12 ms·

Heatwaves kill more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes and floods

207 points by hhs 4y ago

VLM 4y ago
Obesity has a large effect on heat wave damage but the tornado will kill you just as effectively thin or fat, so its no surprise there's been an intense coordinated media push on the dangers of heat as obesity rises death rates will rise.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  I’m guessing climate change is also on most peoples minds.
coding123 4y ago
I guess this is a good time to yell at everyone that's not building within an hour of the ocean. How dare all of you that don't want to pay $5000 per month rent!
t0bia_s 4y ago
What is cause of death? Heart failure? Dehydration? I cannot read whole article to find out.
immmmmm 4y ago
latest paper on the topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9
barney54 4y ago
Interestingly, cold may kill more than heat (but it’s complicated) https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Extreme-Heat-or-Extreme-Cold https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...
metadaemon 4y ago
Down at the lake with my family one year, we watched a guy mowing his lawn collapse. My dad went to go help, but the guy ended up dying from heat exhaustion. Over exerting yourself in the heat is never a good idea, please remember to always stay hydrated.
swader999 4y ago
Cold weather is probably worse. Lot of heart attacks that don't necessarily register as cold related. It is more difficult for the heart to pump the blood. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/14/fact-check-cold-weather-associated-heart-attacks-blood-clots/6418527001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/14/fac...
- dagmx 4y ago
  What percentage of America has to deal with freezing weather versus heatwaves though? Also, it’s much easier to warm up in cold weather than it is to cool down in hot weather.
  - irrational 4y ago
    No idea. I live in the PNW where we have freezing temperatures about as often as heat waves (not very often), but grew up in south Florida where we never had freezing temperatures but everyday felt like a heat wave.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      People do acclimatize to greater or lesser degrees. But what I'd call a heat wave in New England is pretty much just "summer" in a big chunk of the US.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - bluejekyll 4y ago
    One thing I was surprised to learn, mostly because growing up I always thought of AC as extravagant, it’s more energy efficient to cool a building than it is to heat it.
    - bugbuddy 4y ago
      If you flip your windows AC unit around, then you get the exact amount of heat energy removed by the AC in the form of hot air going into your room. This is called a heat exchanger. It was just cheaper to use gas furnace heater when most home was built and it is still true in many places.
Broken_Hippo 4y ago
https://archive.ph/xwKRl https://archive.ph/xwKRl
photochemsyn 4y ago
Hurricanes and floods do far more infrastructure damage on large scales (tornado effects being more localized) than extreme heatwaves do, however - and decaying infrastructure is a huge problem across much of the United States. Why exactly the USA has such a huge infrastructure problem is debatable. Maybe it's the concentration of wealth and political power in fewer locations, i.e. some regions of the West and East Coasts? Maybe it's too much money being earmarked by Congress to military-industrial projects in their home districts, leaving little for things like rebuilding water supply systems, railroads and bridges, improved electricity grids, etc.? A decreased overall tax base due to a steep reduction in tax rates (particularly on the wealthiest) since the 1960s? Financialization of the economy and a resulting lack of engineering expertise and interest in infrastructure development? As far as infrastructure for heat waves, termite-mound-inspired architecture would be the way to go. Build bunkers with large capacity that people can retreat to, with built-in cooling mechanisms. https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/termite-mounds-could-inspire-new-ideas-for-sustainable-building-ventilation/ https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/termite-mounds-could-inspire-n... > "The team’s observations show that thin, outer channels of the mound heat up rapidly during the day when compared to the deeper tunnels in the mound, which causes air to circulate in a closed-loop convection cell. During the day, air moves up along the outer channels and down the center. At night, the flow is reversed. This reversal flushes out the carbon dioxide from deep inside the mound, and the gas then diffuses through the porous walls."
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Why exactly the USA has such a huge infrastructure problem is debatable. I thought it's because we didn't build it nearly from scratch about 70 yers ago.
  - amanaplanacanal 4y ago
    Most of the infrastructure in the US was built after WWII, including the entire interstate Highway system and almost all of suburbia.
    - ceeplusplus 4y ago
exabrial 4y ago
Tornadoes don’t kill many people to start with… and nearly all of them are preventable in this day and age… but that point withstanding
bena 4y ago
