19 Comments
Aug 15, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

Every piece of research increases our knowledge of course but the question as to which kills more - the heat or the cold - is important mainly because the climate deniers keep telling us that cold kills more people therefore we should encourage global warming.

The rest of us know there are a lot more important changes to be considered than mortality. With a population of 8 billion it's neither here not there for survival of the species. Essentially it is the wanton destruction of the clement climate over the past 10,000 years that has enabled civilisation to develop and flourish that is the problem. We will not likely see 3C without wars, and nuclear war is on the cards.

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"cold kills more people therefore we should encourage global warming."

Incorrect conclusion even if the premise were correct.

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Aug 15, 2023Liked by Andrew Dessler

I would recommend two additional resources for climate mortality in the US. The first is the Climate and Health Assessment chapter on temperature-related mortality (https://health2016.globalchange.gov/low/ClimateHealth2016_02_Temperature_small.pdf): it may be a bit outdated now (seven years is a long time in this particular corner of the climate impacts research field) but covers a lot of the key concepts and uncertainties. The second is a paper by Lay et al (https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00058-9/fulltext) that, like the Lee & Dessler paper looks at city-level data in the US, but then divides them into clusters to use Bayesian updating... which allows for then subdividing the data into shorter time periods to look at the change in temperature related vulnerability historically over time.

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I think this deserves a bit more explanation:

1. It sounds like cold-related deaths currently dominate in the southern US, which leads to the decrease in mortality with rising temperatures. This is counterintuitive: since the southern US is hotter, I'd expect higher temperatures to increase heat-related deaths. Likewise, it sounds like heat-related deaths dominate in the north, causing warming to have little effect other than increasing heat-related deaths.

2. Why does "high adaptation" show northern cities more vulnerable to heat than southern cities currently are? Why can't northern cities adapt to have no more heat-related deaths than southern cities, even while having fewer cold-related deaths? Would this reasoning imply that increasing heat would transfer heat-related deaths from Venezuela to Canada? Does this make sense?

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Bjorn Lomborg is an intellectual fraud who, among other things, has committed an academic fraud. Enough said I suppose.

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If you joined all the economists in the world end to end they wouldn't reach a conclusion.

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Agree totally that he's an intellectual fraud - however I didn't know about the academic fraud allegations - is there something you can share?

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The fact that cold kills does not in any way make global warming irrellevant.

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Question- in the middle, you say the southern U.S. will benefit somewhat because it's already adapted to heat, but not cold. Meanwhile, at the end you say that those poor & hot places already have warm winters and won't benefit much from warmer winters. Why wouldn't that apply to the southern U.S. too? I understand their difference in adaptation on the hot side, but don't understand the disparity on the cold side.

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Funny, weren't you the guy saying that we can't adapt to climate change? If so, why are you going about publishing a paper implying that we can?

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author

nothing about your comment is factually accurate. please try again.

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So this isn't you?

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GH000799

Or this?

https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/climate-change-is-death-by-a-thousand?utm_source=twitter&sd=pf

Along with liking the comment that says in 50 years we are all doomed? Do you have any evidence to support the endorsement of that comment?

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author

OK, I see the problem. You don't understand written text. Maybe you can find someone to help you with your reading comprehension. Good luck!

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Another example, this isn't you?

https://twitter.com/AndrewDessler/status/1692336020426027289

If I'm misunderstanding what you're saying, please enlighten me by further expounding upon your position, I'm happy to be proven wrong

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author

that's fair question, so here's the answer: adaptation is possible, but we won't do it. it will require rich people paying to adapt poor people (e.g., higher taxes, wealth redistribution). I'll talk about this more in part 3 of this series.

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How much adaption we need will depend on how much warming we get

according to your paper ( https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2023GH000799 ) you mentioned that, at least in the USA, climate change actually reduces mortality below 3 degrees. If we take into account current policies to determine the most likely climate change future, we get below 3 degrees, closer to a RCP3.4 scenario at around 2.1-2.4 degrees ( https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-023-01661-0 ) so I don't see how we won't adapt if we actually will have a net decrease in mortality?

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Thanks, this is useful.

Are there any plans to extend this analysis to other countries?

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author

We’d love to but that depends on a lot of things, most acutely whether I can find someone to do it. Jangho has graduated and moved on to a postdoc.

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The issue is poorly posed. Even least-cost adaptation to climate change is part of the cost of increasing rising CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere. The issue should be, what set of policies reduces the cost of past and counting accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere at least cost?

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