The cold weather death toll this winter is expected to top 40,000, the highest number for 15 years.
The figures were described as a “tragedy for the elderly” by campaigners who warned that not enough was being done to protect pensioners from unnecessary deaths in cold weather.
Anmd to be serious for a moment, this is something Bjorn Lomborg said repeatedly. Cold weather deaths are far in excess of hot weather deaths. Thus global warming should actually reduce premature deaths from temperature/weather.
And boy, didn’t people shout at him for being right?
And didn’t people laugh at Sarah Palin?
It is a sad state of affairs not merely when the Left is made up of such idiots, but when they are such idiots AND they have such domination in the mainstream.
It is like being ruled by psychotic pygmies with Tourette’s.
There is no TRUTH but Global Warming. Al Gore is the prophet.
They did more than just shout at him. Didn’t they try to prosecute him? Or at least haul him in front of some scientific witch trial in Denmark.
Get energy prices down by scrapping piddle-power projects and going nuke. If our energy prices were as low say as the French (lots of nukes) there would be far fewer winter deaths.
“Cold weather deaths are far in excess of hot weather deaths.”
citation needed. How many hundreds of millions depend on agriculture for their livelihood? you do not have to assume a very large impact of climate change on yields to get “hot weather” killing an awful lot of people. Now you may or may not believe in climate change (I know your comments menagerie largely does not) but you cannot just assert that reduction in cold weather deaths would be larger. Also climate change ain’t necessarily going to make winters more balmy, there is the whole frequency of extreme weather events thing.
It’s OK, we have been assured that by 2010 children won’t know what snow looks like.
Ah, no, that can’t be right ….
Luis U
Now you may or may not believe in climate change
I doubt any commenter here doesn’t believe in climate change – the ice cores show that 12,000 years ago sea levels were 130 meters lower as a result of mile-high glaciers covering the northern UK, all of Scandinavia, all of North America. What many commenters here doubt is the attribution of the subsequent warming to anthropogenic CO2.
Anyway, try this for cold v hot deaths:
http://www.nipccreport.org/articles/2011/aug/3aug2011a4.html
I had the honour of seeing Mr Lomborg at the Royal Society when his book came out.
Lomborg is a diehard warmist, but he is also an economist, and he stated that warming was going to happen anyway and Kyoto just delayed the inevitable by around five years, so it would be better to spend the money elsewhere.
There is also the point that warmer means longer growing seasons, more and better food, and therefore less death through malnutrition.
The idea that perhaps a warmer world might actually be a good thing was blasphemy to the Church of Gaia. Back then, even the slightest indication that the King may be showing a bit of ankle flesh was enough for a lynching – and did they try and hang him high.
Increased fuel prices through green tax and lack of investment on real power generation has probably killed quite a few people too.
Luis, when you talk about climate change, I have noticed that you switch from normative to positive language in a loaded way, eg climate change is bad. Without considering that it might benefit people. However, you are also making a gross assumption that this is the first period in history that “climate” is said to have changed. How do you know this? What is the definition of climate? Researches on the Science of Doom website suggest that it is a timescale without any empirical justification. An economist like you should be above scare – mongering, anti – intellectual stuff like this.
I saw recently a claim that what kills the old isn’t the low temperatures at home, but the low temperatures out in the street. The poor buggers are freezing in inadequate or non-existent bus shelters (and, I suspect, in ill-chosen clothing).
Cold weather deaths are far in excess of hot weather deaths
Yes that’s true, in Europe
Thus global warming should actually reduce premature deaths from temperature/weather.
No, that doesn’t follow at all. A cross-country analysis found that the highest variation occurs in Portugal. Therefore, if Global Warming increases UK temperatures to what what you now get in Portugal, excess winter deaths in the UK will go up.
No actually, my ‘therefore’ doesn’t follow either. But Lomborg’s claim is simplistic.