Work is catching up to me this week, so today only the briefest of reports, with the promise of a return to regularity after this weekend. Also keep those post suggestions coming everybody!
Thanks to the Daily Mail, we learn of new “research” which says that global warming causes cancer.
Melting glaciers and ice sheets are releasing cancer-causing pollutants into the air and oceans, scientists say.
The long-lasting chemicals get into the food chain and build up in people’s bodies – triggering tumours, heart disease and infertility.
It had to happen. Global warming has been proved, in the same manner as this new paper proves its dread effect, to cause every other horrific kind of premature death, from swarming insect attacks, to rampant prostitution and its natural aftermaths, to unstoppable epidemics of this bacteria and that virus.
But nobody thought to put the Big C on the list until Donald Cooper of the United Nations Environment Programme. His mental efforts deserve some kind of prize or award, surely. It’s true Cooper’s invention is not the most imaginative cause of death caused by climate change. That distinction, even though I say it myself, goes to me and my number two son, after we proved conclusively that zombie attacks must increase because of global warming.
It’s also so that it was only a matter of time that cancer showed up as an aftereffect of a half degree Centigrade rise in global average temperatures. Cooper real feat was being first, for having the guts to cross the line and say what others wanted to, but did not. So this one’s for you, Coop. You have provided the last legitimate fright.
That also means there is nothing else; at least nothing else conventional and semi-realistic (zombies don’t fall into either classification). Even increased waves of madness have been predicted to arise because of global warming, the waves composed of human bodies crashing to the ground in suicide attempts (yes, suicides are supposed to increase because of global warming).
Researchers can only gain notoriety by predicting the new, bizarre, or shocking. All the regular routes have been taken. Therefore, the question we have before us today is: what new deadly realistic thing will global warming be said to cause to increase? Let’s get the predictions noted down here, all in one place, so they are easy to verify later.
The only rules are: you can’t use something already in print, and you should try hard to tie your dread cause of death to a funding source, so that when you use the phrase “more research is needed”, you see the money flow.
I think global warming will increase the risk of alien invasion. My logic is thus: aliens who have mastered intergalactic travel must have come from prosperous planets, and history has shown us that civilizations prosper more in warm climates, so they will prefer a warmer planet. Therefore, all we are doing is setting up a sign saying “Aliens! Free buffet here!”
But, of course, more research is needed.
Under certain circumstances a sharp electric shock can induce ventricular fibrillation which, unless treated, causes death. Most at risk are those with a preexisting heart condition.
As Global Mean Temperatures rise under the influence of Catastrophic Climate Disruption average humidity will fall leading, in some areas, to extreme atmospheric dryness.
A well-known consequence of dry air is the creation of large Electrostatic Charges on humans who, while wearing polyester-based clothing, slide across the seat of their car when exiting the vehicle. If the human in question has a preexisting heart condition the resulting Electrostatic Discharge that results when they reach to close the door has a non-zero probability of inducing ventricular fibrillation with the concomitant possibility of death.
As human-induced climate disruption continues we can expect to see car parks littered with the corpses of the elderly and infirm. It is not known if a suitable choice of foot gear will mitigate the risk. More research is needed.
Apparently, death by frostbite is on the rise. Affecting the elderly more than the young.
Herewith a large list of bad things caused by global warming, with links, some dead but lots of live ones.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Much lunatic speculation has already been published. I doubt if the amateurs here can outdo what the professionals have already done in the way of global warming apocalyptic fiction. This stuff makes the Left Behind series look hyper-realistic.
We joked at the end of the acid rain debacle (early 90s) that researchers to stay on the gravy train would need to carefully move away from SO2 as the cause of lake acidification and embrace global warming. That was very clear after Gore got Dr Happer at Energy and declared the “debate was over”.
The lakes and ponds over the next 15 years failed to respond to political pressure, decreased SO2 and to the MAGIC models promises of increasing pH. GLOBAL WARMING rushed to the rescue—warming was increasing soil microbial activity and thus the production of dissolved organic acids. (MAGIC was a great name for the model as it could magically give any answer the acid rain researchers desired.)
This would actually be funny if we had not spent billions on this charade, hamstrung the economy, destroyed the careers of soil scientists like Ed Krug who claimed that natural soil organic acid processes not acid rain were responsible all along for Adirondack acidification. Equally important the false science continues to prevent resolving a myriad of real environmental problems.
It’s ancient, and was not originally blamed on global warming, but the Firesign Theater coined Globner’s Disease, which is shortness of pants, and that could certainly be AGW enflamed.
