The Wonderful Issues of Climate Change - The Existential Threat!

Original Date: January 28, 2024; Revised February 21, 2024.

Author: Tim Platnich

This post discusses the assertion that climate change (caused by anthropological global warming) represents an existential threat to humanity.

Our Supreme Court of Canada (SCC), in the case of Reference re Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act, found that human caused climate change 'is an existential threat to human life in Canada and around the world'. What does an existential threat to human life mean?

The online Oxford Languages dictionary says 'existential' means 'relating to existence'. The dictionary gives the following as an example of the use of the term: 'the climate crisis is an existential threat to the world'.

Hence, the assertion that climate change is an existential threat to human life means that climate change threatens the very existence of human life. There are two senses in which the threat may be interpreted. First, it may mean that climate change will kill all the existing humans on the earth. Second, it may mean that the world will become unliveable for any humans at some point in the future.

Has climate change killed anyone to date? Does climate kill anyone, or do people die from climate related weather events such as droughts, floods, storms, temperature extremes and wildfires?

“Since climate is a statistical concept over decades, no individual weather event can ever be firmly attributed to human influences.”[Steven Kooning, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn't and Why it Matters, p. 128]

As discussed in my last post, attribution science asserts that climate change makes extreme weather events more likely now and in the the future. This is based on modelling. This modelling predicts that more people will die from extreme weather events with global warming, than without warming. There is no suggestion in the models however, that everyone is going to die now or in the future.

Extreme weather events are regional. As such, extreme weather events, at worst, are only going to kill people in the area of the extreme weather events. There is no evidence, or modelled prediction, of global-wide extreme weather events that will kill all humans.

Modelling aside, what does the data say? The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) shows that weather-related death rates fell dramatically since 1900 even as the globe warmed about 1 degree C [Unsettled, p.169]. Weather related deaths are about 80 times less frequent today than they were a century ago. [Unsettled, p. 169]. For example, in the 1920s weather events killed almost 500,000 people per year; this number dropped to fewer than 20,000 notwithstanding that the global population has quadrupled since 1920. [Bjorn Lomborg, “Climate Change Doesn’t Cause All Disasters”, Wall Street Journal, August 5, 2021]. Of course this is due to various human interventions such as better storm tracking, better flood control, better medical care and so on [ibid]. There is no reason to believe human interventions will not continue into the future

Extreme cold kills more people globally than extreme heat. Between January 1, 2000 and December 31, 2019, 4,594,098 deaths were cold-related relative to 489,075 being heat-related [ Zhao, et al, “Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study” Lancet Planet Health 2021] Non-optimal temperature deaths are decreasing on a net basis as the globe warms [ibid, see also “Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multi-country observational study”, Lancet, 2015].

Some projections, based on recent climate change simulations, particularly based on RCP8.5, show that by the end of this century, heat-related deaths in Europe will far exceed cold-related deaths [Martinez-Solanas, et al, Lancet Planet Health, July 1, 2021; Quijal-Aamorano, Martinez-Solanas, et al, Lancet Planet Health, September, 2021].

So what to believe: trends based on observations to date or modelled predictions based on hypothetical scenarios like scenario RCP8.5?

Will the globe become uninhabitable by humans? Although there are projections that various areas of the globe may become uninhabitable due to extreme heat; sea level rise; and extreme weather events like drought, there are no projections that the entire globe will become uninhabitable leading to the extinction of humanity. As late as December 14, 2023, the IPCC, through its representative as Chair of the North-South Prize of the Council of Europe, put it this way: "Climate change is an imminent threat to the health of our planet, our livelihoods, our well-being, and indeed the very existence of other species sharing this world with us. It is an existential threat for small island states and low-lying coastal areas. It warrants an urgent response. Losses and damages inflicted by climate change are now a reality and part of our future."

According to the IPCC, global warming may be an existential threat to some species and to some small island states and low-lying coastal areas. This is serious to be sure. But it is a far cry from an existential threat to humanity.

If you are interested in more statistics concerning world-wide disasters (and how climate-related deaths have decreased by 98%), go to this link. This link is to a respected international database. Unfortunately, the data is for persons with an account only.

One has to wonder why our Supreme Court, and a whole host of others including politicians, climate activists, and so on, need to exaggerate the threat.

My view is that the SCC had to make this finding to justify giving the Federal Government the jurisdiction to regulate carbon emissions through a carbon tax.