Climate Change and Human Health

So how does global warming affect disease, starvation and death?

Happy reading. Check back often. It is kept up to date.

A warming world does not lead to an increase in the spread of disease.

A warming world does not lead to more starvation from droughts and famine.

A warming world does not lead to more deaths. In fact, warmth kills less than cold. See the evidence from Spain.

Severe weather killed more people in the past.

We should fear a cooling world not a warming one. It is harder to grow stuff in ice.

So what is the story on the Himalayan glaciers?

Melt or grow?

Stable  since 1992 despite large increase in CO2

Soot from India and China melting glaciers not CO2 emissions

Both Roman and Medieval warming occurred in Himalayas

Himalayan snow job 2005. WWF says glaciers rapidly receding

Glacier recession not due to CO2

Himalayan glaciers retreated 2km

No ice loss in last 10 years

Growing glaciers in the Himalayas?

Sweater weather in Florida in April

And we don't mean sweater as in sweaty. Southern Florida gets a chill in April. "The cool air comes courtesy of a strong low-pressure system combined with a wind pattern that delivered cold air from Canada, rare conditions for this time of year"

Damn canucks!

Guess the heat trapping gas CO2 has left for a while. Wonder where it goes for vacation?

CO2 was exhaled during the composition of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it.

Anti CAGW Evidence

Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?

Au contraire

Think again

Nope

Unprecedented? Hardly.

Catastrophic?  No.

Myth? Yes.

Fallacies.

There is lots of evidence to invalidate the claims of alarmists.

Three critical ones:

1. As the world warms the energy leaving the earth's atmosphere increases contrary to the heat-trapping scenario favored by the alarmists and the IPCC.
2. The absence of the hot spot predicted to appear in the tropical troposphere.
3. The inability of the models to predict the Siberian High.

Put a fork in it. CAGW is done like dinner.

What's so bad about a warmer world?

Here is a top ten list from Chip Knappenberger at Master Resource.

Things keep getting better.

CO2 was exhaled during the composition of this post. No living thing was harmed. Some even liked it.

Clouds provide negative feedback

The effect of clouds on climate.

Henrik Svensmark's documentary on climate change and cosmic rays. 

Are cosmic rays responsible for cloud formation in the earth's atmosphere?

Do variations in the magnetic field of the sun influence the number of cosmic rays that enter the earth's atmosphere?

Active Sun = less cosmic rays = less clouds = warmer

Less active Sun = more cosmic rays = more clouds = colder

Low clouds reflect sunlight back into space which means a cooler earth climate.

Think of a hot summer day and you are standing in the sun. When a cloud drifts in front of the Sun you feel relief. You feel less heat from the sun. So does the Earth's surface.

There must be aerosol particles (ionization) in the air in order for water to condense in the atmosphere. Cosmic rays help to form these aerosols.

It is an elegant theory of climate change that links us to the universe. Climate change is caused from firces outside the Earth.

Or maybe not. The Sun remains central. More unsettled science. Isn't this fun??

Previously: Severe Weather in 1911

 In 1911 CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was less than 315 ppm. Today it is 394ppm. Do these weather events sound familiar. o we have them today? Can we conclude that CO2 concentration has nothing to do with them? They occur with low and high CO2 concentrations. The fourth one down is interesting don't you think? Same scare today as in 1911 and we are still here. Would we read of infant deaths during the heat waves of today?

1911: Niagra Falls Completley Freezes From Extreme Cold
1911: Heat Wave In Queensland, Australia Hits 120 Degrees
1911: Drought Is Prevalent Throughout England
1911: UK Climate Expert & Other Scientists Say Human Wireless Communications Are Causing Climate Change
1911: 2 Million Expected To Perish In China's Famine
1911: 88 Inches of Rain In 4 Days Submerges Philippines
1911: Oklahoma's Terrible Tornado Brings "Devastation & Death"
1911: Australian Town Leveled By Cyclone
1911: UK Crippled By Two Month Severe Heat Wave & Drought
1911: Heat Wave In Berlin Claims 36 Lives; Paris Hits 100 Degrees
1911: Heat Wave In Melbourne Sets November Record
1911: Terrific Heat Wave Leads To 53 Infant Deaths In Chicago
1911: Czechs Swelter From Terrible Heat Wave
1911: Vancouver Temperatures Reach 38-Year High
1911: Heat Wave Causes 305 Infant Deaths In Leipzig, Germany
1911: At Least 1,200 Babies Die From Heat Wave In London Over Two Weeks
1911: 380 Die During One Day of Great East Coast Heat Wave
1911: Heat Wave Reaches 149 Degrees In Death Valley, Say Residents
1911: Montreal Reachers Highest Temperature Ever Recorded During Heat Wave
1911: Heat Wave Claims 150 In Chicago; 41 In Boston, 53 In Philadelphia
1911: Forest Fires In Newfoundland Cover Immense Area
1911: Grave News About Swiss Glaciers: "They are disappearing"

Discussing the Coming Climate Crisis With Heidi Cullen

"The second way that scientists sort out human contribution to global warming is that we run climate models."

