RISKY THINKING: This image shows the plume following Deep Impact's release of an impactor at Comet Tempel 1. On Earth, asteroids and comets striking the planet can have long-lasting climatic effects, but a recent report on asteroid impact preparedness left out climate change in a chart comparing the expected annual fatalities due to various causes.
Image: NASA
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If you ask the average person whether in the long run it is climate change or an asteroid/comet impact that's expected to kill more people annually, you'll undoubtedly get some confused replies. Those asteroid movies are scary, but there are no verified instances of an asteroid strike killing any humans, are there? Meanwhile, the science of climate change is currently being overshadowed by a media-driven public debate, mainly in the U.S.
In fact, the expected annual fatality rate due to climate change is estimated to be far higher than that due to an asteroid or comet impact—150,000 versus 91, per the World Health Organization (WHO) and Alan Harris of the Space Science Institute, respectively. You won't, however, see that 150,000 figure in the main body of the Washington, D.C.–based National Research Council report on near-Earth object (NEO) surveys and mitigation strategies. (The report was written by a total of 42 scientists.)
Instead, in a chart on page 26 of the report on "expected fatalities per year, worldwide, from a variety of causes," asteroids are compared with shark attacks (three to seven deaths), firearms accidents (2,500), earthquakes (36,000), malaria (one million), traffic accidents (1.2 million), air pollution (two million), HIV/AIDS (2.1 million) and tobacco (five million).
Meanwhile, climate change is mentioned in a note beneath the chart, regarding one of the authors: "Mark Boslough wanted an additional entry in this table for fatalities due to climate change. The steering committee disagreed with including this entry because it did not think a reliable estimate is available, among other reasons. Dr. Boslough has written a minority opinion as Appendix D."
The mysterious "Appendix D"
In Appendix D Boslough, a physicist at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M., wrote that he disagreed with the steering committee's reasons for removing the climate data. The reasons: a debate on climate change could distract from the issue at hand, and the irrelevance of climate-change numbers to the NEO threat.
Boslough wrote that it's "inappropriate" to remove data from a report to avoid the potential for political controversy. And as for irrelevance, climate change is actually more relevant than the other causes in the table, he wrote. Asteroid impacts that cause global catastrophe are climate-changing events, and most of the resulting fatalities would be due to that change (which would cause social disruption that is expected to lead to starvation, disease and violence). And asteroids and climate change share some features—both can have abrupt and worldwide consequences that would have nothing to do with one's lifestyle or location on the planet. Contrast that with earthquakes, malaria, tobacco or firearms use.
Fatality estimates for both an NEO impact and climate change "are similarly impacted by uncertainty in our understanding of climate change and statistical attribution of indirect causes," Boslough and Harris wrote in a poster presented at the fall 2008 meeting of the American Geophysical Union. And when you look at the risks side by side, the researchers continued, "by any objective measure the impact threat is minuscule (by a factor of at least a thousand) compared to the threat from anthropogenic climate change."
Nevertheless, they wrote, "The asteroid-threat community has been much more successful than the climate change community in characterizing the dominant worst-case scenarios and communicating them to policymakers, the media and the public—even though the climate change threat is more than a thousand times greater…, [therefore] quantitative comparison of climate change to asteroid impact is a valuable way to put both threats into perspective."
Why was climate change scuttled?
So why were the climate change figures removed from this chart? Panelists are forbidden from discussing how they arrived at such decisions, but steering committee chair Irwin Shapiro of the Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics says he recalls no discussion about anthropogenic climate change.
"Personally, I was concerned with the 'apples–oranges' mixtures of comparison," he says. "Specifically, some data included were rooted in actual statistics, whereas others were based upon assumptions, with some being shakier than others. The end result was a compromise to which Mark took strong exception at the time the draft report was about to be sent for review."
Panel member Michael A'Hearn of the University of Maryland, College Park, says that no single person made the decision to remove the climate figures: "I think it was a majority opinion, but not a unanimous one."
He added: "I don't think there was any disbelief in anthropogenic climate change, as such. I suppose there may be some doubts about our quantitative predictions of climate change, and there were certainly doubts about the quantitative predictions of deaths due to it."
The sociopolitical climate played a part in the decision, he says: "There was definitely also the independent concern that this would become a distraction to the report."
