On 29th July 2021, Nature published a paper titled 'The Mortality Cost of Carbon' and many publications have repeated a rather sensational part of the abstract of the paper :
Our central estimate 2020 MCC also implies that reducing (adding) 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2020 saves one life (causes one excess death) in expectation globally between 2020 and 2100. In all, 4,434 metric tons is equivalent to the lifetime emissions of 3.5 average Americans, 146.2 Nigerians, and 12.8 average world people.
The Mortality Cost of Carbon - Nature.com - 29/20/2021
This has been repeated by The Guardian, The Independent, Yahoo and many others.
Three Americans create enough carbon emissions to kill one person, study finds
I have examined the original paper online and I can find no proper explanation of what this rather sensationalist sound-byte actually means.
I am not disputing the fact of temperature rise, having recently seen the very convincing graph of the Meterological Office temperature statistics taken from 1659 to the present day (see below) which I first saw on this site but seems to have disappeared.
But I am skeptical of this 'summary' of this particular paper as there is (that I can find) no proper explanation of how the calculations of emissions and the calculations of estimated excess deaths can possibly be matched together and conclusions be drawn in such a simplistic way.
Covid figures have demonstrated that only a few countries have the administrative infrastructure to reliably calculate anywhere near the correct statistic for excess deaths and these very countries are, inherently, not the ones with the highest populations.
But the main feature of this published statement is that no explanation is offered as to the decease of the supposed individual.
Were they never born, because emissions caused a terminated pregnancy ?
Were they never born because their mother never reached reproductive age, due to emissions ?
Did they reach middle age ?
Old age ?
Was their life merely cut short by a few months ?
And what of the "three and a half" Americans ? Did they perhaps have shortened lives due to emissions ? Did they lose a few years ? Or many years ?
To publish such a statistic from the mere matching of other (only vaguely related) statistics is highly debatable and leaves me very skeptical indeed.
