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Gore gored

edit David Janes 2007-01-20 17:42 UTC 1  comment

Lomberg and Rose (via John Ray):

But if we are to follow Mr. Gore's suggestions of radically changing our way of life, the costs are not trivial. If we slowly change our greenhouse gas emissions over the coming century, the U.N. actually estimates that we will live in a warmer but immensely richer world. However, the U.N. Climate Panel suggests that if we follow Al Gore's path down toward an environmentally obsessed society, it will have big consequences for the world, not least its poor. In the year 2100, Mr. Gore will have left the average person 30% poorer, and thus less able to handle many of the problems we will face, climate change or no climate change.

Clearly we need to ask hard questions. Is Mr. Gore's world a worthwhile sacrifice? But it seems that critical questions are out of the question. It would have been great to ask him why he only talks about a sea-level rise of 20 feet. In his movie he shows scary sequences of 20-feet flooding Florida, San Francisco, New York, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing and Shanghai. But were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The U.N. climate panel expects only a foot of sea-level rise over this century. Moreover, sea levels actually climbed that much over the past 150 years. Does Mr. Gore find it balanced to exaggerate the best scientific knowledge available by a factor of 20?

Mr. Gore says that global warming will increase malaria and highlights Nairobi as his key case. According to him, Nairobi was founded right where it was too cold for malaria to occur. However, with global warming advancing, he tells us that malaria is now appearing in the city. Yet this is quite contrary to the World Health Organization's finding. Today Nairobi is considered free of malaria, but in the 1920s and '30s, when temperatures were lower than today, malaria epidemics occurred regularly. Mr. Gore's is a convenient story, but isn't it against the facts?

He considers Antarctica the canary in the mine, but again doesn't tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctica that is dramatically warming and ignores the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The U.N. panel estimates that Antarctica will actually increase its snow mass this century. Similarly, Mr. Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, but don't mention that sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing. Shouldn't we hear those facts? Mr. Gore talks about how the higher temperatures of global warming kill people. He specifically mentions how the European heat wave of 2003 killed 35,000. But he entirely leaves out how global warming also means less cold and saves lives. Moreover, the avoided cold deaths far outweigh the number of heat deaths. For the U.K. it is estimated that 2,000 more will die from global warming. But at the same time 20,000 fewer will die of cold. Why does Mr. Gore tell only one side of the story?

Comment #1 — Bill Brieger

2007-01-21 00:51:20
Malaria is a complicated disease, and climate is one of many factors, though often an important limitation on the range of different forms of the disease. Malaria is not too distant an experience in the USA, and numerous articles describe the economic impact of the disease on economic activities ranging from building railroads and to agriculture in the years preceding the mid-Twentieth Century.  A major factor that eliminated endemic malaria from the USA was change in economic status and homes with window screens, although public efforts to eliminate sources of standing water and spraying to eliminate the mosquito vector were important, too.  What is of interest is that historically, is that malaria in the USA was primarily the vivax variety that survives the winter in the human liver until mosquito populations return in the summer.  While this form of the disease certainly has major health and economic costs, it is not the form that kills a million children in Africa each year, i.e. falciparum malaria.  Falciparum malaria requires the potential for nearly year-round transmission found in tropical and sub-tropical environments.  Vivax malaria was found to be locally transmitted in Virginia two years ago, and travelers to tropical environments are constantly returning to the US with cases of falciparum malaria.  If the climate warmed 'enough', deadly falciparum malaria might be established in more northern latitudes.  Regardless of the longer term future, it is valuable to learn more about this killer disease and help those who are presently suffering.
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