I didn’t say it would necessarily be fewer deaths: only that there are numbers on both sides of the ledger, but when the subject is reported on or argued about, almost all we ever hear is “here are all the negatives” from one side and “no, it’s a hoax” from the other.
Translation: in some places, people won’t freeze to death as much, they won’t catch as many fatal illnesses, and they will have more food due to greater agricultural production.
To tell people “well, maybe where YOU live will be a safer, more prosperous, and more comfortable place to live, but you should sacrifice that, and a lot of other things our modern technological civilization provides you, to improve things for some people in a faraway South Pacific island nation” is quite an ask.
I’m quite sure there are a lot of people who are very afraid about what will happen if a lot of middle class North American voters realize this is what the actual deal is. You can be assured that I plan to tell as many of them as I can!
In which Slacker continues to be a dreary fucking bullshit merchant who doesn’t read his own cite.
The giveaway is in the title:
“Global Warming Won’t Cut Winter Deaths as Hoped”
Just in case there was some confusion there, it goes on into more detail. I’ve underlined the rather critical parts you apparently missed before, and put them in bold so you can hopefully read them this time:
"Global warming will fail to reduce high winter death rates as some officials have predicted because there will be more harmful weather extremes even as it gets less cold, a British study showed on Sunday…
…a report in the journal Nature Climate Change on the situation in England and Wales said climate warming would likely not decrease winter mortality in those places. It suggested more volatile winters, with swings from cold to mild linked to rising greenhouse gas emissions, might even raise death rates."
To summarize: even Britain - a country that will suffer far less than pretty much anywhere else from a rise in temperatures - is not going to see a net positive.
I leave you to a futile attempt to find a reasonable source claiming the world is going to see net positives from global warming (though let’s be honest, you’re just going to furiously googlespawn a few links that don’t say anything of the sort, because that’s pretty much your MO for all this shit)
(2) I started the post explicitly pointing out that I was not claiming global warming would be a net boon for humanity, only that it is a mixed bag with winners and losers and not, as Tol says, “the biggest problem in the world”;
(3) Gary did not respond to the Tol cite at all;
(4) What Gary did highlight in the Scientific American cite is that two British sources disagree on the impact on England and Wales specifically. The British goverment report says climate change will reduce winter mortality in those places, and a U. of Exeter professor and his colleagues believe it won’t;
(5) None of the above disputes relate at all to other issues besides winter mortality in England and Wales.
Such as: heating bills, food production, fatal diseases. Nor do they address every other part of the world, as Tol does.
So Gary’s hilariously underpowered “rebuttal” amounts to “British experts disagree on whether or not climate change will reduce winter deaths in England and Wales”. Holy shit, I’ve been checkmated!
If you think about it, his position’s weakness is highlighted by that very tiny scope. I mean, who would expect England and Wales to have much in the way of cold-related mortality to begin with? Not just where I live, but major population centers like Chicago, Detroit, NYC, and Boston would have much more of an issue to deal with in this area. And then of course there are the other issues of crop production and disease.
Yeah, see, the problem there is that climate change affects Americans too. In America. Today, not in the distant future, not even in the near future. It’s already an issue. It’s not about nobodies living in squalor in nowhereland. It’s about Florida getting flooded and hurricaned a lot more than it used to, and those floods and hurricanes being more severe and causing more lasting damage. It’s about Alaskan coasts crumbling into the sea and its fisheries along with it. It’s about droughts in California, which happens to produce a lot of fucking food the whole country relies on. And so on, and so forth.
It’s a global issue. Meaning it affects the whole globe. Not “the globe except that bit wot I lives in it, which is perfectly fine forever”. No man is an island, and the upper Midwest doesn’t stand apart from the rest of the planet. What changes over there affects what goes on down here, my dude.
And hell, even *if *it only meant that the nobodies of nowhereland got the shaft, what the fuck do you think they’re going to do ? Sit there and take it because shrug ? No. They’ll move somewhere more liveable. It’s already happening. Which will cause conflicts with those living there. Which will cause food problems, water problems, and so on. Meaning the people in those areas will eventually want to move, too.
Where do you think it ends ? How do you plan on stopping them ? Right now in Europe, in the US, even in East Asia we’re already talking about closing the borders on the *first *waves of climate migrants - but they’re the ones asking nicely, or at worst trying to sneak in. Do you reckon they’ll keep asking for long, when they’re numerous enough, desperate enough, when it’s about their survival ? When there’s literally no other choice for them besides “just give up and die”, which goes against millenia of natural selection & human instinct ?
