SPINNING GLOBAL WARMING

Matt at ThinkProgress has pretty lying whore Dana Perino claiming that there will be some beneficial effects of climate change:

Q: And one more. You mentioned that there are health benefits to climate change. Could you describe some of those?
MS. PERINO: Sure. In some cases, there are — look, this is an issue where I’m sure lots of people would love to ridicule me when I say this, but it is true that many people die from cold-related deaths every winter. And there are studies that say that climate change in certain areas of the world would help those individuals.

To put this in perspective, CDC Director Julie Gerberding said this in a SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS hearing ¹ :

SEN. BARRASSO: And then the other question is we hear about the tragedy of what happened in Europe and the heat wave and all of those that perished, and then one reads reports that, you know, with any change in temperature, a degree rise or two, there are reports of a number of lives that have been saved by not having the cold impact in the deaths that are caused by cold and the cardiovascular impacts of the extreme cold.

Any comments on how that --

DR. GERBERDING: No, there is better science now relating temperature and mortality rate, including a very large study done in the United States where this was looked at geographically and by various population subsets.

I think one of the things to say to help put the European experience in perspective, in none of that climate tracking data that went on over a long period of time was there an event where 25,000 people died from a winter storm.

So what we're dealing with is not just the gradual increments in temperature that may be offset by less cold and more heat, but also these extreme events which are devastating, and particularly to vulnerable people in our population.

We have to look at the total impact, not just kind of the stable reflection of temperature and health status, and I think there is a lot of uncertainty there. And we need to really be looking at the past climate and anticipating what it means in terms of the future and what we're seeing happening right now today in the United States.

In case you were wondering, yes, Sen. Barasso is a wingnut as you can verify for yourself by seeing what he references as a realiable source:

SEN. BARRASSO: I was reading an article in Investor's Business Daily, and this comes to try to find this balance. This was last week; it talks about Dr. William Gray, professor emeritus of the Atmospheric Department at Colorado State University. And in the article, it says they found that one dollar spent fighting HIV/AIDS produces $40 in social benefits; a dollar spent in fighting malnutrition yields $30 in social benefits; but a dollar fighting the lower CO2 emission yielded between 2 to 25 cents in benefits, and it's trying to find that balance. And I don't know if you have any comments on how we can best use our limited resources in a --

IBD is a rich source of wingnut propaganda.

¹Federal News Service
October 23, 2007 Tuesday
PANEL I OF A HEARING OF THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC WORKS;
SUBJECT: EXAMINING THE HUMAN HEALTH IMPACTS OF GLOBAL WARMING;
CHAIRED BY: SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (D-CA);
WITNESSES: DR. JULIE GERBERDING, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION; DR. HOWARD FRUMKIN, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL CENTER FOR ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH/AGENCY FOR TOXIC SUBSTANCES AND DISEASE REGISTRY;
LOCATION: 406 DIRKSEN SENATE OFFICE BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C.
SECTION: CAPITOL HILL HEARING
LENGTH: 7486 words