A'Hearn actually would have preferred an even more reduced set of comparisons in the table. "My personal hesitation did not apply solely to the climate change entry but to several other entries, as well," for example, air pollution and possibly even tobacco deaths, he says, "and I espoused the general principle that we should list only discrete events with identifiable, individual deaths in order to have a fair comparison. Clearly that opinion did not carry the day."
Boslough accepts the fatality estimates for climate change (the WHO's estimate was made for the agency by epidemiologist Tony McMichael, of the Australian National University's National Center for Epidemiology and Population Health) as well as those for asteroid impacts, the latter of which are based lately on work by Harris.
The WHO/McMichael mortality rate is not a prediction. It is an estimation of the current (as of 2000) existing rate of annual deaths reasonably attributable to climate change, albeit from a limited subset of climate-related health impacts: malaria due to an increase in the geographic range of disease-bearing mosquitoes, malnutrition associated with loss of agricultural productivity, water-borne diarrheal diseases, and deaths from flooding, McMichael says.
Regarding the strength of McMichael's climate change fatality estimates, Boslough says: "I do not dispute that there are uncertainties in the numbers, but that's true of every number in the table, including (and perhaps especially) the impact number."
Boslough also rejects the idea that the comparison should list only discrete events with identifiable, individual deaths because that's not the case for the fatalities figures for an asteroid impact. "About half the deaths attributed to impact in our risk chapter are actually from events above an assumed 'global catastrophe' threshold," he says, "and most of those people don't get killed by the impact itself, but from starvation, exposure or violence associated with agricultural and civilization collapse in a world that would look a lot like Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Their death certificates would not say, 'killed by impact.' Their direct cause of death would be varied or ambiguous but ultimately traceable back to the impact just as the current increases in malaria and malnutrition are traceable back to climate change."
The methodology of speculative corpse counting
Human risk assessments for asteroid impacts are confusing in part because there has never been an asteroid impact in historic times that has caused even a local disaster (setting aside the 1908 flattening of more than 2,000 square kilometers of sparsely populated taiga near the Tunguska River in Siberia), let alone a global catastrophe. Nevertheless, scientists can estimate the risk and the frequency of such events quite well, Harris says.
Here is a rough outline of how it's done, he says: "In round numbers, [this risk] is dominated by very large events that would kill about a billion people, and happen about once in a million years—thus, in round numbers, about 1,000 per year. Present [NEO] surveys have found about 90 percent of that risk, and provided assurance that no such event will happen in the next century or so from the 90 percent we have found. So the leftover short-term risk is around 100 [per] year, as tabulated."
Harris says he agrees with much of what Boslough wrote in Appendix D: "It was important as a matter of 'due process,' the scientific endeavor cannot tolerate suppression of dissent. On the other hand, it is also unfortunate because…it has distracted attention from the central messages of the report."
The distraction is unfortunate, Boslough says, adding that he only insisted on the minority opinion because it was more important to include the climate change information than to avoid the potential for distraction.
The report, which came out in January and with which Boslough otherwise fully agrees, reveals that the scientific inventory of Earth-threatening space objects (asteroids and comets), especially the smaller ones that are most likely to impact our planet, is far from complete and unlikely to improve significantly without a greatly increased funds for NEO search programs. And our preparedness, if scientists found a moderate to large asteroid with our name on it, is weak—it'd take at least a decade to mount a space mission to deflect the object. And that might not be soon enough.
See what we're tweeting about
49 Comments
Add CommentThis article is similar to the old children's question : 'Would you prefer to be shot or hung?'
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIsn't that a bit like "How would you like to be killed - by Fire or Ice" ?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHere in the EU, we don't listen to US media-driven public debate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlthough we do get a good laugh out of watching grown non-climatic scientists trying to refute science.
Thanks US, we needed that.
I just want to see the movie: "Killer Asteroid vs. Global Warming 3D".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOnly 150,000 deaths a year due to climate change? Well then it's not nearly as big a problem as I have been lead to believe. Currently, over one million people die every year from starvation and disease. So looks like we should be spending our time and money looking for a cure for things like malaria and HIV instead of wasting it on climate issues.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI get so frustrated when I see my fellow Americans debating the reality of things accepted by the rest of the world like Climate Change and Evolution. I wish I could understand why this is happening in the US and not elsewhere.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissparcboy - I suggest we invest our political will in solving overpopulation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting question since mankind can do nothing about either situation!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSpiff
English :
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisExcluded FROM = Forbidden TO.