This feels like one of those things that sounds interesting until you take a minute and think about it. Hurricanes don't come from nowhere. You can evacuate for a hurricane. And the actual hurricane is over relatively quickly. I'm also not sure how knock-on deaths are counted. Hurricanes cause flooding, spin off tornadoes, and can disable services during some of the hottest months of the year. So a hurricane will make you susceptible to floods, tornadoes, and heatwaves. But still. We know what to do when hurricanes come. Tornadoes are violent, but quick. You usually have some amount of time to clear out of the path if necessary. Floods come in many forms. A lot of them are less lethal. Water slowly rising 4 feet over several hours is a different scenario than water rising 4 feet over several seconds. Heat. Heat is different. There's no real indicator that there's too much of it. Yeah, you got hot, but you get hot a lot of times. It's fine. "Just got to finish this lawn, this run, this game, etc." And heat usually covers a huge area, enough that it could take over a day just to drive out of the affected area. We respect violence, and heat is not violent.
- mellavora 4y ago
  > Hurricanes don't come from nowhere. You can evacuate for a hurricane. Actually, we can't realistically evacuate Miami/Dade county. There is only one highway leading north, and no other direction to go. Ask Pakistan about floods. But yes, you are right about heat. My theory is that it is the fourth rider of the apocalypse. Covers a huge area and just kills everyone.
  - bena 4y ago
    We're given a lot of warning with hurricanes. The biggest hurdle with evacuation is that a lot of people don't have the means. Either a lack of transportation or lack of funds to secure shelter. Yes, that's why I said there are different types of floods. I explicitly acknowledged that floods come in several varieties. Pakistan is notable for a lot of reasons. It's also notable because even for a flood, it is out of the ordinary. You tried to pick edge cases to try and say the typical doesn't apply. It still does. The issue is that the typical heatwave is different from the typical variety of other disasters.
  - 4y ago
olalonde 4y ago
Makes me wonder if this is also a problem in countries that get those kinds of temperatures much more frequently (e.g. Qatar). Or have they learned to deal with this?
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  It's a problem because so many Americans are unhealthy and more easily succumb to environmental conditions. It doesn't help that these same people flock to areas where they're more vulnerable. There's lots of bad reporting on the increase in heat related deaths since the 1950s which glosses over the fact that few people were fat back then and air conditioning was exceedingly rare. A fraction of the people were living in the hottest areas of the US and those that were could handle it.
- nine_zeros 4y ago
  They have learned and forgotten due to western influence. During heat waves, cross ventilating wind allows for cooler temperatures indoor. Building architectures in a lot of middle east is designed for cross ventilation. Newer modern buildings appear to have forgotten this ancient technology though.
  - selimthegrim 4y ago
    Do they have termites in the Middle East?
kirse 4y ago
I was recently in one of these hot climates at peak times and did a lot of research on this while pushing my limits as an athlete. So many factors play into human adaptability to heat even including things like how exposed your veins are (phlebotomists love you!). People think areas like Vegas are hot, but cities like Dallas can have higher wet-bulb temps (WBGT) due to humidity. WBGT is the gold standard for performance considerations in hot climates: Current WBGT - https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt Fahrenheit - https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART_A_FARENHEIT.jpg https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART... Celsius - https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART_A_CELSIUS.jpg https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART... WBGT Work Recs - http://blog.mesonet.org/agriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/08/WBGT-Work-Rest-chart.png http://blog.mesonet.org/agriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites... These are good guides but don't let this info plant anxiety in your mind either. Heat can kill you over time, but if you get into a situation where you feel heat exhausted, stay calm and stick to a single plan to unwind and rest. Carry around a frozen water bottle or two if you're headed somewhere hot for awhile. Neck + palms are one of the best ways to cool core temps [1]. Pre-hydration is also important, water + electrolyte intake days before exertion affects performance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_cooling
zosima 4y ago
Still seems to be about twice as many dying from cold weather. https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-related-deaths https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-cold-related-deaths https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
- hitpointdrew 4y ago
  Yup. No one wants to talk about this though. We need to get cheap reliable energy to as many people as quickly as possible to help prevent this. Everything should be on the table, natural gas, fracking, nuclear.
  - hpkuarg 4y ago
