One excerpt:
The effect of the rising temperatures is more complicated to gauge. Hotter summer weather can indeed be fatal, as Al Gore likes us to remind audiences by citing the 35,000 deaths attributed to the 2003 heat wave in Europe. But there are a couple of confounding factors explained in Dr. Lomborg’s new book, “Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming.”
The first is that winter can be deadlier than summer. About seven times more deaths in Europe are attributed annually to cold weather (which aggravates circulatory and respiratory illness) than to hot weather, Dr. Lomborg notes, pointing to studies showing that a warmer planet would mean fewer temperature-related deaths in Europe and worldwide.
The second factor is that the weather matters a lot less than how people respond to it. Just because there are hotter summers in New York doesn’t mean that more people die — in fact, just the reverse has occurred. Researchers led by Robert Davis, a climatologist at the University of Virginia, concluded that the number of heat-related deaths in New York in the 1990s was only a third as high as in the 1960s. The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning.
Posts
3 comments:
http://www.nunatsiaq.com/news/climate/70914_496.html
Check out this link , entitled "Antarctic sea ice at record high".
An excerpt:
---
The climate models predict warming in Antarctica and they are increasingly inconsistent with the observations.
The South pole winter is now about 0.6 Celsius cooler than in 1957.
---
"The main reason is simple, and evident as you as walk into the Bridge Cafe on a warm afternoon: air-conditioning"
Unfortunately our native plants and animals don't have access to this wonderful technology.
Post a Comment