HADCUT4 confirms models are useless

Models overestimate climate sensitivity

NAS confirms Billions wasted on climate models

Here is a model that actually seems to work - it is not from the IPCC and it is NOT based on CO2

Empirical evidence proves IPCC models' positive feedback assumption is incorrect

Models can't predict snowfall

Ocean Heat Content: Climate Models Continue To Fail Miserably At Predicting OHC

The IPCC's Killing Machines: Unable To Predict Accurately, IPCC Climate Models Ultimately Cause Deaths


Chinese Research Documents The Major Failings of IPCC Climate Model Physics - Models Are Wrong

Crunching The "Global Warming" Numbers: Climate Models Horrendous At Predictions, Both Future & Past


New Study: IPCC Climate Models Unable To Predict Arctic Warming With Any Accuracy

"Notorious" Bias Affects IPCC Climate Models - Unable To Successfully Predict Abrupt Climate Changes


IPCC Models Spectacularly Fail Reality Test - Key Predicted Components 'Exaggerated' & 'Overestimated'


This Is What Your Brain Looks Like On Climate Models: Missing Reality

Australian Study Proves Major IPCC Failure: Climate Models Predicted An Increase In Severe Weather - Didn't Happen


Lack of Ocean Heat Affirms Massive Failure By IPCC Climate Models, Latest NOAA Data Shows

Preeminent IPCC Scientist Conducts Research That Reveals Huge Problems With Climate Models

Massive Climate Model Failure: IPCC Models Unable To Predict Pacific Ocean Variability With Any Confidence 

IPCC Expert Reviewer To Young Researchers: Beware Climate Models, They Make You Look Stooopid & Lazy 

Prediction That Global Warming Causes More Storms Fails Empirical Testing - IPCC Climate Models Wrong


Peer-Reviewed Study Determines Climate Models Wrong: U.S. Flooding Has Not Increased As Predicted

New Research By Atmospheric Scientists Discover That Storm Models Currently Used Are Wrong

UN's IPCC Assessment On Glacier Movement Found To Be Robustly Incorrect - Climate Models Are Wrong Too 

Latest Satellite Measurements Confirm Climate Models Wildly Overestimate Atmospheric Warming 

Major IPCC Climate Scientist Publishes Paper Listing Significant Failures of Climate Models

Last Week Had The Global Warming Alarmists Admit To Zero Warming Since 1998, Now An Admission That Models Don't Work   

Phil Jones? "Warming Over Last 15 Years Is Insignificant, Immaterial, Irrelevant, and Inconsistent With Climate Models" 

Researchers Pinpoint Why IPCC Climate Models Fail At Winter Precipitation Predictions: Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation 

Latest Expert Study: Climate Models Unable To Correctly Simulate Tropical Ocean Warming

New Peer-Reviewed Study Reveals Why Climate Models Are Lousy At Predicting Minimum Temperatures  

IPCC Climate Models Underestimate Solar Impact On Global Warming By 6x, EU Astro-Physicists Discover 

Gee, maybe they are good for something after all. Check out the next one.

Govt Climate Models Finally Confirm Skeptics' Prediction: Controlling CO2 Emissions Will Not Work 

Latest Water Vapor Evidence Confirms IPCC Climate Models Are Wrong, Global Warming Hypothesis Opposite of Reality 

IPCC Predicted Warming Would Cause Greater Rainfall: Indian Scientists Determine Models Are Wrong 

Scientists Test IPCC Climate Models' Projections of Cyclone Activity Versus Reality: Models Fail, Again 

California Mountain Snowfall: Climate Scientists Confirm IPCC "Consensus" Climate Models Are Wrong


Researchers Find That IPCC Climate Models Are of 'Insufficient Capability' - Translation? They're Crappy

So Heidi, how are the models doing so far? There does seem to be a consensus here though. Had enough? There are many more studies which come to the same conclusion. The science is settled.

BTW, Latest NASA Data Confirms That Global Warming Is Not Unequivocal, Not Irreversible, Not 
Accelerating, Not Significant

Her first method is to determine which CO2 molecules come from human activity which does not establish cause and effect. CO2 as cause remains an assumption. The failure of the models lends credence to the idea that CO2 is not an important contributor to the temperature rise experienced in the latter part of the 20th century. 