    Similarly, a lot of people think it's inherently wasteful (at least in terms of climate change-related sensitivities) to live in the southern US where it's commonly accepted to run air conditioning for many months of the year, whereas nobody blinks twice at the number of oil-fired furnaces in New England.
    - spikej 4y ago
      That's the reason there's now a major push in a lot of places to replace those with heat pumps...
    - 1-6 4y ago
      We can’t let politics run the nation’s energy policies. The decision makers need to be a neutral body of elected officials.
      - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
        An elected official is by definition not neutral. I think representative government is as good as it gets, but it will never be neutral or bereft of politics.
      - 4y ago
jliptzin 4y ago
The difference is heat usually kills the weak and elderly, so no one cares
- Aachen 4y ago
  This is what I'm wondering. How many years of life are really being taken by a heat wave compared to a hurricane or flooding that can also kill a 15-year-old just as easily? There's a word for this, something like disability-adjusted years of life expectancy (because living without eyesight or your legs is also annoying, and should be taken into account when comparing badness of some health-affecting issue).
progrus 4y ago
Almost seems like the worst thing we can do is compromise the durability of our energy grid…
IngvarLynn 4y ago
Why look at the very bottom of mortality list? (llᴉɥs ɐ sᴉ sᴉɥʇ ǝsnɐɔǝq) Second-hand smoke kills almost 100 times more Americans. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco...
- bequanna 4y ago
  We can't talk about one problem because some other problem exists? Perfect is the enemy of good.
  - IngvarLynn 4y ago
    It would be quite unwise to talk about spoiled food when your house is on fire. >Perfect is the enemy of good. Agree. Looking at the bottom of mortality list is perfectionism.
    - bequanna 4y ago
      Wrong and somewhat naive. If you have a list of problems you don't only focus on solving the one with the largest impact. You need to balance resource allocation between how the problem negatively impacts AND ability to solve. If we followed your logic, we would stop trying to cure cancer and just focus all healthcare resources exclusively on developing life extension drugs.
  - peteradio 4y ago
    Then what is the point of doing a relative comparison to any other causes of death?
    - bequanna 4y ago
      For context.
  - ejb999 4y ago
    wasting limited resources on initiatives that save less lives per dollar spent vs other initiatives that save more lives and/or cost less per lived saved IS the enemy of the good. my own example - I live in a tiny town at about 1700 ft elevation, nowhere near the ocean, no bodies of water than can flood, not anywhere near the ocean, just 1 tornado in the past 80+ years, and no hurricanes above a cat 1 in a century (which caused almost no damage)- i.e. almost zero immediate 'environmental threats' - the town was given a $120K state/federal grant to "prepare" for climate change effects. What do you think would save more lives in my little place in the world? - giving out free car seats to all newborns, free smoke detectors every few years to every residence, free CO2 monitors, and tackling obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices such as drugs thru more education or recreational opportunities for kids etc - or 'studying' the possible effects of climate change in nowhereville USA? My money is on the former.
ejb999 4y ago
>>"Yet some local governments are still not taking extreme heat seriously" Given that extreme heat is not even close to being at the top 50 ways that Americans die on an annual basis, it seems to me that there is much better bang for the buck having federal state and local governments focusing on those things that kills the most people first - if the goal is saving lives (which it should be), than attack those societal/public health problems that kill the most people first. Basic triaging is necessary - if you don't have unlimited resources, and you can't save everybody (both of those things are objectively true), then the best benefit to society is to attack the problems that will save or extend the lives of the most people. The top ten causes of death alone account for 1.5 million USA deaths per year; extreme heat is less than 1/10 of 1% of just those top 10 - I want the government to prioritize making progress on those things first. Just having a healthier population alone would probably cut way down on # number of people that die from extreme heat - a healthier person will almost certainly fare better in extreme heat than someone that already has 2-3 comorbidities.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  It’s cheaper to intervene in the acute event as from a policy perspective solving the actual problem is not politically viable. A person with breathing difficulty, for example, should be getting routine medical care. If they lack insurance, don’t qualify for Medicaid or are unable to access healthcare, that won’t happen. So it’s easier to have old people hang out at a school gym or whatever than engage in some “socialist” pursuit.
hn_throwaway_99 4y ago
