Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
1. Krugman in Gradual Changes and Extreme Events forgets that there is a threshold on the left hand side, below which cold kills. In fact, in the moderate to higher latitudes more people die daily during the cold months than in the rest of the year. See Winter kills: Excess Deaths in the Winter Months.
2. How does Krugman know that the distribution does not become narrower due to warming?
3. Where is the data that shows extremes have become more intense or more frequent, after one corrects for better detection, increased population, and better communications? It certainly doesn’t hold for cyclones, as Ryan Maue’s ACE graph shows. Events more extreme than any we have witnessed over the past 30 years (or whatever) have occurred before and will, no doubt, occur again, even absent any anthropogenic climate change.
4. Empirical data show that even if extremes are more frequent and intense, lives lost have declined. As noted in the A Primer on the Global Death Toll from Extreme Weather Events — Context and Long Term (1900–2008) Trends, long term (1900–2008) data show that average annual deaths and death rates from all such events declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since cresting in the 1920s (see Figure). These declines occurred despite a vast increase in the populations at risk and more complete coverage of extreme weather events.
Source: Goklany, IM. 2009. Deaths and Death Rates from Extreme Weather Events: 1900-2008. Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons 14 (4): 102-09 (2009). Available at http://www.jpands.org/vol14no4/goklany.pdf.
5. Similarly, empirical data also do not show any significant upward trend for property losses once increases in population and assets-at-risk are accounted for. See (a) Pielke, Jr’s weblog on Normalized Disaster Losses in Australia, (b) Bouwer, L.M. (2010), “Have disaster losses increased due to anthropogenic climate change?” Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, doi:10.1175/2010BAMS3092.1, (c) Neumayer, E., and Barthel, F. (2010), “Normalizing economic loss from natural disasters:A global analysis, ” Global Environmental Change http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.10.004.
Cold kills. Warmer is better.
Guest post by Indur M. Goklany
4. Empirical data show that even if extremes are more frequent and intense, lives lost have declined. As noted in the A Primer on the Global Death Toll from Extreme Weather Events — Context and Long Term (1900–2008) Trends, long term (1900–2008) data show that average annual deaths and death rates from all such events declined by 93% and 98%, respectively, since cresting in the 1920s (see Figure). These declines occurred despite a vast increase in the populations at risk and more complete coverage of extreme weather events.
Given the advances in medicine and technology, I don’t think a simple comparison the totals in the 1920’s to the current total is a true representation. If you look at it per capita, deaths from extreme weather events have actually increased from 2000 per million in the 1920’s to 7000 per million in the last decade. So, although deaths from extreme weather events have declined, it has not matched the overall trend. It doesn’t follow from this that there has been an increase in extreme weather events, but it shouldn’t be discounted as a possibility.
Why are Trenberth and his fellow CACA’s(note 1) not following the most recent CACC(note 2) mantra of climate disruption?
The new distribution curve needs to be modified to make it consistent with the current climate disruption meme. If climate extremes (moreless snow, tornadoes, hurricanes, rain, sea ice, glacial ice, heat, etc) increase in frequency, then the modified distribution should be shorter and fatter on both the cooler and warmer ends. As others have said, there also needs to be a threshold at the cooler end.
This change creates a situation where SNR drops sufficiently to enable policy-based evidence-making to continue.
note 1- CACA = catastrophic anthropogenic climate alarmist
note 2- CACC = catastrophic anthropogenic climate change
Goklany:
To be honest I feel that your critique of Krugmans article is a bit off.
Paul Krugman never even mentioned property damage or human lives in his article. He simply stated that a higher global temperature will cause a higher frequency of extreme events.
Here is my reaction to each of your points:
1: He does not forget about cold extreme events. In fact, he mentions this several times in the article.
2: When the distribution shifts to the right, there are three alternatives of what may happen: the distribution becomes wider, more narrow or no change at all. The most reasonable would undoubtedly be to assume that there is no change in the width of the distribution. As far as I know, there is no reason to believe that the change of the distribution has a higher chance of becoming narrower than becoming wider.
3: If the number of warm and cold events has not changed, only our ability to detect it, why do you think that we would get a bias toward warm weather?
I believe that if that was the case we would see that the number of observed cold and warm events would increase approximately the same.
