As if we didn’t already have enough climate worries, RedState scribe Jim Thompson earlier today brought us the tale of noted climatologist Ilhan Omar. Ms. Omar is upset that we have (according to her) broken a 120,000-year-old heat record. She is mistaken, of course, and Mr. Thompson has already eloquently told that tale. But with much of the Northern Hemisphere seeing unseasonably warm temperatures, Ms. Omar has plenty of company in climate hysteria. And, for once, they have a point: It’s hot out. (Not so much here in the Great Land, but, well, you get the point.)
PHOENIX, July 17 (Reuters) – Asia, Europe and the United States baked under extreme heat on Monday as global temperatures soared toward alarming highs and U.S. leaders sought to reignite climate diplomacy with China.
The United States was scorched by record-setting heat in the West and South, lashed with flood-triggering rain in the Northeast, and choked by wildfire smoke in the Midwest.
A heat dome parked over the western United States pushed the temperature in California’s Death Valley desert to 128 Fahrenheit (53 Celsius) on Sunday, among the highest temperatures recorded on Earth in the past 90 years.
Phoenix hit 114F (45.5C) on Monday, matching a historic record of 18 straight days over 110F with the forecast showing the record likely to extend for at least another week.
It’s hot out – there’s no denying that. But is the heat as dangerous as the climate cultists claim? Apparently not, as weather-related damages are at historic lows. Marlo Lewis, Jr., a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, has the receipts, and shows very plainly how things aren’t nearly bad as the climate doom-criers claim.
The doomsday interpretation of climate change is a political doctrine, not a scientific finding, as Danish economist Bjorn Lomborg shows in a recent series of tweets and University of Alabama in Huntsville atmospheric scientist John Christy explains in a new paper titled “Falsifying Climate Alarm.”
In the aforementioned tweets, Lomborg rebuts an op-ed by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz, who advocates spending trillions of dollars annually to combat climate change, which he calls “our World War III.” As evidence, Stiglitz claims that in recent years weather-related damages cost the U.S. economy 2 percent of GDP—a figure for which he gives no reference.
Lomborg deftly sets the record straight. Aon Benfield reinsurers estimate that during 2000-2017, weather-related damages cost the United States about $88 billion annually, or 0.48 percent of GDP per year, not 2 percent. More importantly, extreme weather is a natural feature of the Earth’s climate system. The vast majority of those damages would have occurred with or without climate change. “Does Stiglitz believe there is no bad weather without climate change?” Lomborg asks.
From further on in Mr. Lewis’ analysis, here is the money shot:
The past three decades are generally agreed to be the warmest in the instrumental record. Yet during that period, damages due to all forms of extreme weather as a share of global GDP declined. In other words, despite there being many more people and lots more stuff in harm’s way, the relative economic impact of extreme weather is decreasing. It is difficult to reconcile that trend with claims that ours is an “unsustainable” civilization.
So, once again, the doom-criers have been shown to be wrong.
Looking at the climate issue objectively – as in, not through the lens of climate-change hysteria – hot weather is not nearly as difficult an issue for humans as cold weather. Almost all weather-related deaths are due to cold, not heat.
According to the new study by researchers at the University of Illinois Chicago, patients who died because of cold temperatures were responsible for 94% of temperature-related deaths, even though hypothermia was responsible for only 27% of temperature-related hospital visits.
“With the decrease in the number of cold weather days over the last several decades, we still see more deaths due to cold weather as opposed to hot weather,” said Lee Friedman, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the UIC School of Public Health and corresponding author on the paper. “This is in part due to the body’s poorer ability to thermoregulate once hypothermia sets in, as well as since there are fewer cold weather days overall, people don’t have time to acclimate to cold when those rarer cold days do occur.”
The takeaway? Figure out how to dress for the cold. Ask any Alaskan for advice; we’re pretty good at managing cold temperatures.
So, why then, in the face of all the data to the contrary, do the leaders of the climate movement keep pushing?
The answer has little to do with the climate, or the economy, or the planet. As someone once said, they seek fortune and glory. There’s a lot of money and prestige in big social movements. Climate Czar John Kerry already had his mansions, private jet, and fleet of yachts, but now he’s getting a lot of free travel on the taxpayers. Then you have Al Gore, one of the founders of the whole thing, and his enormous Tennessee mansion with its massive carbon footprint. Gore banked a lot of money with his “carbon offset” scheme. Even the Swedish Doom Pixie has a pretty good net worth, for a twenty-something social crusader.
There’s really not much cause for alarm. It’s hot, yes, but we can handle it. Humans are a heat-adapted species. We really haven’t changed all that much in the last 200,000 years; biologically, we are still essentially creatures of the hot, dry savannas. We can handle hot weather better than cold. And even as the earth does grow somewhat warmer, as it has been doing since the Wisconsin Glaciation, one shouldn’t overlook the positive effects, like much of northern Asia potentially becoming the world’s breadbasket.
Yes, it’s hot out. So, get some SPF100, find a spot by the pool, and enjoy the hot weather. It will get cold again, soon enough.
