Whats Wrong with Mild Winters, Anyways?
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 01. 9.07
When I started reading this Forbes article, I thought that perhaps is was a bit of humour, sort of like Emily Litella's "Whats all this about endangered feces?" bit. No, it is in fact a serious article that says "I'd like to suggest that the debate about climate change include, for once, a fair assessment of the benefits alongside the declamations of harm." The Author goes on to say "For example, cold winter storms kill a lot of people. More people die from blizzards and cold spells than from heat waves." Clearly he was not in Europe three summers ago. He continues: "And once you think about it, there are likely to be other beneficial consequences as well. Life in many places would become more pleasant. Instead of 20 below zero in January in Saskatoon, it might be only 10 below. And I don't think too many people would complain if winters in Minneapolis became more like winters in Kansas City." And then I got to the bottom and found out that Forbes is taking articles from Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Exxon funded gang that brought us CO2: We call it life." ::Forbes, we don't call this journalism. Never mind.
For more hilarity, Linton at Hugg found Fox News discussing how Global Warming is all media spin, it is hotter on the coast where the media live, just go to real Fox country like Denver and you will find more snow that you know what to do with.
I thought it was a joke piece when I read it, too. Thanks for letting us know where it actually came from.
"It's well known that reality has a liberal bias." - Stephen Colbert
In a similar vein, I was just perusing the 2007 Farmers' Almanac that a family member received for Christmas. It contains the article "The Good News About Climate Change" about the "upside" to global warming! At first I started laughing, and then... well, they are serious.
wait a minute! You're telling us that the CEI is not telling the truth? I just finished reading this book by Berlau and Ebel and the CEInatics and if its' not true then I'm really sad, see, they say in the book ("Eco Freaks") that global warming will be good for us (and they interview Dr. Fred Singer to get that tidbit, quel surprise), oh yeah but then they also say that Cars are why *most* people escaped from Katrina's wrath, also how greenies took down the world trade center, kill billions of trees and poor people oh and uh, worship the planet Earth like some sort of Pagan goat or something.... I'm glad you set that straight Lloyd, I was just about to tear up my greenpeace card!
I haven't read the Forbes article (it may be just as slanted as you say), but when you dismissively proclaim that "Clearly he was not in Europe three summers ago", you're engaging in spin of your own.
Cold indisputably kills more people than heat in temperate climates:
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/494582_2
Just look at the rates of death in any modern, Western country and you'll see that the death rate peaks in winter and is lower during the warmer months. In Britain, the average death rate is 40-50,000 higher during the winter months than the summer months. These are long-term averages, not anecdotal evidence from a single, unique event (Europe's summer of 2003) that was caused as much by official incompetence by a bureaucratic government that was largely understaffed due to widespread August holidays than the heat itself. The continental US deals with temperature extremes far larger than any Europe, with its mild Atlantic climate, ever deals with, and we don't have 20,000 people dropping dead in the period of a few weeks. The European "killer heat wave" would be known as "summer" in Kansas City, and as "a respite from the heat" in Dallas.
I'm certainly not in favor of massive climate change and we should be doing what we can to prevent it from occurring, but we also have to be honest about the fact that climate change, like any widespread change, cannot have only negative effects. We need to be able to determine in what areas are the negative effects outweighing the positive effects. For example, if we could overnight reset the carbon load of the atmosphere to any level we wanted, should we go back to pre-industrial levels (which might mean a much colder Northern Hemisphere) or would a level right about what we have right now (but no more) be a good balance between a slightly warmer Northern Hemisphere and relatively low sea-level impacts?
When we have the technology to actually peg global carbon to a specific ppm, what should that ppm be? Unless humans simply disappear, we will have some impact, so which direction should we push for? Is the goal stasis - a global zoo? That's not natural either - deserts and forests grow and shrink, new species appear and old ones go extinct naturally. With a technologically advanced species of billions of individuals, nothing will be "natural" in the historic sense. It will all come down to choices - and to do that right, we have to look at things honestly, without spin from either side.
I'm glad to see TreeHugger posting articles disputing climate change or in this case whether change is bad. It's too bad we are branding them as examples of right-wing lunacy rather than taking them seriously. I believe this article represents the opinion among most non-TreeHugger readers. Al Gore can fume that the evidence is overwhelming, but people tend to believe their own eyes. So far we don't see the impending apocolypse that Gore describes. It feels like the Earth is warming but it doesn't seem to be that bad. This past weekend we were wearing shorts in the Northeast and every one of my neighbors commented on what a "great" day it was.
It feels like the media only puts out alarmist pieces on climate change that don't connect with what viewers can see out their own windows. I think one-sided articles are counterproductive. Rather than presenting people with ready made conclusions, we need a genuine discussion with points presented for both sides that allow people to make up their own mind. Even though I don't agree with Myron Ebell, it made me think. I applaud his article.
"When you want to convert someone to your view, you go over to where he is standing, take him by the hand (mentally speaking), and guide him. You don’t stand across the room and shout at him; you don’t call him a dummy; you don’t order him to come over to where you are. You start where he is, and work from that position. That’s the only way to get him to budge."
