Thanks for this post. It's very illuminating and well presented.
It's interesting that the MMT varies so much by city. This makes sense - Bangkok is a hot city in the tropics; a normal day in Bangkok would be far out of normal for London or Boston.
But this suggests two things:
1. People can adapt to, and flourish in, a wide range of temperatures.
2. We should start paying attention to adaptation. Some cities and countries that have historically used little air conditioning should perhaps plan to use more. Further temperature increase is inevitable, but a little prudent adaptation would keep it from being fatal.
Yes, if you look at a bunch of cities you can see how people adapted to the climate the city was built in. As the climate change, people will adapt as much as they can afford, which is the problem. The poor, vulnerable, etc. can't afford it. Particularly in very poor countries in the tropics. They are going to suffer.
> Particularly in very poor countries in the tropics. They are going to suffer.
But won't they suffer more if we try to keep them from getting more prosperous? Isn't the best way to reduce the suffering (from all causes, not just climate change) to help them get more prosperous, or at least allow them to get more prosperous?
And isn't adaptation still the over-riding requirement, given that further warming is inevitable? The alternative sounds like useless hand-wringing, lamenting the plight of the world's poor.
Sure, I'm 100% in favor of democracy and prosperity, as well as apple pie and kittens. But increasing prosperity is not a policy, it's an outcome. What policy are you proposing that will do that?
Yes, we absolutely need to adapt to the climate change that we cannot avoid, but our goal should be to limit warming as much as possible so we have the least amount we need to adapt to.
The policy I'd propose is that we stop wasting resources and political bandwidth on a fruitless quest for Net Zero, and prioritize things that are achievable. I'd especially propose that we cease all talk of penalizing poor countries that won't cut their own emissions.
Another form is tying international financial transactions to increased efforts to reduce emissions. For instance, the UN's High-Level Expert Group recommended: "there needs to be a new deal for development that includes financial institutions and multinational corporations working with governments, Multilateral Development Banks and Development Finance Institutions to consistently take more risk and set targets to greatly scale investments in the clean energy transition in developing countries." This was presented to the COP27 meeting last year. I don't see any way to read this recommendation that doesn't call for requiring poor countries to devote resources to decarbonization as a price for accessing the international finance system. Here's the report: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_n7b.pdf; the quote comes from page 31.
Most western insurers and investors won’t finance coal power plants in poor countries, thus increasing the capital cost of such power plants and ultimately electricity costs. That’s a direct economic penalty.
"More people die of cold than heat" - the climate denier mantra.
While I'm grateful to have an expert answer, the question is silly. First, the correct answer to (say)100k dying from cold is money for heating, not global warming. (Is the answer to the higher frequency of deaths on pedestrian crossings to remove the crosswalks?)
Business as usual - millions eventually billions will die when they can no longer grow food where they live.
Great article Andrew! I didn’t know about the two different methods to measure (or estimate) the number of deaths due to heat and cold. I’m looking forward to your post on adaptation!
Incredibly enlightening article. I'd never heard of an RR curve, and it clarifies things so much, because I've been so confused over the conflicting information. The CDC also attributes more deaths to cold than heat. I've tried to find answers to this, but never encountered an RR curve.
However, the end confused me a little. I've read in lots of places that heat deaths can be undercounted because it's often difficult to identify a heat death as such. I understand that this can be true for cold too, but all the sources I've read suggest that it's more true for heat deaths. So when you said NOAA counts more deaths from heat because it only counts deaths for which the cause of death is determined to be heat/cold, that's the exact opposite of what I would have expected. Can you provide any more insight on that?
Most temperature-related deaths are not counted as temperature related on death certificates. If you just look at death certificates, then heat-related deaths greatly outpace cold related. The method we use here is an "excess death" approach, where we use statistics to determine how many excess deaths occur. Under this approach, there are a lot more cold-related deaths, even more than heat related, although most of those are occurring at quite moderate temperatures. I hope that answers the question.
Thank you- actually, your second sentence is what I was getting at. Various sources I've looked at have brought up the difficulty of identifying heat deaths as a counterpoint to those who say that cold deaths outnumber heat deaths. But, if more death certificates list heat as the cause than cold, then it seems that disproves what those sources say.
Thank you for preparing this series. It is raising some issues that need some well thought-out analyses. This phrase under "NOAA" deserves special consideration: "these are very different methodologies."
I guess the cold theory is more about likelihood per person. Most healthy individuals could last awhile in 110F, but almost nobody could survive a night at -50F. (Two extremes I experienced this year). But yes, the volume of people who see -50 are far lower than those who top 110.
This is what user First_Fit commented on one of my posts:
"In a massive 2014 UN survey of development priorities in people across world nations, in the poorest nations, those without reliable electricity, climate change ranked dead last."
I'm struggling to find the survey though. The UN conducts so many surveys!
Yep. And that applies both to nations we’re trying to help but also ourselves. We need broad public support in western countries to push for transformations like net zero. Currently, that support isn’t there.
Thanks for this post. It's very illuminating and well presented.
It's interesting that the MMT varies so much by city. This makes sense - Bangkok is a hot city in the tropics; a normal day in Bangkok would be far out of normal for London or Boston.
But this suggests two things:
1. People can adapt to, and flourish in, a wide range of temperatures.
2. We should start paying attention to adaptation. Some cities and countries that have historically used little air conditioning should perhaps plan to use more. Further temperature increase is inevitable, but a little prudent adaptation would keep it from being fatal.
Yes, if you look at a bunch of cities you can see how people adapted to the climate the city was built in. As the climate change, people will adapt as much as they can afford, which is the problem. The poor, vulnerable, etc. can't afford it. Particularly in very poor countries in the tropics. They are going to suffer.
