Josh writes: There is a hilarious transcript which was posted on BishopHill of a BBC Radio programme on the Lancet’s latest Alarm fest – all, no doubt, part of the run up to Paris in December. Dr Hugh says
If one’s looking at the estimates that have been produced in this piece of research, we’re looking at billions of events, so billions of individual people being exposed to – let’s just say extreme heat-wave events, on their own, over the next decades. And of course this plays out, whilst we emphasise the climate effects, it’s playing out on a pretty stressed world system, as well, with reductions in water supplies and in topsoil, and so forth. And these things are coming together in a, in a – excusing the bad, sort of, pun or analogy – a perfect storm, really.
I was not sure a cartoon would be quite as entertaining so I went for more of a portrait.
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The wild exaggerations of heat deaths in the media over the last few days pale in comparison to what I just discovered at wikipedia.
18 MILLION people were allegedly killed by the heat waves in 2010:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Northern_Hemisphere_summer_heat_waves
There are a few disclaimers at the top of the page. ☺
@Khwarizmi well spotted
“17,905,000 deaths globally” – an extraordinary claim with no extraordinary evidence presented.
It’s preceded by another : “about $500 billion (2011 USD) of damage was done”
..There’s NO REFERENCE after the 2 sentences to an external source. (which is the normal Wikipedia requirement)
– It seems like the article was created/maintained by some fanatics interested in hyping ‘weird weather’ using Wiki as their own webpage. I searched for proper external articles, but found nothing. Searching for “Northern Hemisphere” “Heat Wave” of “2010” just showed one amateur page and a China Daily July 2010 News story.
I was in Spain that summer and I did not think that it was particularly hot. If I recall, the heatwave was centred more over Russia/Eastern Europe.
i do not recall at the time hearing about any deaths in Scandinavia, the UK or even Greece due to the heatwave, I do recall hearing about a few deaths in Spain (not many) and more deaths in France.
The figure seems a gross exaggeration and even if one takes a wide view on heat related deaths, I doubt that a figure of more than a few thousand could be reached, and I bet the real number is well below that. It is nothing like the premature winter mortality figures seen recently in the UK due to a spate of colder than usual winters and ever increasing fuel poverty.
Maybe we could cure his insanity by paying him only in Zimbabwe dollars?
These are real money in much the same way climatology is science.
Pay him in Hanergy shares.
There is ONE real world vs the fanatasy green worlds of doom or magic solutions.
BTW ..news just in from Reuters Hanergy declines to disclose parent’s accounts to Hong Kong bourse ..Hmm, that is not likely to get the fallen stock back on the stock exchange. “our company has 2 divisions, one worth $90bn and a second which is the first’s largest customer but its book are entirely secret” Right.
Give him a one-way ticket to the North Pole; let him ride out all this “doom” there and see if that helps.
“Give him a one-way ticket to the North Pole”
A meeting with an endangered polar bear, would have the MSM shouting that AGW is causing the poor bears to change diet to blowhards and dolphins. Yikes, it’s much worse than we thought…
(Another wasted effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
Better that we take such insanity seriously? Surely you jest.
(Another wasted effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
California is returning to its natural desert state?
“If you can’t see what’s starting to happen right now in California, India, Pakistan, Australia ”
Re Australia: You missed the brutal demise of Flannery’s “No more rain forever” prophecy… I think that was 4 years ago. You gotta update your song and dance it seems.
LA is the center of the Universe.
Buffalo, NY doesn’t exist. sarcasm time!
While the tales of doom and disaster
They keep on inflating,
Where’s the CAGW,
The whole world is waiting?
http://rhymeafterrhyme.net/the-time-has-come-to-stop-being-afraid/
It’s okay, guys. “Billions of people”–women of a certain age–have been surviving “extreme heat-wave events on their own” for thousands of years. No biggie. 🙂
“So if we manage to cut down a bit on red meat consumption and animal consumption, that’s fewer cows belching methane out of their ruminant’s stomachs, that’s less greenhouse gases but also means less bowel cancer for us blokes, it means less coronary disease and strokes and so forth”
One guy has so many things backwards lol.
I’ve substantially upped my intake of meat, fat, and cholesterol while avoiding grains and sugar. I lost 30 lbs in 6 weeks, lowered my triglycerides and signs of inflammation. Hopefully people are beginning to understand cholesterol is necessary to survive and it’s the grains and sugars that cause inflammation which leads to heart attacks and strokes. I just made a shake this morning with 5 eggs yolks, high fat yogurt, avocado and some berries.
So let’s see, there has been billions of extreme heat waves? Or maybe it is billions of events times billions of people creating a ka-zillion of unclear but certainly bad events. And since when did people have to deal with bad events on their own. During WWII was Europe liberated and Jews freed from concentration camps on their own? During the massive earthquakes in China, did China just ignore the people affected? Do we have policeman, fireman, and hospitals just for show?
This is the most childish, nonsensical gibberish I have heard in a while, is Dr Hugh mentally disabled or a heavy drinker?
@ALx He’s a “HEAVY BELIEVER” …and like an alcoholic in denial* about the real world, just like L.Ron Hubbard followers and other cultists. (*pity that this word has been hijacked of course)
CO2 really does do everything
I.m hoping for a snowstorm in Paris on Dec. 7-8. The Al Gore effect…
http://www.holiday-weather.com/paris/averages/december
We don’t know when and we don’t know where, but somewhere sometime it will be hot and we’ll be right there claiming that it’s all your fault.
