June 13, 2009
Climate Change
Good Friend of this blog, T Greer, has an excellent post on "Death by Climate." An NGO headed by former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan asserts that climate change currently is responsible for 300,000 deaths a year. Our friend disagrees.
From here it is easy to see the fallacy inherit in any attempt to label a death (or even a group of deaths) as "caused" by climate change. There does not exist a single causality attributed to climate change whose death cannot be sourced more directly to factor of the socio-economic sort. In cases where the deaths are indirectly attributed to climate change** (such as the cholera epidemics or crop failures that often follow flooding in underdeveloped areas) the link between death and weather is even more tenuous; each degree of separation between climatic trends and causality trends simply multiplies the number of factor leading to the end result that are more important than climate change.
TG is a lot more generous with Annan and the Global Humanitarian Forum than I am (as I mention in a lenghy, black-helicopterish comment) but there is much I agree with in his thoughtful post. Deleterious Anthropogenic Warming of the Globe Posted by John Kranz at June 13, 2009 11:18 AM
Don't be surprised at the claim. It has the same unscientific basis by which Obama says "___ jobs saved or created."
On the other hand, the ban on DDT has led to hundreds of thousands of African deaths each year. This is directly provable, because they died from disease x (malaria) that could have been prevented by action y (spraying pesticides).
Posted by: Perry Eidelbus at June 15, 2009 2:19 AMJk-
Thanks for the link. I have responded to your comment, and agree with you to a large extent. It is a sad reflection of our society that claims such as this are accepted and supported by the eletes who really should know better.
Posted by: T. Greer at June 15, 2009 4:33 PM | What do you think? [2]