“The data doesn’t matter. We’re not basing our recommendations on the data. We’re basing them on the climate models.” - Prof. Chris Folland, Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research

 “The models are convenient fictions that provide something very useful.” - Dr David Frame, Climate modeler, Oxford University 

Hayhoe Hayhoe

Texas temperature data from 1895 to 2011 from NCDC.

Perhaps Katherine Hayhoe needs to review the climate history of the State that she lives in.

White Christmas for Lubbock

Here is the rest of the list for Katherine's edification and education.

"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" – Richard Feynman

Perhaps things aren't so bad, Katherine.

Earth Day aka, Harold Camping Day

The original Earth Day (1970) predictions have become a joke just like the prognostications of Harold Camping except perhaps to his true believers. Those of us who have caught on to the fear mongering of our leaders (do they feel obligated to dare people to see that they have no clothes?) can reflect back and have a hoot at the dire predictions that have gone before us or accompanied us on our journey through life. Senator Gaylord Nelson predicted that by 1995 “between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.” I understand that date has passed and been pushed further into the future. They don't give up. Sooner or later 'they' might be right. Gaylord passed in 2005 so he did live to witness the folly of his prediction. 

Kenneth Watt had some good ones back in 1970 including this doozy:

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”
• Kenneth Watt, Ecologist


Can we speculate that present trends didn't continue?

Here are some good omens from oracle Paul Ehrlich of Population Bomb fame:

“The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s the world will undergo famines . . . [AND] hundreds of millions of people [including Americans] are going to starve to death.” (1968)
“Smog disasters” in 1973 might kill 200,000 people in New York and Los Angeles. (1969)
“I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” (1969)
“Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion.” (1976)

How much pain have they caused us, the evils that never happened. ~ Thomas Jefferson

But wait! We have people today who are predicting the end of the world and they are saying it is all the fault of CO2 produced by our burning of fossil fuels which is overheating our planet to the detriment of life on earth.

"Current lifestyles and consumption patterns of the affluent middle class - involving high meat intake, use of fossil fuels, appliances, air-conditioning, and suburban housing - are not sustainable." ~Maurice Strong


"Now is the time to draw up a master plan for sustainable growth and world development based on global allocation of all resources and a new global economic system. Ten or twenty years form today it will probably be too late." ~Club of Rome: Mankind at the Turning Point 1974


Now that is scary! Except that 1994 has passed and we are still here. Why should we believe the next prediction of doom? The fearmongers haven't got one right yet.

Let's look at James Hansen's predictions from 1990 regarding the current fear crisis de jour - CAGW. Hansen came up with his three future temperature projections based on assumptions about how the world might respond to CO2 emission cutbacks. Scenario A assumed no cutbacks and predicted a year 2100 temperature of  X. Scenario B assumed cutbacks to a constant level of emissions and predicted a year 2100 temperature of Y with Y less than X. Scenario C assumed, unrealistically but it provided a base point, that we would have zero human emissions after the year 2000 with a temperature in 2100 of Z, with Z less than Y. The reality is that temperature measurements are tracking below Hansen's Scenario C. This means that the models vastly over-estimate the sensitivity of the climate to the presence of CO2 in the atmosphere. This is good news and the alarmists are still batting 1.000 for failed predictions. The fearmongers still haven't got one right. Is it unreasonable to expect them to score before we go off wasting billions of dollars of taxpayer money on what turns out to be a non-problem?

CO2 emissions in the US have not been able to stop the decreasing temperatures in the US over the last 15 years? This is a disconnect between CAGW theory and reality. Is it not self-delusional to maintain a belief in CAGW in the face of this evidence?

But they do reveal their true intentions with their emphasis on sustainability and a new economic order. If only there were fewer people we wouldn't be is such dire straits. Hmmm. In the year the Mayan calendar ends should we adopt their practice of human sacrifice to make life more sustainable for those left behind?

"...the resultant ideal sustainable population is hence more than 500 million people but less than one billion." ~ Club of Rome


Any volunteers? Will the Club of Rome lead by example?


