The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released its latest climate report, and reactions from politicians and media pundits could not have been more predictable.
Fitting the apocalyptic narrative many have spun lately, the always-breathless Guardian literally summarized this scientific report as finding mankind “guilty as hell” of “climate crimes of humanity.” (Needless to say, the report never says any such things.)
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called the findings a “code red for humanity,” saying we can only avert catastrophe by acting in the next couple of months. Of course, the United Nations has a long history of claiming catastrophe is right around the corner: The first UN environment director claimed half a century ago that we had just 10 years left, and the then-head of the IPCC insisted in 2007 that we had just five years left.
In contrast to the hyperventilating media, the report is actually serious and sensible (and very, very long). It doesn’t surprise, since it is a summary of already-published studies, yet it reconfirms that global warming indeed is real and a problem.
But it also highlights how much one-sided thinking takes place in the climate conversation. Since the heat dome in June, there has been a lot of writing about more heat deaths. And the IPCC confirms that climate change indeed has increased heatwaves. However, the report equally firmly, if virtually unacknowledged, tells us that global warming means “the frequency and intensity of cold extremes have decreased.”
This matters because globally, many more people die from cold than from heat. A new study in the highly respected journal Lancet shows that about half a million people die from heat per year, but 4.5 million people die from cold.
As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year. This, of course, fits the narrative and is what we have heard over and over again. But it turns out that because global warming has also reduced cold waves, we now see 283,000 fewer cold deaths.
You don’t hear this, but so far climate change saves 166,000 lives each year.
Likewise, we have heard a lot about flooding in Germany and elsewhere being caused by climate change. But the new UN report tells us it has “low confidence in the human influence on the changes in high river flows on the global scale” — and low confidence in attributing “changes in the probability or magnitude of flood events.” The report tells us that the evidence isn’t there to say floods are caused or driven by climate change.
It also mentions climate upsides like the fact that more CO₂ in the atmosphere has acted as a fertilizer and created a profound global greening of the planet. One NASA study found that over a period of 35 years, climate change has added an area of green equivalent to twice the size of the continental United States. But don’t expect to read about this in any of the breathless articles on climate impact.
The UN report only deals with the physical impact of climate change, but of course, much of what really matters is how humans handle this. Often the real problem of rising sea levels is converted into a catastrophe by arguing that nobody will adapt and everyone will drown or be displaced. Remember when news reports told us that rising seas will displace an astonishing 187 million people, potentially “drowning” entire cities like Miami in 80 years?
In reality, humans adapt, as Holland has shown. That’s why many models show that adaptation will reduce the number of flooded people 12,000-fold. As in the past, rising prosperity will continue to reduce flood impacts, and climate change will merely slow down this reduction slightly.
Ultimately, this is why the scare stories on climate impacts are vastly overblown and not supported by this new climate report. One of the clearest ways to see this is through climate economics. Because of climate change, the average person worldwide will be “only” 436 percent as well off in 2100 as they are now, instead of 450 percent.
This is not the apocalypse but a problem we should fix smartly.
After this column was published, an organization called Climate Feedback posted a fact check. Author Bjorn Lomborg responds:
In this column I reference a new Lancet study, which shows that climate change avoids more cold deaths than extra heat deaths, in total avoiding 166,000 deaths annually. Climate Feedback makes two claims. They claim that the 166,000 avoided deaths is wrong, but don’t rebut it. They asked one of the authors of this new Lancet study, and he doesn’t mention any issues with the 166,000 claim at all.Climate Feedback secondly uses a quote I’ve never made, to suggest that I should argue that “climate change is not causing heat-related deaths.” This is false: In the Post column text I explicitly say that climate change caused more heat-related deaths: “As temperatures have increased over the past two decades, that has caused an extra 116,000 heat deaths each year.”
Most of the fact check discussing points I did not make, about other deaths that could be attributable to climate change, or accusing me of climate change denialism — which isn’t true.
Bjorn Lomborg’s latest book is “False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet.”