XPost: alt.politics.economics, alt.politics.green.party, alt.fan.rush-limbaugh XPost: talk.politics.guns, sac.politics
https://nypost.com/2024/02/15/opinion/unspoken-truth-fewer-people-are- dying-of-climate-related-disasters-than-ever/
Watching the news, you get the sense that climate change is making the
planet unlivable. We are bombarded with images of floods, droughts, storms
and wildfires.
We see not only the deadly events nearby but far-flung disasters — as long
as the pictures are scary enough.
But this impression is wildly misleading and makes it harder to get
climate change policy right.
Data show climate-related events like floods, droughts, storms and
wildfires aren’t killing more people. Quite the contrary.
Over the past decade, climate-related disasters have killed 98% fewer
people than a century ago.
This should not be surprising, because the trend has been obvious for many decades, although it rarely gets reported.
A century ago, in the 1920s, the average death toll from weather disasters
was 485,000 per year.
In 1921, the New York Herald headlined its full-page coverage of droughts
and famines across Europe with “Deaths for Millions in 1921’s Record Heat Wave.“
Since then, almost every decade has seen fewer deaths, with 168,000
average dead per year in the 1960s and less than 9,000 dead per year in
the most recent decade, 2014-23.
The 98% drop in climate-related deaths is revealed by the most respected international disaster database, which is the gold standard in measuring
these impacts.
It’s reliable because very deadly catastrophes have been documented fairly consistently over the centuries.
It is true, of course, that smaller events — often with far fewer or no fatalities — are much more likely to have been overlooked in the past,
because there were fewer people and less advanced technology.
That is why some media and climate campaigners increasingly point to a
rise in reported events (rather than the declining death toll) as evidence
that climate change is ravaging the planet.
But all of the increase has been in less-serious events, whereas more
deadly events are few and declining.
The “rise” is due to global interconnectedness that allows much better reporting of ever-small events, wherever they take place.
This is clear because the increase is seen in all categories of disasters measured — not only weather disasters, but also geophysical disasters like volcanoes and earthquakes, and technological disasters like train
derailings.
Not even radical climate activists claim that climate change is causing
more trains to derail, or more volcanoes to explode.
That is why fatalities provide a much more robust measure.
These are falling dramatically because innovation has allowed humanity to better adapt to disasters.
One much-cited study shows that at the beginning of this century, an
average of 3.4 million people experienced coastal flooding, with $11
billion in annual damages.
Around $13 billion, or 0.05% of global GDP, was spent on coastal defenses.
By the end of this century, there will be more people in harm’s way, and climate change will mean sea levels rise several feet.
If we do nothing and just keep coastal defenses as they are today, vast
areas of the planet will be routinely inundated, flooding 187 million
people and causing damage worth $55 trillion annually, costing more than
5% of global GDP.
But richer societies will adapt before things get that bad — especially
because the cost of adaptation is very low in comparison to the potential damage, at just 0.005% of GDP.
This sensible adaptation means that despite higher sea levels, fewer
people than ever will be flooded.
By 2100, there will be just 15,000 people flooded every year.
Even the combined cost of adaptation and climate damages will decrease to
just 0.008% of GDP.
These facts help show why seeing the bigger picture matters.
Linking every disaster to climate change — and wrongly suggesting that
things are getting much worse — makes us ignore practical, cost-effective solutions while the media focus our attention on costly climate policies
that help little.
Enormously ambitious climate policies costing hundreds of trillions of
dollars would cut the number of flooded people by the end of the century
from 15,000 to about 10,000 per year.
While adaptation saves almost all of the 3.4 million people flooded today, climate policy can, at best, save just 0.005 million.
The calculation is even more stark for poor countries that have few
resources and little disaster resilience. Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) suffered the largest recorded global death toll of 300,000 from a
hurricane in 1970.
Since then, it has developed and improved warning systems and shelters.
Over the past decade, hurricane deaths have averaged just 160 a year,
almost 2,000 times lower.
To help countries achieve fewer disaster deaths, we should promote
prosperity, adaptation and resilience.
Of course, weather disasters are just one aspect of climate change, which
is a real global challenge that we should fix smartly.
But when we are inundated with “weather porn,” we end up focusing on the
least effective policies first.
Bjorn Lomborg is president of the Copenhagen Consensus and Visiting Fellow
at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. His new book is “Best Things First,” which the Economist named one of the best books of 2023.
--
November 5, 2024 - Congratulations President Donald Trump. We look
forward to America being great again.
The disease known as Kamala Harris has been effectively treated and
eradicated.
We live in a time where intelligent people are being silenced so that
stupid people won't be offended.
Durham Report: The FBI has an integrity problem. It has none.
Thank you for cleaning up the disaster of the 2008-2017 Obama / Biden
fiasco, President Trump.
Under Barack Obama's leadership, the United States of America became the
The World According To Garp. Obama sold out heterosexuals for Hollywood
queer liberal democrat donors.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)