Save Five Lives, Save $142

Edmunds recently tested tips for improving fuel efficiency. Some of these tips (stop driving like a maniac; drive the speed limit) could reduce your gasoline consumption by at least 10%. So if you drive 12,000 miles per year and averaged around 25 miles per gallon, you would have burned 480 gallons of gas. If you reduced this by 48 gallons, at $4 per gallon you’ve saved $192. Of course you still burned 432 gallons of gas, and this means you contributed 4.19 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. The IPCC estimates that the "social cost" of a ton of CO2 is $12, so you have caused a total of about $50 worth of damage.

If you feel bad about this I suppose you could buy $50 worth of carbon offsets. But I’d like you to consider something else. Global warming may increase the incidence of malaria, which already kills around one million people a year. Nothingbutnets.net has started a campaign to raise awareness and get bed nets to people in areas where the mosquito borne disease is found. So you can donate that $50 and buy five nets, which could easily save the lives of five people. (Donating to Save the Children is a good option too). And you can still pocket the $142 left in savings.

One million lives a year is about two per minute. So two people died while you were reading this. But now, by changing some of your driving habits, you can

Reduce your “carbon footprint”
Save $142
Save five lives

The only thing better than a “win-win”…is a “win-win-win.”

Global warming effects: A Decrease in Hurricanes?

A new study, from NOAA, says that we may actually see fewer hurricanes in the coming decades.

The new research suggests that the number of hurricanes
each summer could decrease by about 18 percent.

Major hurricanes—those with winds in excess of 110 miles (177 kilometers) an hour—could decline by about 8 percent.

Currently about ten Atlantic hurricanes form—two to three of them major—during an average season, which runs from June 1 to November 30.

One of the ways that global warming could reduce hurricanes is by increasing upper-level winds—known as wind shear—that can inhibit hurricane formation, said lead author Thomas Knutson.

Read the article at National Geographic.

Global warming 'may cut deaths'

Lomborg pointed out that we need to look at the effects of any change in climate, cooling or warming, and weigh both the damages and benefits. We don't hear much about the number of cold related deaths, and how they can be expected to drop in a warmer world.

A seriously hot summer between now and 2017 could claim more than 6,000 lives, the Department of Health report warns.

But it also stresses that milder winters mean deaths during this time of year - which far outstrip heat-related mortality - will continue to decline.

The report is to help health services prepare for climate change effects.

A panel of scientific experts commissioned by the Department of Health and Health Protection Agency (HPA) has looked at the way the UK has responded to rising temperatures since the 1970s, and how the risks are likely to change.

While summers in the UK became warmer in the period 1971 - 2003, there was no change in heat-related deaths, but annual cold-related mortality fell by 3% as winters became milder - so overall fewer people died as a result of extreme temperatures.

Read the whole piece here.