—Thomas Aquinas, the great persuader
As a Minnesotan, I am complaining and will continue to complain as winters in Minneapolis become more like those in Kansas City. And I'm not alone.
Not all residents of northern climates just hunker down and "endure" cold temperatures. It's part of the reason we live here. It's part of who we are. Enduring this winter, with no snow and above-normal temperatures, has become nothing short of painful to my soul.
This article makes me sick. The idea of purposefully changing Earth's climate -- or just going along with unintentionally doing so -- to be more "comfortable" makes me sick. It's fine if you want to live your life in such a short-sighted way, but don't make the rest of us pay for it with you.
The writer and those who agree with him (and their corporate masters who are profiting in the short-term) would be much more useful if they used their words to tell the rest of us what it's like to live without a soul.
Climatic extremes kill people. Extreme cold and extreme heat are all part of the picture of climate changing . The mortalities have always been there: climate change intensifies and makes extremes more common is all.
Strongly suggest that we all have a look at the latest post on RealClimate for a rational statement of what indicates and what does not indicate climate change in the way of weather extremes. http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/01/el-nino-global-warming-and-anomalous-winter-warmth/
Greg provides a clear example of how we marginalize our viewpoints through name calling. Announcing that those who disagree with you make you sick and have no soul might rally the faithful but do nothing to pull the skeptics closer. If anything, you've pushed them further away.
"When you shoot an arrow of truth, dip its point in honey."
—Arab proverb
"When we have the technology to actually peg global carbon to a specific ppm, what should that ppm be?"
An optimistic thought, I wonder if this will ever be possible? I'm not expecting it.
First we have to master the technology to actually not affect gobal carbon.
If it ever comes true? Put it back to 1750 levels, leave it alone for 1000 years then have another look.
Mark says: "Greg provides a clear example of how we marginalize our viewpoints through name calling. Announcing that those who disagree with you make you sick and have no soul might rally the faithful but do nothing to pull the skeptics closer. If anything, you've pushed them further away."
..and while i do feel that it is better to use honey than vinegar, dude, you have to really read up on the bile that CEI is spewing these days... read Eco Freaks, check out Bureaucrash, they are fighting, dirty fighting, and while yes to reach mom & pop you ought not call them morons, i think you realy have to look at the playing field and the players and understand that nice does not always win. And know what? Extinction (what happens whne a specied doesn't adapt to climate change) isn't very nice either.....
@ Marc:
My opinion is that sometimes giving equal weight to two sides of the argument is a falsehood in itself because, in a lot of issues, there actually is one side that is more or less completely right and another that's completely wrong.
I could make a bunch of analogies, but I'm sure they'd only distract from the point - so global warming is happening and it's not good.
The problem with this talk of "well, it's not all bad" is that people tend to be taking a very short sighted view of things when they say that. Sure, the winters will be warmer in North America (which could presumably let us go out swimming in November), but is that REALLY, in ANY WAY, worth acid levels rising in oceans (making them more unliveable), water levels rising in oceans (making major cities around the coast more unliveable), extinction of more and more species, massive drought and desertification...
... not to mention bigger storms, larger floods and a host of other natural disasters that are definitely linked to global warming and the melting of glaciers?
It's kind of like watching your house burn down from the inside and going "well, at least I don't need to put on another sweater."
@ Marc:
My opinion is that sometimes giving equal weight to two sides of the argument is a falsehood in itself because, in a lot of issues, there actually is one side that is more or less completely right and another that's completely wrong.
I could make a bunch of analogies, but I'm sure they'd only distract from the point - so global warming is happening and it's not good.
The problem with this talk of "well, it's not all bad" is that people tend to be taking a very short sighted view of things when they say that. Sure, the winters will be warmer in North America (which could presumably let us go out swimming in November), but is that REALLY, in ANY WAY, worth acid levels rising in oceans (making them more unliveable), water levels rising in oceans (making major cities around the coast more unliveable), extinction of more and more species, massive drought and desertification...
... not to mention bigger storms, larger floods and a host of other natural disasters that are definitely linked to global warming and the melting of glaciers?
It's kind of like watching your house burn down from the inside and going "well, at least I don't need to put on another sweater."
When I started reading this TreeHugger rant I thought there might be a point. I had already seen the Forbes article and thought it was a reasonable posit for a discussion. Here is one situation where it's not just raw numbers but a chance for the humans to weigh-in with their opinion - TreeHuggers have never been shy about opinions in the past :)
Change is going to happen people - is the glass half full, or half empty?
To me the whole climate change issue boils down to something so hardwired into humans we can't even see it.
Humans don't like change.
What's so good about much of the world being so cold it only supports a handful of species?
I personally feel the climactic ideal was back in the days of the dinosaurs when there were forests on antartica. (what an ECOLOGICAL DISASTER that continent has become since then!)
I don't disagree that we are entering a period of rapid climate change. I find it sort of pathetic that humans are trying to rally their societies to hold on to some arbitrary climate ideal.
Some areas will get worse, some will get better. What's definate is that the world is changing.
Why not spend our efforts dealing with climate change instead of fighting it?