Angry in the Great White North

The most powerful weapon in the arsenal of climate change alarmists has been the notion that as the earth warmed and the climate changed, people would begin to die in droves because of weather-related disasters.

Instead, the weather has become far less a danger over the years and decades:

Green scientists have been accused of overstating the dangers of climate change by researchers who found that the number of people killed each year by weather-related disasters is falling.

Their report suggests that a central plank in the global warming argument – that it will result in a big increase in deaths from weather-related disasters – is undermined by the facts. It shows deaths in such disasters peaked in the 1920s and have been declining ever since.

Average annual deaths from weather-related events in the period 1990-2006 – considered by scientists to be when global warming has been most intense – were down by 87% on the 1900-89 average. The mortality rate from catastrophes, measured in deaths per million people, dropped by 93%.

A whopping 93%?

And what is to blame for this terrible news? Wealth:

The report by the Civil Society Coalition on Climate Change, a grouping of 41 mainly free-market bodies, comes on the eve of an international meeting on climate change in Bali.

Indur Goklany, a US-based expert on weather-related catastrophes, charted global deaths through the 20th century from “extreme” weather events.

Compared with the peak rate of deaths from weather-related events in the 1920s of nearly 500,000 a year, the death toll during the period 2000-06 averaged 19,900. “The United Nations has got the issues and their relative importance backward,” Goklany said.

The number of deaths had fallen sharply because of better warning systems, improved flood defences and other measures. Poor countries remained most vulnerable.

Recall that at the heart of Kyoto is a plan to solve the planet's greenhouse gas emissions by wrecking the economies of the weatlhiest countries of the planet. Countries that are huge emitters but not seen as wealthy (so-called "developing" countries like India and China) are exempt from Kyoto's emissions control targets, but are recipients of billions to be transfered from developed countries.

Perhaps it is the relatively high death rates in India and China because of weather that earned them a pass from the environmentalists.

The numbers suggest that wealth and the science and technology that flows from that is what will protect us from the effects of weather -- weather being something that has always been and will always be in a state of flux.

Moreover, the spread of science and technology from wealthy nations to less wealthy nations will reduce the effects of weather on those people.

See what I mean? This is terrible. What next? Allegations that global warming itself has been oversold using incomplete data and conclusions drawn from computer models that can't tell me if it'll be sunny five days from now?

The environmentalists are quick off the mark. They've attacked the conclusions of the report.

Well, not exactly the conclusions. And not the data either.

Greenpeace attacked the International Policy Network, one of the Civil Society organisations, which is publishing the report in Britain.

“The International Policy Network is known for being in the pay of the world’s biggest oil company,” a spokesman said.

The network said: “Funding for this project has come entirely from private individuals and foundations.”

Right then.

Perhaps the environmentalists can run some computer models to show that deaths have been in fact increasing with the rise of carbon dioxide levels. In fact, I'm sure the computer model can be adjusted to show that untold millions (calculated to four decimal places) will be dead within weeks unless this report is withdrawn.