I feel like we need a better metric to use when something "kills" people. When heat waves kill people, the vast majority of the time it means these people already had major health problems that (a) let the heat do more damage and (b) prevented the person from seeking help in the first place. To be clear, I'm not saying that heat wasn't the final cause, but I think it's a fair assumption that most of these people didn't have much healthy life ahead of them regardless. Compare that to, say, a tornado that wipes out a family with 2 young kids and 2 middle-aged adults. That to me feels orders of magnitude worse, both in the violent manner of death, and the fact that these people had years and years of healthy life left. And, to hopefully kill this anticipated straw man, I am not making the assertion that "it's no big deal" if elderly or sick people die. I am only commenting on the comparison to other forms of death, and arguing that I think it's fair to think those other forms are death are much worse if you look beyond just "number of people killed".
- robertn702 4y ago
  We do have a better metric. It’s “years of life lost” (YLL) and it is a commonly used metric for the exact reasons you mentioned. My guess as to why you rarely see it being used outside of the scientific community is because “number of deaths” drives more clicks. https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/159 https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr...
  - umvi 4y ago
    I remember COVID deaths being compared to WW2 deaths by the media a few years ago. If YLL were used instead I think (but don't know for certain) that WW2 would be much more egregious.
    - watwut 4y ago
      WW2 happened to kill significantly more civilians then soldiers. And among those, old, sick, poor and weak died the most. Babies and small kids too, so it is not entirely clear how exactly it would cut.
enviclash 4y ago
How comprehensive is the data source? E.g. are all such events recorded? And, is there clustering, in relation to weather events or lack of response policies?
blablabla123 4y ago
This makes me actually wonder how the daily peak temperatures changed over the years
OOIE 4y ago
The overall problem with climate talking points is that it has become a trendy political topic, which often deduces into a battle between two sides instead of a civil discussion on the scope of a potential threat and logical solutions. I admittedly don't pay much attention to it since I live pretty minimally anyway. Though, I cannot tell you how many homes in my area have "Climate Action" signs in front of their unnecessarily large homes. One home in particular has one right next to a gas guzzling jeep. It's sad that so many human issues have fallen into the political spectrum where they are weaponized for power rather than resolved for the common good.
- kortilla 4y ago
  > Though, I cannot tell you how many homes in my area have "Climate Action" signs in front of their unnecessarily large homes. One home in particular has one right next to a gas guzzling jeep. Better than one next to a Prius that commutes 50 miles every day.
  - juve1996 4y ago
    Not sure I get this joke. What would you rather them do? Commute 50 miles in a gas-guzzling SUV?
    - kortilla 4y ago
      It’s not a joke. Judging someone by a vehicle that gets poor gas mileage is idiotic unless you know their usage pattern. Someone with a Jeep in their driveway who has no commute at all and works from home so they only drive 10k miles a year is far better than the Prius driver who does 40k a year and has to buy vehicles 4x as frequently.
      - juve1996 4y ago
        This doesn't make sense. It would be better if the person who owns the jeep and only puts 10k on a year has a Prius as well. The Prius is always more fuel efficient. > better than the Prius driver who does 40k a year and has to buy vehicles 4x as frequently. But worse than the F-150 driver who never hauls anything and works in an office and has to buy the same amount of vehicles. Again, doesn't make sense. You can always compare the other way.
SoftTalker 4y ago
The headline doesn't really quantify the problem. Lots of things kill more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods can be quite destructive, but they don't really kill a lot of people in the grand scheme of things.
petre 4y ago
I'm quite sure obesity gives a helping hand as well.
hollywood_court 4y ago
From 4th grade until I left home at age 16, I lived in a single wide mobile home in lower Alabama. My mother had a window unit AC in her bedroom but other than that, there was no cooling. Looking back now, I have no idea how I survived. My pet chinchilla died one summer because it was too hot in my bedroom. I could never imagine allowing my own son to grow up on such conditions. I suppose I have regressed and I am now weaker. But I couldn’t possibly live without AC now.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  The advent of termites put paid to traditional New Orleans house designs that would passively cool. It looks like we are all in the same boat.
  - hollywood_court 4y ago
    It's quite a coincidence that you mention passive cooling. I moved to the Caribbean after high school, and I never once had AC during the 10 years I spent there. But the windows were always open and the fans were always on. The Caribbean doesn't suffer from the humidity of the Deep South, and there was most always a breeze. It was much more bearable even though the temps were often just as high as those I experienced in Alabama.
powerbroker 4y ago
Having lived in Saudi Arabia and Finland, I'll take Saudi Arabia (for weather purposes) any day of the week. You would be surprised at how many ways cold, snows, and very diminished sunlight have to kill you.

