Written for Bacon’s Rebellion by James A. Bacon
Old global warmist spin: as temperatures rise, millions will die.
New global warmist spin: OK, we’ll admit that rising temperatures have resulted in fewer overall deaths due to the decline in cold temperatures, which kill more people than hot temperatures. But rich developed-world countries in northern climes will benefit the most from rising temperatures while poor developing countries closer to the equator will suffer the most.
Washington Post writer Harry Stevens acknowledges that a peer-reviewed paper recently published in Lancet Planetary Health found that the number of people dying from cold is declining faster than the number of people dying from heat is increasing.
Oh, no, what’s a climate hysteric to do? There is no upside to warmer temperatures — none!!!
The solution: emphasize the inequality.
Writes Stevens: “In the medium emissions scenario, Niger, one of the poorest and hottest countries in the world, is projected to suffer the largest increase in temperature-linked mortality, while cold, wealthy Finland sees the largest decrease.”
In the Warmist crowd, the preferred way to address this inequality is to re-engineer the global energy economy by putting all our eggs in the volatile, intermittent “renewable energy” basket at the cost of trillions of dollars per year. Stevens doesn’t explore the potential impact on mortality if the electric grid goes down in hurricanes or global vortexes, knocking heaters and HVAC systems out of commission for days or weeks at a time.
An alternative strategy is to rely upon diversified sources of energy, make electricity more abundant in the developing world, and provide air conditioning to the global masses.
Which alternative do you think the global masses would choose?
Here in temperate Virginia, we’re in a sweet spot. Warmer temperatures will make us more like… North Carolina. Not so bad. I’m a lot more worried about the grid going down — taking down our lights, appliances, businesses, factories, electric vehicles, and everything else with it, including heaters and air conditioners — than I am about Virginians expiring from heat stroke. I’ll bet homeless people are more worried about extreme cold than extreme heat, too. Someone ought to ask them.