In 2011, Harold Camping, was given prime time news attention by the MSM for his prediction of the end of the world on May 21, 2011. When, happily, that didn't occur, undaunted, he revised his admittedly erroneous timeline to October 21, 2011. We are still here so we know how that worked out for him. It seems to me that our environmentalists deserve to be recognized for their own predictive abilities by immortalizing Earth Day with a more accurate moniker in honor of Harold Camping. We could have counter rallies to mock the unscientific fear mongering of HC impersonators. Perhaps we could ask them to put their money where their mouth is and collect a few bets with winnings going to charity. We could all dress like Harold and wear Harold masks to herald the arrival of the new spring ritual of mocking the new set of ominous predictions. Some of us could dress like Johnny Carson's Carnac while we mimic the importation of portentous predictions from the universe through an envelope. 

It will be great fun to impersonate Al Gore and make grave revelations of a future climate apocalypse with 20 feet of rising sea levels. We could show pictures of airports in the low lying Maldives to illustrate how the island nations are preparing for an oceanic uprising. How about the advertising in Vanuatu (backup here) that urges us to visit and get away from global warming?

We could show pictures of early blooming cherry trees in Washington due to warm spring weather and late blooming cherry trees in Japan due to cold weather in the same year in the same month and blame them both on too much CO2 in the atmosphere. Our SUVs are confusing the cherry trees. Stop that! 

Or how about pictures of celebrity environmentalists and their beachfront property?

We can illustrate the increasing temperature trend by selecting the Holocene maximum as our starting point and drawing a downward sloping line to the temperatures of today.It was warmer in the past? How did that happen without human additions of CO2 to the atmosphere?

Or how about satellite pictures that show no ice loss in the Himalayas for the last 10 years. 

Growing glaciers like the Hubbard in Alaska are always great fun to watch as they calve. Can we use this to prove that all glaciers are receding? Or would that cause confusion? Then there are the temperature records for the South Pole that show decreasing temps for the last 30 years that give the lie to global warming. 

We could show how CO2 is simultaneously causing record snow and cold in Europe and creating balmy conditions in Southern Ontario and the NE USA in winter 2011-2012. That heat trapping gas CO2 can do magical things like suck all the heat out of Europe and make it disappear only to have it reappear in North America. Does it use the jet stream as its conveyor? Amazing! We didn't realize that the greenhouse effect behaved in that manner. Perhaps this is a new scientific discovery. 

We could illustrate the settled science by pointing out all the places in the world that scientists and journalists have pegged as the ground zero of climate change, THE place that will be hardest hit by global warming. 

Various predictions for an ice free Arctic can be trotted out to further exemplify the consensus among scientists. A google search using 'ice free Arctic' as the search term will net a plethora of different dates when we can expect the unprecedented event to occur. Except that even if it does happen it won't be unprecedented.

We could dramatize the year 2000 prediction that "children won't know what snow is" by showing pictures from the 2012 European winter. We could illustrate that our current extreme weather is clearly unprecedented by showing newspaper clippings from the 1920s and 1930s that demonstrate the people back then were just as concerned about a melting Arctic as we are today. Wait, what? 

We can demonstrate how climate change is accelerating by showing the deceleration in contemporary sea level rise coming from the satellite data. 

We can reveal how extreme weather is increasing by showing how F3-F5 hurricane activity is slowing down as CO2 increases. We could reinforce that point with the graphs showing the decrease in severe tornadoes as CO2 increases. Similar trends can be found for forest fires, famine, drought and floods. Can we conclude that as CO2 increases in the atmosphere the weather gets better? Does it help to point out that the US hasn't been hit by a major (F3-F5) hurricane since 2005, the longest period without a major hit since records have been kept? Should that be happening as CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere?

How do we tell the difference between a low CO2 concentration snow storm, hurricane or tornado and a high CO2 concentration one? If they happen now and they happened in the past when CO2 atmospheric concentration was lower then perhaps the correct conclusion is that CO2 has naught to do with it.

And if we really want to cause mass confusion in the ranks of global warming alarmists we can show the results of the Ibuki satellite that the Japanese sent up to map the net CO2 emissions around the planet. It discovered that the industrialized countries are net CO2 sinks and that the developing countries are net CO2 emitters which is, of course, the exact opposite of what it was supposed to find according to the CO2-from-fossil-fuel-burning-is-bad school of thought. Oops, that's embarrassing. Better not mention it. Shhhhh!


CO2 is a trace gas (.039% of the atmosphere) essential to life on earth. Plants love it. We exhale it daily. And that is the real problem as some people see it.


"For the planet’s sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we’re doomed." ~ Susan Blakemore, science writer

“It’s a morbid observation, but if everyone on earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem.”
— Newsweek Senior Writer Jerry Adler, December 31, 1990 issue.

Or we can hope for an epidemic.  And if people who think like that gain control we are doomed. 


FEAR is promoted. GUILT is cast in a supporting role. Alarmists peddle them. They use them to manipulate people to march their way to Rio and global governance.