207 points by hhs 4y ago

VLM 4y ago

Obesity has a large effect on heat wave damage but the tornado will kill you just as effectively thin or fat, so its no surprise there's been an intense coordinated media push on the dangers of heat as obesity rises death rates will rise.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
I’m guessing climate change is also on most peoples minds.

coding123 4y ago

I guess this is a good time to yell at everyone that's not building within an hour of the ocean. How dare all of you that don't want to pay $5000 per month rent!

t0bia_s 4y ago

What is cause of death? Heart failure? Dehydration? I cannot read whole article to find out.

immmmmm 4y ago

latest paper on the topic: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-021-01092-9

barney54 4y ago

Interestingly, cold may kill more than heat (but it’s complicated) https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Extreme-Heat-or-Extreme-Cold https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...

metadaemon 4y ago

Down at the lake with my family one year, we watched a guy mowing his lawn collapse. My dad went to go help, but the guy ended up dying from heat exhaustion. Over exerting yourself in the heat is never a good idea, please remember to always stay hydrated.

swader999 4y ago

Cold weather is probably worse. Lot of heart attacks that don't necessarily register as cold related. It is more difficult for the heart to pump the blood. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/14/fact-check-cold-weather-associated-heart-attacks-blood-clots/6418527001/ https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/12/14/fac...

dagmx 4y ago
What percentage of America has to deal with freezing weather versus heatwaves though? Also, it’s much easier to warm up in cold weather than it is to cool down in hot weather.
- irrational 4y ago
  No idea. I live in the PNW where we have freezing temperatures about as often as heat waves (not very often), but grew up in south Florida where we never had freezing temperatures but everyday felt like a heat wave.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    People do acclimatize to greater or lesser degrees. But what I'd call a heat wave in New England is pretty much just "summer" in a big chunk of the US.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- bluejekyll 4y ago
  One thing I was surprised to learn, mostly because growing up I always thought of AC as extravagant, it’s more energy efficient to cool a building than it is to heat it.
  - bugbuddy 4y ago
    If you flip your windows AC unit around, then you get the exact amount of heat energy removed by the AC in the form of hot air going into your room. This is called a heat exchanger. It was just cheaper to use gas furnace heater when most home was built and it is still true in many places.

Broken_Hippo 4y ago

https://archive.ph/xwKRl https://archive.ph/xwKRl

photochemsyn 4y ago

Hurricanes and floods do far more infrastructure damage on large scales (tornado effects being more localized) than extreme heatwaves do, however - and decaying infrastructure is a huge problem across much of the United States. Why exactly the USA has such a huge infrastructure problem is debatable. Maybe it's the concentration of wealth and political power in fewer locations, i.e. some regions of the West and East Coasts? Maybe it's too much money being earmarked by Congress to military-industrial projects in their home districts, leaving little for things like rebuilding water supply systems, railroads and bridges, improved electricity grids, etc.? A decreased overall tax base due to a steep reduction in tax rates (particularly on the wealthiest) since the 1960s? Financialization of the economy and a resulting lack of engineering expertise and interest in infrastructure development? As far as infrastructure for heat waves, termite-mound-inspired architecture would be the way to go. Build bunkers with large capacity that people can retreat to, with built-in cooling mechanisms. https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/termite-mounds-could-inspire-new-ideas-for-sustainable-building-ventilation/ https://wyss.harvard.edu/news/termite-mounds-could-inspire-n... > "The team’s observations show that thin, outer channels of the mound heat up rapidly during the day when compared to the deeper tunnels in the mound, which causes air to circulate in a closed-loop convection cell. During the day, air moves up along the outer channels and down the center. At night, the flow is reversed. This reversal flushes out the carbon dioxide from deep inside the mound, and the gas then diffuses through the porous walls."

rootusrootus 4y ago
> Why exactly the USA has such a huge infrastructure problem is debatable. I thought it's because we didn't build it nearly from scratch about 70 yers ago.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  Most of the infrastructure in the US was built after WWII, including the entire interstate Highway system and almost all of suburbia.
  - ceeplusplus 4y ago

exabrial 4y ago

Tornadoes don’t kill many people to start with… and nearly all of them are preventable in this day and age… but that point withstanding

