The latest contretemps pits former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, now president of the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, against Roger Pielke, Jr., an expert in disaster trends at the University of Colorado. Mr. Annan’s outfit issued a lengthy report late last month warning that climate change-induced disasters, such as droughts and floods, kill 315,000 each year and cost $125 billion, numbers it says will rise to 500,000 dead and $340 billion by 2030. Adding to the gloom, Mr. Annan predicts “mass starvation, mass migration, and mass sickness” unless countries agree to “the most ambitious international agreement ever negotiated” at a meeting this year in Copenhagen.
Even on its own terms, the numbers here are a lot less scary when put into context. Malaria kills an estimated one million people a year, while AIDS claims an estimated two million. As for the economic costs, $125 billion is slightly less than the GDP of New Zealand. Question: Are targeted campaigns using proven methods to spare the world three million AIDS and malaria deaths a year a better use of scarce resources than a multitrillion-dollar attempt to re-engineer the global economy and save, at most, a tenth that number? We’d say yes.
But the Annan report deserves even closer scrutiny as an example of the sleight of hand that so often goes with the politics of global warming. Unlike starvation, climate change does not usually kill anyone directly. Instead, the study’s authors assume a four-step chain of causation, beginning with increased emissions, moving to climate-change effects, thence to physical changes like melting glaciers and desertification, and finally arriving at human effects like malnutrition and “risk of instability and armed conflicts.”
This is a heroic set of assumptions, even if you agree that emissions are causing adverse changes in climate. Take the supposedly heightened risk of conflict: The authors suggest that “inter-clan fighting in Somalia” is a product of climate change. A likelier explanation is the collapse of a functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in the region.
Root cause? Anthropoids, the selfish bastards.
“A likelier explanation is the collapse of a functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in the region.”
Here we go again……………………………………….
It’s the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSSLIMMMMMMMMMSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS !!!!!!!
Cooling is associated with the collapse of geographically large states (“empires,” I guess). Warming isn’t. And Somalia doesn’t qualify.
If it had a government, it would be “jihadist.” Functionally. It’s good that it doesn’t.
Was there a collapse of a functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in that region, cleo?
Fish. Barrel. Shoot.
JHo, I don’t think so. I don’t think there was ever a functioning government in Somalia. More like a post-colonial power vacuum that is being filled by Muslisms.
So, cleo is almost 100% right!
Miss KKKleo – Fuck you. That was a fucking lie and you are a fucking liar.
And the goddamned sun rises in the east.
“Was there a collapse of a functioning Somali government and the rise of jihadists in that region,”
Well, at least I didn’t blame the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS….
Gads, is there ANYWHERE on the internet where we can find an interesting/non-crazy liberal to discuss shit with?
Of course you didn’t blame the Jews. The Jews don’t have anything to do with slaughter in Somalia. The Muslims do.
cleo totally knows how to assign blame to the appropriate source.
Carin: no. There is nowhere where liberals are not crazy and somewhat boring in their smug morality. Not on the internet, not in the real world.
But cleo’s satire is actually close to reality in this case, so I’m rolling with it.
Comment by Semanticleo on 6/6 @ 10:44 am #
Do you speak English?
“Well, at least I didn’t blame the JOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOS….”
Give yourself some time.
It’s always the same story with you fascist thugs.
Climate change has been going on since time immemorial. So has inter-clan strife in Somalia. Therefore, the two are connected; Q.E.D.
Outside of the tropics, if you compare all the people who die in cold spells in the winter to those who die in warm spells in the summer you find the totally unsurprising fact that cold kills much more than heat.
As for the tropics, if you tie down an AGW promoting scientist and administer a truth drug, (or perhaps a few shots of water up the nose), he will finally admit that ‘global warming’ actually means that it will get a few degrees warmer in high latitudes at night, but for the rest of the world not much change.
But apart from that, and the Lancet style statisical skullduggery, there’s not much wrong with Kofi’s effusion.
And while you’ve got your scientist tied down you might ask him how much his model exaggerates the effect of CO2 in general and ‘man-made’ CO2 in particular, whether his model can tell what the ‘global temperature’ will be in one month’s time, let alone fifty or a hundred years and quite possibly how much money Soros has paid him, what the incriminating photos contain and where the bodies are buried.
