Dr. Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. The Copenhagen Consensus Center is a think-tank that researches the smartest ways to do good. For this work, Lomborg was named one of TIME magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world. His numerous books include “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet”, “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, “Cool It”, “How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place”, “The Nobel Laureates’ Guide to the Smartest Targets for the World 2016-2030” and “Prioritizing Development: A Cost Benefit Analysis of the UN’s SDGs”.
The heresy of heat and cold deaths
A group of campaign researchers try hilariously, ineptly — and depressingly —to suppress facts
TL;DR. A blog, claiming to check facts, does not like that I cite this fact: the rising temperatures in the past two decades have caused more heat deaths, but at the same time avoided even more cold deaths. Since this inconvenient fact is true, they ignore to check it. Instead, they fabricate an absurd quote, which is contradicted in the very article they claim to ‘fact-check’.
166,000 avoided deaths
Cold deaths vastly outweigh heat deaths. This is common knowledge in the academic literature and for instance the Lancet finds that each year, almost 600,000 people die globally from heat but 4.5 million from cold.
Moreover, when the researchers include increasing temperatures of 0.26°C/decade (0.47°F/decade), they find heat deaths increase, but cold deaths decrease more than twice as much:
Or here from the article:
The total impact of more than 116,000 more heat deaths each year and almost 283,000 fewer cold deaths year is that by now, the temperature rise since 2000 means that for temperature-related mortality we are seeing 166,000 fewer deaths each year.
Climate Feedback
However, this is obviously heretical information, so the self-appointed blog, Climate Feedback, wants it purged. Now, if they were just green campaigning academics writing on the internet, that might not matter much. But unfortunately, this group has gained the opportunity to censor information on Facebook, so I have to spend some time showing you their inept, often hilarious, and mostly nefarious arguments. The group regularly makes these sorts of bad-faith arguments, and apparently appealing their Facebook inditements simply goes back to the same group. It is rarely swayed by any argument.
They never test the claim
Climate Feedback seemingly wants to test my central claim from the Lancet article that global warming now saves 166,000 people each year, from my oped in New York Post:
But notice what is happening right after the quote “Global warming saves 166,000 lives each year”. They append it with something that is not in the New York Post. You have to read much further to realize that they are actually trying — and failing — to paste in an entirely separate Facebook post, which addressed a different scientific article.
It turns out, Climate Feedback never addresses the 166,000 people saved in their main text. “166” only occurs three times in the article: twice stating my claim and once after their main text in a diatribe by an ocean-physics professor, complete with personal insults. In it, the professor doesn’t contest the 166,000 avoided deaths. Instead, he falsely claims that I am presenting the 166,000 as the overall mortality impact of climate change, which is absurd: anyone reading my piece understand that I’m talking about the impact of temperature-related mortality.
Perhaps most tellingly, Climate Feedback has asked one of the co-authors of the 166,000 Lancet study (as they also very proudly declare in their text). And this professor, Antonio Gasparrini, does not only not challenge but doesn’t even discuss my analysis of the 166,000 avoided deaths.
Climate Feedback not only doesn’t present any reasonable argument against the 166,000 avoided deaths. It has actually asked one of the main authors of the study to comment and they have nothing.
In conclusion, Climate Feedback simply has no good arguments against the 166,000 people saved, and yet they pillory my work publicly in an attempt to censor data they deem inconvenient. . That academics play along in this charade of an inquisition dressed up ‘fact-check’ is despicable.
Rest of Climate Feedback’s claim is ludicrously wrong
So, beyond the claim of 166,000, Climate Feedback is alleging that I say the following: “those claiming that climate change is causing heat-related deaths are wrong because they ignore that the population is growing and becoming older.”
This is a fabricated quote. I never say this. Climate Feedback has simply made up a false statement, dressing it as a quote of mine, even though I never claimed anything like this. This is incredibly deceptive: it is ludicrous to insist that I should argue that it is wrong to claim “climate change is causing heat-related deaths.” I simply do not argue that “climate change is not causing heat-related deaths”
Up above I exactly argued that climate change causes more heat deaths. My graph shows that climate change causes more heat deaths.