Just a suggestion for Josh. Consider doing a redesign of the great seal of the US for the upcoming COP 21. In the foreground, a dead bald eagle, with a ribbon in it’s beak that says “died of a theory”, and in the background a wind tower, and an image of Obama, with a big ####-eating grin on his face and holding the UN flag in one hand and a hockey stick in the other.
Leo Norekens – “Well… if my house is hit by, say, a hailstorm, and my neighbour’s house is hit by a hailstorm… that’s two hailstorms already.
Right ? So ….”.
Brilliant, I can confirm that Chromebooks don’t react well to red wine being sprayed on them from the nose and mouth – my solicitors will be in touch soonest!!
It used to be that people that said “THE END IS NEAR” were just laughed at as you passed them on a street corner. Now they get time of radio and TV shows.
What a sad, sad world we live in.
At least some of us are still laughing at them.
With Met office predicting a cool sun cycle, we might be right to enjoy the sun this summer. It’s very possible that this summer is .04C warmer than summers will be 30 years from now. That could spell disaster for some highly sensitive vegetables somewhere. A few breeds of ultra temp sensitive fish might decrease in number by as much as 2%. Total freak out scenario. I would lines to home my wagon to three doom and gloom kids. Yes, eventually we are gonna butter our toasts for the last time, and that may be as soon as 62 years from now, unless life extension does us the great dishonour of allowing for cozy 150 year life spans. Yes, we have every reason to be utterly afraid
You live long enough you are doomed. The longer, the more doomed. 🙂
To those people that still don’t understand, if you listen to the audio direct link the garbling tone is that of a cultist living outside the real world. It is like a panicking 5 year old failing to understand PERSPECTIVE & CONTEXT.
I paraphrase : ‘The problem is huge & urgent ..whereas a zero CO2 fix is easy to implement’
Consider his point #7 “The first is: we’ve got to phase out the use of coal, quickly.. VERY SEVERELY damages human health, just from the particulate pollution it creates.”
When you are not in a cult you understand the difference between real big problems and minor problems
People’s health is affected by “coal power station” particles.
People’s health is affected by Open fire indoor cooking.
.. It the second case we are talking we are talking about 5 million people/year dying many years earlier.
.. Whereas in the case of new scrubber fitted power stations the effect is hours off some peoples lives .. So tiny it’s not going to appear on their death certificates. Lomborg explained on WUWT
Open fire indoor cooking is like “burning 400 cigarettes an hour”, that is a problem worth tackling.. whereas stopping particulates by closing a modern coal power station isn’t.
His next point #8 is that in imposing a huge carbon levy “countries don’t get poorer by doing that” “they get to keep that money and redistribute it. So actually that nation doesn’t become poorer – they can spend that money on reducing taxes” … Doesn’t that sound too romantic ?
Likewise he ends with his simplistic solutions :
“It is avoidable .. cut down a BIT on red meat consumption” “more active transport” ..is all that he mentions ..not disassembling the entire economy and lifestyle.
More detail on his points, (apologies for long comment, matter of public record)
#1 “it’s been largely ignored” No it hasn’t ..we’ve spent $ billions
#2 Takes the extreme weather CO2 link as proven and happening. However it is still not proven, though possible.
#3 He talks like a 5 year old all drama queening ..he’s not considered ANY POSITIVES.
#4 “the threat is immediate”. No it isn’t – There were no proven climate dead yesterday – So it is unlikely there’ll be any tomorrow.
“Climate change” has not been written on any death certificates so far.
#5 “Is there a way of fixing it?” “we can fix this right now” “there’s no shortage of money”
So tomorrow we can magically change the planet’s CO2 footprint ? really
Let’s look at past efforts ..we have made $billions worth of effort and made no noticeable global decline in CO2. No cost/benefit analyses seem to be available for past CO2 saving measures.
All that SEEMS to have happened is western countries have moved big industry offshore.
– “there’s no shortage of money” – So you don’t find that claim laughable ?
Mike Singleton said “investments in renewables in the EU have halved since 2012.”
#6 “political will.. of 193 countries”
– They can’t control movement of big humans IMMIGRATION, how can they agree on CO2 molecules?
#9 I paraphrase his breathless garbling as ‘There is no debate ..No scientists say climate change is NOT .. due to humans producing greenhouse gases.. only debate is the solution’
– Thats MISREPRESENTATION cos he needs the word ‘partially’ in there to make that true.
If he puts the word ‘entirely’ in ..it would be by anyone’s measure untrue .. the IPCC went for 50%
Anyway it’s the Strawman fallacy ! The actual talk is 1) about how much sensitivity is the CO2 to extra heat relationship..and that it ISN’T LINEAR (If it was there would not have been a temperature pause whilst in the last 15 years CO2 emissions have been historically huge.)
The actual talk is 2) is whether a zero CO2 solution is needed right now, cos if sensitivity is low then it’s not a priority.
#10 Presenter “Is this a clever way to change the narrative on climate change”
I paraphrase his breathless garbling as ‘I want to say for human beings’ ..”that is a grave threat” ‘NOW’ ‘not just icebergs way in the future’..so he means YES
#11 I paraphrase again : ‘It is SIMPLY avoidable * (ha ha !)
a lot ofSOME CO2 lifestyle changes also happen to be very healthy in their own right.’” cut down a BIT on red meat consumption and animal consumption”, “more active transport”
“worth many tens of billions in savings in our health service”.. That’s easy to say BUT is that how it plays out ? If I don’t die at 65 does the health service save money ? No I live longer and come into the health system for something else.
* Again his romantic simplicity is remarkable – Failing to context a few MILLION westerners moving away from meat with the reality that a few BILLION new non-westerners will also be moving towards western style high consumption.