Global warming causes obesity.
Mat said:
with the promise of a return to regularity after this weekend.
I hear the pink stuff works wonders.
As to no more fears after the big C, I think you’re right. At least in the realm of medical bogeymen. I suppose the next realm of manufactured scares will be that global climate disruption will disrupt the very fabric of our societies. We’ve already seen that it causes increased prostitution. What’s next, will AGW cause people to beome gay? Or it might be worse than we thought, it could drive people straight.
You may joke, Mr. Briggs, but let’s look at the facts.
As the CO2 concentration has increased, so has the total number of deaths.
Of course, that may be due to this fact:
As CO2 concentration has increased, so has the total number of births.
So, there we have it: Global Warming causes birth and death.
I still think we should or be much more concerned about the Earth spinning out of control!
Robert of Ottawa,
Sheer brilliance!
One of the most talked about effects of global warming is the thermal expansion of the oceans that is causing them to rise threatening the lives and jobs of millions who live near the coasts. Lost in all of this is the real threat from the thermal expansion of the atmosphere.
Yes, the entire world is getting bigger. This may seem silly, but we live in a cosmic shooting gallery with large dinosaur killing rocks flying by the earth at more than 25,000 mph. Now look what we have recklessly done. We have made the Earth a bigger target! Asteroids that would have been near misses by flying through part of the atmosphere and scarring the bejeezus out of everyone may now be slowed enough by the expanded atmosphere to cause an impact. Others, have written about minor problems such as massive hurricanes, plague, cancer, and massive starvation that could cause mere megadeaths. Now we are talking about the death of everything on earth except the extremophile bacteria.
More funding is needed so that I can travel from Minnesota to visit the Yucatan peninsula to investigate the angle of impact of the dinosaur killing impact and to Cape Canaveral and Houston to discuss these problems with NASA (Oh God. Please. Anywhere where it is warm.)
Thermal expansion of the entire planet means that anywhere you want to travel or send freight becomes further away. This means that more fuel is required, more CO2 emissions, further warming, more expansion etc.
Global warming will increase the gap between the rich and the poor, and will cause reduced academic performance among the children of disadvantaged minorities.
But William, we ALREADY knew back in 1982 that everything gives us cancer. Joe Jackson is a prophet. 🙂
http://www.videoanni80.com/view/2734/joe-jackson-cancer-1982/
Ha ha. I read that as “triggering tumours, heart disease and infidelility.”
# Person of Choler
On the same site (Number Watch) there is a “complete” list of everything that causes cancer: Global Warming is on it.
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/cancer%20list.htm
From the global warming list, the link to Cancer Deaths in Britain is still live:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/1161895.stm
It’s all the extra deaths from skin cancer – 5,000 extra p.a.
However, according to Cancer Research UK*:
So. Global Warming will triple the death rate from skin cancer. How Global Warming brings about this amazing increase is not explained.
* Cancer Research UK has never knowingly under played the importance of cancer and it’s own wonderful place in the world of cancer:
I haven’t searched their site so I don’t know how they did the calculation because it clearly isn’t data from real people. Like, how do you know, say, Fred Bloggs was prevented from getting cancer?
HTML blockquote closure failure – sorry!
Alan Bates says:
11 December 2010 at 6:52 am
“So. Global Warming will triple the death rate from skin cancer.”
No,no,no. fear of Global Warming Induced Skin Cancer will increase the incidence of rickets.
It’s too dangerous to allow our children to play outdoors without smeering them with sunscreen, so now they get rickets instead.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1244988/Victorian-disease-rickets-rise-poor-diet-lack-exercise-doctors-warn.html
Global warming causes infertility. Beat that.
Our study shows that Anthropogenic Global Warming will lead to an increase in old age death syndrome. We re-analyzed data from 1850 to the present and show a direct correlation between increasing temperatures and old age death syndrome. Current computer models show that old age death syndrome only affects old people. We ran an ensemble of computer models hindcasting the increase in temperature against the number of deaths attributed to old age death syndrome and found a statistically significant finding. We then ran the ensemble of models to futurecast expectations based on the IPCC’s highly likely global temperature increases. The runs were performed for the next 100 years and we found that as the temperatures increased year over year, that the sample population also got older year over year. This indicates that it is highly likely that increasing temperatures in the next 100 years will lead to an increase in old age death syndrome. Further study is required to explore why increasing temperatures increase the likelihood of contraction of old age death syndrome.