4:
He never mentioned anything about the relationship between lost lives and increased extreme events in this article. In fact, he didn’t mention lost lives at all. You call the article nonsense because of something he hasn’t said.
And where is the data where you have taken increased ability to adapt to extreme weather events into consideration?
5: The same goes here. He never mentioned anything about property losses.
Please don’t get offended. I’m simply stating my opinion on the matter.
I would add that regardless of ones position on climate change it is difficult to dispute that the use of fossil fuels has enabled the global economy to grow faster than the population. This has significantly increased world wealth. As a result even the relatively poorest countries are much better equipped to deal with weather events (right down to forecasting impending storms). Most advocates for addressing climate change purpose solutions that would create scarcity and that would impact the poorest among us the hardest. I often wonder why the press etc. fails to address this at all.
A further indicator that cold is the larger problem: Insurance claims are more due to cold weather.
http://topnews.us/content/234363-insurance-claims-are-more-due-cold-weather
h/t to Tom Nelson’s blog http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/
At least Krugman’s Nobel wasn’t for Peace (like Al Gore’s). I am still ticked off that Gore won the Peace prize for a mock-u-mentary. If mock-u-mentary=Peace, then the creators of “This is Spinal Tap” really got shafted long ago. Clearly that first, best, mock-u-mentary film did more for World Peace than Gore’s did.
I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was about Krugman’s ‘analysis’ that chafed me the most, but I think I just have. If ‘extreme’ weather events are at the high-temperature side of his graph, then what is at the low side? …what is at the peak? By trying to throw a normal distribution curve over ‘weather events’, you’re not changing the frequency of any type of event, only the temperature at which it happens.
Krugman’s visual aids remind me of one of my favorite Simpsons quotes: “These words like ‘proactive’ and ‘paradigm’… aren’t they just things that stupid people say to make themselves sound intelligent?”
@AGWeird says:
February 9, 2011 at 7:07 am
Agreed, Krugman’s article can easily be exposed for the facile finger pointing exercise it is without having to construct straw men.
PhilJourdan’s comment above offers a really interesting take on Krugman’s alarmism though. Perhaps the same reasoning could partly explain the wholesale adoption of AGW (and denial of the obvious flaws in the hypothesis) amongst the political class too? Carbon Dioxide makes a great whipping boy..
Well, as I have stated many times here, on a givn northern summer day; the total range of extreme Temperatures on earth can range from as low as -90 deg C (-130 deg F or 183 K) to as high as +60 deg C (+140 deg F or 333K) on the surface or higher on some blacktop surfaces. And every Temperature in that total 150 deg C range can exist somewhere on the earth at the same time, in fact at an infinity of places.
But, the actual official records at formal reporting stations, of about +136 deg F and -128 deg F or so, were recorded many many years ago; and they still stand. (google them up for yourself).
So nyet on more extreme weather; or those records would be busted all the time. And people survive at both of the places where those record extremes were recorded; and we go into fits over a one deg F warming (maybe) in 150 years; nutz !
He does? Where? And what does he say about it? Does he agree that extreme events induced by warm weather will be offset by extreme events by cold weather assuming constant width of the distribution?
1. Actually, for an uninformed person “there is no reason to believe” anything at all. And all of mankind is certainly uninformed about this issue.
2. If the distribution becomes more narrow, then there will be less extreme events from both warm and cold – thus lives will be saved. If the distribution stays the same (which you are assuming), then the increase of extreme warm events will be offset by the extreme cold events – thus lives will be saved. This is exactly why the CAGW narrative pushes the fact that CO2 will increase the distribution width – hence the name change to climate disruption. They’re doing this because it’s much more difficult to disprove.
Statements of findings, without derivative data, is akin to the noise of discharging flatulence. GK
Could Dr Krugman be part of a team of magicians? And is it possible that his role in the performance is to serve as the distraction so the audience doesn’t see the sleight of hand going on somewhere else on stage? Just wondering.
Just a quick question: If the distribution is supposed to represent, say temperature, if I consider the temperature distribution in my upstate NY home town over a one year period, that would be on the order of 100 degrees F wide. Onto this if you add a second curve with a shift of say 0.7 degrees, the ballpark figuure thrown about by AGWers, the two would be almost indistinguishable.
So why does Krugman’s curver look more like a 20 degree shift?
