Mr. Goklany: Would you give an illustration of what you mean by this?

I think it’s important to point out that insofar as the data is unreliable, it is on the side of undercounting the further back one goes. Does this invalidate the conclusion on account of bad data, or does it perhaps make the point even more strongly?
I just Want to repeat what Evan Jones Did say back there!
Thats the Best I could come out with!!

You are correct that no data is prefect. Are you saying that the data in this study, in your opinion, is good enough to base conclusions?

Let’s look at this study.

The question is whether or not the data is good enough to warrant a conclusion.

The study is titled “Death and Death Rates Due to Extreme Weather Events”. The data in Table 1 is mainly from Em-Dat, who runs a disaster database, not an extreme weather event database. I did not read the paper before I made my first comment. I had looked at table 1 and saw numbers that made no sense. I have now read the paper and the numbers still make no sense.

There is no definition of an “extreme weather event” in the paper. Without a definition, what is the author talking about? Without a definition, how can any of the numbers be verified? Mr. Goklany has questions (in the comments above) about the extreme temperatures deaths in WW2.
When are high temperatures an extreme event? When are low temperatures an extreme event? Is there such a thing as a normal hurricane? An extreme hurricane?

In Table 1 there is a line for Wild Fires. Is a wild fire an extreme weather event?

Table 1 shows 30 times increase (.03 vs .91) for the risk of death from extreme temperatures. Do you think that is reasonable estimate? Do you think this is a reasonable conclusion?
Do you believe that the 110 deaths per year is a realistic number?

That is the problem in a nutshell. Ironically, I agree with Mr. Goklany’s conclusion, but the data as shown is so flawed it should not be used.

Yes, I know. But I was actually responding not to your post but to Chris D.’s comment (which I quoted verbatim). He had apparently missed the header.

I was just stating that we have disrupted the natural selection process.

We ARE the natural selection process!

I saw no other explanation except that the numbers were in someway contaminated by deaths from war related problems such famine, disease, exposure, and poor medical care.

WWI ended in late 1918 but historians know civil society suffered more afterward than during the 1914-1918 war. And that lasted for decades.

Interesting study. I can’t believe the numbers from 1900-1960 accurately reflect natural disasters. But sobeit.

Kinda looks like a Malibu lamp to me.

Evan Jones…please reread my post, i said per year. The 110 deaths per year times 90 years is 9,900 deaths. Google showed me 1,213 people died in 1934 in the USA due to extreme heat. If both numbers are correct, that means 12% of the deaths for the world over 90 years took place in 1 year in one country.

My point is that Table 1 is flawed, and therefore no conclusions can be drawn from the data.

First, please look at Endnotes 3 and 4 to get a better idea about the data, whence it came, and its quality. Second, regarding the jump in numbers after the 1910-1919 period noted by many of you (e.g., Evan Jones, Jan Jenssens, WWS), I think this is probably due to a combination of generally poorer communications in earlier days, and, as noted by Evan Jones and WWS, probably due to the fact that with the war from 1914-1918 and the Bolshevik Revolution and its aftermath, newspapers and other information sources probably weren’t focusing on deaths from extreme weather events. From the perspective of their time, it was probably more like “routine” deaths.

Also note the sources of the basic data: NGOs, research institutes, UN agencies, insurance companies, press agencies and newspapers. At that time there were few NGOs, virtually no research institutes, no UN agencies, and I suspect insurance companies (which would be operating in the developed countries for the most part) were like, press agencies and newspapers, more concerned with other events.

K: The paper only looks at extreme weather events, specifically, hydrometeorological events such as droughts, extreme temperatures, slides, floods, waves/surges, wildfires, windstorms. I excluded famines because they are frequently exacerbated by, if not entirely due to, human failures (e.g., wars, collectivization, and other political experiments, etc.). Had I included them, then the apparent reduction in deaths and death rates during the 20th century would have been even more pronounced.

Chris D.: Regarding deaths from extreme temperatures from 1900-1989, Table 1 provides deaths per year, so actually that would be 90 x 110 deaths (= 9,906 deaths). That said, I’m also skeptical of these numbers myself. I have to believe that many more people worldwide died from extreme cold, for instance, in particular during the world war periods when many were close to starvation – but would that be “natural” or “man-made”? For example, how many soldiers froze to death on the Eastern Front? I would think the numbers would be greater. But take a look at Endnotes 3 and 4, and you can see that many deaths from extreme weather events during war periods were probably excluded.

Jan Janssens: You raise a really good question. More detailed examination of the data indicates that from 1940-49, most of the deaths were due to droughts and none to extreme temperatures! Surely some soldiers, not to mention civilians, froze to death on the Eastern Front. See above comments. However, there were zero deaths attributed to extreme temperatures from 1910-1919 too. I think the reason might have to do with a combination of poorer coverage in earlier years, and perhaps some luck – after all we are talking about extreme events.

Robert Burns and M. Jeff: Deaths from the 2004 Tsunami were excluded. See Endnote 3. But now looking at Endnote 1, I can see how one might think that tsunami deaths were included. So to clarify, the paper only looks at extreme WEATHER events, but for brevity in the paper I refer to them as “extreme events”.

Douglas Hoyt: It’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance, even if it’s in the virtual sphere. It should be possible to figure out if EM-DAT, the original source of the data, has accounted for the events you have identified. You may want to communicate your list to them. They are at: http://www.emdat.be/