December 11, 2003
Pop Quiz
I hope you've all been studying. You have thirty minutes. And don't forget to pur your name in the upper right-hand corner.
Read the entire piece linked here, paying particular attention to the sections excerpted below.
Global warming killed 150,000 people in 2000, and the death toll could double again in the next 30 years if current trends are not reversed, the World Health Organization said Thursday.
One heat wave killed 20,000 people in Europe alone this year, the WHO said, launching a book on health-weather links at a U.N. environment conference.
The book estimated climate change was to blame for 2.4 percent of cases of diarrhea because, Campbell-Lendrum said, the heat would exacerbate bacterial contamination of food.
Climate change was also behind 2 percent of all cases of malaria, because increased rainfall created new breeding grounds for mosquitoes, which carry the disease, he said.
Questions:
1. What are the major logical fallacies employed by the authors of this piece?
2. Using the same logic, explain how a global increase in temperature could save 500,000 or more lives per year.
3. True or false: those claiming a death toll from global warming are pushing a religious agenda. Explain your answer.
I'm just auditing the class so I'll just toss out some comments without addressing the test questions.
Are those heat related deaths balanced against cold related ones? Low temperatures contribute more to disease, and at extremes are deadlier. I don't recall if it was 2000, but there was one recent year when lower than normal temperatures resulted in deaths in Mexico and India. Some of them were the result of carbon monoxide poisoning from makeshift heat sources.
The heat related deaths in Europe this summer had infrastructure, and allegedly cultural, components.
It was suggested a few years ago that the ban on Freon refrigerants would result in eventual massive death tolls due to food spoilage. Fortunately the market found a solution in the form of alternate chemicals.
People I am inclined to agree with have stated that the primary factor in the return of malaria from having approached non-problem status resulted from banning, rather than regulating, the use of DDT.
Just auditing?
Your answers are worthy of a grad student, triticale. We might even consider putting you on the faculty.
Posted by: Phil at December 13, 2003 08:23 AMJoin the Linux community. Linuxwaves.net
Posted by: Robert at July 6, 2004 01:01 AM