The Overlooked Benefits of a Warmer Planet
Since 1975, our planet has warmed by about two-thirds of one degree centigrade.
Before that, for 35 years, the Earth was cooling. It is a fascinating fact that almost no one ever mentions that 1972 was when the campaign to halt acid rain began and the removal of sulphur dioxide (SO2) from our atmosphere, which had a heating effect on our climate .
SO2 acts as a precursor for water droplets to form, and increased cloud cover follows this process, which causes additional rays from our sun to be reflected into space. Less SO2 meant fewer clouds and a warmer climate.
Even more baffling are the current efforts to replace some of the SO2 that has been removed, particularly in our stratosphere. On January 9th 2024, an article in the Washington Post described a firm named Make Sunsets releasing weather balloons filled with sulphur dioxide and helium in a project designed to seed our stratosphere with SO2.
This company accepts donations from mostly climate activists who want to cool our planet and uses these proceeds to fund its efforts. And, as the Post reported, nature does this already. For example, “After Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines erupted in 1991, sending 20 million tons of sulphur dioxide spewing into the atmosphere, global temperatures fell by about one degree Fahrenheit the following year.”
Further complicating this Gordian Knot is the fact that these new efforts may not follow the five principles contained in the Oxford Principles of Geoengineering. The story in the Post quoted an expert in solar geoengineering governance and law named Jesse Reynolds, who said, “I looked at the five Oxford principles, and [Make Sunsets is] acting in a way that’s consistent with none of them.”
Ergo, as these efforts expand, there may exist added dangers. Make Sunsets has received equity investments from two venture capital firms, a total of $750,000. As Mr. Reynolds said, “This is the ‘move fast and break things’ worldview.”
Since 1970, when the fight to limit global warming was started by the World Economic Forum (WEF), and after the First World Climate Conference was held in 1979, climate scientists have been in continuous high dudgeon without ever a single mention of the impact of pollution abatement as a possible cause of the current warming.
Even worse, these pro-climate change researchers have produced an almost never-ending stream of forecasts and predictions of coming climate catastrophes — floods, droughts, wildfires, rising sea levels, famines and the spread of tropical diseases. But almost no one has tested these claims of coming cataclysms against the historical statistics.
We have 50 years of hard data today, yet these foreseen calamities have yet to happen. Indeed, since 1920, the number of recorded deaths attributable to climate disasters has declined by over 95%.
However, climate change advocates insist that extreme weather events are increasing and that this is an early warning that, if followed, will save countless lives. Regardless of these endless predictions of coming doom, human mortality attributable to climate change has sharply declined.
Plus, the current warming is itself saving thousands of people from premature death every year. Our warming planet has so far been a major benefit to everyone.
Since 1988, when Jim Hansen testified before Congress, we have been urged to believe that we face a coming climate catastrophe. But 35 years later we learned that the increase in the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere,l.
Along with the resulting temperature rise, has to date only improved things on our planet. The Earth is greening and thousands of lives worldwide are saved yearly. The Earth is greening and our deserts are blooming.
Turning to lives saved, a recent study published in the Lancet and done at Monash University showed that today, warmer temperatures save thousands of lives worldwide every year.
This study found that “the global heat-related excess death ratio increased by 0·21 percentage points (0.13–0.31), leading to a net reduction in the overall ratio.” Ever since the Crimean War and the continuing research begun by Florence Nightingale, we know that warmth saves lives while cold kills many more people. In other words, the current warming is saving eight lives for every life that is lost due to premature death attributed to temperature.
Therefore, there is no current need to halt the burning of fossil fuels. The warming associated with climate change is so far saving thousands of lives every year, greening our planet and shrinking our deserts. But some experts insist that increases in droughts, wildfires, mass starvation and rising sea levels are just some of the consequences of our warming planet that are already occurring, but the hard data say otherwise.
- Droughts: According to the UN, droughts over the last 50 years have averaged only 13,000 deaths annually.
- Wildfires: NASA’s satellite observations found that the number of wildfires has declined, and the vast majority are attributable to human actions (arson, etc.) Deaths due to wildfires have typically been extremely low. Plus, as noted, total deaths from all climate disasters have declined by over 95% over the last 100 years.
- Mass starvation: The number of famines worldwide has sharply declined since the 1960s. Most famines are attributable to armed conflicts (wars and civil wars).
- Rising sea levels: According to NASA’s satellite data, sea levels have risen by only 100.1 mm since 1993, i.e., by just four inches over the past 30 years. The most recent scholarly study from the NASA satellite data found that 50% of the sea level increase on the East Coast of the U.S. was due to subsidence (heavy structures built near the water line are causing the land to sink.)
In 1988, James Hansen advised us that untold climate catastrophes were on the immediate horizon, and for 35 years he has been only wrong.
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