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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 d
by 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 agoHow 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 agoTo 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.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoThe IPCC estimates 250,000 excess deaths due to climate change by 2050.
- pdonis 3y agoSee my response in the other subthread where you made a similar claim.