"Forbidden from" is just plain ignorant. Oh sorry - it's "American English" !
Asteroid vs climate, vs overpopulation- It seems pretty clear that overpopulation is the real key issue over the next 100 years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"10 years to mount an operation to deflect the object .."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBut think of the grant money available ! This time the payload is another entire rocket ? - but a rocket that will need to be able to speed-up a payload of several hundred ? thousand ? Million ? tonne lump of rock. Wow ! that's gonna be Sooo expensive my tongue is just hanging-out !!
Maybe it's time to take a sedative, or see a shrink ?
Up until 1940 there were 2 billion people on our planet, but now there are over 6 billion with over 1 billion of them starving and without fresh water. By 2050 there will be 9 billion people with over 4 billion starving and without fresh water. Nothing to my knowledge is being done to alleviate this situation.Tony Juniper top British environmentalist states that an adult breathes out as much CO2 in a year as the average car engine. We are doing something about car emissions and human activities, but only China is doing something about population reduction. The UK Dept of the Environment state that of the total CO2 of 386 parts per million, only 14 ppm (or 3.5%) of that comes from the burning of fossil fuels and cement manufacture. Prior to the Industrial period CO2 was a constant 280ppm so 106ppm (386 -280) has come from humans. If only 14ppm is from the burning of fossil fuels, then the rest, 92ppm is from the repiration of the additional 4 billion population, but all the Governments hide this fact and just blame it on our activities.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisdebates at an individual vs individual level like these are happening every where else on the planet. to think it's only an american affliction is naive, and limited in perspective.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm not sure what you're referring to. Maybe you need to go back to your aluminium drawring board.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Watkins - I certainly concur. I wonder how the global population's correlation coefficient with global warming compares to atmospheric CO2 levels? I bet its in the same ballpark. I wonder if there's a correlation between population and atmospheric CO2 levels? I wonder if anyone's checked??
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe 150,000 deaths per year blamed on climate change are, in reality, due to people living where they shouldn't. How many of them are also included in the hypothetical number of a million per year that die of starvation?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid watkins ; The concentrations of CO2 have risen since the Industrial Revolution of the mid 1800's for reasons as yet undetermined, people/machine?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt the same time the average global temperature has risen a WHOPPING 0.74C in TOTAl! That is less than ONE degree in 150 years.
It is amazing to me that this global warming is even a debate. The global average temperature was rising before they started to keep records in the 1800's, else, why did the mile high sheet of ice that covered much of North America melt?
The "overpopulation" problem (i.e., there are too many people on the planet who are not me) is solving itself, as women become less dependent on men and find other means to survive and advance than to reproduce. This is true around the world: fertility is substantially down wherever women have won access to schooling, credit and contraception. And resistance to this change fuels more reactionary politics than is usually ascribed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, if you're concerned that population will not peak soon enough (around 2050), then you could favor both asteroid collisions AND global warming to boost the death rate instead. Or buy stock in a tobacco company.
Kfreels - let me help you understand why this phenomenon of debate is happening here in the US and no where else. It is because in the United States of America we believe in simple little idea called FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!! If you don't want to be frustrated any longer, flee to a socialist European country or better yet a communist controlled State and live a happy life. Otherwise, be thankful you live in a country where an opinion can be expressed and disagreed upon in a non-violent forum such as this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't they teach anything in schools these days... like y'know First Amendment kinda stuff?.....
Freedom of speech, seems a perfect excuse for bigotry most of the time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI really don't understand why is there so fuss about climate issue. Do we really need a yes nod from the politicians to accept the fact that global warming is real? Look at the pictures of receding glaciers in the himalayas and melted ice on the antartica and compare them with snapshots of 50-70 years back. The pictures should clear any doubts you have.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJon Swift - I think you're reading the chart wrong:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopgraph.php
it does not peak in 2050, that's simply when the current forecast ends. So, in 2050 the population is only expected to reach a little over 9B, an increase of around 2.5B, or 35% more than today's population just under 7B.
