Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Toronto Now reporter Zach Ruiter has called the imminent extinction of mankind based on all the different climate scare stories he has read.
Are we headed for near-term human extinction?
Recent studies suggest it is irresponsible to rule out the possibility after last week’s “warning to humanity” from more than 15,000 climate change scientists
BY ZACH RUITER NOVEMBER 22, 2017 3:34 PM
A “warning to humanity” raising the spectre “of potentially catastrophic climate change… from burning fossil fuels, deforestation and agricultural production – particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption,” was published in the journal BioScience last week.
More than 15,000 scientists from 184 countries endorsed the caution, which comes on the 25th anniversary of a letter released by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 1992, advising that “a great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.”
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[Several speculative climate scare stories – methane, ocean acidification, ice free arctic, decline of sulphate aerosols from coal]
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The take-away
Out of control climate change means feedback mechanisms may accelerate beyond any capacity of human control. The occurrences discussed in this article are five of some 60 known weather-related phenomenon, which can lead to what climate scientist James Hansen has termed the “Venus Syndrome,” where oceans would boil and the surface temperature of earth could reach 462 degrees Celsius. Along the way humans could expect to die in resource wars, starvation due to food systems collapse or lethal heat exposure.
Given all that remains unknown and what is at stake with climate change, is it irresponsible to rule out the possibility of human extinction in the coming decades or sooner?
Read more: https://nowtoronto.com/news/are-we-headed-for-near-term-human-extinction/
The simplest argument against Hansen’s boiling oceans fallacy is the Earth’s geological history and a bit of common sense.
Past CO2 levels were much higher than CO2 levels in today’s carbon dioxide starved world. The Cretaceous, the final age of the dinosaurs, averaged 1700ppm CO2 – over 4x today’s CO2 levels. If CO2 was capable of driving the oceans to boiling point, this catastrophe would have already occurred long ago.
Humans would survive any lesser global warming disaster. Imagine for a moment we’re all wrong, that regional Northern temperatures soar by 27F (15C) in the next century. Britain, Northern Europe and the Northern states of the USA would still be colder than the current temperature of my subtropical hometown. Some already hot places might become inhospitable, but vast regions of the world – Northern Canada, Siberia, Greenland, Antarctica – would actually become a lot more benign for habitation by tropical species like human beings.
Whatever climate change the next century brings, and the evidence to date is “not a lot”, climate change will not cause the imminent extinction of humanity.
Where I live goes from -15 C in winter to 45 C in the summer.
I am sure plants are terrified of a 2C rise in average temperatures.
In the north of Norway they’ve experienced – 52C in Winter and well above + 30C in summer at the same place.
I am sure people are aware of this study about the relative effect on mortality of high or low extreme temperature differences. the abstract in Science Daily is :
“Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather, according to an international study analyzing over 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries. The findings, published in The Lancet, also reveal that deaths due to moderately hot or cold weather substantially exceed those resulting from extreme heat waves or cold spells.”
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
and is taken from an article published by the Lancet :
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
(open access)
As people also probably know the Lancet has taken on Christiana Figueres to head its Climate Change policy group . I think that it was another Lancet paper that analysed the changes in fatalities attributable to either cold or hot temperatures as the world heats up under different RCP forcings . Only under RCP 8.5 did predicted fatalities attributable to increase in temperature rise significantly . Generally , globally , the effect of, say RCP 4.5, was an overall drop in fatalities .
Well-said Mike.
Joe d’Aleo and I had written a paper on Excess Winter Mortality based on other evidence when the major Lancet study was published, so we revised our paper to include that excellent study. Our summary reads:
“Cold weather kills. Throughout history and in modern times, many more people succumb to cold exposure than to hot weather, as evidenced in a wide range of cold and warm climates.
Evidence is provided from a study of 74 million deaths in thirteen cold and warm countries including Thailand and Brazil, and studies of the United Kingdom, Europe, the USA, Australia and Canada.
Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures.
These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.”
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
The espousal of Christianity is waning, but its tenets like sin and the End Days, Rapture, Armageddon, and the Judgement, remain. These are all social expressions of a fear of death. By being Gods, we run the world, and stop death. Expressed by religion or paganism, the fear remains.
At least we now know where to get that article we wrote published. Not credible enough for “The Outer Limits” or Marvel Comics? try Toronto Now.
SteveT
I guess all those people who live in the middle east, qatar and so on are not real, 40c in the shade in Qatar in summers, obviously these places and the million who live in them are fictional
More CO2, more plants and forests, more precipitation, more cooling.
Less desert more water retention, more evap more rain.
So tired of junk science
Hi Mark
In Southern Egypt it hits 50C – I have been there and done that. People survive just fine, without air conditioning. They adapt.
Even in warm countries like Brazil and Thailand, winter deaths exceed non-winter deaths.
shhh no telling the truth on climate and weather!!! Doom Porn only please 😛
Pity you cant comment on papers like you can on news articles, most of these studies would be destroyed in minutes
‘Dr. Peter Wadhams of the Polar Ocean Physics Group at Cambridge University told The Independent more than a year ago that the central part of the Arctic and the North Pole could be ice-free within one to two years.’
Arctic warming is normal in a solar minimum. Because low solar increases negative North Atlantic Oscillation conditions, driving a warm AMO.
Women and minorities hardest hit.
“the end is near”. the universal hope that Monday morning will not arrive.
If you don’t want to be humilliated never a make prediction that the end of the world is nigh in your own lifetime. Apparently “15000 scientists” have forgotten this maxim.
Now magazine is a controlled circulation (Free) tabloid you pick up in grubby road house restaurants. It’s largely an “entertainment” magazine that draws a percentage of its revenue from “adult” classifieds. Nobody picks up Now for its News, Science, or Political Comment content. If you’re checking out the club scene or looking for an escort hook-up Now is your rag.
The plot of global temperatures with atmospheric CO2 looks like this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_RXGJAF_XL5V0Y0eU1ya3E2UTA/view
If there is a tipping point for threatening change, this is at the LOW, not the high end of the CO2 range – something like 200 ppm.
Below this C3 plants 🌱 face decline and extinction. Not good.
We are quite close to this 200 ppm CO2 tipping point. Fortunately however we are moving in the right direction, away from it, with increasing atmospheric CO2.
I should have mentioned that this plot is over the Phanerozoic, the last half billion years.
I believe it is a bad decision by the editors to refer to Now Toronto and give them publicity in this forum. Now Toronto is the publication which hosts all escort service ads and corresponds to the Village Voice in NYC. This forum claims to be a venue for competent climate analysis.
Aren’t we a little old to believe in the boogie man?
And…… so what? Eric digs out a weekly city news/entertainment publication whose main sections are lifestyle, food, movies, stage, art and books – a “what’s on in Toronto” paper. The paper doesn’t even have a science or environmental section. So why is an article from this paper worth publishing here?