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> With climate change, heat waves and cold fronts are worsening and taking lives worldwide: about 5 million in the past 20 years If there are 60 million deaths

> With climate change, heat waves and cold fronts are worsening and taking lives worldwide: about 5 million in the past 20 years If there are 60 million deaths a year, that factoid suggests 1 in 240 deaths, or 0.4%, was caused by a heat wave or a cold front. That just doesn’t pass a smell test

delecti 4y ago
Do you think it sounds too high or too low? It doesn't seem outrageous to me.
- trts 4y ago
  Too high. For example in the northwest U.S. last year we had an unprecedented heat wave, over 110 degrees for multiple days in places where air conditioning is not common. In the Portland region 72[1] people were reported to have died from it. Going by the metro region with a population of 2.2 million, and assuming the heat-related deaths were underreported by half (round up to 100) that’s .0045% [1] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/27/portland-remembers-people-died-heat-dome-one-year-ago/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/27/portland-remembers-pe...
  - lozenge 4y ago
    Statistically, the heat wave you mention killed 150 people, not 72 [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/deaths-pacific-northwest-heat-wave.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/death... - see graphic
  - hedora 4y ago
    110F isn’t very hot by global standards. Of course, northern costal cities like Portland are going to be below global averages. Heck, it hardly makes news when Silicon Valley breaks 100F these days.
    - marcosdumay 4y ago
      It is around the temperatures the article is talking about.
    - hexane360 4y ago
      It's very hard to compare ~110 F in a very dry region compared to ~110 F in a wet region. 110 F at 70% humidity is a heat index of 160 F, close to unsurvivable. The highest recorded heat index was 178 F in Saudi Arabia, with an actual temperature of 108 F. Another thing to consider is heat waves are much worse in regions without reliable or universal air conditioning. This could explain the much higher death tolls in South America compared to North America.
  - Jensson 4y ago
    > Going by the metro region with a population of 2.2 million, and assuming the heat-related deaths were underreported by half (round up to 100) that’s .0045% That is deaths per pop, not rate of deaths. Assuming people live to 80 on average, you'd expect 1/80 to die each year. So multiply that number by 80 to translate it to per death instead of per pop, and you get around 0.36% of deaths that year in Portland was due to that heatwave. 0.36% line up really well to the reported 0.4% figure from the article.
    - trts 4y ago
      Nice catch, that does line up well
deleted 4y ago
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Narretz 4y ago
Why not? I can see a problem linking heat waves directly to mortality, but 0.4% doesn't sound too high?
ntoskrnl 4y ago
Heat stroke as a cause of death is a bit nebulous, in that it can cause parts of the body to fail that otherwise wouldn't. It's similarly fuzzy to dying of old age: If someone has a heart attack, and they're 95 years old, did they die of heart failure or die of old age? If someone has a heart attack, and it's 120°F outside, did they die of heart failure or die of heatstroke? Heat deaths are typically underreported because of this.
- rbanffy 4y ago
  > and they're 95 years old, We really need to stop saying people die of old age. Old age is not a disease, even though aging is a degenerative disease that affects a lot of species and leads to a 100% fatality rate from other conditions.
  - mc32 4y ago
    I would disagree --at advanced age, multiple systems and organs are near failure, so while one may identify one as being the proximate cause, if not that today, it would have been another tomorrow and that offers a false sense of certainty or precision. It’s akin to saying we estimate the newly discovered satellite to be about 1 mile across or 1609.34 meters.
    - rbanffy 4y ago
      It's still a different condition caused by aging. If you live long enough, cancer will eventually get you.
    - thomastjeffery 4y ago
      Right, but if you can prevent death from each of those causes, you run out of death. If grandpa's liver is failing and he gets hit by a car, he didn't die of old age. If the deadly car accident is prevented, and then he dies of liver failure, then he didn't die of old age. If his liver is replaced, and he dies of heart failure... Most people are dying from cancer and cardiovascular issues. If we cured cancer next year, then we would see a huge drop in people dying from old age, at least until the heart failure caught up to them. Basically, that would introduce latency without changing bandwidth, and the total mortality rate would only be delayed temporarily.
mmaunder 4y ago
The way any weather event is associated by default with climate change has harmed the credibility of those reporting on it, and made it harder to have the urgent conversations we need to have to solve climate change. I suspect journalists think they’re helping the planet by raising the subject at every opportunity, but when there is no clear link, they’re providing fuel for parties that want to discredit the data and ignore the issue.
- mc32 4y ago
  I suspect this is more due lack critical thinking and lumping everything in with climate change because that is what everyone else is doing. Hivemind may be overwrought, but while I do believe people are affecting climate, attributing thigs that would have happened regardless of climate change is not constructive. It only serves to incite the choir and turn off most everyone else as it appears to resemble chicken little.
- hedora 4y ago
  Climate change increases the frequency of previously rare events. By definition, any unprecedented weather event in the last few years is linked to it. Excluding those, what weather event reporting are you referring to? People saying it’s a nice seasonably warm day, or noting historically average precipitation last week, and blaming climate change?
  - coryrc 4y ago
    > Climate change increases the frequency of previously rare events. People were saying this about hurricanes after Katrina. Then we went about a decade with far fewer hurricanes than normal, and, indeed, named hurricanes in 2010s were 2/3 the count in the 1990s. It's too nuanced of a point to be used with the public.
- swatcoder 4y ago
  Maybe journalists are reporting what’s on the mind of readers, like they always do? A distressing weather event is news and has always been. The connection of any such event to climate change is something that most people wonder about, and journalists can do little besides ask an expert for their take. And the expert inevitably says “well, we can’t credit any specific event to climate change but extreme and unfamiliar weather patterns are a symptom in any case” How would you rather it go? Should the journalist find an expert who wouldn’t say that? Where would they find one? Should the journalist stop reporting on the weather? Stop addressing what’s on reader’s minds when they do?
curiousllama 4y ago
High or low? 0.4% caused by an incremental change in climate sounds like a pretty reasonable effect size, to me.
lozenge 4y ago
What's a cause of death? Everyone dies of something... usually more than one thing. AIUI, they've basically put a bunch of factors in to create a regression model which outputs "number of deaths in this area on this day", and the factors for "very hot day or very cold day" are multiplied by the actual number of total deaths to get the "5 million" figure.
shadowgovt 4y ago
That sounds about right, actually. People (especially in the developed world) really, really overestimate how much thermal regulation the very old and very young can do. Even in our safe, structured, developed cities in the US, we lose several people every time a major snowstorm hits from elderly folks getting locked out of their homes and dying before they can find help.
coldtea 4y ago
>That just doesn’t pass a smell test This sentence appears totally random. Why doesn't it "pass a smell test"? Because somehow 0.4% is a big number? It might be, but without context seems perfectly normal to me...
marcosdumay 4y ago
Well, the article goes a bit into qualifying it. Up to the point of this: In a 2019 study, she and her colleagues determined that daily deaths increased by 43% during a December 2013 heat wave in Buenos Aires. Given the frequency of heat waves, a 0.4% increase is not an extraordinary claim. Anyway, death attribution to heat waves is always messy.

