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Michael Brauer

Professor, The University of British Columbia

Expertise: Guest analyst - Health impacts of air pollution

Business Insider highlights health impacts of climate change, but some aspects are misleading

“The article draws attention to the high CO2 at present and the health risks of climate change, but it gives the incorrect impression that breathing CO2 directly is a major cause of concern. The most important health effects of climate change—heat stress, vector-borne diseases, air pollution, access to food and water, severe storms, displacement—do get some discussion here.”

Playing semantics, misleading Breitbart article downplays US contribution to climate change

“This whole post is based on semantics and basically one big strawman fallacy. The author is deliberately confusing air pollution from suspended particulate matter (as discussed in the WHO report) with pollution from carbon dioxide emissions (as discussed in the Reuters link and the Paris Agreement). Even though CO2 does not impact our health through “disease-causing pollutants that get into people’s lungs”, it does change our environment and the Earth’s climate, and in that sense does classify as a pollutant.”

Analysis of "An Overheated Climate Alarm"

“Lomborg is using scientific ‘language’ to suggest that climate change will have insignificant health impacts; this goes against a vast body of evidence. The notion that benefits from warmer winters could be more important than risks from hotter summer in terms of human health is plain wrong.”