A Reuters story a couple of weeks ago said "Carbon Dioxide pollution kills hundreds a Year." Wow. To give one a sense of scale, cold weather kills about 700 people a year in the US alone. So let me see, we want to hamstring the world’s economy and keep hundreds of millions of people in poverty to save fewer people than those who are killed in turn by cold weather?
But the silliness does not end here. This is what the story says:
The deaths were due to lung and heart ailments linked to ozone and polluting particles in the air, which are spurred by carbon dioxide that comes from human activities, according to the study’s author, Mark Jacobson of Stanford University.
As the planet warms due to carbon dioxide emissions, the annual death rate is forecast to climb, with premature deaths in the United States from human-generated carbon dioxide expected to hit 1,000 a year when the global temperature has risen by 1.8 degrees F (1 degree C).
By the way, don’t expect a better explanation of the mechanism of death further in the story, because it is not there, nor should you expect any counter-vailing opinions in this patented Adcocay-press-release-masquerading-as-a-Reuters-story. Here is a big hint for everyone, though: Ozone and some particulate pollution can cause health problems. However, they have nothing to do with CO2 and global warming except that they are coincidently both created by burning fossil fuels. Warmer weather can increase ground ozone levels, but it is absurd to say that this is any kind of substantial mechanism, and nowhere do we see any evidence of how ozone related health problems may scale with temperature. But we can be suspicious because the author is saying deaths go from 700 at 0.8 degrees C increase (which he says is the current level) to 1000 at 1.0 degrees C. So there are 300 more annual deaths just from 0.2C rise? If so, why, when temperatures rise 20C or more in the Phoenix summer, then, aren’t people dropping like flies?
This is just another great example of how incentives work. Funding for academic studies is always hard. A professor who wants to study ozone effect on heath may not get funding. But there is much more available if he pitches it as global warming effect on health, focusing on ozone.
Prof. Mark Jacobson needs no greenhouse gases money. His forefront & landmark study on detrimental effects of E85 bio-fuels throwing cold water on Federal gov’t subsidies for said fuels, marks his courage.
His ozone & carbon dioxide studies are nearly an extrapolation of his E85 studies, therefore such studies by Prof. Jacobson are dearly welcomed. As for razzing him, get to the end of the line. Others have already demeaned his studies of the past. However, his knowledge is deep & he has silenced his detractors. So if you stay in line, you will face him…soon.
Reuters didn’t publish his data. Geophysical Research Letters has Prof. Jacobson’s research. Again his study is landmark & the first of hopefully many studies.
The obvious way to test his argument is to look at lung disease rates in two similar populations, one of which lives in a slightly warmer (but otherwise similar) area.
I feel confident in predicting that you won’t find any significant difference.
“Prof. Mark Jacobson needs no greenhouse gases money.”
Comon. What professor in the sciences doesn’t need funding? What professor doesn’t want attention? And what better way to get funding and attention than to tell the Emporer how wonderful his new clothes are?
Here’s a related article by William Briggs:
http://wmbriggs.com/blog/2008/02/01/zombies-no-joke-global-warming-can-cause-anything/
dreamin…Get your copy of Geophysical Research Letters & prove Prof Jacobson wrong.