It’s not “do something, it will help people in the south Pacific”. It’s “do something, or your kids will fight neverending wars about this shit”.
What I did, was actually quoting what your cite said you thick fuck, demonstrating that it did nothing at all to support your claim that (and I quote) “a lot more people will be saved from freezing to death than will die in heat waves”. An actual rebuttal to your bollocks about a net positive can be found here:
Oh, Gary. :smack: This doesn’t feel sporting. Your hotshot rebuttal is a blog post written by someone named GPWayne?? I mean, even the color scheme and fonts make it hard to take seriously. Why not just cite a fellow Doper’s post instead? :dubious:
Skeptical Science is a reliable source vetted and written by climatologists and comes recommended by the climatologists at RealClimate.org. It cites its sources extensively, but it does so in such a way as to be accessible to people of any intelligence.
You landed on the “Basic” page, which is generally meant as a resource for grade schoolers. Here, this might be more your speed, since you’re the very specific kind of stupid where big words don’t scare you but you’re still fucking wrong about everything. Bonus: it’s written by Dana Nuccitelli, professional climatologist.
Dana Nuccitelli is an environmental scientist at a private environmental consulting firm in the Sacramento, California area. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in astrophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Master’s Degree in physics from the University of California at Davis.
Dana has been researching climate science, economics, and solutions since 2006, and has contributed to Skeptical Science since September, 2010. He also blogs at The Guardian, and is the author of Climatology versus Pseudoscience. He has published climate-related papers on various subjects, from the build-up of heat in the Earth’s climate system to the expert consensus on human-caused global warming.
Also, if you’re curious who GPWayne is, here’s his blurb:
“Graham Wayne is a journalist who writes about climate change science and the ways it will affect us in the UK’s Guardian, and in his blog (gpwayne.wordpress.com). He writes basic level rebuttals and occasional blog posts for Skeptical Science, motivated in part by a concern for the environment, and partly as a counter-reaction to the demagoguery and disinformation that pervades the public discourse on climate science.”
He’s not a climatologist and doesn’t pretend to be one - he’s a journalist. His job is to break things down in their simplest terms.
And if all of that isn’t interesting to you, you could click on the “Advanced” link at the top, cut out the middleman and just follow the sources back. It’s not hard, it takes a whole one click, as these pages are typically formatted as:
"Here’s a link to our source.
Here’s a quote from the source.
Here’s a summary of what that quote means.
Here’s an important graph from that source.
Here’s a link to the next source…"
…Honestly, though, I think we’ve spent entirely too much time trying to explain this shit to you, so let me try something a little simpler. If warming continues at its current pace, how many displaced Bangladeshi Muslims would you like to see move into your hometown?
In which Slacker, fresh from trying to use a cite that states the exact opposite of his claims, then rejects a further cite that outlines why his position is wrong because he dislikes the colour scheme, choice of fonts, and author’s name.
So, any luck on finding a reputable source that agrees with your claim that "“a lot more people will be saved from freezing to death than will die in heat waves”?
I figure a few more people will get the idea when recurring flooding makes it untenable to maintain property in Miami Beach. We’re alreadygetting there.
Remember how I kept saying my main point was not “global warming will be awesome for everyone” but that there will be winners and losers, yet only the losers get all the focus?
Here’s a very thorough analysis published in the prestigious Lancet medical journal:
It’s clearly on the side of those who want to dramatically curb greenhouse emissions overall. But it appears to be an honest attempt to calculate this heat death vs. cold death issue. And it finds that in Australia, Northern Europe, and East Asia, more deaths will be prevented by even extreme warming than will be caused by it. Combine that with the fact that this is almost certainly going to be true in Canada and the northern U.S. as well, and you have most of the world’s technological civilizations actually not so much in peril from climate change. In other regions, things look a little rougher—but what else is new? I figure by 2099 everyone on Earth will have access to AC anyway, so the point will be moot. But even if it’s not, the point that is being hidden here is that what you really want is for advanced nations to sacrifice their own citizens’ lives to help prevent deaths in developing nations.
And as I have already pointed out, people in advanced nations could already do a lot more to save lives in the developing world, without sacrificing their own loved ones, simply by spending less at the pub (or Starbucks) and sending the money to a charity that distributes anti-malarial bed nets. But most of us don’t, even those preaching the loudest about climate change. :dubious:
This is a super sick burn. I love it! Nicely played.
You are only looking at people freezing to death vs dying from heat stroke, that’s so useless I cannot imagine that you think you are making an honest argument here.
That is not looking at people dying due to famine, drought, disease, or severe weather, all of which will be increased by climate change.
