There’s a new essay from Indur Goklany in response to a recent Reuters news article.
Yesterday Reuters reported on a study which claimed that heat is the deadliest form of natural hazard for the United States. However, this result is based on questionable data. The study used results for mortality from extreme heat and cold that can be traced to the National Climatic Data Center. But these data are substantially different from mortality data from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) based on the Compressed Mortality File for the United States. The latter uses death certificate records, which provide the cause of each recorded death (based on medical opinion). It is reasonable to believe that regarding the cause of death, particularly for extreme cold and heat, medical opinion as captured in death certificate records is more reliable than determinations made by the meteorologists in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s NCDC (even if they have Ph.Ds.).
The essay draws on data from the CDC database of mortality in the USA. See this table:
Combining data from the CDC database for extreme cold and extreme heat, and various arms of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for floods, lightning, hurricanes, and tornadoes, Goklany has shown that extreme cold, rather than heat, is the deadliest form of extreme weather event. In fact, from 1979-2002, extreme cold was responsible for 53 percent of deaths due to all these categories of extreme weather, while extreme heat contributes slightly more than half that (28%). For more, see The Deadliest U.S. Natural Hazard: Extreme Cold.
Of course we all know that the human race has historically done better during warm periods. While we’ve seen a sloght warming in the last century, we’ve also seen a worldwide improvement in the human condition.
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crosspatch (14:33:48) :
When this happens again. When we go into another 100,000 years of glaciation, our world as we know it is going to turn absolutely upside down as far as political and social fallout. And it *will* happen again and considering the length of this interglacial already, it is probably going to happen quite soon in geological time (in the next 10 to 20 centuries).
I think we can control it, and not with greenhouse gases.
I vote for light weight mirrors in space to increase insolation. Thick aluminum foil should do it.
crosspatch (22:48:58) :
“The Swiss Alps are losing their glaciers at an accelerating rate”
“Yes, and they are exposing 5000 year old wood in the process. Meaning that 5000 years ago, the area that is now glacier was forest. And other glaciers are exposing other artifacts as they recede such as leather clothing, arrows, even ancient Roman coins.”
When was the great flood supposed to take place? See, maybe it was Noah who simply dumped the junk there? 😉
Or maybe God just put them there to test our faith and/or our reasoning skills… ;D
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7770472.stm
“Is sublimation/deforestation an issue in Switzerland?”
I once saw a news item suggesting that deforestation to creat ski resorts would lead to incresed flooding, perhaps there is also an affect on the glaciers
Joseph:-)
As I understand it from Geologists we’re not likely (real likely as opposed to an IPCC one) to undergo an ice age for another 50-100,000 yrs. But it is a very interesting area of research which should be undertaken & planned for, should man still be here? We know, or at least some scientists know that as a race we will one day have to leave little old earth behind if we’re to survive, will it be then? I don’t know.
I agree with Brooklyn Red Leg 🙂 that the IPCC’s next meeting should be held in Ojmjakon, Russia if it’s that cold, limit the aircon & heating system or let it go faulty right in the middle of tense negotiations, might just concentrate the minds of those experts a little bit! Just why do they hold them at the perfect time of year in those exotic locations?
Penultimately, I would concur with Number Watch, Humanity is a minor infestation of a minor planet orbiting a minor star in a minor galaxy!
Finally, may I wish everyone a very Happy & Peaceful Christmas & New Year, & may your God go with you.
AtB
Look out, here it comes!!!
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-general/20081219/Obama/
No need to worry about the cold when PM Gordon Browmn himself will save the world:
http://atvs.vg.no/player/?id=20237
Brendan H:
Necessity is the mother of invention. In times of hardship, people are forced to find better and more efficient ways of growing crops, etc.
WWII was also a time of unprecedented scientific advances.
Freezing Finn (02:53:41) :
crosspatch (22:48:58) :
“The Swiss Alps are losing their glaciers at an accelerating rate”
““Yes, and they are exposing 5000 year old wood in the process. Meaning that 5000 years ago, the area that is now glacier was forest. And other glaciers are exposing other artifacts as they recede such as leather clothing, arrows, even ancient Roman coins.”
When was the great flood supposed to take place? See, maybe it was Noah who simply dumped the junk there? 😉
Or maybe God just put them there to test our faith and/or our reasoning skills… ;D”
Depending on which young earth Biblical timescale one wishes to use the Flood could have been almost 6000 years ago, which would place 5000 year old Alp artifacts well within the correct age range.