Meanwhile we are still being force fed AGW claims for increased warming targets being missed due to government inaction.
http://money.canoe.ca/money/business/international/archives/2011/02/20110208-155702.html
As some have already noted, Krugman’s flaws of logic point to a political agenda and his omission of some of the details are not necessarily sloppy work but quite intentional. Rebuttal of his ideas lets the sunshine in.
Surely the more fundemental question is: Where is the evidence that “extreme” weather events are Gaussian distributed?
The Earth’s average surface probably warmed by 0.8°C (+/-0.2°C) from 1880 to 2010… Rao et al., 2010 demonstrated that 40% of the warming was driven by GCR modulation of cloud cover; that leaves 0.5°C (+/-0.2°C). Spencer & Braswell, 2010 showed that the climate sensitivity to a doubling of pre-ndustrial CO2 is ~0.6°C – So, the rise in CO2 from 280 ppmv to 380 ppmv could have only caused 0.2°C of warming; that leaves 0.3°C (+/-0.2°C)… Anyone doubt that HadCRUT3 and especially GISTEMP have margins of error (AKA built-in operator-induced warming) of at least 0.3°C ?
On top of all of that… If at least half of the CO2 rise since 1850 is natural (as Beck, 2007 and the stomata data indicate)… Anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions might have caused as much as 0.1°C worth of warming since 1850.
0.1°C of anthropogenic warming over 150 years could not cause any change in extreme weather… Which fits right in with the absolute non-existence of any valid statistical evidence that extreme weather events have been occurring any more frequently than they did 10, 100, 1,000 or 10,000 years ago…
US Climate Extremes Index – Annotated
NOAA U.S. Climate Extremes Index
Weird
Don’t be naive. The whole thrust of Krugman’s piece is “more warm=bad”. There is no “threshold” at the lower end because he is only interested in “more warm” which equals “bad”. No, he doesn’t spell out that there will be more deaths or more disasters. He does spell out that there will be more “extreme events” by which he means more times when the temperature is to the right of his self-determined “threshold”.
(The question has already been asked: what is this threshold? 20C? 30C? You do realise, I take it, that the earth’s average temperature is about 24 degrees below that at which human beings can survive without clothes or heating. We are already having to take mitigating action because the planet we live on is too cold!)
But a high temperature per se is not an “extreme event”; it’s simply a high temperature. And there is ample evidence that his contention that we are already seeing more frequent “extreme events” on the back of a temperature rise too small for the unaided human being to detect is totally wrong.
Excellent point. Someone (including me) should graph this and show what it looks like.
3: If the number of warm and cold events has not changed, only our ability to detect it, why do you think that we would get a bias toward warm weather?
I believe that if that was the case we would see that the number of observed cold and warm events would increase approximately the same.
That’s not happening. The number of hot summer days in Canada is DROPPING, while the number of severe cold days is also dropping (less cold in winter). Yearly TMax and TMin is converging in Canada. Heat wave days ae falling, most of recordsetting hot days are before 1950.
Since the topics has broadened a touch, I hope it’s not too much off-topic to note that that respected intellectual Prince Charles has just warned us off again. Why don’t we see the error of our ways?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8313302/Climate-change-fuelled-by-pursuit-of-economic-growth-says-Prince-of-Wales.html
I know I shouldn’t sneer but may I be forgiven because we have here a man, immensely rich and privileged who on no persuasive evidence, is in effect telling the poor of the world not to expect better. He doesn’t like growth.
I would think that if “Global Wrrming” due to CO2 were true, the cold end of the extremes would less likely.
For example, if the average temperature of the Earth were to rise to 50 degrees C, the chances of any snow would be zero.
What could be simpler than his graph. He has done a lot of reading lately so he knows what he is writing about while giving no indication of his sources. What could be simpler than that except for the opinion of those who commented to the article in the NYT who think it is that simple and Krugman is right.
Anyone questioning why there should be a rebuttal can find the answer in the NYT comments to the article. Climate change advocates are losing the public support needed to legislate and regulate the Western world out of its wealth and productivity and Krugman is attempting to salvage the cause.
Surprised no one has picked up on Krugman-defender Kevin McDonald’s inanity above:
Say what??
Right there on the graph, e.w. deaths/million dropped from 241 in the 20s to 5 in the last decade.
KW is smoking something neurologically lethal, obviously.