"The objective, clearly enunciated by the leaders of UNCED, is to bring about a change in the present system of independent nations. The future is to be World Government with central planning by the United Nations. Fear of environmental crises - whether real or not - is expected to lead to – compliance” ~ Dixy Lee Ray, former liberal Democrat governor of State of Washington, U.S. 

 And they know they are selling snake oil.


"The only way to get our society to truly change is to frighten people with the possibility of a catastrophe." ~ Professor Daniel Botkin


“We’ve got to ride the global-warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.” ~ Timothy Wirth, former US Senator


"A global climate treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the greenhouse effect." ~ Richard Benedict, former US bureaucrat

Pinky: Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?

Brain: The same thing we do every night, Pinky - try to take over the world!

Be bright. Show your might. Push back your fright. Improve your sight. Ignite the light.



Let's track this year's predictions of future doom and hold then up to the light of reality just like we did with the 1970 crop of crystal ball divinations. We can all use a good chuckle. 


Let's see them make a successful prediction before we go off spending billions of dollars on a non-problem. 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed — and hence clamorous to be led to safety — by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken

If the media is in full fearmonger roll we know we are safe. They haven't been right yet.

Weird weather caused by CO2?

Thanks to Jimbo, a poster at the blog Watts Up With That, for the following refutation of the title inquiry.

Weird weather – no trends
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.776/full

Historically low global tropical cyclone activity
http://www.agu.org/journals/gl/gl1114/2011GL047711/2011GL047711.pdf

Floods – no increase in frequency, less intense
http://itia.ntua.gr/en/docinfo/1128/

Extreme weather events – no trend
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021

Global precipitation – no trends
http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2005GL025393

Rate of sea level rise – deceleration over 80 years
http://www.jcronline.org/doi/abs/10.2112/JCOASTRES-D-10-00157.1

Forest fires – decreasing frequency
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.2307/3237261/abstract

Forest fires of the past 

Read the comments here for more forest fires of the past

NOAA confirms that 96% of worst tornadoes occurred before 1960
http://www.c3headlines.com/2011/07/noaa-states-that-96-of-deadliest-us-tornadoes-occurred-before-1960-prior-to-the-global-warming-hyste.html

Weird weather caused by rising CO2 - puhleeze

Let's see Bill McKibben connect these dots. More historical evidence of weird weather. The additional links in the post are worth exploring.

Xibalba: Place of Fright

"The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man." ~Club of Rome


"Human beings, as a species, have no more value than slugs." ~ John Davis editor of Earth First!


"A cancer is an uncontrolled multiplication of cells; the population explosion is an uncontrolled multiplication of people. We must shift our efforts from the treatment of the symptoms to the cutting out of the cancer." ~ Paul Ehrlich


"The extinction of the human species may not only be inevitable but a good thing." ~ Christopher Manes, writer for Earth First!


“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95% decline from present levels, would be ideal.” ~ Ted Turner


Any volunteers? Ted?


It is difficult to believe that there are people who actually subscribe to the beliefs expressed above. But there they are and they are not alone. They would have fit right in to the Mayan culture of ritual human sacrifice. Appease Gaia.


Xibalba was the Mayan concept of the underworld. It sounds like our esteemed brethren who hate their fellow humans with such passion would like to establish Xibalba right here on Earth. The people above do not see themselves as part of the 95% but as part of the 5% who will eliminate the 95%. Population control means people control which means control over procreation, control of resources, control of the food supply and what goes in it, control over disease treatment, control, control, control....


"Childbearing should be a punishable crime against society, unless the parents hold a government license. All potential parents should be required to use contraceptive chemicals, the government issuing antidotes to citizens chosen for childbearing." ~ David Brower, founder of the Sierra Club


"For the planet’s sake, I hope we have bird flu or some other thing that will reduce the population, because otherwise we’re doomed." ~ Susan Blakemore, science writer


"I suspect that eradicating small pox was wrong. It played an important part in balancing ecosystems." ~ John Davis editor of Earth First!

“The extinction of Homo Sapiens would mean survival for millions, if not billions, of Earth-dwelling species. Phasing out the human race will solve every problem on Earth - social and environmental.” ~ Ingrid Newkirk, former PETA president

Can we start with you Ingrid? 


Pinky: What are we going to do tonight, Brain?
Brain: same thing we do every night, Pinky, try to take over the world!


Brain: Pinky, are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Pinky: I think so Brain. People are sheeple. But where are we going to find 6.65 billion coffins at this time of night?

Jaguar symbol of Xibalba