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And let’s talk about deaths due to cold weather? I’m all for conserving the climate. The doom and gloom has been media’s staple for over 50 years. Now, it’s ta

And let’s talk about deaths due to cold weather? I’m all for conserving the climate. The doom and gloom has been media’s staple for over 50 years. Now, it’s taking on the vibes of “We’ll all die if you don’t adopt authoritarianism. We want to monitor your carbon footprint.”

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
Are cold weather deaths increasing or predicted to increase significantly? If so, then that does sound interesting and should be discussed.
- pdonis 3y ago
  No, cold weather deaths will decrease significantly--by more than heat-related deaths will increase. About five times as many people die from cold each year as from heat. So the overall effect of warming will be to decrease the number of deaths due to extreme weather.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Are there any studies that support that view?
    - ipaddr 3y ago
      Yes. Have you heard of google? It's a search engine. Type your question and a list of related pages appear https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohe...
    - sltkr 3y ago
      Five seconds of googling will reveal: > https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-temperatures-kill-5-million-a-year-20-year-study-77875 https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-t... > > The study found that extreme heat and cold killed 5.08 million people on an average every year from 2000-2019. Of this, 4.6 million deaths on an average occurred annually due to extreme cold while 0.48 million deaths occurred due to extreme heat. The study is here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... This shows that cold deaths outnumber heat deaths about 10:1, so global warming is a net positive when it comes to avoiding death. Additionally, heat deaths currently happen in countries that lack air conditioning because it was not historically needed. This is rapidly changing. Fortunately, cooling takes less energy than heating, which seems paradoxical at first, but it makes sense if you consider that cooling doesn't need to generate heat, but simply move it away (which also requires energy, but less than raising the temperature of a closed system by the equivalent temperature). Additionally, heat pumps can run on electricity from renewable energy sources, rather than heating which mostly uses fossil fuels (yes, heating can use electricity too, but that's currently an order of magnitude more expensive). All of these factors show that moderate global warming is good for mankind: it reduces overall energy use, it reduces fossil fuel use in particular (which is great because it's fossil fuels that are contributing to the greenhouse effect), and it reduces human death rates. You rarely hear about this, however, because the media is committed to pushing the false narrative that the world is on a path to global destruction.
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        That's a big jump from one questionably positive benefit to a blanket "good for the planet".
        sltkr 3y ago
        I find it extremely callous to label a net reduction of people dying of extreme weather as only “questionably positive”.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Questionable statistic. Indirect deaths due to temperature are a lot higher than direct deaths, but much harder to measure.
        pdonis 3y ago
        The referenced paper is taking indirect effects into account. It is not just counting deaths that have "cold-related" or "heat-related" listed in the cause of death. It is looking at overall excess mortality due to extreme temperatures, i.e., the increase in deaths over what would be expected at non-extreme temperatures.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        How about deaths due to crop failure? How about deaths caused by mass migrations? How about deaths due to the increased spread of disease? et cetera.
        pdonis 3y ago
        To the extent those vary by temperature, which is what is relevant for this discussion, the paper's methodology takes them into account. That's the whole point of doing an overall excess mortality analysis: it means you don't have to know the specific cause of each individual death or how temperature affected it. You can just compare expected deaths at "normal" temperature to actual deaths at the actual temperature (I am oversimplifying here, the actual methodology is more complex than that, but that's the basic idea). This methodology was not made up for this specific case. Overall excess mortality analysis is used in all kinds of contexts. For example, it is used to estimate the overall impact of COVID, for much the same reasons--because it takes into account indirect effects of COVID that would otherwise be very hard to measure. The methodology is not perfect (no methodology is), but it is the best we have for this kind of analysis.
