Is Alain Robert your hero?

Question

This brave individual free climbed the NY times building without any harness or parachute clutching a banner that read, “Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week.” He completed the climb and was immediately arrested. When asked why he did such a thing he replied, This is a green building, which is a fantastic step.” He proceeded to talk about global warming as the police led him away. He said he believed the news media would give more prominence to coverage of global warming if a man climbed a prominent building.

I don't know about you but personally he is my hero of the day. : )

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/man-scales-new-york-times-building/

Answer 1

I wonder how he figures in increase of just 0.5 degrees over the last 100 years has killed anyone?

Probably like any other stat that starts off with "scientist believe" that global warming has "probably killed" blah... blah.... blah....

Answer 2

No he is not my hero  I prefer people like the late Mother Theresa who actually helped people rather then climb buildings.

Answer 3

I wouldn't call him my hero.  But he is one heck of an impressive climber.  And he's willing to risk his life for a cause he's convinced will help save people's lives.  When you compare that with people who aren't even willing to switch their light-bulbs or car-pool to help combat global warming, that's pretty impressive.

Answer 4

"I wonder how he figures in increase of just 0.5 degrees over the last 100 years has killed anyone?"

ummmm,  200,000+ dead in Darfur.

Answer 5

I think that does more to hurt than help.  It is very hard to equate weather events to global warming. Heat waves, droughts hurricanes and such are weather events.  If we can't confidently predict if global warming is the cause of a weather event, we can really say with any real confidence  global warming caused the deaths.  50/50 is no confidence - a guess is as good as a prediction.  We have much higher confidence (90%) that humans are causing global warming. I realize such weather events may be consistent with what scientist would expect to happen with climate change,  but we have to look at the change of weather events as a whole (many days and locations for many types of events) to see if it signals a change in the climate.  For example, the significant increase in mean global temperature since the industrial revolution is an observed and quantified number that is right in line with predicted CLIMATE changes.

However, looking at the numbers of deaths associated with weather events and looking at the expected change in weather events climate change will probably gives us some insight into some of the potential costs we could be looking at in the future.

When somebody acts like a fruitcake to make the point, they reduce the credibility of those trying to explain the issue.  However, it does sound impressive!

Answer 6

So Global warming has caused massive heat waves that have killed people.. come on give me a break..  You can't attribute anything that's happened in this century to global warming.. Seriously how do you know.. b/c the WHO said it!! and I love how they just assume that's it's man's fault even though half of the warming in the past century can be attributed to the sun and there is a lag time especially in the oceans. There's lies d**n lies then there's stats!! all a bunch of BS.. He's not my hero personally I think he's crazy but everyone is entitled to there own self sacrifice to make a statement so I commend him on that.  I'm all for cleaner air and less dependency on foreign oil, but this needs to be done the right way and I don't think anyone's come up with the a good solution at this point.  But I'm not sold on it curving the temperature.  So if it reaches 100 degrees here in NM today and someone dies of a heat stroke can I blame that on global warming.  You have to have a trend not just localized events, like the heat wave in europe in 2005, have they had one like it since.. it has to be a reoccurring pattern.  It's just crazy when people make assumptions.