Yea, looks like the Swiss Alps are really hurting for snow – not.
http://www.onthesnow.co.uk/valais/zermatt/skireport.html
What the hell – will USA Today do?
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-09-25-france-heat_x.htm
Took all of ONE search in Google to find out about the deaths – guess you couldn’t be bothered to look for yourself, Mr. Jones?
Of course, it’s an adaptive process – if the cimate does swing massively to colder or warmer temps, the architectural styles will change. And the above was a freak heat wave in 2003. Now they’re getting blizzards.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1094958/Britons-travelling-France-warned-snowstorms-kill-people-cause-road-chaos.html
Britons travelling in France warned as snowstorms kill three people and cause road chaos
As Crosspatch said – it’ll be interesting to see whether the glaciers advance this year.
“Ross (21:04:50) :
My rough guess … when the glaciers are marching down Pennsylvania Avenue, maybe the AGW crowd, the IPCC, and their slavish pols will scratch their heads and wonder where they went wrong.
S’pose?”
http://www.knmi.nl/~laatdej/EOS2008.pdf
Judging from de Laat’s paper, when the glaciers start advancing, we’ll be turning on our heaters more, and those UHI biased temperature readings will go up! – A. McIntire
I entered this on a different topic thread, but since that was quite a while ago, I will also enter it here:
“Response to Today in climate history – Dec 12th, 1938 – getting warmer
Doug in Mankato, MN (07:10:22) :
One source of data I have not heard anyone talking about on this site or anyplace else I can find is the ocean data from the ARGO project, the worldwide array of robot floats that was completed about a year or so ago. This is a project with international support and I would think by now some of this data would be starting to tell us something about ocean temperature trends, currents and salinity. The home site is The site and the system itself is not meant to do analysis of the data collected, but rather to provide an international data base for anyone it who does. It was originally initiated to study global warming. Could it be that the lack of media coverage is due to the fact that it hasn’t shown any GW so far? Would be interested to know if any of the readers of this site have seen any referances to ARGO data.”
In response to the topic “Today in Climate History – Dec 12th, 1938 -getting warmer” I asked(above) if anyone had seen any results or references to the ARGO project data. Since then I have found two references:
http://oceans.pmel.noaa.gov/Pdf/hc_bias_jtech_v3.pdf
http://argo3000.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-much-have-ocean-temperatures.html
The first is a paper published in June which discussed the cooling biases in some of the ARGO floats and also the warming biases in the pre-ARGO technology for measuring ocean temperatures. The second is a blog entry from someone on the ARGO team referencing a more recent article in Nature in August of this year by a team that apparently analyzed both pre-ARGO and ARGO data. I can’t access the Nature article, but the conclusions of both articles seem to be that prior to the ARGO network coming on line four years ago the oceans were gradually heating and since then the ARGO data seems to show NO overall change in temperature. From the first article it appears that most of the ARGO data is systematically correctable. Those same authors admit that the pre-ARGO technology was not really designed for climate analysis and that those data have problems. Both sets of authors, of course, insist that the case for warming oceans is “compelling” and that the current stable state(which, by the way is the only state for which we have good data) is just a phase in a constantly trend upward.
Again, I would like to know if anyone has seen other articles on ocean temperature, currents, etc. which reference the ARGO system. As a layman with a science background(retired electrical engineer) it would seem to me that the oceans, because of their enormous mass in comparison to anything else on the surface of the planet, would also have an enormous effect on the global climate compared to anything else.
I think anyone who is not at least a bit skeptical about “peer-reviewed” research and the periodicals that print it is naive. I remember the Lancet editor who fast-tracked a “study” that purported to show Iraqi civilian deaths in Iraq. He made sure to print it before the 2004 Presidential election. Here he is at a peace rally:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csxvUzpIQ18&feature=Responses&parent_video=v7BzM5mxN5U&index=0&playnext=1&playnext_from=RL
crosspatch (22:48:58) :
I collected some links to relevant articles at
http://wermenh.com/climate/6000.html
I appears that the glacial retreat then was global.
Wally (06:24:32) :
Depending on which young earth Biblical timescale one wishes to use the Flood could have been almost 6000 years ago, which would place 5000 year old Alp artifacts well within the correct age range.