bena 4y ago

This feels like one of those things that sounds interesting until you take a minute and think about it. Hurricanes don't come from nowhere. You can evacuate for a hurricane. And the actual hurricane is over relatively quickly. I'm also not sure how knock-on deaths are counted. Hurricanes cause flooding, spin off tornadoes, and can disable services during some of the hottest months of the year. So a hurricane will make you susceptible to floods, tornadoes, and heatwaves. But still. We know what to do when hurricanes come. Tornadoes are violent, but quick. You usually have some amount of time to clear out of the path if necessary. Floods come in many forms. A lot of them are less lethal. Water slowly rising 4 feet over several hours is a different scenario than water rising 4 feet over several seconds. Heat. Heat is different. There's no real indicator that there's too much of it. Yeah, you got hot, but you get hot a lot of times. It's fine. "Just got to finish this lawn, this run, this game, etc." And heat usually covers a huge area, enough that it could take over a day just to drive out of the affected area. We respect violence, and heat is not violent.

mellavora 4y ago
> Hurricanes don't come from nowhere. You can evacuate for a hurricane. Actually, we can't realistically evacuate Miami/Dade county. There is only one highway leading north, and no other direction to go. Ask Pakistan about floods. But yes, you are right about heat. My theory is that it is the fourth rider of the apocalypse. Covers a huge area and just kills everyone.
- bena 4y ago
  We're given a lot of warning with hurricanes. The biggest hurdle with evacuation is that a lot of people don't have the means. Either a lack of transportation or lack of funds to secure shelter. Yes, that's why I said there are different types of floods. I explicitly acknowledged that floods come in several varieties. Pakistan is notable for a lot of reasons. It's also notable because even for a flood, it is out of the ordinary. You tried to pick edge cases to try and say the typical doesn't apply. It still does. The issue is that the typical heatwave is different from the typical variety of other disasters.
- 4y ago

olalonde 4y ago

Makes me wonder if this is also a problem in countries that get those kinds of temperatures much more frequently (e.g. Qatar). Or have they learned to deal with this?

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
It's a problem because so many Americans are unhealthy and more easily succumb to environmental conditions. It doesn't help that these same people flock to areas where they're more vulnerable. There's lots of bad reporting on the increase in heat related deaths since the 1950s which glosses over the fact that few people were fat back then and air conditioning was exceedingly rare. A fraction of the people were living in the hottest areas of the US and those that were could handle it.
nine_zeros 4y ago
They have learned and forgotten due to western influence. During heat waves, cross ventilating wind allows for cooler temperatures indoor. Building architectures in a lot of middle east is designed for cross ventilation. Newer modern buildings appear to have forgotten this ancient technology though.
- selimthegrim 4y ago
  Do they have termites in the Middle East?

kirse 4y ago

I was recently in one of these hot climates at peak times and did a lot of research on this while pushing my limits as an athlete. So many factors play into human adaptability to heat even including things like how exposed your veins are (phlebotomists love you!). People think areas like Vegas are hot, but cities like Dallas can have higher wet-bulb temps (WBGT) due to humidity. WBGT is the gold standard for performance considerations in hot climates: Current WBGT - https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt https://www.weather.gov/tsa/wbgt Fahrenheit - https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART_A_FARENHEIT.jpg https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART... Celsius - https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART_A_CELSIUS.jpg https://arielschecklist.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/CHART... WBGT Work Recs - http://blog.mesonet.org/agriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2015/08/WBGT-Work-Rest-chart.png http://blog.mesonet.org/agriculture/wp-content/uploads/sites... These are good guides but don't let this info plant anxiety in your mind either. Heat can kill you over time, but if you get into a situation where you feel heat exhausted, stay calm and stick to a single plan to unwind and rest. Carry around a frozen water bottle or two if you're headed somewhere hot for awhile. Neck + palms are one of the best ways to cool core temps [1]. Pre-hydration is also important, water + electrolyte intake days before exertion affects performance. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_cooling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palm_cooling

zosima 4y ago

Still seems to be about twice as many dying from cold weather. https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-heat-related-deaths https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica... https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-cold-related-deaths https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...