  - ahnick 3y ago
    You have data to back that up? How do you know that the death rate from heat won't eventually eclipse the cold weather death rate?
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Note that your statistic comes from a study of European cities, and is only true for Europe. By not noting that caveat you're implying world-wide, which is very much not true. Nobody has studied Africa and India the same way, but it seems quite likely that the increase in heat deaths there will significantly the decrease in cold deaths.
    - pdonis 3y ago
      > your statistic comes from a study of European cities Yes, the ratio of 5 does (actually from Northern Europe). But if you look at worldwide data, the ratio is actually higher: 9.8. In other words, Europe as a region has a substantially lower ratio of cold-related to heat-related deaths than the world average. And Africa has a substantially higher ratio: 16.5 in Northern Africa and a whopping 58.3 in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Of course this is because the people there are so much better adapted to heat than to cold.) See Fig. 1 here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
      - bryanlarsen 3y ago
        deleted because it's hard to reply to a comment that keeps getting edited.
        pdonis 3y ago
        Yes, sorry for the edits, I hit post by mistake the first time.
- version_five 3y ago
  There are way more cold weather deaths than hot, and they would be expected to decrease significantly. I'll add that I belive we should prioritize reducing atmospheric CO2, but straight up lying about it's impact, and using it for politics, which go togetjer and represent most of the discourse, are both despicable and counterproductive.
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    I agree as oil companies have influenced politics and climate science for decades. There is plenty of evidence that they deliberately lied as they valued their profits over humanity's welfare.
    - landemva 3y ago
      Some of the worst environmental damage has been done by socialist governments when they control everything. Private ownership is better than alternative of socialism. Even though residents of East Germany had considerably less standard of living than the west, the east created enormous amounts of pollution. Worse with less human welfare. https://fee.org/articles/why-pollution-was-so-much-worse-in-east-germany-than-west-germany https://fee.org/articles/why-pollution-was-so-much-worse-in-...
      - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
        I think you're conflating authoritarian communist governments with socialism. Moreover, isn't that just trying to deflect from addressing climate issues?
        landemva 3y ago
        The "blame the for-profit oil companies" ignores the history of government dictated economies. We don't have to like private ownership [of energy production], but removing companies just changes ownership to less accountable government.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  There was a recent study on this issue here. [1] Globally from 2000-2019 there were about 5 million deaths per year associated with "non-optimal" temperatures. This accounted for more about 9.5% of all global deaths. 8.5% of these were because of cold, and less than 1% were due to heat. So if the heat increases, it could be expected to lead to a global reduction in temperature related deaths, which is pretty neat! The most interesting thing about this study is an initially paradoxical (but not really when you think about it) finding. The most mortality from high temperatures came from Eastern Europe, whereas the most mortality from low temperatures came from Sub-Saharan Africa! [1] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
  - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
    Deaths due to cold can only decrease so much (i.e. they can't go negative), so it would seem reasonable to assume that increasing deaths due to heat will surpass the deaths due to cold.
ipaddr 3y ago
We in a media inspired climate doom and gloom period where the media tries to inflate impacts but still promotes a return to the office because the impact of going into the office on climate change doesn't matter. The fact that more lives will be saved when death by freezing is lessoned doesn't matter. What matters is you read and do what they want. Stop your critical thinking and panic on the way to the office.
netsharc 3y ago
Funny, adopting authoritianism sounds like "vote for me to be your dictator"... Do you consider yourself sane and intelligent? Ever wondered if you could also suffer from evidence bias, thinking everything from the point of view that the elite trying to force something down your throat? Or maybe you have the certainty of Principal Skinner? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAuR5bkIlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAuR5bkIlQ

