NPR’s special series, “The Undercount: The invisible death toll from climate change,” aims to answer this question. When climate and health reporter Alejandra Borunda asked doctors what important topics she should focus on, she heard the same thing over and over: Climate change is hurting a lot of people, but we aren’t doing a good job of keeping track of how many. “We’re undercounting the damage by an enormous amount,” Borunda says.
The answer to the basic question here is no; it’s impossible to provide even a good guess as to this figure, if only because there is no way to ascribe a certain catastrophic event, say a hurricane or a wildfire, to climate change. It’s really not a matter of doing a good or a bad job at keeping track.
Consider what appears to be a far more black-and-white situation, deaths from COVID-19. As discussed in this paper, it’s not a straightforward task to say that a certain victim died “with” COVID or “of” COVID.
As unsatisfying as it may be, I’m afraid that the community of climate scientists will eventually give up on the task of counting the deaths due to global warming.
NPR: Is it Possible to Know How Many People Have Died Because of Climate Change?
Maybe the protestors are less concerned about length of time in office, and more with criminal authoritarianism.
I have such respect for Pascal that I considered naming our son after him. (My wife wasn’t having it. Maybe if we lived in France?)
Pascal made important contributions to both math and physics but he’s perhaps best known for his philosophic “wager,” that it makes sense to believe in God, since if He exists, you’ll be very glad you did, and if He doesn’t, you haven’t lost anything. I counter that this is not how we accept or reject religious tenets.
“Republican Patriots” writes: Howard Stern once again reveals the contempt so many in the entertainment elite hold for everyday Americans. He claims not to hate President Trump himself, but openly declares his hatred for those who support him, calling them stupid and saying he has no respect for them. This kind of arrogant dismissal shows how out of touch these Hollywood types have become with the hardworking people who built this country.
I’ve got news: contempt for Trump supporters is hardly limited to “these Hollywood types.” The vast majority of Americans–especially at this point–are neither greedy pigs nor hateful morons. We respect human rights and rule of law.
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