By Paul C. “Chip” Knappenberger and Patrick J. Michaels
The main idea, as it is portrayed, driving the Obama administration’s pursuit of carbon dioxide regulations is that climate change is leading to all manner of bad things. Pointing to concrete example of bad things that have resulted from human greenhouse gas emissions, however, is much more challenging than just saying it is the case. In fact, for most climate/weather events and their resulting effect, the bulk of the science contradicts the administration’s contentions.
Roger Pielke Jr. makes it a habit to point out how White House proclamations concerning extreme weather events go awry. We have similar habits.
An especially egregious example concerns heat-related mortality. It is true that extreme heat can lead to excess mortality. It is also true that global warming should lead to more heat waves. However, it is NOT true that global warming will lead to more heat-related mortality—the logic forwarded by the administration. Frequent readers of this blog are well aware of this.
However, as not everyone (to his or her detriment) is a frequent reader of this blog, we presented our findings on climate change and heat-related mortality to the audience at a science policy conference held by the American Geophysical Union (AGU) this week. Our conclusions were:
The cause of the observed decline in the sensitivity to extreme heat in the face of rising heat is likely found in a collection of adaptations including increased access to air-conditioning, better medical care, improved building design, community response programs, heat watch/warning systems, and biophysical changes. There is no reason to think that such response measures won’t continue to exist and be improved upon into the future.In our recent study summarizing the findings on declining heat-related mortality trends in both the U.S and Europe, we made this observation (Knappenberger et al., 2014):
“Some portion of this response [the declining sensitivity to excessive heat events] probably reflects the temporal increase in the frequency of extreme-heat events, an increase that elevates public consciousness and spurs adaptive response. In this manner, climate change itself leads to adaptation.”
It is insufficient and inappropriate to ignore this effect when compiling and discussing the impacts of climate change. If an increasing frequency of heat events raises public awareness and gives rise to an adaptive response that lowers the population’s relative risk due to extreme heat, this must be properly weighed against any increases in mortality that result from a greater number of mortality-inducing heat events.
Our analysis highlights one of the many often overlooked intricacies of the human response to climate change.
Our full AGU poster, “Climate Change, Heat Waves, and Adaptation,” is available for viewing online here.
Hopefully, it opened some eyes.
Global Science Report is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science, where we highlight one or two important new items in the scientific literature or the popular media. For broader and more technical perspectives, consult our monthly “Current Wisdom.”
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I have been freezing in Canada since I returned from the Bahamas. I have not had the quilt off since I arrived, plus having to wear long pants, long sleeves, no heat wave, just cold. Where is Obama that he is so hot? Tell him to turn down the heat.
Where is Obama that he’s so hot? Undoubtedly on a sunny golfcourse somewhere.
The Greenland ice cores show that 9,100 of the past 10,000 years have been warmer than any of the past 100 years. How did we survive? Actually, abundant historical records summarized by climate giants like H. H. Lamb show that one of the biggest challenges to survival was found in the Little Ice Age 1350-1850AD when powerful storms, horrific crop failures and resultant starvation, and raging epidemics decimated poorly fed and sheltered populations. In over 50 years of traveling the world, I’ve found it quite easy to adapt to high heat and humidity, and that great cold causes great suffering. Look at where our population is growing most rapidly. We’re voting for global warming with our feet.
The first paragraph spells it out. It’s all BS.
The first paragraph spells it out. It’s all BS.
Eve says: June 20, 2014 at 7:36 pm
Where is Obama that he is so hot? Tell him to turn down the heat.
We did back in 2009, but do not know if he is listening.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/03/obama-getting-heat-turning-oval-office-thermostat/
On the first day of his presidency, Obama allowed staffers to venture into the Oval Office without wearing coat and tie, which had been obligatory under President Bush. Fashion observers called it a new age of business casual at the White House.
Obama’s aides had a simpler explanation. Though he’s spent more than 20 years in Chicago, the president was born in Hawaii. And so he “likes it warm” in the Oval Office, said Chief of Staff David Axelrod. “You could grow orchids in there,” he told the New York Times.
But while it’s perpetual summer in the Oval Office, the rest of the country has been trudging through a tough winter. Ice storms have cut power to millions in the Midwest and South.”