It is also not looking at the number of people impacted by what happens when millions or billions of people are displaced from their homes, and are looking for a place that they can live.
Will you invite them to live in your backyard? Will we admit them as refugees? Or, will we expect them to just lay down and die without making much of a fuss for us?
Also, can you give any citation to your claim that everyone will have a working air conditioner and the energy to use it, by 2099? We still have programs here in the US to get AC to people at risk during the summer, and yet people still die of heat related illnesses every summer.
Yeah, we could probably do more, and maybe we should. But, on an individual level, there really isn’t all that much more we can do, especially when it comes to really big things like climate change.
But, this is less like not buying bed nets, and it is more like leaving water filled pots all over the place to encourage mosquito breeding.
We, as first world nations, are the beneficiaries of burning fossil fuels. We benefit from causing global climate change. We are the cause of the problem, we profited off of making the problem, but we are expecting others to pay the price, while (I hope), joking that it’ll make our winters less cold.
And, we are not isolated. It’s not just poor people in other parts of the world that are paying for our actions, some of this does come back to bite us in our asses too. Your winter may be less cold on average, but it will probably have more extreme storms. You will probably have even lower temperatures, and more snow, even if it is concentrated into shorter bursts.
We also need to worry about drought. We are not immune from a total crop failure if we miss a few year’s rain. Famine in the US hasn’t been a thing for a while, but that doesn’t mean that it can never come back. How much will you be enjoying your milder winters with food prices 10-100x higher than they are currently, with not enough for everyone to eat?
We experience economic damage from hurricanes and other extreme storms, along with loss of life and property for individuals. Rising sea levels and extreme storms may make some of our most economically active areas no longer viable to live.
As I’ve told many, I’m not an environmentalist because I care about a redwood tree or a species of owl, I’m an environmentalist because I am selfish and I find myself living in the environment. Same with climate change. I don’t really care all that much about some island in the south pacific that is being inundated by rising sea levels. I care that that is a sign that the same can happen in ways that will affect me.
It is not the empathy of feeling the pain that others feel, it is the cold hard rationality that I very well could feel that pain that I am currently watching others endure.
Your statement was “a lot more people will be saved from freezing to death than will die in heat waves”. I do like the way you’re trying to backpedal on it, in a medium where your actual words are readily available to see.
And today’s logical fallacy: “Unless you spend 100% of your efforts and resources on an issue, then you are not allowed to point out it’s an issue”. I’d categorize it as an example of the Nirvana fallacy, but if people think there’s a better to classification please let me know.
Slacker, you’re basically the Dunning Kruger effect made flesh. You’re consistently wrong on most everything you say, yet in your mind you believe it’s because no-one else is smart enough to understand your genius.
Gary, what I said appears to be true in most of the advanced, developed world. I should not have implied it was true everywhere—my bad. But do I really need to show you that my posts have consistently said there will be winners and losers?
Furthermore, how do you maintain a straight face nitpicking my every statement, while giving AOC maximal leeway to make far more wildly inaccurate claims? The double standard is so blatant.
When you resort to boiler plate arguments from deniers that are being supported by industry and right wing sources it is harder to pretend that one is more from the left side of things.
Now, that argument of yours does work by willfully ignoring the rise of the oceans (meaning less land for agriculture) and the acidification of the oceans (that will also impact the food supply) thanks to the human produced CO2 we emit.
I don’t think that Minnesota will avoid harm regarding this issue.
What do you think happens when it stops raining int he places where we grow crops? What do you think happens when the weather becomes unreliable?
What do you think happens when the aquifers dry up?
What do you think happens when the rivers feeding the billions in Asia, which are fed through melting glaciers, dry up?
Yes, technology has increased crop yields substantially, that’s great, that allows us to feed far more people than anyone ever thought possible just a century or so back.
But, it still relies on water. the vast, vast agricultural land relies entirely upon the water that falls on it or flows past it or is trapped underneath it.
If we start having to desalinate and pipe water for agriculture, prices are going to go through the roof.
And why would that be, because the grasshopper takes the fact that it is nice now to extrapolate that it will be nice forever.
So, in exchange for a couple degrees higher average, you are willing to accept another couple of blizzards, as well as another week or so of record setting lows?
That’s stupid.
Sure, when I come in from the cold sometimes, I joke, “Man, where is global warming when you need it?” but it is as a joke. Taking it any further than that, trying to make it serious as a policy proposal is just not just inhumane to those who would suffer for your personal benefit, but stupid, as you will not get the benefit that you think you will.
