The journalist Ross Gelbspan, who led the fight against what he called “climate denialism”, has passed away. Mr. Gelbspan who wrote for the Boston Globe and other mainstream outlets died of COPD (likely from smoking). He championed the idea that global warming results in the spread of disease and rising sea level. In 1995 he wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post:
We’re all familiar with future-horror stories about global warming – that in some distant era, the glaciers will melt, the oceans will rise and Florida will disappear beneath the waters. But a much more imminent – and deadly – threat from climate change is already upon us and could be felt in North America as early as this summer. Scientists call it a worldwide redistribution of disease ‘vectors’ – the animals, insects, microorganisms and plants that transmit disease to humans. To the layman, it means a global spread of infections.
Let’s examine our planet’s rising sea level first. A recent NASA satellite study found that:
The average global sea level rose by 0.11″ (0.27cm) from 2021 to 2022, according to a NASA analysis of satellite data. Since satellites began observing sea surface height in 1993 with the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon mission, the average global sea level has increased by 3.6″ (9.1cm), according to NASA’s Sea Level Change science team. The annual rate of rise – or how quickly sea level rise is happening – that researchers expect to see has also increased from 0.08″ (0.20cm) per year in 1993 to 0.17″ (0.44cm) per year in 2022. Based on the long-term satellite measurements, the projected rate of sea level rise will hit 0.26″ (0.66cm) per year by 2050.
That’s right, less than four inches over a 30-year interval, which is not enough to get anyone’s shoes and socks wet. Context matters!
Another NASA satellite study covering 25 years found that the rate of sea level increase was speeding up: “Global sea level rise is accelerating incrementally over time rather than increasing at a steady rate, as previously thought, according to a new study based on 25 years of NASA and European satellite data. If the rate of ocean rise continues to change at this pace, sea level will rise 26 inches (65 centimeters) by 2100.” Two feet instead of the 30+ feet by 2100 that climate change advocates have been predicting.
Finally, a third NASA satellite study uncovered the fact that roughly 50% of the sea level increase along the U.S. East Coast was due to subsidence and not increasing water levels. Ergo, the other two NASA satellite studies may have overestimated the real increase in sea level by as much as 100%. Perhaps, only a one foot increase in sea level by 2100.
Interestingly, James Hansen in a 2023 published paper repeated his prediction that a dramatic sea level rise remains in our planet’s future. But he made a similar forecast in 2007, stating that the Earth would see serious sea level increase within 10 years. Six years after his deadline we still have a quiescent water level in our planet’s oceans. Since 1988 Dr. Hansen has been only wrong. Perhaps in the distant future he may turn out to be correct, but so far he has been solely incorrect.
Turning to the idea of spreading infections, diseases, pandemics and plagues, which Mr. Gelbspan predicted would spread to North America as soon as the summer of 1995, this has not happened even after over 25 years have passed.
According to the World Atlas there were six deadly epidemics during the 20th century: HIV/AIDS that killed almost 40 million people worldwide and is still killing 2.5 million per year, the 1918 Spanish Flu that resulted in 50 to 100 million deaths, the 1950s Asian Flu which killed 70,000 Americans, the 1968 flu with one million demises worldwide, the 6th cholera outbreak at the turn of the 19th century to which 800,000 succumbed, and the 1974 smallpox outbreak in India with 15,000 deaths. There have been no recurrences during the 21st century except the 2020 Covid pandemic that had zero connection with climate change.
According to the CDC there have only been a total of 496 cases of plague (that is spread by fleas) in the U.S. (almost all were in the South West) over the past 20 years. As of 2019, Our World in Data reported that only 3.2% of worldwide deaths were attributable to malaria and other infectious diseases. And almost all of these illnesses occurred in the tropics.
The bottom line is that Gelbspan has so far been only wrong about everything.
Richard Burcik is the author of two short books, The DNA Lottery and Anatomy of a Lie.
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Ross Gelbspan died at age 84yrs 7mths. We hardly need to know that he died of COPD due to a smoking habit. If remarkable (the article remarks on it) smoking leads to an above average age of death then I’m slightly regretting quitting.
Yes, I feel I have been manipulated in this article into thinking he died prematurely.
I think it is relevant to report what he died from and at what age. If his personal choice of lifestyle led to his death I say good luck to him. He made a free choice.
in contrast he and his fellow travellers want to tell us how to live and we are losing choices rapidly.
