New paper faults World Health Organisation’s wilful exaggeration
A new briefing paper from the Global Warming Policy Foundation examines the World Health Organisation’s recent report on climate change and finds that its estimates of future mortality from global warming are grossly exaggerated.
The WHO report predicted that climate change would bring about 250,000 extra deaths annually between 2030 and 2050, but relied upon absurd assumptions to reach this conclusion. For example, the report assumes that the people affected by climate change will forgo commonsense steps to protect themselves, including several that are already in the works in some developing countries.
Briefing paper author Dr Indur Goklany said:
“The idea that people would not, for example, react to higher sea levels by building higher sea defences or even moving away from the coast is preposterous, so for the WHO to suggest such a high death toll from climate change completely misleads the public.”
And as Dr Goklany goes on to explain, the WHO’s results use climate model results that apparently overstate the warming trend three-fold compared to observations despite using 27% less greenhouse gas forcing.
The WHO also assumes that higher carbon dioxide levels will have no beneficial effects on crop yields, despite scientific studies having confirmed that this is precisely what will happen in a wide range of crop species.
“Because of its willful exaggerations,” says Goklany, “the WHO study risks scaring people into taking ill-considered costly actions to limit greenhouse gases rather than focusing on higher priority global health issues such as hunger, malaria and diarrhoeal diseases, which can be addressed at a fraction of the cost”.
Dr Indur Goklany is an independent scholar and author. He was a member of the U.S. delegation that established the IPCC and helped develop its First Assessment Report. He subsequently served as an IPCC reviewer.
GWPF TV: The WHO exaggerates future global warming mortality
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There is a fundamental problem with a paper that discusses increased deaths caused by global warming.
Cold weather (aka Winter) kills many more people every year than warm weather. That is why there is a parameter called the Excess Winter Mortality Rate. This winter across Europe and Russia, Excess Winter Mortality will probably exceed 500,000 souls.
Previously posted [excerpt]:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/11/21/will-green-politics-soon-be-a-thing-of-the-past/#comment-1796208
This winter in the Northern Hemisphere is predicted to be quite cold in North America (Eastern and Central), Western Europe and very cold all across Russia, compared to seasonal norms.
Energy costs in Europe are much more expensive than in North America, due to imbecilic European green energy policies to “fight global warming” and irrational green opposition to shale fracking. Many elderly and poor in Europe will not be able to keep warm this winter, due to the unnecessarily high cost of energy.
I am concerned about a significant increase in excess winter mortality rates. Winter cold kills many more people than summer heat – typically about 15% more people die monthly in Europe during the four winter months than in the eight non-winter months. Excess Winter Mortality in Europe and Russia amounts to over 500,000 souls per year – these are real people, not just statistics.
While other factors such as flu deaths contribute to Excess Winter Mortality rates, I suggest that the inability to heat their homes in winter due to high energy costs is a significant cause of death and illness, particularly among the elderly and the poor.
I suggest we can thank the greens for causing widespread suffering and death among the elderly and poor. I further suggest that the greens should be held accountable as the consequences of their irresponsible conduct become fully apparent.
Regards to all, Allan
Excess Winter Mortality in Europe: a Cross Country Analysis Identifying Key Risk Factors
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full
Table 1 – Coefficient of seasonal variation in mortality (CSVM) in EU-14 (mean, 1988–97)
CSVM 95% CI
Austria 0.14 (0.12 to 0.16)
Belgium 0.13 (0.09 to 0.17)
Denmark 0.12 (0.10 to 0.14)
Finland 0.10 (0.07 to 0.13)
France 0.13 (0.11 to 0.15)
Germany 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Greece 0.18 (0.15 to 0.21)
Ireland 0.21 (0.18 to 0.24)
Italy 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
Luxembourg 0.12 (0.08 to 0.16)
Netherlands 0.11 (0.09 to 0.13)
Portugal 0.28 (0.25 to 0.31)
Spain 0.21 (0.19 to 0.23)
UK 0.18 (0.16 to 0.20)
Mean 0.16 (0.14 to 0.18)
WHO forgets about adaptation?
