A Body Count due to Climate Change
Dr. Simon Lewis, a Royal Society research fellow at the Earth and Biosphere Institute (UK) says it is time for a real climate change body count. According to Lewis, there is currently no official climate change body count and the most likely reason is that it is very tough to quantify. That's no surprise to me since there is still not enough information out there to link specific weather disasters (floods/hurricanes etc..) with climate change. The only global estimate of people killed due to global warming is published by the World Health Organisation, and they estimate that 150,000 people are killed each year due to global warming, as stated in the Guardian op-ed. Now we are probably all wondering where that number comes from, well it comes from a 2002 modelling study which looked at four probable impacts of climate change.....
1. Malaria
2. Malnutrition
3. Diarrhoea-type diseases
4. Flooding
The authors of this study say this is a highly conservative estimate that is already out of date. It also seems that these four could easily be caused by many other factors in addition to climate change.
This seems like a number (body count) that we may never know or even come close to knowing, at least in the near-term. What do you think?
