Death toll from global warming already on the rise
What's the cost of global warming?
Death toll from global warming already on the rise
Michael Yudell, Associate Professor, Drexel University School of Public Health
By Michael Yudell
What’s the cost of global warming?
A report released last week on the human costs of climate change estimates that 400,000 people on our planet died from its consequences in 2010. That number is expected to rise to almost 700,000 by 2030. Sadly, climate change denialists are likely to ignore these new findings. But they do so at their own peril. Deaths from diarrheal disease, hunger, meningitis, illnesses related to heat and cold or carried by insects, not to mention a plethora of environmental disasters (flooding, hurricanes) are all increasing as the planet warms.
The report, Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of a Hot Planet, was written by a team of scientists and policy makers from around the globe for the Climate Vulnerable Forum of DARA International, an organization that says it is “committed to improving the quality and effectiveness of aid for vulnerable populations suffering from conflict, disasters and climate change.” The forum is made up of countries around the globe that are most vulnerable to the environmental and economic impacts of climate change.
Another byproduct of climate change is economic losses – which, according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, are “estimated close to 1% of the global GDP for the year 2010, or 700 billion dollars.” The report says that these losses will be driven by an increase in weather-driven events like drought, floods, storms, and wildfires, as well as changes to the earth’s environment like desertification and sea-level rise.
No model is completely accurate – it is a prediction, after all – and questions about the over- or under-inflation of this one will likely be argued over on cable news and debated in the scientific literature.
Meanwhile, our climate is changing, and the Climate Vulnerability Monitor is another in a long and growing line of wake-up calls to a public that doesn’t seem to notice. Making matters worse, American politicians seem completely disengaged from the issue, if not openly hostile to it. As Mark Hertsgaard pointed out Thursday in The Daily Beast, “climate change continues to be the great unmentionable on Capitol Hill and the presidential campaign trail.”
It was 50 years ago this week that scientist Rachel Carson published her classic work Silent Spring, a book that exposed the hazards of chemical pesticides and helped galvanize the environmental movement, arguably preventing catastrophe. We’ve seen similar efforts to mobilize the public on the dangers of climate change. Bill McKibben’s 1989 classic The End of Nature was the first popular attempt to do so, and McKibben has worked tirelessly since to educate the public on this matter. Same for Al Gore, whose 2006 An Inconvenient Truth also served as a popular overview of the crisis. Recent polling indicates that 70 percent of Americans now believe the climate is changing.
When the public’s acceptance of a changing climate will finally spur action is anybody’s guess. But the longer we wait, the more we all suffer. How many will have to die before we start paying attention?
Read more about The Public's Health.
*Occupywallstreet does not even mention CO2 in its list of demands because of the bank-funded carbon trading stock markets run by corporations.
*Obama has not mentioned the crisis in the last two State of the Unions addresses.
*Julian Assange is of course a climate change denier.
*Canada killed Y2Kyoto with a freely elected climate change denying prime minister and nobody cared, especially the millions of scientists warning us of unstoppable warming
— mememine69
Every 40 years the government tries to scare people with talk of impending doom. When I was a kid back in the 50s they warned of the next ice age. They also made us hide under our school desks in anticipation of an Atomic Bomb attack from Russia.
Nowadays it's the melting ice in the Poles. Just scare tactics to get money from the people. You know that your taxes will have to rise to pay for a solution. Yeah, OK!
— MODEREATER- See no evil hear no evil. Keep closing your eyes while the climate changes. Ignore facts and studies and remain ignorant. Ignorance is a good way to live a life. — nick417
- Yes I am the ignorant one because I believe what the science community over whelming believes is happening, that is man made climate change. That is me, Mr. Ignorant — nick417
- If you can put fear into a population, you can control them much easier.— jmc
- Quiet, you are giving away the secret that every Religion hides from its believers........ — nick417
- @Modereater and jmc
That is the same argument I use against people who believe in Religion. Religion has absolutely zero proof that any of it is real and it is full of fear tactics to get you to believe it (i.e. hell). Yet millions of people believe in Religion, yet we laugh off climate change that is supported by a majority of scientists. Absolutely ridiculous.— nick417 - If there is no proof of Christianity or Judaism, then there is no proof that Julius Caesar existed. There are more, and older, extant manuscripts of biblical texts than histories of Caesar's Rome.
- Wow, the argument is that scientists around the globe agree that man made global warming is happening. Unfortunately, half of this country do not believe them and think they are lying or making it up. The ironic thing is these same people believe in Religion which has no proof of its existence. The poster said that the gov't uses fear so people will believe in global warming. This is the same thing Religion does to brain wash people into believing the fairy tales. The problem is man made global warming is happening right now in front of us all whereas Religion is a bunch of fairy tales that no one living has ever seen. — nick417
- Based on your logic, Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, the Revolutionary & Civil Wars along with the War of 1812 are a bunch of fairy tales "because no one living has ever 'seen' them." You sir are dumber than a moron. Hopefully you have no children. — bad joe s
- I estimate 500,000 were killed by the actions of their own governments in 2010. Prove me wrong.
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"Deaths from diarrheal disease, hunger, meningitis, illnesses related to heat and cold or carried by insects, not to mention a plethora of environmental disasters (flooding, hurricanes) are all increasing as the planet warms."
Because these didn't exist before climate change. And it couldn;t have anything to do with food shortages and or the population increase.
— RG - you can blame almost everything on "climate change". keep the population misinformed, while you use taxes to give breaks to lobbyists and well-connected entrepreneurs.— the_chief
- Man-made global warming is either the biggest or the 2nd biggest fraud ever perpetrated upon mankind. The other is Obama as savior. We can call them 1a and 1b.
Like everything else in life, follow the money. The U.N. wants your your "carbon credit" dollars for what? So the leftist elites that inhabit the rats nest known as the U.N. in NYC can get rich. The E.U. also wants your carbon credit tax dollars because they are so more enlightened than the ugly Americans (except those of you who worship at the Al Gore alter of man-made climate change.) Oh man, there I go again using the phrase "climate change" since man-made global warming has been debunked as junk science and strictly a wealth re-distribution movement by at least as many climatologists and meteorologists as the leftists claim prove it.
As far as the doubters of religion, that is why it is called "faith."
Follow the f**king money you dopes. Soros, E.U. leftist bureaucrats and technocrats, and all the useful idiots will get rich while you become the subservient fools you deserve to become in order to hope that the Obama's of the world can make the sea levels recede even if they don't need to recede, etc.
Mother nature is too big and too powerful to manipulate or F with anyway.— Paul McGinley