> Particularly in very poor countries in the tropics. They are going to suffer.
But won't they suffer more if we try to keep them from getting more prosperous? Isn't the best way to reduce the suffering (from all causes, not just climate change) to help them get more prosperous, or at least allow them to get more prosperous?
And isn't adaptation still the over-riding requirement, given that further warming is inevitable? The alternative sounds like useless hand-wringing, lamenting the plight of the world's poor.
Sure, I'm 100% in favor of democracy and prosperity, as well as apple pie and kittens. But increasing prosperity is not a policy, it's an outcome. What policy are you proposing that will do that?
Yes, we absolutely need to adapt to the climate change that we cannot avoid, but our goal should be to limit warming as much as possible so we have the least amount we need to adapt to.
The policy I'd propose is that we stop wasting resources and political bandwidth on a fruitless quest for Net Zero, and prioritize things that are achievable. I'd especially propose that we cease all talk of penalizing poor countries that won't cut their own emissions.
I have to admit that I'm unaware of suggestions that we penalize poor countries who don't cut emissions. Can you point me to those discussions?
Re-posting this, to line up with the reply I intended to reply to:
Have you not heard such proposals?
One form is "border adjustment fees" for carbon emissions. It's a common enough idea that Resources for the Future has a site explaining them: https://www.rff.org/publications/explainers/border-carbon-adjustments-101/?gclid=CjwKCAjwwb6lBhBJEiwAbuVUSlPy3dCKD43nSDTYlgB4_D32d0Frvk7zhQixahV1JQbsuPIw0eTsFBoCmV0QAvD_BwE
Another form is tying international financial transactions to increased efforts to reduce emissions. For instance, the UN's High-Level Expert Group recommended: "there needs to be a new deal for development that includes financial institutions and multinational corporations working with governments, Multilateral Development Banks and Development Finance Institutions to consistently take more risk and set targets to greatly scale investments in the clean energy transition in developing countries." This was presented to the COP27 meeting last year. I don't see any way to read this recommendation that doesn't call for requiring poor countries to devote resources to decarbonization as a price for accessing the international finance system. Here's the report: https://www.un.org/sites/un2.un.org/files/high-level_expert_group_n7b.pdf; the quote comes from page 31.
Most western insurers and investors won’t finance coal power plants in poor countries, thus increasing the capital cost of such power plants and ultimately electricity costs. That’s a direct economic penalty.
But the MMT is not stable in the approached used - not well explained by adaptation etc. Can be at the 90th percentile for some cities. https://theconversation.com/heat-kills-we-need-consistency-in-the-way-we-measure-these-deaths-120500
"More people die of cold than heat" - the climate denier mantra.
While I'm grateful to have an expert answer, the question is silly. First, the correct answer to (say)100k dying from cold is money for heating, not global warming. (Is the answer to the higher frequency of deaths on pedestrian crossings to remove the crosswalks?)
Business as usual - millions eventually billions will die when they can no longer grow food where they live.
> "First, the correct answer to (say)100k dying from cold is money for heating, not global warming."
Of course, the converse would be: the correct answer to (say) 61k dying from heat is money for air conditioning, not immediate decarbonization.
Great article Andrew! I didn’t know about the two different methods to measure (or estimate) the number of deaths due to heat and cold. I’m looking forward to your post on adaptation!
Incredibly enlightening article. I'd never heard of an RR curve, and it clarifies things so much, because I've been so confused over the conflicting information. The CDC also attributes more deaths to cold than heat. I've tried to find answers to this, but never encountered an RR curve.
However, the end confused me a little. I've read in lots of places that heat deaths can be undercounted because it's often difficult to identify a heat death as such. I understand that this can be true for cold too, but all the sources I've read suggest that it's more true for heat deaths. So when you said NOAA counts more deaths from heat because it only counts deaths for which the cause of death is determined to be heat/cold, that's the exact opposite of what I would have expected. Can you provide any more insight on that?
Thanks!
Most temperature-related deaths are not counted as temperature related on death certificates. If you just look at death certificates, then heat-related deaths greatly outpace cold related. The method we use here is an "excess death" approach, where we use statistics to determine how many excess deaths occur. Under this approach, there are a lot more cold-related deaths, even more than heat related, although most of those are occurring at quite moderate temperatures. I hope that answers the question.
Thank you- actually, your second sentence is what I was getting at. Various sources I've looked at have brought up the difficulty of identifying heat deaths as a counterpoint to those who say that cold deaths outnumber heat deaths. But, if more death certificates list heat as the cause than cold, then it seems that disproves what those sources say.
Thank you for preparing this series. It is raising some issues that need some well thought-out analyses. This phrase under "NOAA" deserves special consideration: "these are very different methodologies."
And of course this takes no account of the effects on agriculture which may mean millions starve or die trying to reach luckier latitudes.
I guess the cold theory is more about likelihood per person. Most healthy individuals could last awhile in 110F, but almost nobody could survive a night at -50F. (Two extremes I experienced this year). But yes, the volume of people who see -50 are far lower than those who top 110.
I think the UN has something from 2014. I’ll try to look it up later.
This is what user First_Fit commented on one of my posts:
"In a massive 2014 UN survey of development priorities in people across world nations, in the poorest nations, those without reliable electricity, climate change ranked dead last."
I'm struggling to find the survey though. The UN conducts so many surveys!
Yep. And that applies both to nations we’re trying to help but also ourselves. We need broad public support in western countries to push for transformations like net zero. Currently, that support isn’t there.