Thread by @ShellenbergerMD

Why are they even talking about climate right now?

There is no scientific basis for predicting millions of deaths from climate change

But Coronavirus could kill 10 million or more IN NEXT ~12 MONTHS

People are deeply confused about the science here

I turned in my expert comments to IPCC today, but could hardly see why given what is happening

People are confused

There has always been strong evidence that a virus could kill millions

There has never been strong evidence that temp increase of 2-4 degrees could

Bravo to @jaketapper for asking about grossly hypocritical opposition to fracking for natural gas by @BernieSanders

Natural gas reduced emissions 11 times more than solar energy and 50 percent more than wind energy in the U.S.

@jaketapper @BernieSanders Many experts have compared climate change to virus epidemics like coronavirus over the years

There's no comparison.

Experts have near-unanimously over the decades have ranked disease epidemics as far, far more dangerous and catastrophic than climate change is likely to be

In his 2008 “Global Catastrophes and Trends,” Vaclav Smil doesn’t even include climate change in his chart of “fatal discontinuities, which estimates fatalities & probabilities, with megawars, influenza, volcanoes, tsunamis, and asteroids ranked from most lethal to least

After decades of alarmism about nuclear energy, overpopulation, rainforest destruction, species extinction, and the climate, it's understandable that many were skeptical of covid-19 alarmism

At first, I was skeptical, too, & only cancelled a Europe trip at the last minute.

But they were never the same for experts

Viruses kill people outright

Climate change magnifies other risks

It is an indirect background factor

There will never be death attribution to climate change like there is when lungs stop working from covid-19

People should know that

Can climate change make viruses worse?

Maybe.

There are certainly stories one could tell about it doing so

But you don't need climate change to get disease epidemic risks like covid-19

We certainly didn't need it for Spanish Flu, which killed 20-50M, more than WWI

Similarly, you don't need climate change to get the bad fires in Amazon, California, or Australia

Human development in the form of roads and housing, and fire suppression allowing for the build-up of wood fuel, are sufficient factors for hotter fires & more acres burned

Climate change and viruses aren't comparable

It's like comparing climate change and weather events like hurricanes, cyclones, and forest fires

Climate is a background factor not a direct factor

What covid-19 and natural disasters have in common is that our response to them matters greatly

Competency matters

Death rates and economic damage from extreme weather events dropped 80-90% during the last 40 years, due to more competent preparedness

We need same for disease

It is notable to me that South Korea did some of the best early response to covid-19

It's a country I have spent a lot of time in over last few years, and admire greatly, for its work making nuclear plants safer and more efficient

Same with Korean trains. Clean, reliable, cheap

South Korea has been able to do this because its people value competency, hard work, and rationality

That does not mean they are cold and secular. They are not. They are some of the warmest and most Christian people I have ever met.

They care about each other deeply, too.

The blunt truth of the matter is that everybody including me got this wrong

Diseases are a far greater threat to humankind than climate or other environmental problems

That doesn't mean we shouldn't care about climate change. We should. But most trends are already going in the right direction.

The greatest threat to emissions rising are people like @BernieSanders who oppose nat gas & nukes which were 56% of US electricity in 2019 (37% & 19%)

But it's clear that disease epidemics like coronavirus pose a far greater threat to human life, society, & economy than climate change, especially since temperatures are likely to peak at 2-3 degrees where the risks, including from tipping points, are significantly lower than ~4

Pandemic experts said that the chance of more dangerous novel viruses spreading from animals viruses from animals, and infecting and killing many thousands and maybe millions, was *100%*

decider.com/2020/03/12/pan…

There is no comparatively dire *scientific* warning possible for climate. There is no mechanism to get to millions of direct deaths like there is from viruses

Many *fictional* movies about pandemics are more scientifically accurate than apocalyptic climate *documentaries*

Bill Gates called a virus pandemic “The most predictable disaster in the history of the human race”

He is a brilliant man, but he was also just repeating the expert consensus

vox.com/2015/5/27/8660…

“We are, probabilistically speaking,” wrote Vaclav Smil in 2008, “very much inside a high risk zone. Consequently, the likelihood of another influenza pandemic during the next 50 years is virtually 100%... Optimistic assessments put infection rate at 20%... & 7M deaths.”
😳

“The single biggest threat to man's continued dominance on this planet is the virus.”

- Joshua Lederberg, winner of the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1958

H/t @specterm

newyorker.com/news/daily-com…