Time for one of my favourite IPCC quotes.
So mainstream science states clearly that poverty and injustice are a greater priority than climate change as the poor are especially vulnerable to “adaptation and mitigation responses”.
But the WHO ignores mainstream science and just says they will die. They will if we listen to the WHO.
Hmm my comment disappeared into the aether. [de-aetherized. ~mod.]
It was just referring to page 7 of AR5 WG2 SPM.
Basically, it showed that the policies of the WHO are expected to kill lots of people.
Addressing poverty and injustice is expected to save those lives – but it seemed the WHO didn’t read the IPCC.
By the way, quoting the IPCC on the Guardian is now considered to be denying the science.
Let me quote this compliment I received on HotWhopper out of vanity (sorry dbstealey):
MCourtney:
Are you related to my friend Richard S Courtney?
I have been trying to contact him without success – is he OK?
Thank you ,Allan
My Father, Richard S Courtney is not at all well. I also have been trying to contact him without success. I hope he is OK.
For details of his health in words that he would use I refer you to his last comment here.
Thank you MIchael – I wish you and Richard the very best.
Considering the source, I would take that as a back handed compliment. 😉
When will WUWT get it?
THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT EXAGGERATING. They are calling black white and up down. As to climate (temperature) change, there has been none for 14 years, which is an unusual situation. But both warming and carbon dioxide mean more Life, including more and healthier human life. They have succeeded in badly damaging the economy and promoting corn ethanol, which helped cause the “Arab Spring” food riots that killed 10s of thousands of people at a minimum. THEY ARE KILLERS.
Dr. Goklani is one of my favorite heroes after watching him speak about human life versus extreme temperatures at a Heartland Climate Conference. He is old and his voice was shaky and I want him alive and energetic for the next 100 years. He is likely to read this comment and learn from a biologist that the first rejuvenations have already begun. This desire can happen.
A couple decades ago, I looked at hundreds of people walking out of Wild Oats markets (now part of Whole Foods) versus regular grocery stores. I was interested in pot bellies, and there were about the same percentage either place, but there were far more super-fatties and super skinnies in the regular markets, not to mention oxygen tanks (in mile-high Denver, these are common) and people needing store help to get their grocery carts to their cars. The difference in posture and energy levels was unmistakable. I lost the data, so I could not publish it–but good science is repeatable. Look for yourself.
That study could not tell me whether the Organic customers were really healthier from organic versus conventional carrots–or whether the Whole Foods customers were buying carrots, while the supers customers were buying cookies. But it DID show me that if you research and TRY to improve your physical well-being, you will succeed.
It’s not the message, it’s how it’s delivered that matters these days. It could be rephrased as follows and have a totally different emphasis.
The WHO estimates – Between 15 and 40 years from now deaths due to climate change would (could) increase by 0.4%.
WHO Estimates of 15 – 40 years into the future combined with the certainty of WOULD doesn’t make any sense to me.
is it just me or is the shrill speculation and hysteria getting worse?
The crude death rate is about 8 people per 1000, which given a population of 7Billion means about 56million per year or about 150,000 per day. Even if what they are claiming is true, and even if they could prove definitively that some deaths were caused by climate change, it is completely lost in the noise. Another piece of Hiroshima Bomb FUD. Bad WHO.
WHO are into scare campaigns. I am old enough to remember when we were all going to die of HIV-AIDS.
WHO also listed bedbugs and mosquitoes as carriers for Slim Disease, before it became a 3 letter word.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/unaids/
Brings back fond memories of that other climate alarmist story when “The UN “disappears” 50 million climate refugees, then botches the disappearing attempt” !
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/15/the-un-disappears-50-million-climate-refugees-then-botches-the-disappearing-attempt/
No question, climate change is a disaster for humanity. And it is certainly man-made (or Mann-made?)
