expect me to believe that when you can't prove any death at this moment is related to GW. Just the same you can't say the rising amount of Co2 will continue to warm the earth to a catastrophic disaster. I believe Co2 was higher millions of years ago during an ice age!! hmm??

Bob: I'm aware we have a threshold of when it gets to hot to handle. But how do we know the 150,000 that have died they are counting is attributed to global warming. We don't know if the warming will continue. So the future scenarios are irrelevant. They're just model computed scenarios.

leftist1234: I was right but not by accident. These isolated events are now not attributed to global warming but in the next 10yrs if temperatures continue to rise then you will attribute these isolated events to global warming. Even if the event was proven not to be a cause of global warming. They will still all get lumped into together. So how do you sift through the past natural disasters and depict which ones are GW related. As for the hot cold relationship if temperatures do stabilize and no more warming occurs then the warming we have witnessed is not so bad after all and would have been much worse if the world was cooling instead.

leftist1234: I was right but not by accident. These isolated events are now not attributed to global warming but in the next 10yrs if temperatures continue to rise then you will attribute these isolated events to global warming. Even if the event was proven not to be a cause of global warming. They will still all get lumped into together. So how do you sift through the past natural disasters and depict which ones are GW related. As for the hot cold relationship if temperatures do stabilize and no more warming occurs then the warming we have witnessed is not so bad after all and would have been much worse if the world was cooling instead.

Answer 1

Any numbers like 150,000 deaths from global warming are HIGHLY suspect. They totally ignore all kinds of other factors that could totally change the number, like the recent story about how divorce causes global warming because it makes people not share housing which increases energy use. There are millions of silly correlations like that which could be used to support or oppose ANY claim. It is basically like Astrology. The position of the planets caused 150,000 deaths because the world death rate went up when Jupiter aligned with Mars. NONSENSE! I simply ignore these claims for the nonsense that they are. And if we somehow DID manage to completely control global warming, some OTHER group, probably from some country with a really cold climate, would come up with statistic saying that the rest of the world had killed 150,000 of their people by cold due to the anti global warming efforts.

Answer 2

You don't seem to understand the science behind global warming. Global Warming isn't about isolated high temperatures (which is the data that you're citing)... it's about climate destabilization.

Global Warming is about increase in average temperature. What you get with increased average temperature is more extreme weather patterns, including more extreme colds.

The warmer the average temperature, the more brutal winters will be in some areas, as well as the less predictable the weather patterns are. You'll see more droughts, crop failures due to inordinate heating in the summer, and harsher winters.

In other words, you should probably learn about the topic and its impact and mechanics before claiming something like this.

You are correct, by accident though, that one can't attribute all natural disasters to global warming. I won't support any figure, but the evidence you're claiming supports your point of view on hot/cold temperatures actually doesn't.

Answer 3

So what you're saying is that we should all live on the Sun? After all, heat is good and it doesn't get much hotter than the Sun. No worry about cold-related deaths there!

By the way, that was the World Health Organization saying that global warming is responsible for 150,000 deaths per year, and that this number will double in 20 years. If you want to know how they calculated it, read the article or the report itself.

"Temperature fluctuations may sway human health in a surprising number of ways, scientists have learned, from influencing the spread of infectious diseases to boosting the likelihood of illness-inducing heat waves and floods."

*edit* I told you, I didn't do the study, the WHO did. Read their report if you want to know how they calculated it. I'm sure there were a lot of statistics involved.

The Sun example is to illustrate that it's not always better for the environment to get warmer. There's obviously a point where it becomes too warm.

Answer 4

Historically, we are not even close to as warm as it got in the early 1800's. If you check into historical records you will find out that whalers were able to sail deep into the Arctic Ocean in pursuit of their prey. When temps returned to normal after two decades of "global warming" the whalers were caught unawares and many perished being trapped in the ice late in the season.

This is not the only historical circumstance. A reading of any well founded history book that looks at weather's affects on human events shows fluctuations far more extreme than what we have today.

The fact is that a single volcano can spew more greenhouse gasses into the air than all of humanity combined. The "El Nino" phenomena was based entirely on volcanic activity in the Philippines, for example.

Present theories about global warming are based on very small amounts of data collected in only the last hundred or so years. Hardly enough upon which to base a judgement.

Further, if you look at the trend of modern technology, it has the general effect of moderating the introduction of so called greenhouse gasses into the air as we find more efficient ways to produce products and transport them. The fact is that going back to the horse and buggy days would create MORE "greenhouse" gasses than are currently being produced, merely from the carbon dioxide and methane created from the emissions from horses!

Don't you think that it is more likely that the scientists who espouse this theory of global warming (by no means a majority of those polled) might in fact be mistaken? The planet has the ability to maintain equilibrium from the creation of carbon dioxide, merely through the respiration of plants. More carbon monoxide creates more "breathable" air for plants. Which creates more lush growth, which, in turn, converts more oxygen and reduces the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Please, please, please, do more research on this matter and you will see that the whole "global warming" movement is not based on sound data, but is mere conjecture by groups that just might have some other political motivations behind their advocacy.

Answer 5

Sure. But you're missing the inportant thing.

The problem with global warming is not temperature increase, it's the EFFECTS of that increase.

Damage to agriculture in places like Africa and Bangladesh will cause many deaths from starvation.

Flooding in coastal areas will cost so much money that it will drive the world into an economic depression. Poverty kills people - proven fact.

Added to that stronger storms (heat fuels storms).

And nobody is talking about making things cooler. The idea is simply to slow the rate of increase of warming, so we can do deal with it.

Nobody not politically driven objects to that.

EDIT - Are you willing to bet your economic well being on the very unlikely possibility this trend won't continue, for the reasons given in the second link?

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif

http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png

Answer 6

It would be nice if some anti-global warming conspiracy poster could come up with a better argument than saying that the estimate must be wrong because the poster wants the estimate to be wrong.

Here is a hint that may prove helpful in life. If you disagree with all of the experts for political reasons, you may be right, but it isn't very likely.

I think that the smart money is on the people who know what they are talking about.

Answer 7

A cooler, CO2 starved earth, will cause more crop failures, shortened growing seasons, and a massive reduction in the food supply.

The WHO numbers of "deaths by GW per year" are simply guesses - they have started attributing perfectly natural disasters within perfectly historical variations to GW, and then saying anybody who dies from these disasters are dead because of Global Warming.

They are also taking perfectly predictable disease vectors (global travel) and attributing them to GW because the diseases are thought of as "tropical." Nobody seems to remember St. Petersburg, Russia used to have malaria outbreaks before misquito eradication was the norm.

The Truth is, Phoenix has fewer heat deaths each year than New York City - because people living in chronically hot locales acclimate better.

Answer 8

I'm always amazed at how quickly people jump on the "Disaster Bandwagon". The temp goes up 1 deg and 150,000 people die? Somebody exhales and the CO2 becomes a threat? Where's this stuff come from? Some idiot starts a war, thousands die, and it's cool? Tell me the inmates aren't running the asylum.

Answer 9

I think it's so great that you care about the environment as much as I do!! I love animals, nature and the environment!! Some people don't respect the bounty that Mother Nature has given us.

Answer 10

Ya if you include the number of people that are gonna die any how (old age etc.) you can get all kinda jacked up numbers.