And I even point out exactly that the temperature increases cause heat deaths in my New York Post piece:
“As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year.” Sorry, Climate Feedback, but the rest of your claim is straight-out, full-on stupid.
Evaluation of Climate Feedback’s review
So Climate Feedback is simply wrong in asserting that I somehow say climate change is not causing heat-related deaths — because I do say that, even in my New York Post article:
Climate Feedback doesn’t show anywhere in their main text how the 166,000 avoided deaths are wrong. They even ask one of the main authors of the study, and that professor says nothing.
Conclusion
Climate Feedback’s deceptive hit job is long on innuendo and bad arguments (see a few, further examples below). But the proof really is in the pudding.
They make two central arguments. First, that my claim of “Global warming saves 166,000 lives each year” is incorrect. Yet, they never address this in their main text. And while they get information from one of the main authors of the Lancet study that is the basis for the 166,000 lives saved, they get no criticism of the argument.
Second, they assert that I somehow say that it is wrong to claim climate change is causing more heat-related deaths, which is just ludicrous because I make that very point, even in my New York Post article:
Verdict: Climate Feedback is fundamentally wrong in both their two main claims.
Additional point: It really shouldn’t be necessary to say, but you can’t make a ‘fact-check’ page, write page after page of diatribe, ignore the first main point and bungle the other main point, and then hope at the end nobody notices, and call my arguments wrong. Or, at least, you shouldn’t be able to get away with such nonsense.
Two examples of the inadequate arguments in the rest of Climatefeedback
Lomborg doesn’t have a time machine
Climate Feedback asks professor Gasparrini, co-author of the Lancet study above. He doesn’t cover anything on the 166,000 deaths avoided. Instead, his text entirely discusses a 2016 WSJ article where I used his 2015-article but he criticizes me for not citing his 2017 article:
The reason I didn’t cite his 2017-article is of course that I didn’t have access to a time machine when I wrote my article in 2016.
Indeed, I have corresponded with Professor Gasparrini several times later about his 2017-article. And yes, his 2017-study indeed shows that at very high emissions, additional heat deaths will likely outweigh avoided cold deaths towards the end of the century. But his study also shows that all regions see additional heat deaths vastly exceeded by extra avoided cold deaths from the 1990s to the 2010s — the exact point I’ve made here.
Serious academics take into account population growth and aging
In a refreshing comment, Climate Feedback asks Philip Staddon, Principal Lecturer in Environment and Sustainability from the University of Gloucestershire to chime in. He says, that I’m wrong to criticize the lack of standardization from population growth and aging, because clearly “all serious academic research already takes account of population growth, demographics and ageing”:
I, of course, entirely agree with Staddon, that all serious academic research should do that. But the research that I have criticized has exactly not done so, resulting in unsupported claims. So, for instance, in the Facebook post that Climate Feedback discusses, I show how CNN believes that a study shows a 74% increase caused by the climate crisis:
This is based on not adjusting for population and age, and is actually from the press release of the paper (and in table S6 in the paper).
Likewise, Staddon might have noticed that a very high-profile editorial in the world’s top medical journals made that very amateurish mistake. They argue that temperature increases over the past 20 years have increased deaths among people 65 and older:
But they cite numbers that are not adjusted for age or population — indeed the world’s population of people above age 65 has increased almost as much:
I absolutely agree with Principal Lecturer Philip Staddon on the necessity of making sure that good arguments in the public sphere are adjusted for population and aging before blaming climate. Unfortunately, they often aren’t
After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.
Red Deer River Naturalists (RDRN), in partnership with the Red Deer and District Community Foundation (RDDCF), has established a $500,000 Red Deer River Naturalists Endowment Fund For Nature with funds received from a generous bequest. This Endowment Fund will ensure the long-term sustainability of the RDRN organization and enable it to engage in important conservation projects throughout Central Alberta.
RDRN Interim President Rick Tallas comments “Endowments like this will bring together community to protect and enhance our environment for the betterment of all future generations.” Going forward, RDRN will be seeking out creative, forward-thinking and timely ways to invest these funds. The organization has created a matrix to assess future potential projects and funding opportunities will be announced as they are developed.
