Green politicians are politicising the weather. Again. [Updated]

EVEN AS PEOPLE ARE cleaning up and recovering -- and mourning -- after the worst weather event in New Zealand this century, Green politicians and other warmists are out there politicising these recent weather events.

Sub-tropical Cyclone Giselle, claims James Shaw, Green leader and minister of cyclone's devastation, is proof that global warming "is real ... is clearly here now, and if we do not act, it will get worse." (His standard of proof, clearly, being different to that of formal logicians. And his proposed "solution"-- i.e., that New Zealand drastically reduce its agriculture and industry, and all us non-politicians spend less on air travel than he does -- is perhaps further proof of that.) 

Meanwhile, his fellow Green MP Julie Anne Genter took the opportunity of the devastation around the North Island to ... not to get out there and help, but to take the opportunity to jump on Twitter to lambast the Act Party, whose "extreme ideology," she says, "has never been less relevant."

You'd think she'd have better things to do. Like get on her bike and deliver help, perhaps. And James might have better things to do too. Like think, perhaps about the difference between climate and weather, and about the dangers of generalising from the latter to the former. Especially, you would think, about the dangers of generalising from weather here to "global action" everywhere -- action that is, in truth, just government action to ban private actions.

YES, THIS IS THE worst weather event here this century. No question. So, no matter how passionate you might feel about your reckonings, you'd think even a politician might wait a day or two before spewing them forth. But because these political creatures have no gag reflex, it requires others to respond to their bile, however briefly. For that, I apologise.

First quick point: while we probably do all agree that this is New Zealand's worst weather event this century, it shouldn't need to be said however, that it's not the worst weather event New Zealand has ever had. The fifty-four people who died in the 1968 Wahine disaster, for example, are one tragic reminder of that. That was Sub-Tropical Cyclone Giselle. And we've been through several alphabet's worth of cyclones since then, everything from Bola to Hola, and worse, to come around again to Gabrielle's letter 'G.'

And there have been many worse cyclones in the South Pacific over the centuries before human industry began. But they either didn't hit these islands, thank goodness, or there was no-one here to record them.

Another thing to note: bad as things are and have been these last few days, fewer people have died in the more recent weather events than those in previous centuries. More than fifty died in that 1968 storm. More than 200 died in an 1863 storm and blizzard in Otago. Storms have taken ships aplenty, and landslides, caused by heavy rain, have been endemic. One in 1846 took 60 souls on the shores of Lake Taupo, in a place called Waihi.

Indeed, if we "think global," as Air-Miles James and his party faithful frequently implore we do, we can see that climate deaths worldwide haven't increased either over the decades that human industry has increased. Instead, just as they have here in New Zealand, climate-related deaths have decreased. Dramatically. In fact "as population has quadrupled," records Bjorn Lomborg, "deaths have dropped twenty-fold. Death risk from climate," he calculates based on data from the OFDA/CRED International Disaster Database, "is down 99% from 1920s."And that's despite temperatures increasing, and the globe enjoying more people, living in more places that get threatened by severe weather -- and enduring more and more politicians talking bollocks.

Explain that one, James. Or at least, you know, take it on board while keeping your damned mouth shut.

ONE REASON FOR FEWER climate-related deaths is that severe weather events globally are themselves generally either decreasing or showing no particular trend. And that's not just me and climate scientists like Roger Pielke Jr saying that. It's the IPCC, who find no trends in flooding globally; no long-term trends in meteorological or hydrological drought; no upward trend either in so-called atmospheric rivers, and no upward trend in landfalling hurricanes or tornadoes either in the US or globally. None. And the US Govt, whose official metric records a general decrease in heatwaves since the 1930s -- or the international insurance industry, who record a decline in both US and European disaster-related losses. And the World Bank agrees. Meanwhile, even as alarmists like James talk about sea level rise inundating coastlines in the near future, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) records that ongoing sea level rise since 1880 amounts to only 240mm, i.e., just 17mm per decade -- measurable, but steady, and not accelerating -- and recent research shows many coastlines worldwide to be prograding rather than retrograding (i.e., shifting seaward) and at a globally-averaged rate of 260mm per year, reducing even this slow but steady threat. And the Department of Atmospheric Science at CSU records that cyclone frequency in the South Pacific (the very reason we're here talking about this stuff) has, since 1980, been declining. (Click those links if you'd like to see the peer-reviewed data, graphs and studies, or to send them to James and Julie Ann.)

But the other main reason for climate-related deaths to fall so dramatically is that the very thing James and Julie Ann decry so loudly and monotonously, human industry, is the very thing that keeps folk safer from weather events like these recent ones. It was the Netherlands' rising wealth, for example, that allowed them to build the dikes and dams that immunised that protected their sub-sea level provinces from flooding. And mortality from extreme heat in the US for example, as heat waves have recently kicked up and more and more people have moved to live in desert regions, has fallen pretty much all over the country over the past 50 years. In this case, it's because of things like air conditioning and better medicine that more and more people can afford.

And in the general case, as Bjorn Lomborg explains is succinctly, it's "because richer and more resilient societies are much better able to protect their citizens." 

The climate catastrophists don’t want you to know this [points out energy advocate Alex Epstein] because it reveals how fundamentally flawed their viewpoint is. They treat the global climate system as a stable and safe place that we make volatile and dangerous. In fact, the global climate system is naturally volatile and dangerous—we make it liveable through development and technology—development and technology powered by the only form of cheap, reliable, scalable reliable energy that can make climate liveable for 7 billion people.
    As the climate-related death data show, there are some major benefits—namely, the power of fossil-fuelled machines to build a durable civilisation highly resilient to extreme heat, extreme cold, floods, storms, and so on.

It's not just that GDP is correlated with fewer climate-related deaths and disasters, although it is; it's that the whole relationship between economic progress and human flourishing itself is actually causal. The richer and wealthier a society is, the better able it is to train the engineers and raise the capital and devise and build the infrastructure that allows human beings in all the many places on this fragile planet to master all the many things that nature is ready to throw at us. 

And James's and Julie Ann's governments action to ban private actions -- like banning the exploration and extraction of the fossil fuels that help power all the industry that makes us wealthier and keeps us all safer -- will only make that harder. 

So I suggest they both shut the fuck up. At least until people have cleaned up, and are ready to debate this stuff with a clearer head.