We’re not all going to die!? 100 million climate dead study ‘deliberately misleading. Too bad so many in media got fooled’ — Claims were ‘scare tactics without foundation in reality’

Except from Bjorn Lomborg on study:

Indeed, 1.4 million deaths are caused by outdoor air pollution, which is almost entirely unrelated to global warming. This air pollution, of course, is still predominantly caused by fossil fuels, but only because that is what we mostly use for fuel in the world. So, while the report is technically correct in saying that these 1.4 million deaths are caused by “the present carbon-intensive economy,” these deaths are in no way caused by climate change. Rebranding air pollution, mostly from particulate pollution, as “carbon” appears both disingenuous and designed to confuse. It was clearly intended to convey the message that these deaths were somehow relevant for the global warming debate.

Moreover, 3.1 million deaths in 2010 were due to indoor smoke, which in no way is caused by global warming and has little or nothing to do with fossil fuels. According to the World Health Organization, indoor air pollution is due to cooking and heating with biomass fuels (agricultural residues, dung, straw, wood) or coal products, and biomass, which is entirely unrelated to fossil fuels, constitutes more than 85 percent of the total. So, while the study lumps all these deaths together as resulting from the use of carbon-based fuels, it is only true in the most exaggerated meaning of that word, in that all biomass contains carbon.

The bottom line: When the study reports that 4.975 million people die in 2010 from the “combined climate-carbon crisis”, the reality is that 4.575 million have not been caused by global warming.

Essentially, the report’s authors claim that 0.4 million actually die from global warming (this number itself is very likely exaggerated, as I have described in my book Cool It, but a closer examination is beyond the scope of this article). Yet the impression clearly intended for the media was almost 5 million deaths, or a more than twelve-fold exaggeration.

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