And that was his people reporting on the temp
at least you got in……
Majormike1 is right, here in the tropical north of Australia, thousands of climate refugees are towing their camper vans, trailers and wotnot all over the region, clogging up the roads, hotels, resorts and camping grounds, just to get away from ‘the cold’ in the ‘Southern Australian States’.
Those of us who have lived here long enough, hate to leave here, even in the summer.
If you want your cold, you can keep your cold. Stay away Mr President. Bring global warming back, now.
I’ve got good news – when it gets too hot, here in Sunny Hervey Bay, 25 degrees south of the Equator, we wear shorts and t-shirts.
Hervey Bay has a lot of retired people, because of the year round pleasant climate, a lot like Florida. So far, heat related mortality does not seem to be an issue.
Seconding Tom and Eric’s comments. As it happens, I think here at 19 south it has actually been colder since 2002 or thereabouts, than for some of the 90s years. The following link bears this out:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2014/06/cooling-temperature-trend-establishing-across-northeastern-australia/
Unfortunately, like everywhere else we have had a nasty outbreak of upward “adjustments”.
If the temperature exceeds 37C and RH is approaching 100%, then yes there is a problem. Those circumstances can be created in an enclosed environment and/or through inappropriate behaviour but they do not occur naturally.
It is extraordinary how people who think they are free thinkers are so quickly influenced by money grasping quacks and politicians. These ignorant fools are conformists. Lockstep conformists, who somehow believe they are avant garde .it is disgusting.
I visited my Hemo yesterday, and he and I have a good raporte, and discuss other things. He finally said to me ‘We should cut down greenhouse gases’ ‘When 95% is water vapor’ How do you do that, stop neutrinos from hitting the earth? I mentioned cosmic rays, and he corrected me they are neutrinos he told me. I may have spelt it wrong, sorry. Even with the B.Sc in Physics, they are vulnerable. ‘Humans cause most disasters?’ Oh, yeah, they told Mt.Vesuvius to erupt in 79 AD. I just don’t think many really think about the alarmist predictions. Oh by the way, my blood tests were encouraging and I’ve been told to cut out Panadol Osteo that I have taken 6 a day for years. No doctor told me they shouldn’t be taken for that long! They are irritating my liver.
[But the “Experts” let you take them that long? What was their consensus at the time? 8<) .mod]
For the August swelter of DC, Obama heads to Martha Vineyard or Nantuckett.
For Decembers wet freezing wx, the O’s head to Hawaii. His adaptation is financed by the US taxpayer.
bushbunny, pls dont stop taking your meds.
Matt Ridley has a piece up at Financial Post:
19 June: Financial Post: Matt Ridley: Junk Science Week: IPCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is ‘no’
Even if you pile crazy assumption upon crazy assumption, you cannot even manage to make climate change cause minor damage.
The debate over climate change is horribly polarized. From the way it is conducted, you would think that only two positions are possible: that the whole thing is a hoax or that catastrophe is inevitable.
In fact there is room for lots of intermediate positions, including the view I hold, which is that man-made climate change is real but not likely to do much harm, let alone prove to be the greatest crisis facing humankind this century…
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/06/19/ipcc-climate-change-warming/
Extreme heat rarely kills in Africa, so why should it do so in more temperate zones, especially since in those zones the countries tend to be more developed with better access to technologies such as aircon etc?
My understanding is that global warming is not increasing the highs in the equitorial area; indeed there is very little warming seeen in this area; the warming is substantially seen in high latitudes. The problem in Africa is water, not heat. If they had proper access to water farming would flourish. It is interesting that the largest land animals (elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes) are to be found in Africa, and of course, when the dinosaurs ruled the Earth, the planet was far warmer than today.
Further, my understanding is that to the extent that there is global warming, it is not the day time highs that are getting hotter, but rather the night time lows are not as low, ie., global warming (such as it be) is notably warming at night. If people can survive the highs of the day, and if that is not getting hotter, then the fact that the nights may be becoming warming is far less of a problem.
But the real issue here is whether, there is any statistaically significant evidence that there are more frequent heatwaves and/or droughts and/or downpours, and if so, can these be linked to global warming. Only in 2012 the IPCC published a report on extreme weather and found no evidence that weather was more frequently becoming more extreme, or that it was linked to global warming.
