In Douglas Adams’s Life, the Universe, and Everything, a spaceship is mistaken for a star moving across the heavens, and taken for a sign by the people below. As is anything and everything.
When the rains came, it was a sign. When the rains departed, it was a sign. When the winds rose, it was a sign. When the winds fell, it was a sign. When in the land there was born at midnight of a full moon a goat with three heads, that was a sign. When in the land there was born at some time in the afternoon a perfectly normal cat or pig with no birth complications at all, or even just a child with a retrousse nose, that too would often be taken as a sign.
It’s much the same with climate change. When it’s hot in summer: climate change. When it’s cold in winter: climate change. When it’s a nice day, but looks like rain later: you better believe that’s climate change.
And any time the weather does something dramatic – whoa! that’s proof positive we’re heading to climate hell in a handbasket.
2021 […] is now being branded the year of climate catastrophes. Add the deaths from the North American heat dome, from floods in Germany and Belgium, from Indian climate-related catastrophes that you may not have heard about, and from more than 200 other catastrophes. Adjusted to a full year, climate-related weather disasters could cause about 6,000 deaths in 2021.
Cue outraged howls of “People are dying! How dare you!” from the brainless ninnies of climate change.
Yes, people are dying. But, they always have – just in far greater numbers. If every death from climate change is a tragedy, then every death from climate change avoided must be a blessing.
And we are truly blessed.
The International Disaster Database shows that an average of half a million people died from climate-related disasters in the 1920s. Today that has plummeted to 6,000.
How dare you, Greta Thunberg? 494,000 people a year have been saved from climate-related death, most of them in the poorest countries and all you, an ultra-privileged Swedish teenager, can do is howl and stamp your feet about your first world problems. How dare you!
But… but… deadly floods in Europe!
The recent flooding in Germany and Belgium, which many, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, are blaming on climate change. Yet a new study of more than 10,000 rivers around the world shows that most rivers now flood less. What used to be a 50-year flood in the 1970s happens every 152 years today, likely due to urbanization, flood-control measures, and changes in climate.
In fact, the real cause of disasters like the German flooding is government.
As more people build on risky flood plains, they need better water management and timely warning systems. The German government, ever-ready to sink billions into solar panels and wind farms, has spectacularly failed its riverside communities.
Following the deadly European floods in 2002, Germany built an extensive warning system, but during a test last September most warning measures, including sirens and text alerts, didn’t work. The European Flood Awareness System predicted the floods nine days in advance and formally warned the German government four days in advance, yet most people on the ground were left unaware. Hannah Cloke, the hydrologist who set up the system, called it “a monumental failure.”
Who do you think it’s easier for Angela Merkel to blame? Her own government, or the big bogey-man, climate change?
Nearly all of the other whipping-boys of the climate cultists, such as the devastating bushfires in the US and Australia, can similarly be sheeted home to abysmal forest management on government reserves. In Australia’s case, this lesson has been hammered home by inquests since the 1930s; yet governments prefer to bow to environmental activists rather than manage forests to reduce fire risk.
Even so, wildfires have declined spectacularly over the last century, in complete opposition to the lies of climate activists.
But what about the heat waves?
Even if heat waves have increased – that’s not a bad thing. Remember, a death saved from climate causes is a blessing.
Once again, climate change is saving an awful lot more deaths than it takes.
According to a new study in the Lancet […] temperature increases over the past two decades in the U.S. and Canada cause about 7,200 more heat deaths a year. But the study also shows that warming prevents about 21,000 cold deaths a year. Globally, the study shows that climate change annually causes almost 120,000 additional heat deaths but avoids nearly 300,000 cold deaths.
Wall Street Journal
So, that’s 180,000 net lives saved by climate change.
Tell me again why I’m supposed to be terrified?
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