These are good points, but the article didn’t mention his age I think? I looked it up on that most reliable of sources, Wikipedia – so it might be madey-uppy.
Totally agree that his ilk try to tell everyone else how to live their lives.
As Glenda Slagg might opine: “Ross Gelbspan. Crazy name, crazy guy! (ex) Byeeeee”
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/how-the-greens-moved-from-local-protests-to-saving-the-planet/
The green madness in this country is being duplicated in Australia.
G’day Ms Huxley, Fancy a beeer? ———-Where Is the Alleged Australian Warming? – Watts Up With That?
Everywhere at once apparently
He was utterly wrong about everything but well rewarded.
12 000 years ago, sea levels were around 40m lower than today and Britain was not an island but connected to the Continent by a wide land bridge. It was also covered in ice.
Gadzooks – the climate warms, changes, sea levels rise, Britain no longer a sheet of ice.
The reality is global warming will continue into a tropical age and there is nothing Man can do or not do to stop it, before once again reverting to an ice age.
The rate of global warming, climate change, sea level rise is so small so slow, it will not be noticeable within a generation and will take numerous generations to be apparent by retrospective comparison, by which time people will have adapted and the ‘new’ climate, sea level etc will be normal.
Yes. However, thanks to our partial ability to manage energy sources we are perhaps uniquely able to survive (as a species, obviously not as individuals) through a hothouse age or an ice age in greater numbers than might have been the case in previous cycles.
Nuclear power now!
Coal power is cheaper, just as effective = more efficient.
The Human resource is infinite and it is used to invent resources, that is things which can be used to advance Human prosperity.
Iron, coal, oil were not resources until Man invented them, although they had been on the Planet for ages.
We cannot therefore know what resources Man shall invent in the future, just as our ancestors did not know about the resources we have now.
This makes those who are alarmist about future climate or warn we shall use up the Earth’s resources (the Earth has no resources only Man has resources) so particularly ignorant and dumb.
Yes.
But there might well be better things to do with it than burning it for power. As you rightly point out: We cannot therefore know what resources Man shall invent in the future…
Nuclear is great and I would continue to use coal and gas. 80% of the worlds energy comes from fossil fuels and that really isn’t going to change very much. What is going to change is the wealthy west (UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, New Zealand USA, unless Trump returns etc etc), will play the climate eco socialist politics game and pander to the UN idea that the wealthy countries have used up more than their fair share of the fossil fuels in the ground and must fob their citizens off with wind and sun by convincing them there is a climate crisis, and unfortunately much of the public have fallen for that as it is all the time on their 6 O’clock News. ———–But I say to those people, you don’t really believe that much your government tells you on all manner of issues so why are you believing them when they tell you there is a climate emergency?
Its very tempting to try and counter people like Gelbspan with facts and logic, but the truth is they don’t believe what they believe because of facts and logic. Cherry picked facts and wayward logic, possibly.
They will hold on to this nonsense, even though it keeps running into reality. They will find an excuse why their predictions don’t come true. That or they just ignore reality and push on relentlessly with the big lie. Trying to explain it to them is like trying to teach a dog to recite Shakespeare.
Another great fighter of “climate denialism” was James Lovelock. (The Gaia hypothesis guy). He passed away in 2022, but long before that he admitted that what he thought 20 and 30 years before about global warming in his own words “has simply not happened”. He said that “billions will die and the few breeding pairs that survive will be in the arctic”. —–He added “The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium”. ——That is true, it has hardly warmed despite more and more CO2 going into the atmosphere. ——-As someone famously pointed out (Feynman), when your theory does not match observations, it is WRONG. ——–Jim Dale are you listening? BBC are you listening? Guardian are you listening? Independent are you listening? ——-Or have you invested so much effort supporting climate politics that you don’t dare admit you were WRONG?
Come on MTF! Stop hiding behind the sofa! I miss seeing all those downticks!
All you need to know. There is NO correlation between CO2 levels and temperature, long or short term. A short period, for example the 30 years or so at the end of the last century OF correlation is statistically beyond insignificant.
Indeed, CO2 levels are at a historic low.
I would encourage everyone concerned with our climate to read the Geoengineering news put out by Geoengineering watch.org