But it’s not the climate that’s the problem, in fact the mild 20th century warming has almost certainly been a great benefit. Far more people are killed by the cold than by warmth. And increased CO2 is making the world greener and more productive. History repeatedly shows that mankind prospers during the warm period. The periods between the last few warm periods were named the Dark Ages and the Little Ice Age for good reason.
The climate change catastrophe is purely man-made: the corruption of science, trillions of dollars squandered on things like wind farms that don’t work most of the time, pushing up the cost of energy that must have killed many old people who couldn’t afford their bills, the obscene switch from food production to biofuels, the increased destruction of forests again due to biofuels.
It’s not just wrong, it’s criminal.
Chris
WHO’s estimates are indeed absurd, and of course they don’t include any positive impact of “climate change”. So far, almost 100% of the effect of climate change has been beneficial. As it has warmed and atmospheric CO_2 has increased:
* Plant growth per annum (all other things being equal) has increased, by 10 to 15%. This alone is huge, with an enormous impact on both food supply and the ongoing competition between deforestation and reforestation.
* Later frosts, earlier last frost, has increased the growing season in many areas by at least a few days. Again, significant positive impact on the food supply and general biosphere, although the impact on growing zones is far smaller than the media hype makes it out to be. First/last frost dates haven’t really changed much in NC over my lifetime or residence, and they are scattered all over the place and not systematically changing with time in any way that can easily be extracted from the data. In 2014, the “hottest year on record” in the making (really?) we’ve had some of the earliest significant snowfall (in October!) and temperatures in the teens (in November!) ever recorded in North Carolina, even though yesterday and today it is back to balmy perfect. Which is pretty normal, on the cooler side of things. But regardless, longer growing season is a net positive, not a net negative.
* A shorter cold season also means less cold-weather-linked disease. Reducing e.g. the flu season by a single day would save an enormous number of lives, because flu can be 7 to 9% fatal and hundreds of thousands of cases are reported every year. It is one of the deadliest infectious diseases, and kills predominantly the very young or very old. With a season on the order of 100 days, every day it is shortened saves 1% of all of those lives, and a truly fabulous amount of money in lost work, human suffering and medical expense.
* Cold weather is a direct threat to human life and kills a lot of people every year from pure exposure, especially the homeless and poor. It is true that peak hot weather is also a threat, but global warming so far has generally raised daily low temperatures but not significantly raised daily high temperatures, and it is the peaks either way that are dangerous, so thus far the balance is entirely positive, with fewer people that are dying because of any increase in summertime high temperatures (which pretty much isn’t happening) than are not dying because of slightly warmer wintertime low temperatures (which is happening).
* It is a simple fact that so far, global warming has either left the frequency and strength of severe weather events alone (statistically this is pretty much the case) or perhaps reduced them — there are arguably fewer, weaker, severe weather events. This actually makes physical sense, and even James Hansen pointed this out in one of his many propaganda appearances, although he somehow made it sound like a bad thing. Storms are driven by temperature differences, not absolute temperature, and warming the poles while holding the equator nearly constant should reduce the violence and frequency of storms, not increase it. It’s basic physics. There is weak evidence that this is actually occurring, but of course the WHO report is going to be based on the exact opposite.
There is not one single death that can be directly attributed to global warming/climate change as a proximate cause. The reason for this is simple — if one plots the daily temperature minimax (range) and average as a function of annual time and then displays the expected shift from global warming on it, the shift is utterly lost in the normal noise of extremes around the mean. Trying to detect a shift in mortality from some sort of “warming signal” buried under the normal climate noise is utterly impossible — it becomes a matter of trying to guess the impact of things like reducing flu season, subject to a small pile of Bayesian priors with pretty much arbitrary probabilities assigned to them on the basis of the projections of computational models that suck at describing the actual progress of the climate so far and which hence should have little confidence attached to them.