Yeah, you've probably got little to worry about there. When I was growing up in the 1950s the population was less than 3B, so it's already increased more in the past than it will in the future.
Of course you must consider that the population only represents the total current survivors. The birth rate could increase by billions, as long as the death rate kept up. I doubt the population will ever exceed 10B by very much, as so many will be suffering and dying. Nothing for me to worry about anyway, as I'll be long gone by then.
There is another factor I failed to mention about the good old days. We don't have accurate stats, but if we go back far enough the global population was much lower. Of course it was held in check by the average lifespan thought to be what, varying between 25-40 years? I suspect nobody could take much more suffering than that...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen food becomes a big enough problem there's always war to fall back on. Good luck with the current population plan.
If there is a possibility of a train coming over a hill, and at the same time there is a possibility of the trees from which you feed not bearing fruit next spring, which will you be concerned about? Think about the train-but don't forget to plan for the spring.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think we are facing a triple threat of overpopulation, climate change, and peak oil. Population is on the rise and, if you look at things like the depletion of fish stocks, we are already near or exceeding the earth's carrying capacity. Our agricultural production is dependent on petroleum products not only for the gas to drive the tractors, but also for the fertilizers and pesticides that allow for high levels of productivity. Peak oil will happen. All you have to look at is the rate of our consumption versus the rate at which it is created. We are consuming it a lot faster than it is created; it's a question of when, not if. Meanwhile, climate change is shifting the zones of what grows well when and where. We can adapt to that, but only the foolhardy would assume no cost or loss of productivity during the adjustment period. Climate change is also threatening the productivity of the oceans; substantial food chains are based on organisms that will cease to exist in broad swathes of our seas once pH levels reach predictable levels based on the exchange of CO2 between air and sea water. So, our increasing population is adding to our need to produce food at the same time that our activities are on the verge of reducing productive capacity. It is going to be a train wreck. I think the best we can do is slow the train down as much as possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBarron - Not many would say the Earth's ice is melting. All you have to look at is a photo of North America 15,000 years ago when the glacier that covered much of the continent was, in places over a mile high. A photo today would show there are only small remnants of this huge mass of ice. To think that human activity has had anything to do with the melting is just plain foolishness.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe ice will continue to melt until the next cold period (ice age) sets in. The climate has always been either warming or cooling, all just the natural cycle.
The current theory that CO2 emissions spur warming is just that, a theory. So far the predicted warming has not followed the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere (hence the name change from global warming to climate change).
GameGuy49, please pay more attention to the rates of change over time, and, man, where to start?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPlease look up the absorption spectra of CO2 and then explain to us why you think the physics behind that are different in the lab than they are in the atmosphere. Or maybe you should look at the satellite observations of lower radiative energy loss in the CO2 wavelengths.
Maybe you've heard of thermal lag or inertia. Or maybe you've observed that a pot of water on the stove does not instantly reach a new equilibrium temperature the moment you adjust the dial. Or, putting a lid on it might be a better analogy.
And lastly, what do you mean by "just a theory"? Maybe you are not aware that 'theory' means it has been supported by a large body of evidence and not yet contradicted?
I got tired of America bashers with off-topic comments; so sorry if I didn't read the more pertinent comments related to the following.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt seems that 91 deaths/year distorts the main concern of a major impact, which results in extinction. While an extinction event is less probable from large NEO, or Oort cloud objects than say climate change deaths, the "deaths per event" are certainly not reflected accurately in a "deaths per year" estimate. The areas of concern are simply not comparable, but the author seems more concerned with the sensational, but meaningless comparison. Forgive me if I missed something, but the article 'hook' seems to fade into a jello mishmosh of irrelevant "he said-they said", so I just got bored of what seemed like political squabbling.
