Global Warming News

Will Global Warming Save Lives?
By IBD
INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Feb 16 2008 «m|d Feb 16f 20C
Global Warming: A study done for the British government says that global warming will kill thousands. It also says lives will be saved due to warmer winters. OK, which is it? Or is it neither?
A report commissioned by Britain’s Health Department says that one blistering hot summer between now and 2017 could kill more than 6,000 Britons. The panel of scientific experts that compiled the study believes the chance of that is 25%.
Naturally, the global-warming-will-kill-us-all crowd latched onto that speculation, as did headline writers. “U.K. May Suffer Heat Wave That Kills 3,000,” topped a Bloomberg story, while Reuters opted for “Climate Change May Kill Thousands In U.K. By 2017.”
The panel also said global warming will bring warmer winters, which will cut down on cold-related deaths in Britain. So should we fear human-created climate change or embrace it?
Surprisingly, the BBC stood out as one media agent that took enough care to balance its coverage. Underthe Web site headline “Global Warming ‘May Cut Deaths,” it reported 20,000 deaths are linked to the cold each year in the U.K. and that those deaths fell 3% ayearfrom 1971 through 2003, a period in which summers warmed but heat-related deaths did not change.
In the U.S., a warmer climate could save tens of thousands. Thomas Gale Moore, a seniorfellowatthe Hoover Institution who has studied and written extensively about global warming, believes as many as 40,000 American lives would be spared each year.
Fewer deaths seems like a good thing to us, but the enviro-fascists have not wavered from their unrelenting rhetoric that global warming is a catastrophe in the making.
There remains a wide gap, though, between their hysterical warnings of death and destruction and the possibility of saved lives. This disconnect supports our belief that the climate change alarmists are not as interested in protecting the environment as they are in choking developed economies, hobbling capitalism and punishing those who engage in conspicuous consumption.
While we are still skeptical of global warming claims, let us for a moment speculate what warmer winters- and a warmer world in general - would bring in addition to fewer cold-related deaths:
Longer growing seasons and more land available for agriculture, two factors that will yield greater crop production. A reduction in respiratory and cardiovascular diseases that tend to be higher during colder months. Increased precipitation that will help the world solve its water scarcity issues. Lower heating bills by $12 billion a year, the Energy Department reckons.
The environmentalists will never give in on these points, just as they refuse to let record cold and historic snowfalls dissuade them from their appointed rounds. That’s why we see headlines such as this one Tuesday from India’s Sity news: “Cold Wave In India Attributed To Global Warming.”
In this case, Suresh Prabhu, a former power minister and current member of India’s parliament, convinced the media that the frigid temperatures outside of the Combat Global Warming conference in Bombay were actually caused by a warming earth.
Typical. Al Gore has delivered many a flre-and-brimstone climate change sermon from the warm confines of a conference hall while the weather outside was frightful. Has the Al Gore Effect — harsh winter conditions that seem to arrive about the same time he lands somewhere to make a speech - damaged his cause?
Apparently not. Ask any true believer and he’ll tell you global warming causes miserable hot spells, cold snaps, torrential rains, drought, ice storms, blizzards, tornadoes and hurricanes.
And of course it will kill thousands in Britain and elsewhere. Unless Western nations reel in their economies just as the eco-activists tell them to.