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Climate change to claim 600,000 lives a year From correspondents in London Reuters May 29, 2009 09:30am CLIMATE change kills about 315,000 people a year through hunger, sickness and weather disasters, and the annual death toll is expected to rise to half a million by 2030. A study commissioned by the Geneva-based Global Humanitarian Forum, estimates that climate change seriously affects 325 million people every year, a number that will more than double in 20 years to 10 per cent of the world's population (now about 6.7 billion). Economic losses due to global warming amount to over $125 billion ($160...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is widely regarded in the media as the ultimate authority on climate change. Created by two divisions of the United Nations, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, its pronouncements are received as if they come down from Mount Olympus or Mount Sinai. The common presumption is that the IPCC has assembled the best scientific knowledge. Let’s take a closer look at this organization to see whether it merits such uncritical deference. The IPCC’s Feb. 2007 report stated: It is “very likely” that human activity is causing global warming. Why then, just...

A person needn't be a buffoon or political hack to be skeptical of global warming. That would be news to The Washington Post's news desk, however. A Post article on May 19 falsely reported that there is a "consensus" among scientists and a growing portion of the American public that human carbon emissions are causing a dangerous, long-term increase in worldwide temperatures. The facts, overwhelmingly, show no such consensus. The Post's David A. Fahrenthold reported that Republican "warming skeptics" are becoming ever bolder on Capitol Hill even as "most" or a "consensus" of "scientists around the globe have rejected their...