According to almost all public opinion surveys, President Biden’s support among African American voters has been steadily eroding and so one can imagine that a directive has been sent out from the White House calling upon all of Mr. Biden’s cabinet officials to take prompt action to try to improve President Biden’s standing among America’s black electorate. And immediately, as if on cue, a brief video pops up on X from Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary, Rachel Levine, a trans pediatrician, who falsely asserts that global warming is having a disparate impact on the heath of African-American.
Levine’s baseless claim runs completely counter to the well documented science. In 2021, a study that was published in the Lancet confirmed the findings of an earlier 2015 research paper – also in the Lancet – which documented the fact that cold kills far more people than heat. These two scholarly papers only confirmed the well known truth that was first uncovered by Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War almost 170 years ago. Ms. Nightingale maintained meticulous records and discovered that far more soldiers died during the cold winter months than during the warm summer season. Interestingly, she also noted that far more of her patients died from disease than from their wounds. Her research was reported to the very top echelons of the British Army and has since been studied worldwide. Today, every medical student studies her work and each budding physician has it drummed into them that cold is a far greater killer than heat. It is highly unlikely that Dr. Levine does not know this truth.
Turning to the hard science, the most recent Lancet study that was done by experts at Monash University in Australia found that “Globally, 5,083, 173 deaths (95% eCI 4,087,967–5,965,520) were associated with non-optimal temperatures per year, consisting of 4,594,098 cold-related deaths (3,337,222–5,640,617) and 489,075 heat-related deaths (304,216–732,518”. In layman’s language, the investigators found more than five million people suffer premature deaths every year due to “non-optimal temperatures”, but less than 500,000 of these early expirations were attributable to excess heat and over 4.5 million were attributable to excess cold, a nine-to-one ratio. The study also concluded that “average excess deaths related to non-optimal temperatures accounted for 9.43% (95% eCI 7.58–11.07) of global deaths (74 deaths per 100,000 residents), with 8.52% of deaths explainable by cold temperatures (67 deaths per 100,000 residents) and 0.91% explainable by hot temperatures (seven deaths per 100 000 residents)”. In plain terms, the research results revealed that 67 per 100,000 died prematurely from excess cold while only seven per 100,000 succumbed from excessive heat. The researchers concluded:
Our study also explored the temporal change in temperature-related mortality burden from 2000 to 2019. The global daily mean temperature increased by 0.26°C per decade during this time, paralleled with a large decrease in cold-related deaths and a moderate increase in heat-related deaths. The results indicate that global warming might slightly reduce the net temperature-related deaths, although, in the long run, climate change is expected to increase mortality burden.
In short, the increase of 1.1°C over pre-industrial levels has been saving thousands of people from premature death every year since 1880. Even the Guardian reported that “the study found more people had died of cold than heat over the two-decade period. But heat-related deaths were increasing, while cold-linked deaths were dropping.”
Therefore, the current warming of the Earth’s atmosphere is saving countless lives every year. And this very favorable impact was found to occur at relatively minor increases in temperature. But the latest scientific research paper also concluded that black people “had the highest death rates per 100,000 due to exposure to cold”. Thus, Global Warming, by reducing the number of people dying from cold temperatures, is disproportionately benefitting blacks. This reveals that Secretary Levine will stoop to any level to try to assist Biden’s fading re-election efforts. The truth is, the net benefit on early human mortality of Global Warming has been quite significant, particularly for black people.
Richard Burcik is the author of two short books, The DNA Lottery and Anatomy of a Lie.
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