The leftist Mother Jones website is promoting a new, false, global warming fairy tale this week – that global warming is killing American soldiers. Citing a “joint investigation between Inside Climate News and NBC News,” Mother Jones reports 17 American soldiers died from heat-related illnesses in the 11 years between 2008 and 2018. (https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/07/climate-change-is-killing-us-soldiers/) According to the Mother Jones headline for its story, “Climate Change Is Killing US Soldiers.” But is this true?
As an initial flaw, the Mother Jones assertion assumes that no American soldiers died from heat-related causes prior to SUVs and coal-fired power plants. That assertion is ridiculous. Heat stroke, heat exhaustion, and related heat-related causes have always been a mortality factor among U.S. servicemen, particularly during times of military conflict. Claiming that “climate change” is suddenly responsible for all heat-related deaths requires a degree of evidentiary proof that is completely lacking from the Mother Jones/NBC News/Inside Climate News analysis. The alarmists merely cite a few heat-related deaths and then assert, without any evidentiary support, that the 1-degree increase in global temperatures during the past century is to blame for all of them. Really?
In the hot-climate Middle East, U.S. forces remain deployed in Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, and Oman. American military personnel also have been recently stationed in Syria, Afghanistan, and other hot-climate nations. Quite frankly, it is probably a pleasant surprise that less than two soldiers per year die from heat-related ailments given this distribution.
Just as importantly, American mortality data show more than twice as many people die from cold-related causes than heat-related causes. The same modest global warming that alarmists blame for every heat-related death should also be given credit for reducing the number and severity of cold days that kill far more people than heat-related deaths. Yet Mother Jones/NBC News/ Inside Climate News ignore that obvious counterbalance.
A recent global study in the prestigious peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet found cold temperatures are responsible for approximately 4 million deaths per year, which is 20 times more people than die due to warm or hot temperatures. Unless there is some reason that this global ratio does not apply to American soldiers, we can reasonably calculate that for every U.S. soldier who dies due to heat-related reasons, 20 more U.S. soldiers die due to cold-related reasons. Warming temperatures will accordingly save far more American soldiers than it will kill. Again, Mother Jones/NBC News/ Inside Climate News ignore this.
Consider this another alarmist climate scare debunked.