Don’t know if it fits any Biblical time scales or not, but…
There is also the issue of the Clovis people. The most interesting explanation so far was that a meteor or asteroid bit hit the ice cover of N. America and a) Killed off most Clovis people. b) Killed of most megafauna. c) Left no crater since it hit ice and released the melt water lakes which d) lead to the Younger Dryas cooling. About 12k yrs ago which would still allow for persistent flood myths world wide to be (barely) preserved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas_impact_event
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clovis_culture
The bottom line on this, IMHO, is that we are flyspecks on the earth and the forces that drive climate are so huge we have not a chance of controlling them. Could we stop a nice big space rock tomorrow? Stop the orbital eccentricity changes? Change the Earth’s precession? Influence the polar wobble? Stop the sun from taking a nap after an overactive workout? Maybe even just stop the PDO?
Hubris doesn’t even come close…
@ur momisugly Patrick Henry (07:04:11) :
Two and a quarter metres of snow in one day?
They are going to have difficulty just finding the glaciers under that lot.
This article have a very interesting and very long range perspective:
http://www.sciencebits.com/ice-ages
There have been many ‘ice-epochs’ during which there are ice-ages. These, per the graph part way down the page, correspond with the time just after the solar system transits a spiral arm of the galaxy. We have just (in galactic time!) finished such a transit and ought to be leaving the subsequent ice-epoch. This would imply that each ice age ought to be less severe than the preceding ‘for a while’.
If that means were all done with ice ages or that we’re in for a slightly less catastrophic disaster I’ll leave for others to decide…
There is also a wonderful little book, that I can’t find on my self right now… I think the title was “The Ice Ages”. I’ll try to get a full citation later. It is mostly a history of the discovery of the ice ages, but along the way explains the how. A great read.
Memo to self: Two coffees before posting in morning (improves proof reading, spelling & typing) and glasses on before looking at bookshelf…
E.M.Smith (08:51:02) :
There is also a wonderful little book, that I can’t find on my self right now…
Got it. “Ice Age, the Theory That Came in From the Cold” by John & Mary Gribbin. Published by Barnes & Nobel, Inc. by arrangement with Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 0-7607-3406-2 The book is about 100 pages and an easy read. It mostly explores the people and process of the discovery of the ice ages. Along the way you get to understand how they happen, and how folks made the discovery of their existence and worked to an understanding of them. The history of folks doing things like calculating by hand orbital changes while in prison… lets just say you get a new respect for science…
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Ice-Age/John-Gribbin/e/9780760734063/?itm=1
http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/g/john-gribbin/ice-age.htm
Hasse@Norway (05:24:10) :
I hope you’re not taking the piss out of our great leader!
Also,
Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery by Imbrie, John and Katherine Palmer Imbrie. 1986. Harvard University Press.
One of the founders of modern paleooceanography, John Imbrie is (2004) the Henry L. Doherty Professor of Oceanography Emeritus at Brown. In addition to more than 60 articles in scientific journals dealing with the Earth’s past climate, Imbrie has published four books, including Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery, which he wrote with his daughter Katherine, and which won the 1976 Phi Beta Kappa prize.
Dr. Imbrie was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1978, and in 1981 was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Prize Fellowship. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America, the American Philosophical Society, the American Meteorological Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In addition to the Vetlesen Prize, Imbrie was honored with the American Geophysical Union’s Maurice Ewing Medal in 1986, the Lyell Medal for Geology of the Geological Society of London in 1991, the Vega Medal of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography in 1999, and the Milankovic Medal in 2003.
John Imbrie was a member of the team that vindicated the work of Milutin Milankovic by demonstrating that changes in the geometry of the Earth-Sun system did indeed pace the glacial cycles of the Pleistocene.
Peter: “Necessity is the mother of invention.”
My very point. Hence my balancing comments to the scare-mongering about “plagues, crop failures, massive starvation and many wars”.
One could take the same optimistic view (necessity is the mother of invention) to the challenge posed by global warming.
Brendan H:
I’m afraid that, being an engineer, I don’t share your optimism that technology will magically produce the goods that the politicians decree.
Most of the major technological advancements have already taken place – especially in the fields of agriculture and energy efficiency. Most technological advances still to be made in these areas will be small, incremental improvements.
As far as energy generation goes, the next major advancement will be the development of commercially viable nuclear fusion – and this may still be several decades away.
In the meantime, there will be a lot of hardship as energy costs increase by huge amounts, while politicians continue to throw huge sums of money away on non-starters such as wind power.
heres a graph of temperature fluctuations vs number of stations
interesting correlation – the stations must have a cooling bias (grins) because the less there are of them the warmer it gets!!!
http://solarcycle24com.proboards106.com/index.cgi?board=globalwarming&action=display&thread=168&page=7
What credibility will GISS have if they come out with “December – third warmest in history”? next month.
I’m curious to see how this is spun next month.