So do you REALLY believe that the USA is the last bastion of freedom of speech? Excluding, all of Europe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe CAUSE of global warming is indeed up for debate, but you are hugely mistaken if you think the EFFECT of human activity is. In simpler terms, just because you haven't caused a problem doesn't mean you can't do anything about it. The amounts and effects of carbon emissions are measurable. Even if you can't stop a runaway train, the extent to which you may be able to slow it down will have a direct effect on the survivability of its occupants.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisbrerlou - Has there been any attempt to correlate atmospheric CO2 with the global population? Perhaps the most effective method of reducing the rate of global warming is to reduce the population. Otherwise global warming will eventually reduce the population. Which method minimizes human suffering?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI�m not sure the article is what I want to read i SA. I�d rather read about science, not debate. Also I don�t like SA pushing some scientific views supressing others. Do I have a magazine with a main course to push for certain issues or do I have a magazine which main course is to report, not taking a stand?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJarmo...i kind of agree...unfortunately...or...fortunately the climate change articles generate about 10 times to 100 times the amount of feedback(postings) that most other articles do....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDavid Cota...well put...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a reason it's a "theory"....it's because it's not PROVEN. The more I look at global warming, the more question marks I see. For example....you would think the warming would be exponential, since we're continually pumping more and more co2 in the atmosphere....the artic ice is expanding...the hacked emails....the overall percentage of co2 in our atmosphere still hasn't changed much. People act like the co2 gets in the air and just festers or something, when it's being consumed by plants in the ocean and every little green plant on earth. In addition to that, look at history....the ice age didn't end because of all the factories and SUV's that cave men drove around.....I live off of Lake Michigan...a couple thousand years ago it was a giant glacier.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn the US, the reason we question it, is because we're not raised to be chumps, we're taught to look at a situation, analyze it and make up our own minds. And I have yet to be sold on GW. I see the money that Al Gore and other GW lobbyists have to make on this whole thing, so I certainly question the man's motives. Especially when his house consumes the amount of energy as a small town.
well said sir, well said.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"look at the absorption spectra of co2", i hear that over and over again.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLook at the tests MIT did at the amount of radiation emitted from the earth. Hasn't changed at all over the past 30 years. Oh yeah, you don't want to give that one too much attention, nothing to see here! And any .5 Celsius temperature change could NEVER be because of something like sun patterns, or any of the other million or so factors. And the amount of co2 actually in the atmosphere hasn't increased as much as you might think, because you know, just about every little tiny plant and blade of grass sucks in the co2 and spits out oxygen. Studies show that the more co2 we spit out, it promotes plant growth.
The last straw:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn Canada who are also free to debate global climate change. Here we are divided by geography. Oil producing provinces in the predominantly conservative west argue that climate change of human origin does not exist. The rest of us, for the most part, think, based on the overwhelming scientific evidence, that it does.
The only thing we are not free to do is advocate for hatred and violence against any racial, sexual, political, or religius group. This is part of our constitution adopted by our provincial and federal governments
Thats amazing
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCool. I never knew there were climate changes or an impact with another celestial body. Its funny how man is powerless to stop both of them- he may slow it down, However, both are inevitable!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnectdotely speaking, the weather in Southern Manitoba has gotten warmer in my 61 year lifetime. The glaciers have receded drastically in the Columbia ice-fields over the 30 years that I have observed them as well. You can quote worldwide averages and these are statistics that most people do not observe directly, and therefore distrust, but I trust what I see. I know that I sunburn more quickly too, that is evidence that the ozone layer is weaker than it was in my youth in the fifties. This is another direct observation. Those of us who distrust scientists and those who fund them are restricted to doing our own observations; surely a severe handicap in making any rational conclusions about human generated climate change. In any case we are going to see who is right within our lifetimes. I don't like to base my children's chances for long term survival on the possibility that people who think we have human generated climate change are wrong.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe climate is always shifting jimfromcanada....when the dinosaurs walked the earth the temperature was SIGNIFICANTLY higher. The funny thing is that there was also a lower concentration of co2 in the air, the percentage of oxygen was much higher than what it is even today (thats one reason insects these days will never be as big as they used to be millions of years ago.) There is so much reason to doubt the whole human caused global warming, *cough climate change cough*. Whether it's the "tampered" data or just looking at history. They also did a study that found as the earth warmed, so did mars!! providing evidence that it's more likely sun related. Theres just way too much evidence out there supporting other possibilities besides the "we're such bad people, we're killing the earth!". You just don't hear about it because theres no money to be made off of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs far as the ozone and you're sunburns, you know as well as me that theres a lot of biological explanations for that one aside from the "ozone layer is evaporating and it's evidence the world is ending".