hitpointdrew 4y ago
Yup. No one wants to talk about this though. We need to get cheap reliable energy to as many people as quickly as possible to help prevent this. Everything should be on the table, natural gas, fracking, nuclear.
- hpkuarg 4y ago
  Similarly, a lot of people think it's inherently wasteful (at least in terms of climate change-related sensitivities) to live in the southern US where it's commonly accepted to run air conditioning for many months of the year, whereas nobody blinks twice at the number of oil-fired furnaces in New England.
  - spikej 4y ago
    That's the reason there's now a major push in a lot of places to replace those with heat pumps...
  - 1-6 4y ago
    We can’t let politics run the nation’s energy policies. The decision makers need to be a neutral body of elected officials.
    - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
      An elected official is by definition not neutral. I think representative government is as good as it gets, but it will never be neutral or bereft of politics.
    - 4y ago

jliptzin 4y ago

The difference is heat usually kills the weak and elderly, so no one cares

Aachen 4y ago
This is what I'm wondering. How many years of life are really being taken by a heat wave compared to a hurricane or flooding that can also kill a 15-year-old just as easily? There's a word for this, something like disability-adjusted years of life expectancy (because living without eyesight or your legs is also annoying, and should be taken into account when comparing badness of some health-affecting issue).

progrus 4y ago

Almost seems like the worst thing we can do is compromise the durability of our energy grid…

IngvarLynn 4y ago

Why look at the very bottom of mortality list? (llᴉɥs ɐ sᴉ sᴉɥʇ ǝsnɐɔǝq) Second-hand smoke kills almost 100 times more Americans. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/secondhand_smoke/general_facts/index.htm https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/seco...

bequanna 4y ago
We can't talk about one problem because some other problem exists? Perfect is the enemy of good.
- IngvarLynn 4y ago
  It would be quite unwise to talk about spoiled food when your house is on fire. >Perfect is the enemy of good. Agree. Looking at the bottom of mortality list is perfectionism.
  - bequanna 4y ago
    Wrong and somewhat naive. If you have a list of problems you don't only focus on solving the one with the largest impact. You need to balance resource allocation between how the problem negatively impacts AND ability to solve. If we followed your logic, we would stop trying to cure cancer and just focus all healthcare resources exclusively on developing life extension drugs.
- peteradio 4y ago
  Then what is the point of doing a relative comparison to any other causes of death?
  - bequanna 4y ago
    For context.
- ejb999 4y ago
  wasting limited resources on initiatives that save less lives per dollar spent vs other initiatives that save more lives and/or cost less per lived saved IS the enemy of the good. my own example - I live in a tiny town at about 1700 ft elevation, nowhere near the ocean, no bodies of water than can flood, not anywhere near the ocean, just 1 tornado in the past 80+ years, and no hurricanes above a cat 1 in a century (which caused almost no damage)- i.e. almost zero immediate 'environmental threats' - the town was given a $120K state/federal grant to "prepare" for climate change effects. What do you think would save more lives in my little place in the world? - giving out free car seats to all newborns, free smoke detectors every few years to every residence, free CO2 monitors, and tackling obesity and unhealthy lifestyle choices such as drugs thru more education or recreational opportunities for kids etc - or 'studying' the possible effects of climate change in nowhereville USA? My money is on the former.

ejb999 4y ago

>>"Yet some local governments are still not taking extreme heat seriously" Given that extreme heat is not even close to being at the top 50 ways that Americans die on an annual basis, it seems to me that there is much better bang for the buck having federal state and local governments focusing on those things that kills the most people first - if the goal is saving lives (which it should be), than attack those societal/public health problems that kill the most people first. Basic triaging is necessary - if you don't have unlimited resources, and you can't save everybody (both of those things are objectively true), then the best benefit to society is to attack the problems that will save or extend the lives of the most people. The top ten causes of death alone account for 1.5 million USA deaths per year; extreme heat is less than 1/10 of 1% of just those top 10 - I want the government to prioritize making progress on those things first. Just having a healthier population alone would probably cut way down on # number of people that die from extreme heat - a healthier person will almost certainly fare better in extreme heat than someone that already has 2-3 comorbidities.

Spooky23 4y ago
It’s cheaper to intervene in the acute event as from a policy perspective solving the actual problem is not politically viable. A person with breathing difficulty, for example, should be getting routine medical care. If they lack insurance, don’t qualify for Medicaid or are unable to access healthcare, that won’t happen. So it’s easier to have old people hang out at a school gym or whatever than engage in some “socialist” pursuit.

hn_throwaway_99 4y ago

I feel like we need a better metric to use when something "kills" people. When heat waves kill people, the vast majority of the time it means these people already had major health problems that (a) let the heat do more damage and (b) prevented the person from seeking help in the first place. To be clear, I'm not saying that heat wasn't the final cause, but I think it's a fair assumption that most of these people didn't have much healthy life ahead of them regardless. Compare that to, say, a tornado that wipes out a family with 2 young kids and 2 middle-aged adults. That to me feels orders of magnitude worse, both in the violent manner of death, and the fact that these people had years and years of healthy life left. And, to hopefully kill this anticipated straw man, I am not making the assertion that "it's no big deal" if elderly or sick people die. I am only commenting on the comparison to other forms of death, and arguing that I think it's fair to think those other forms are death are much worse if you look beyond just "number of people killed".

