Guest contribution by Willis Eschenbach
I see a number of health organizations urging Zhou Bai-den to declare a “climate health emergency.” From the American Lung Association:
WASHINGTON, DC | January 26, 2021
Today, 26 national health and medical organizations tabled a statement on climate change and health to President Joe Biden and the congressional leadership, highlighting climate change as a health emergency and calling for immediate action to protect public health from the present and future effects of climate change .
Have you ever noticed that these types of people never state exactly what a degree or two of warming should mean to our health? It’s just like declarations of an “environmental emergency” in general. Where is the “emergency” of slight warming inherent?
In any case, I thought I’d look at what temperatures people settle down at. Here are the average annual temperatures for 444 cities around the world.
Figure 1. Histogram, average annual temperatures of 444 cities. The two cities with annual temperatures below -10 ° C are Dikson (Russia) and Gjoa Haven (Canada). The warmest city is Assab, Eritrea, average temperature 30.5 ° C. Once again I note that almost nowhere on earth does the annual average temperature exceed ~ 30 ° C.
People live happily in cities with average annual temperatures of -14 ° C to 30.5 ° C …
Now, most of the warming over the past century has occurred in the extra tropics in winter and at night. I find it amazing that people can believe that a slight warming of winter nights outside the tropics will lead to a “health emergency”. But then, as HL Mencken noted, “As far as I know, no one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of ordinary people.” And unfortunately these days also include the large masses of climate alarmists.
However, that’s only part of the story. In each of these cities, the average monthly temperature varies throughout the year. Figure 2 shows the size of the annual variation from the coldest to the warmest month.
Figure 2. Histogram, average annual temperature ranges for 444 cities. The longest range city is Yakutsk in Siberia, where the coldest month is -38.6 ° C (-37.5 ° F) and the warmest month is 19.5 ° C (67.1 ° F).
Almost a third of these cities have an annual variation of more than 20 ° C (36 ° F). Again, which “health emergencies” are caused by a few degrees Celsius warming if the annual fluctuation is greater than about 94% of all cities?
After all, here is the full range of monthly temperatures that people live in in cities.
Figure 3. Histogram, 5,328 month average monthly temperatures with data from 444 cities. The most common monthly temperature is in the range of 26 to 28 ° C (78.8 to 82.4 ° C).
Given the monthly average temperatures of 80 ° C (144 ° F) in which humans live and thrive, given above, I can’t imagine how a few degrees Celsius warming will affect most of the night in the winter imaginable “health emergency”.
I suppose none of this should come as a surprise. It was all set out in the 1841 book “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of the Masses” by Charles McKay, which is available online here. But nobody has ever accused us humanoids of learning so quickly … from the foreword:
When we read the history of nations, we find that like individuals, they have their whims and peculiarities; their seasons of excitement and recklessness when they don’t care what they are doing.
We find that entire communities suddenly turn their minds on an object and go mad as it is pursued; that millions of people are simultaneously impressed by a deception and chasing after it until their attention is attracted by a new folly, more fascinating than the first.
We see a nation suddenly gripped from its highest to its lowest members with a fierce desire for military glory. another who suddenly goes mad about a religious scruple; and none of them recovers until they have shed rivers of blood and sown a harvest of moans and tears to be harvested by posterity.
At a young age in the annals of Europe, the population lost their minds over the tomb of Jesus and crowded into the Holy Land in frenzy. Another age went mad for fear of the devil and offered hundreds of thousands of victims of the deception of witchcraft. At another time, the many went mad about the Philosopher’s Stone and committed follies that were hitherto unknown to the persecution.
Welcome to 2021, where we are still as vulnerable to popular delusions and crowds as we were in 1841 …
In completely independent news, my latest story about wandering among the homeless can be found on my blog here. Comments are welcome.
My very best and warmest greetings to everyone, and please, can we stop the nonsense “climate emergency”?
w.
PS – Misunderstandings are the bane of the intarwebs. I can defend my own words. I cannot defend your interpretation of my words. Accordingly, when you comment, I ask you to quote the exact words you are talking about so that we can all clearly know what and who you are talking about.
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