We are always being told that whilst it is not possible to link a particular event to global warming, the chances of more extreme events is increasing because of global warming. This is a logical fail until such time as it is possible to link a particular event to global warming. If every individual particular event cannot be linked to global warming, there is no observational evidence from which one can go the stage further ans suggest that the prospects of such events becoming more frequent as a consequennce of global warming is increasing.
“richard verney says:
June 21, 2014 at 1:06 am
The problem in Africa is water, not heat.”
Not at all! Problems in Africa spawns from politics and religion. All mostly introduced concepts.
Climate Change, Heat Waves, and Adaptation
Yeah, right.
I adapt to heat waves by taking my shirt off and maybe going ‘commando’ on the under wear under the shorts. That and a regular dip in the local lake to cool off has always been sufficient for ‘adaptation’.
If you can’t manage that, you aren’t human.
Mac
One of the biggest errors that we make as humans is that when we project into the future, we fail to recognise that technology changes and improves over time. Alarmist predictions of future impacts of climate change are but one issue. Another is new energy technology such as nuclear power, which is constantly improving, becoming safer and cheaper, and so offers an opportunity to transition painlessly away from coal and oil without the need for expensive and inefficient economic levers and crippling government regulations. There are numerous evolutionary vectors to “decarbonisation” of the economy, and whilst the actual path cannot be predicted, one thing that has always been true of technological development – necessity is the mother of invention. People in 2050 will look back on us in 2014, and laugh – in the same way that we laugh at Londoners in 1899 who were so concerned about the inevitable looming environmental disaster of excessive urban horse manure.
This will not stop the climate alarmists and technological Luddites from banging on about future disasters as if technological development doesn’t happen. Let’s face it folks, they don’t have much imagination and are crippled by ideological prejudice, so only see the future as they want to see it.
Re the “environmental disaster of excessive urban horse manure” see:
http://www.banhdc.org/archives/ch-hist-19711000.html
But it grew good rhubarb.
bushbunny says:
June 20, 2014 at 10:22 pm
bushbunny,
The docs here in the Seattle area first diagnosed me as having ‘allergies’, to explain my throat irritation. Eight months later they decided it was ‘acid reflux’. A year and a half later, after my initial consult with the docs about my irritated throat, an x-ray identified a 2 inch diameter tumor growing through the wall of my throat and into the intramuscular regions around it. Radical surgery, radiation treatments, eating liquid ‘food’ through a tube into my stomach for 12 months, and chemotherapy have given me a new lease on life….. and the simple pleasure of restoration of eating food in the conventional way. I have a raspy voice now (think Clint Eastwood “Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?”) and eat/swallow with caution, but life is good!
There are those here that will offer snarky crap about ‘taking your meds’ because they lack the insight to your contributions here. Those who have suffered the travails of life understand ‘short sleep and hard times’. I, and others, appreciate your contributions here! Don’t let the ‘bummers’ here put you down…. Keep asking for explanations and answers!
Mac
Further to Martin Clark at 10pm…
I’ve done a comparison of UK Met Office station data with as much data as I can get from any long established and nearby Wunderground stations – those with a record longer than 5 or 6 years. Stations in England only.
The temperature in England is falling off a cliff, typically minus 1.5 deg C per decade.
I find it ‘odd’ how the Met Office data always shows a lower trend than Wunderground. Hardened skeptix wouldn’t 😉
Also it kinda gives a lie to that Trenberthian deep ocean storage as you surely expect the Atlantic Conveyor to dredge some it up and dump it on the UK.
PDF here… https://www.dropbox.com/s/0qsmg6o6v5zz5gb/Recent%20UK%20Temp%20Trend.pdf
This is a joke, right? Your solution to global warming is to turn up the air conditioning?
Seriously, you can’t make this shit up.
We used to have a dog that would sit in front of the fire. When it got too hot it would bark at the fire.
mandas:
Your post at June 21, 2014 at 3:59 am says in total
Global warming stopped over 17 years ago.
There is no need for a “solution” to global warming because there is no global warming.
Do try to keep up.
Richard