RDRN is also actively seeking out volunteers for committees, and representatives for the board itself, as wisdom and expertise are needed in shepherding the organization further into the twenty-first century. The future for RDRN is wide open with conservation and nature-based opportunities and the board invites interested members of the Central Alberta public in joining in.
Receiving such a generous gift has given RDRN cause for serious and lengthy reflection upon the conscientious and prudent use of the funds. These extensive conversations within the RDRN board resulted in the $500,000 endowment fund at the Red Deer and District Community Foundation (RDDCF). The Red Deer and District Community Foundation is an independent, community-based organization that focuses on philanthropy, grants and leadership. “RDRN is grateful to the Red Deer and District Community Foundation for its guidance in this process,” says Interim President Rick Tallas. “The Red Deer River Naturalists trust that with the money invested with the Red Deer and District Community Foundation, the long-term sustainability of our organization and its conservation goals will be ensured alongside fiscal responsibility.”
#Just out of his electric Jaguar (because nothing says “I’m staying in touch with the average person” like a Jaguar), Justin Trudeau took the stage at the Conference of the Parties (COP26) meeting in Glasgow yesterday.
Trudeau’s message in Glasgow: his extreme green agenda is about to get, well, more extreme.
Here are the “highlights”:
– a carbon tax set to reach 170 dollars a ton in less than a decade. (Over four times its current price);
– a second carbon tax called the “Clean Fuel Standard”, or CFS, that he sneaked by with little notice as a regulation;
– a tax on methane that is, in effect, a third carbon tax for anyone using natural gas (and this represents more than a third of our energy in Canada);
– billions in handouts to cities to buy electric buses that then don’t work well in the Canadian winter (and in some cases need polluting diesel generators to be heated);
– billions to the provinces for electric vehicle charging station subsidies so that people wealthy enough to buy an electric car can find a place to charge it;
– billions in handouts to an international fund to help other countries reduce their emissions with the same;
And that’s not all, even at a time when the country is massively in debt and more so every day, when the cost of living is rising dramatically and banks are now signaling interest rate rises are coming, when Canadians are trying to come out of over a year and a half of unprecedented lockdowns and start society up again……..
Now the Prime Minister says Canada will put an absolute cap on oil and gas emissions, and lower that cap every year.
All these announcements might seem like mere noise to most of us. This is because we don’t appreciate the day-to-day implications – who has the time to figure out what all of this means? And it sounds good, doesn’t it? You know, because “green.” Because it’s 2015, um, no – because it’s 2021.
But Canadians need to know these latest installments of Trudeau’s green agenda have very real implications. And yesterday’s announcement should drive the point home.
If you don’t allow greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to rise, how do you build infrastructure projects? How do you grow your economy? How do you deliver oil and gas exports to nations that want them and can’t believe we won’t export them? How do you get our oil and gas – some of the most cleanly produced in the world – to places where people still heat with much dirtier, much less efficient, much less healthy wood and dung? The fact is you don’t.
Trudeau’s announcement is his most powerful signal yet that he will kill the Canadian economy to satisfy his ideological green agenda. Our lives are about to become significantly more expensive.
And this doesn’t have to happen.
But Trudeau is making it happen.
Will resource company CEOs finally stand-up?
Will all those executives bending over backwards to show how committed they are to being “green” finally defend the interests of their shareholders – all of us who have their stocks in our RSPs and pension funds – and say “enough is enough”? Will our energy executives start to express even the slightest interest in the hundreds of thousands of Canadians currently in their employ – people who will lose their jobs as a result of Trudeau’s policies?
Life is going to get even less affordable. But wow, that electric Jaguar is a nice-looking car isn’t it?
An 18 year veteran of the House of Commons, Dan is widely known in both official languages for his tireless work on energy pricing and saving Canadians money through accurate price forecasts. His Parliamentary initiatives, aimed at helping Canadians cope with affordable energy costs, led to providing Canadians heating fuel rebates on at least two occasions.
Widely sought for his extensive work and knowledge in energy pricing, Dan continues to provide valuable insights to North American media and policy makers. He brings three decades of experience and proven efforts on behalf of consumers in both the private and public spheres. Dan is committed to improving energy affordability for Canadians and promoting the benefits we all share in having a strong and robust energy sector.
