This is part two of a three-part series about temperature-related mortality. If you haven’t already, you may want to read part one first. Part three is here. Mortality due to extreme temperatures is emerging as one of the most concerning impacts of climate change. But it’s a complex issue, susceptible to being misrepresented or distorted in the public debate.
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.
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mortality (https://health2016.globalchange.gov/low/ClimateHealth2016_02_Temperature_small.pdf): it may be a bit outdated now (seven years is a long time in this particular corner of the climate impacts research field) but covers a lot of the key concepts and uncertainties.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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
Bjorn Lomborg is an intellectual fraud who, among other things, has committed an academic fraud. Enough said I suppose.
The fact that cold kills does not in any way make global warming irrellevant.
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.
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?
Thanks, this is useful.
Are there any plans to extend this analysis to other countries?
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?