Yeah sure,
Everybody believes Kofi Annan; hi cred is immesurable, bolstered by the near heroic way he ran that oil-for-food program…
Anyone remember that? Or any of the other “triumphant” successes while he ran the UN..?
And how come these guys are less worried about diseases, especially AIDS, in Africa than eeeeeeeeevil Boooooooooosh! was..? Why that’s a real conundrum, eh..?
And, why does it seem that the O!ne, with his superior empathy and all, doesn’t seem too concerned either..?
Could it be that they already possess their identity politics, multi-cultural, absolute moral authority; so they don’t have to waste time hand wringing publicly or privately over the brown folks suffering in the third world…
Could it be that they’re more concerned with repaying poitical cronies, lining their own pockets, and bringing the west down to third world economic levels through the whole cap and trade connivance than, you know, actual environmental and humanitarian concerns…
This whole crowd won’t be happy until the west essentially pays a form of welfare to the entire third world; essentially creating the one world government they all crave, and ensuring the redistribution of wealth to the de facto third world ghettos for years to come…
Resist!, Dissent!, Fight the Pow-AH!
If somebody hadn’t misplaced all the alpine tree ring data and the Greenland glacial ice core samples you’d get onboard with this.
Fuck Kofi Annan and whatever ungulate he rode in on. His 315,000 number is as much of a bullshit statistic as the number of jobs Obama has “saved.”
Meanwhile, over a million people in sub-Saharan Africa, mostly children, die of malaria each year (http://www.cdc.gov/Malaria/facts.htm).
Yet the same environmentalist nitwits who wring their hands about CO2 and global warming block the use of DDT, which is the most effective tool known for fighting malaria.
The environmental nitwits are part of the liberal useful idiots wing which also supports abortions for everyone 24 hours per day but especially in third world areas to keep undesirable populations down as much as possible. DDT allows more common persons to live. Its use must be suppressed.
David Frum makes some sense. Frum hated the Obama speech.
And Andrew Sullivan almost apologized yesterday for emphasizing Tiller’s murder of that of Pvt. Long in Arkansas. Sully blamed it on the Obama speech distracting him.
Are dogs and cats living together now?
Will Obama realize that fighting climate change will cause more harm than good, because cap and trade will actually directly hurt people and diversions of money from other programs will hurt people indirectly.
When will many of his supporters figure it out? Soon, Later, or Never?
I’m done with both Frum and Sully…
No redemption of credibility available there…
Probably providing advance cover for the O!ne’s coming tax flip-flop…
If Semen knew ANY history, it would realize that wide-scale instability and strife show a 100% correlation with global COOLING. Of course, if it knew anything it wouldn’t be Semen any more.
She may treat the Constitution like toilet paper, but I am hearted she likes to eat stuff like this.
Maybe heartened is not the right word to use.
Still, not some typical Democrat snob.
Fixed that for you :D
Could be! After all, Africa is the cradle of humanity and it’s likely that even bands of Australopithicines vied for scarse resources. Things haven’t really changed there much, huh?
Consider Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium in evolution and look waht happened to humans as we survived the last ice age. We went in as Homo habilus or some such and came out Homo sapiens. From this we might hypothesize that periods of extreme climate change are actually good for us!
Of course, evolution does not imply “progress”, only adaptation. Perhaps we were happier as H. habilus? What do you think, ‘cleo, are you happy?
Another thought: Among invertebrates some of the most “advanced” species have lost their brains entirely. Perhaps this explains the obvious superiority of progressives?
Kofi Annan is demented. He still belongs in prison for Oil for Fraud deals, along with his wheeling & dealing son Kojo. (oh wait, Volcker, now working for Barry, gave all those guys a pass)
Didja know, Henry Waxman (who hires a speed reader to read the cap & trade bill) is relying on the fricking, biased, politically bent UN/IPCC “climate” report as the basis for the entire bill he is sponsoring ?
So, you know, government policy can be even stupider than it is already, if that’s possible.