This process is not helped if the authors of a study ignore positive outcomes and concentrate solely on negative ones. The only thing one can say when one reads such a study is to utter “statistical bullshit” loudly or under your breath as circumstances and location dictate, crumple it up, and pitch it into the trash.
rgb
Hydro Nano Gas could be the Answer for Neutralizing Carbon Fuel Emissions
Hydro Infra Technologies (HIT), a Swedish clean tech company based in Stockholm, has developed an innovative patent pending approach for neutralizing carbon fuel emissions by generating a novel gas called Hydro Nano Gas (HNG).
In spite of all the advancement happening in the energy sector, global economies are still dependent on fossil fuels as the interlinked chain of costs to completely replace the burning of fossil fuels with more clean and sustainable options is beyond the financial resources of even the richest nations.
This in turn effects the climate change scenario which has been continuously increasing as more pollution and green house gases are created from burning fossil fuels on a daily basis.
This dilemma requires a new approach with safe, cost effective and smart solutions; the solution in sight? Making any fossil fuel climate neutral – and this is exactly what HIT’s Hydro Nano Gas proposes to do.
Water contains 2 basic elements, Hydrogen and Oxygen. These 2 basic elements can be split, divided and utilized. Splitting water (H2O) is a known science. But the energy costs to perform splitting outweigh the energy created from hydrogen when the Hydrogen is split from the water molecule H2O. This is where mainstream science usually closes the book on the subject.
HIT took a different approach by postulating that it was not only possible but indefinitely sustainable to split water in an energy efficient way to extract a high yield of Hydrogen at very low cost.
The process of creating HNG involves pulsing an range of low energy frequencies in a very specific sequence into water. The pulsing treatment effectively manipulates the molecules to line up in a certain structure which are then put through a splitting process. The result is HNG.
Being exotic as it is, HNG displays some very different properties from normal hydrogen. For instance: HNG instantly neutralizes carbon fuel pollution emissions; HNG can be pressurized up to 2 bars; HNG combusts at a rate of 9000 meters per second while normal Hydrogen combusts at a rate 600 meters per second; oxygen values actually increase when HNG is inserted into a diesel flame; and finally, HNG acts like a vortex on fossil fuel emissions causing the flame to be pulled into the centre thus concentrating the heat and combustion properties.
Injecting HNG into a combustion chamber produces several effects that increase the burn efficiency of the fuels. HNG gasification effectively burns unburned residue/cluster while completing the burn process quicker. The long term impact of using HNG in the burning of fossil fuels can provide the balanced solution for the on going economic-climate change debate.
The new technology is also found to be effective in the treatment of polluted water; when HNG Nano bubbles are injected into polluted water, a microbe chain reaction is initiated that rapidly triggers and boosts the waters’ own organic repairing process. While further testing and validation are required, the discovery creates new potential in providing solutions to critical areas of global pollution.
HIT is also developing a Smoke Eliminator for all sorts of plants and facilities. The process reduces the need for smoke analysis as it results in a clean wet scrubber technology where CO2 becomes a clean by-product ready to be reused.
Further, a miniaturized version of the standard HNG reactor will help HIT achieve its goal of gassing 9,000 cubic meters of smoke volume per second. Using Nano technology, the reactor will see the beginning of a new technology phase for each HNG application, reports HIT.
The HIT innovation story begins in the 1980’s when a small team of dedicated technicians, researchers and engineers came together to innovate real world solutions based on the theoretical research conducted by Nobel prize winner Professor Yuan Tse Lee. The goal was clear – to ‘crack’ the Hydrogen code.
In late 2012, after years of on / off research and experimentation, they finally cracked the code and HNG was born.
HIT was formed to spread their discoveries to the world as Information Technology via joint venture partners.
HIT has also selected SGS – the worlds leading testing/validation and certification company – to be its’ permanent testing-validation protocol partner, providing certification that enables HIT to expand into global markets.
Read more about HIT: http://www.hydroinfra.com