robertn702 4y ago
We do have a better metric. It’s “years of life lost” (YLL) and it is a commonly used metric for the exact reasons you mentioned. My guess as to why you rarely see it being used outside of the scientific community is because “number of deaths” drives more clicks. https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr-details/159 https://www.who.int/data/gho/indicator-metadata-registry/imr...
- umvi 4y ago
  I remember COVID deaths being compared to WW2 deaths by the media a few years ago. If YLL were used instead I think (but don't know for certain) that WW2 would be much more egregious.
  - watwut 4y ago
    WW2 happened to kill significantly more civilians then soldiers. And among those, old, sick, poor and weak died the most. Babies and small kids too, so it is not entirely clear how exactly it would cut.

enviclash 4y ago

How comprehensive is the data source? E.g. are all such events recorded? And, is there clustering, in relation to weather events or lack of response policies?

blablabla123 4y ago

This makes me actually wonder how the daily peak temperatures changed over the years

OOIE 4y ago

The overall problem with climate talking points is that it has become a trendy political topic, which often deduces into a battle between two sides instead of a civil discussion on the scope of a potential threat and logical solutions. I admittedly don't pay much attention to it since I live pretty minimally anyway. Though, I cannot tell you how many homes in my area have "Climate Action" signs in front of their unnecessarily large homes. One home in particular has one right next to a gas guzzling jeep. It's sad that so many human issues have fallen into the political spectrum where they are weaponized for power rather than resolved for the common good.

kortilla 4y ago
> Though, I cannot tell you how many homes in my area have "Climate Action" signs in front of their unnecessarily large homes. One home in particular has one right next to a gas guzzling jeep. Better than one next to a Prius that commutes 50 miles every day.
- juve1996 4y ago
  Not sure I get this joke. What would you rather them do? Commute 50 miles in a gas-guzzling SUV?
  - kortilla 4y ago
    It’s not a joke. Judging someone by a vehicle that gets poor gas mileage is idiotic unless you know their usage pattern. Someone with a Jeep in their driveway who has no commute at all and works from home so they only drive 10k miles a year is far better than the Prius driver who does 40k a year and has to buy vehicles 4x as frequently.
    - juve1996 4y ago
      This doesn't make sense. It would be better if the person who owns the jeep and only puts 10k on a year has a Prius as well. The Prius is always more fuel efficient. > better than the Prius driver who does 40k a year and has to buy vehicles 4x as frequently. But worse than the F-150 driver who never hauls anything and works in an office and has to buy the same amount of vehicles. Again, doesn't make sense. You can always compare the other way.

SoftTalker 4y ago

The headline doesn't really quantify the problem. Lots of things kill more Americans than hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods can be quite destructive, but they don't really kill a lot of people in the grand scheme of things.

petre 4y ago

I'm quite sure obesity gives a helping hand as well.

hollywood_court 4y ago

From 4th grade until I left home at age 16, I lived in a single wide mobile home in lower Alabama. My mother had a window unit AC in her bedroom but other than that, there was no cooling. Looking back now, I have no idea how I survived. My pet chinchilla died one summer because it was too hot in my bedroom. I could never imagine allowing my own son to grow up on such conditions. I suppose I have regressed and I am now weaker. But I couldn’t possibly live without AC now.

selimthegrim 4y ago
The advent of termites put paid to traditional New Orleans house designs that would passively cool. It looks like we are all in the same boat.
- hollywood_court 4y ago
  It's quite a coincidence that you mention passive cooling. I moved to the Caribbean after high school, and I never once had AC during the 10 years I spent there. But the windows were always open and the fans were always on. The Caribbean doesn't suffer from the humidity of the Deep South, and there was most always a breeze. It was much more bearable even though the temps were often just as high as those I experienced in Alabama.

powerbroker 4y ago

Having lived in Saudi Arabia and Finland, I'll take Saudi Arabia (for weather purposes) any day of the week. You would be surprised at how many ways cold, snows, and very diminished sunlight have to kill you.