delecti 4y ago

Do you think it sounds too high or too low? It doesn't seem outrageous to me.

trts 4y ago
Too high. For example in the northwest U.S. last year we had an unprecedented heat wave, over 110 degrees for multiple days in places where air conditioning is not common. In the Portland region 72[1] people were reported to have died from it. Going by the metro region with a population of 2.2 million, and assuming the heat-related deaths were underreported by half (round up to 100) that’s .0045% [1] https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/27/portland-remembers-people-died-heat-dome-one-year-ago/ https://www.opb.org/article/2022/06/27/portland-remembers-pe...
- lozenge 4y ago
  Statistically, the heat wave you mention killed 150 people, not 72 [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/deaths-pacific-northwest-heat-wave.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/11/climate/death... - see graphic
- hedora 4y ago
  110F isn’t very hot by global standards. Of course, northern costal cities like Portland are going to be below global averages. Heck, it hardly makes news when Silicon Valley breaks 100F these days.
  - marcosdumay 4y ago
    It is around the temperatures the article is talking about.
  - hexane360 4y ago
    It's very hard to compare ~110 F in a very dry region compared to ~110 F in a wet region. 110 F at 70% humidity is a heat index of 160 F, close to unsurvivable. The highest recorded heat index was 178 F in Saudi Arabia, with an actual temperature of 108 F. Another thing to consider is heat waves are much worse in regions without reliable or universal air conditioning. This could explain the much higher death tolls in South America compared to North America.
- Jensson 4y ago
  > Going by the metro region with a population of 2.2 million, and assuming the heat-related deaths were underreported by half (round up to 100) that’s .0045% That is deaths per pop, not rate of deaths. Assuming people live to 80 on average, you'd expect 1/80 to die each year. So multiply that number by 80 to translate it to per death instead of per pop, and you get around 0.36% of deaths that year in Portland was due to that heatwave. 0.36% line up really well to the reported 0.4% figure from the article.
  - trts 4y ago
    Nice catch, that does line up well

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Narretz 4y ago

Why not? I can see a problem linking heat waves directly to mortality, but 0.4% doesn't sound too high?