ndsipa_pomu 3y ago

Are cold weather deaths increasing or predicted to increase significantly? If so, then that does sound interesting and should be discussed.

pdonis 3y ago
No, cold weather deaths will decrease significantly--by more than heat-related deaths will increase. About five times as many people die from cold each year as from heat. So the overall effect of warming will be to decrease the number of deaths due to extreme weather.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Are there any studies that support that view?
  - ipaddr 3y ago
    Yes. Have you heard of google? It's a search engine. Type your question and a list of related pages appear https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/amp/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohe...
  - sltkr 3y ago
    Five seconds of googling will reveal: > https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-temperatures-kill-5-million-a-year-20-year-study-77875 https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/extreme-t... > > The study found that extreme heat and cold killed 5.08 million people on an average every year from 2000-2019. Of this, 4.6 million deaths on an average occurred annually due to extreme cold while 0.48 million deaths occurred due to extreme heat. The study is here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5... This shows that cold deaths outnumber heat deaths about 10:1, so global warming is a net positive when it comes to avoiding death. Additionally, heat deaths currently happen in countries that lack air conditioning because it was not historically needed. This is rapidly changing. Fortunately, cooling takes less energy than heating, which seems paradoxical at first, but it makes sense if you consider that cooling doesn't need to generate heat, but simply move it away (which also requires energy, but less than raising the temperature of a closed system by the equivalent temperature). Additionally, heat pumps can run on electricity from renewable energy sources, rather than heating which mostly uses fossil fuels (yes, heating can use electricity too, but that's currently an order of magnitude more expensive). All of these factors show that moderate global warming is good for mankind: it reduces overall energy use, it reduces fossil fuel use in particular (which is great because it's fossil fuels that are contributing to the greenhouse effect), and it reduces human death rates. You rarely hear about this, however, because the media is committed to pushing the false narrative that the world is on a path to global destruction.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      That's a big jump from one questionably positive benefit to a blanket "good for the planet".
      - sltkr 3y ago
        I find it extremely callous to label a net reduction of people dying of extreme weather as only “questionably positive”.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        Questionable statistic. Indirect deaths due to temperature are a lot higher than direct deaths, but much harder to measure.
        pdonis 3y ago
        The referenced paper is taking indirect effects into account. It is not just counting deaths that have "cold-related" or "heat-related" listed in the cause of death. It is looking at overall excess mortality due to extreme temperatures, i.e., the increase in deaths over what would be expected at non-extreme temperatures.
        bryanlarsen 3y ago
        How about deaths due to crop failure? How about deaths caused by mass migrations? How about deaths due to the increased spread of disease? et cetera.
        pdonis 3y ago
        To the extent those vary by temperature, which is what is relevant for this discussion, the paper's methodology takes them into account. That's the whole point of doing an overall excess mortality analysis: it means you don't have to know the specific cause of each individual death or how temperature affected it. You can just compare expected deaths at "normal" temperature to actual deaths at the actual temperature (I am oversimplifying here, the actual methodology is more complex than that, but that's the basic idea). This methodology was not made up for this specific case. Overall excess mortality analysis is used in all kinds of contexts. For example, it is used to estimate the overall impact of COVID, for much the same reasons--because it takes into account indirect effects of COVID that would otherwise be very hard to measure. The methodology is not perfect (no methodology is), but it is the best we have for this kind of analysis.
- ahnick 3y ago
  You have data to back that up? How do you know that the death rate from heat won't eventually eclipse the cold weather death rate?
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Note that your statistic comes from a study of European cities, and is only true for Europe. By not noting that caveat you're implying world-wide, which is very much not true. Nobody has studied Africa and India the same way, but it seems quite likely that the increase in heat deaths there will significantly the decrease in cold deaths.
  - pdonis 3y ago
    > your statistic comes from a study of European cities Yes, the ratio of 5 does (actually from Northern Europe). But if you look at worldwide data, the ratio is actually higher: 9.8. In other words, Europe as a region has a substantially lower ratio of cold-related to heat-related deaths than the world average. And Africa has a substantially higher ratio: 16.5 in Northern Africa and a whopping 58.3 in Sub-Saharan Africa. (Of course this is because the people there are so much better adapted to heat than to cold.) See Fig. 1 here: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      deleted because it's hard to reply to a comment that keeps getting edited.
      - pdonis 3y ago
        Yes, sorry for the edits, I hit post by mistake the first time.
version_five 3y ago
There are way more cold weather deaths than hot, and they would be expected to decrease significantly. I'll add that I belive we should prioritize reducing atmospheric CO2, but straight up lying about it's impact, and using it for politics, which go togetjer and represent most of the discourse, are both despicable and counterproductive.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  I agree as oil companies have influenced politics and climate science for decades. There is plenty of evidence that they deliberately lied as they valued their profits over humanity's welfare.
  - landemva 3y ago
    Some of the worst environmental damage has been done by socialist governments when they control everything. Private ownership is better than alternative of socialism. Even though residents of East Germany had considerably less standard of living than the west, the east created enormous amounts of pollution. Worse with less human welfare. https://fee.org/articles/why-pollution-was-so-much-worse-in-east-germany-than-west-germany https://fee.org/articles/why-pollution-was-so-much-worse-in-...
    - ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
      I think you're conflating authoritarian communist governments with socialism. Moreover, isn't that just trying to deflect from addressing climate issues?
      - landemva 3y ago
        The "blame the for-profit oil companies" ignores the history of government dictated economies. We don't have to like private ownership [of energy production], but removing companies just changes ownership to less accountable government.
somenameforme 3y ago
There was a recent study on this issue here. [1] Globally from 2000-2019 there were about 5 million deaths per year associated with "non-optimal" temperatures. This accounted for more about 9.5% of all global deaths. 8.5% of these were because of cold, and less than 1% were due to heat. So if the heat increases, it could be expected to lead to a global reduction in temperature related deaths, which is pretty neat! The most interesting thing about this study is an initially paradoxical (but not really when you think about it) finding. The most mortality from high temperatures came from Eastern Europe, whereas the most mortality from low temperatures came from Sub-Saharan Africa! [1] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
  Deaths due to cold can only decrease so much (i.e. they can't go negative), so it would seem reasonable to assume that increasing deaths due to heat will surpass the deaths due to cold.

ipaddr 3y ago

We in a media inspired climate doom and gloom period where the media tries to inflate impacts but still promotes a return to the office because the impact of going into the office on climate change doesn't matter. The fact that more lives will be saved when death by freezing is lessoned doesn't matter. What matters is you read and do what they want. Stop your critical thinking and panic on the way to the office.

netsharc 3y ago

Funny, adopting authoritianism sounds like "vote for me to be your dictator"... Do you consider yourself sane and intelligent? Ever wondered if you could also suffer from evidence bias, thinking everything from the point of view that the elite trying to force something down your throat? Or maybe you have the certainty of Principal Skinner? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAuR5bkIlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYAuR5bkIlQ