Roger Pielke, Jr. criticizes the fantastic claim that 315,000 people die each year from effects of CO2 concentrations:
I am quoted in today’s NYT on a new report issued by the Global Humanitarian Forum which makes the absurd claim that 315,000 deaths a year can be attributed to the effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations. Here is what I said:
Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist at the University of Colorado, Boulder, who studies disaster trends, said the forum’s report was “a methodological embarrassment” because there was no way to distinguish deaths or economic losses related to human-driven global warming amid the much larger losses resulting from the growth in populations and economic development in vulnerable regions. Dr. Pielke said that “climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention.” But the report, he said, “will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.”
Strong comments I know. Shoddy work on disasters and climate change is the norm, unfortunately, and something I’ve been closely following for well over a decade. I have no illusions that this latest concoction will be repeatedly cited regardless.
Below are my comments to the NYT upon reading the report (cleaned up and formatted). Caution, strong views ahead.
Let me apologize for the length of this reply. But it is important to be clear and to set the record straight.
Let me say first that human-caused climate change is an important problem requiring our utmost attention. Second, the effects of disasters, particularly in poorer countries, is also an important problem that to some degree has been overlooked, as I have argued for many years.
However, I cannot express how strongly I feel that this report has done a disservice to both issues. It is a methodological embarrassment and poster child for how to lie with statistics. The report will harm the cause for action on both climate change and disasters because it is so deeply flawed.
It will give ammunition to those opposed to action and divert attention away from the people who actually need help in the face of disasters, yet through this report have been reduced to a bloodless statistic for use in the promotional battle over climate policies. The report is worse than fiction, it is a lie.
So, the Global Humanitarian Forum report “is a lie”, but the fact that more than 800,000 die from H20 every year is very, very true:
Even with swimming and safety classes available in many countries, large numbers of people still drown every year – over 800,000 around the world….
LikePossibly Related Posts:
- Study: ‘Modern high-yield farming lowered the amount of greenhouse gases pumped into the Earth’s atmosphere toward the end of the 20th Century by a massive amount’
- Domino Effect: Utah, then Texas, and now Virginia challenging EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations
- Utah legislative panel digs its heels in against EPA’s CO2 regs; passes resolution mentioning ‘flawed climate data’, and critical of $7B ‘climate change gravy train’
- BREAKING: Dems join effort to block EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations
- Scientist’s Letter to the Editor: ‘It is simply not logical that controlling a single (and miniscule, by volume) variable such as atmospheric CO2 will allow us to bend the entire global climate to our will’