NASA impact fatality estimates are some of the worst "scientific" work I have ever seen, and bear no relationship to the observed recent data.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen averaged over time, the impact death rate works out to about 1 per 90 seconds at current population loads, assuming the recent cometary impact rate continues.
E.P. Grondine
Man and Impact in the Americas
Lightening is by far the worst problem.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt all depends on the size of the asteroid and the extent of the climate change...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo question: Nanny state liberals (communists and socialists) win hands down. They killed nearly a billion people in the twentieth century, and the twenty-first is all ahead of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe human race can adapt to climate change. There is no way to adapt to an asteroid or comet impact. Also climate change does not threaten to cause the extinction of the entire human race.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is really no comparing the two. One is a slow process occurring over decades. The other has the capability of destroying large areas of the earth in minutes or hours.
Boslough is dead wrong. We have been misled by activist climate scientists to think that anthropogenic global warming has been detected when nothing of the sort is true. It all started when James Hansen got up in front of the Senate in 1988 and testified that global warming caused by carbon dioxide we were putting into the air had started. Checking global temperature curves from NASA, NOAA and the Met Office in UK shows indeed that a warming trend started about 1977 and continued through in the eighties and nineties. It is this warming that constitutes the blade of Michael Mann's hockey stick curve. But satellites have also been measuring global temperatures and they simply cannot see that warming. What they do see is a temperature oscillation, up and down by half a degree for twenty years, but no rise until 1998. That is ten years after Hansen said that the warming had started. So what is going on here? I compared the satellite data with the three curves from the guardians of climate data and realized that they were all cooked. As in falsified. Let me explain. If you take, for example, the HadCRUT3 curve from the Met Office and put it side by side with the satellite temperature curve you notice right away that they start by cherry picking the high points off the satellite curve. There are five such peaks within a twenty year period. They correspond to warm El Nino periods in the Pacific and the valleys in between them are cool La Nina periods. Both are part of the ENSO system that has a global climate influence. The center line of this oscillation is horizontal. What was done to turn this into a rising temperature curve was to stick to the peaks but lift up the cool intervening temperature valleys. But this only worked for the first four peaks. The fifth one was too low for them so they lifted it up bodily to line it up with the first four. The Super El Nino of 1998 that followed helped them out but the temperature segment that followed it in the early twenty-first century was again too low for them so the entire right side of the curve got raised up by a tenth of a degree. This falsified curve is presented to us as proof that global warming started in the late twentieth century. This is untrue. And since there was no warming in 1988 when Hansen testified that there was we can state that anthropogenic global warming has never been observed. The colossal scientific fraud that is used to justify this charade should be investigated. This and more is documented in "What Warming?" available on Amazon.com.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Boslough accepts the fatality estimates for climate change ..." and this 150,000 "... mortality rate is not a prediction. It is an estimation of the current (as of 2000) existing rate of annual deaths reasonably attributable to climate change.."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have no idea how they get away with this kind of nonsense. There is no way climate change can be killing people now if there is on climate change now. And there is none if by that is meant climate change from the greenhouse effect. The claim that anthropogenic climate change started in the twentieth century is false as I pointed out but that does not mean that there was no climate change. Real warming started with the 1998 super El Nino and continued with the twenty-first century high in its aftermath. It was comprised of six warm years between 2001 and 2007 with an average temperature 0.3 degrees higher than that of the previous decade. Neither this warm spell nor the super El Nino was caused by any greenhouse effect. The super El Nino itself was a result of a storm surge that brought warm water of the Indo-Pacific Warm Pool to the start of the equatorial countercurrent near New Guinea. The countercurrent carried it to South America where it caused the super El Nino we observed. Its leftover warm water was responsible for the twenty-first century high. This, and not some greenhouse effect made the first decade of the century warmest on record. 0.3 degrees does not sound much but it is actually half of the 0.6 degree temperature rise for the previous century. What it tells us is that natural phenomena can and do change the climate in unpredictable ways. Carbon dioxide so far has had no observable influence for the last thirty years and claims that it started to warm the world in the late twentieth century are simply false. To learn more about this, the Arctic, El Nino and other climate things get "What Warming?" from Amazon.com.