ntoskrnl 4y ago

Heat stroke as a cause of death is a bit nebulous, in that it can cause parts of the body to fail that otherwise wouldn't. It's similarly fuzzy to dying of old age: If someone has a heart attack, and they're 95 years old, did they die of heart failure or die of old age? If someone has a heart attack, and it's 120°F outside, did they die of heart failure or die of heatstroke? Heat deaths are typically underreported because of this.

rbanffy 4y ago
> and they're 95 years old, We really need to stop saying people die of old age. Old age is not a disease, even though aging is a degenerative disease that affects a lot of species and leads to a 100% fatality rate from other conditions.
- mc32 4y ago
  I would disagree --at advanced age, multiple systems and organs are near failure, so while one may identify one as being the proximate cause, if not that today, it would have been another tomorrow and that offers a false sense of certainty or precision. It’s akin to saying we estimate the newly discovered satellite to be about 1 mile across or 1609.34 meters.
  - rbanffy 4y ago
    It's still a different condition caused by aging. If you live long enough, cancer will eventually get you.
  - thomastjeffery 4y ago
    Right, but if you can prevent death from each of those causes, you run out of death. If grandpa's liver is failing and he gets hit by a car, he didn't die of old age. If the deadly car accident is prevented, and then he dies of liver failure, then he didn't die of old age. If his liver is replaced, and he dies of heart failure... Most people are dying from cancer and cardiovascular issues. If we cured cancer next year, then we would see a huge drop in people dying from old age, at least until the heart failure caught up to them. Basically, that would introduce latency without changing bandwidth, and the total mortality rate would only be delayed temporarily.

mmaunder 4y ago

The way any weather event is associated by default with climate change has harmed the credibility of those reporting on it, and made it harder to have the urgent conversations we need to have to solve climate change. I suspect journalists think they’re helping the planet by raising the subject at every opportunity, but when there is no clear link, they’re providing fuel for parties that want to discredit the data and ignore the issue.

mc32 4y ago
I suspect this is more due lack critical thinking and lumping everything in with climate change because that is what everyone else is doing. Hivemind may be overwrought, but while I do believe people are affecting climate, attributing thigs that would have happened regardless of climate change is not constructive. It only serves to incite the choir and turn off most everyone else as it appears to resemble chicken little.
hedora 4y ago
Climate change increases the frequency of previously rare events. By definition, any unprecedented weather event in the last few years is linked to it. Excluding those, what weather event reporting are you referring to? People saying it’s a nice seasonably warm day, or noting historically average precipitation last week, and blaming climate change?
- coryrc 4y ago
  > Climate change increases the frequency of previously rare events. People were saying this about hurricanes after Katrina. Then we went about a decade with far fewer hurricanes than normal, and, indeed, named hurricanes in 2010s were 2/3 the count in the 1990s. It's too nuanced of a point to be used with the public.
swatcoder 4y ago
Maybe journalists are reporting what’s on the mind of readers, like they always do? A distressing weather event is news and has always been. The connection of any such event to climate change is something that most people wonder about, and journalists can do little besides ask an expert for their take. And the expert inevitably says “well, we can’t credit any specific event to climate change but extreme and unfamiliar weather patterns are a symptom in any case” How would you rather it go? Should the journalist find an expert who wouldn’t say that? Where would they find one? Should the journalist stop reporting on the weather? Stop addressing what’s on reader’s minds when they do?

curiousllama 4y ago

High or low? 0.4% caused by an incremental change in climate sounds like a pretty reasonable effect size, to me.

lozenge 4y ago

What's a cause of death? Everyone dies of something... usually more than one thing. AIUI, they've basically put a bunch of factors in to create a regression model which outputs "number of deaths in this area on this day", and the factors for "very hot day or very cold day" are multiplied by the actual number of total deaths to get the "5 million" figure.

shadowgovt 4y ago

That sounds about right, actually. People (especially in the developed world) really, really overestimate how much thermal regulation the very old and very young can do. Even in our safe, structured, developed cities in the US, we lose several people every time a major snowstorm hits from elderly folks getting locked out of their homes and dying before they can find help.

coldtea 4y ago

>That just doesn’t pass a smell test This sentence appears totally random. Why doesn't it "pass a smell test"? Because somehow 0.4% is a big number? It might be, but without context seems perfectly normal to me...

marcosdumay 4y ago

Well, the article goes a bit into qualifying it. Up to the point of this: In a 2019 study, she and her colleagues determined that daily deaths increased by 43% during a December 2013 heat wave in Buenos Aires. Given the frequency of heat waves, a 0.4% increase is not an extraordinary claim. Anyway, death attribution to heat waves is always messy.