Guest post by Indur Goklany
Now that the cold weather is here, we should remember that more Americans die during the cold months than at any other time of year, notwithstanding any global warming.
The figure below, which is based on data from the US National Center for Health Statistics for 2001-2007, shows that on average 7,200 Americans die each day during the months of December, January, February and March, compared to the average 6,400 who die daily during the rest of the year. On this basis, there were 95,000 “excess” deaths during the 121 days in the cold months (December to March, assuming a non-leap year).
So bundle up if you go outside, and keep warm indoors as well.
Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays.
Figure 1: Average daily deaths for each month, United States, 2001-2007. Sources: 2001-2004 data from National Center for Health Statistics, DataWarehouse at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/datawh/statab/unpubd/mortabs/gmwkIV_10.htm, and National Vital Statistics Reports available at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/nvsr/nvsr.htm; 2005 data from Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2006, Volume 55, Number 20. 6 pp. (PHS) 2007-1120; 2006-2007 data from Births, Marriages, Divorces, and Deaths: Provisional Data for 2007. NVSR Volume 56, Number 21. 6 pp. (PHS) 2008-1120.
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It would be interesting to have this number as a function of the year, starting from 1970 or so?
another global warming proxy might appear.
Understanding the AGW alarmists.
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Cognitive Dissonance
http://web.mac.com/sinfonia1/Global_Warming_Politics/A_Hot_Topic_Blog/Entries/2008/8/19_Cognitive_Dissonance.html
“I must ask a very serious and urgent question of our media. Why do you continue to talk glibly about current climate ‘warming’ when it is now widely acknowledged that there has been no ‘global warming’ for the last ten years, a cooling trend that many think may continue for at least another ten years? How can you talk of the climate ‘warming’ when, on the key measures, it isn’t? And now a leading Mexican scientist is even predicting that we may enter another ‘Little Ice Age’ – a ‘pequeña era [edad] de hielo’.”
“Such media behaviour exhibits a classic condition known as ‘cognitive dissonance’. This is experienced when belief in a grand narrative persists blindly even when the facts in the real world begin to contradict what the narrative is saying. Sadly, our media have come to have a vested interest in ‘global warming’, as have so many politicians and activists. They are terrified that the public may begin to question everything if climate is acknowledged, on air and in the press, not to be playing ball with their pet trope (AGW).”
Yeah, global warming is menice to life on earth. It kills everything from germs to humans. I would much rather prefer massive global cooling. At least we would’nt feel anything below -75F degrees. Hypothermia does wonders for the senses.
How could anyone, intelligently make the argument, warm is more deadly then cold, when that data plainly shows the winter (cool) is more deadly then the summer (warm)?
I much appreciate British humor (humour).
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Climate change summits like Poznan and Brussels will cost us the earth
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3743591/Climate-change-summits-like-Poznan-and-Brussels-will-cost-us-the-earth.html
“The outcome was a compromise,…under which the targets would be nominally retained but the means of achieving them – sharp rises in the cost of carbon-based energy – abandoned.”
“So onto Poznan, where,…all that emerged on the global warming front was a great deal of hot air,…”
“Increases in world carbon prices need not be large – say a $0.01 initial increase in the price of a gallon of gasoline that rises by $0.02 every three years”. At that rate, it would take the US more than 350 years to reach the level of petrol tax we already have in the UK.”
“The first report of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change,…The 480 pages certainly make up in quantity for what they conspicuously lack in intellectual quality.”
“Since the committee uses the same methodology and indeed the same model as the Stern Review (which was not peer-reviewed), it is hardly surprising that it comes to the same conclusion. It reminds me of the man who, concerned about the authenticity of a report in his newspaper, bought a second copy of the paper to confirm it.”
“…welcome to the new science paradigm, in which effects precede cause. I have to confess my own limitations. Unlike Mr Al Gore, Lord Stern, and Lord Turner, I do not know what is going to happen to the planet in the next 100-200 years. But I do know nonsense when I see it.”
Let’s see now.
Which month would I rather experience; January, which has roughly an extra 1,000 deaths each day, or August? Hmmm, that’s a tough one…
Not!
Now, when I look outside my window, there’s still a snow dune (snow drift sounds too wimpy compared to what I’m seeing) crossing a sidewalk I’ve still got to shovel. This is gonna be a loooooong season.
Bring on global warming.
As if we have any say in the matter.
Brrrrrr.
Just breaking the icicles off the keys, long enough to wish the WUWT community a hearty Merry Christmas.
And God bless us, everyone.
I think the cold month v. warm month statistics can be explained by this premise:
In the summer we expect warm temperatures. All seems normal. We do not expect warm temperatures in the winter.
The added winter deaths are due to high temperatures from AGW. This confounds our primitive brain which has evolved to expect cold weather in the winter.
Unable to cope with milder winters, our will to live is eroded, and deaths rise.
Public education can correct this. We must persuade more people to die in the hottest months as a protest against the heat. To survive the milder winters an anti-depressant can be taken.
Would anyone care to comment on the sea ice extent plot? We hit a new high for all values plotted for the date and then suddenly a right turn to the minimum of same.
Unprecedented in the dataset and to my way of thinking, not credible.
Somebody is cooking the books and burnt books smell very bad.
Data matches well with UK’s experience: I understand they average 25,000 more deaths in the colder months – but I don’t know how that value was calculated.
But AGW remains the biggest threat ….. Yeah. Right.
Temperature and mortality in 11 cities of the eastern United States
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11772788
Mortality increases with extreme hot weather in northern cities and extreme cold weather in southern cities. Unless you own an airconditioner in the north or a heater in the south.
But airconditioners and heaters need nasty carbon polluting energy, which is going to kill us all.
So your choice is die sooner from heat or cold, or die later from global warming.
1998 was a warm phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a warm phase in the cyclical PDO and a warm phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle. 2008 is a cold phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a cold phase in the cyclical PDO and a cold phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle.
All of these cycles, including solar cycle 24, are going to eventually turn warm again in the next few years, and before 2012 the 1998 records will be solidly broken.
The cognitive dissonance here is assuming that this time its going to be different in all these cyclical factors. The skeptical crowd needs to generate a major failure in solar cycles in order to avoid dealing with AGW. That is textbook cognitive dissonance.
OFF TOPIC: HAS EVERYONE SEEN THIS
Water vapor’s effects on atmosphere are debated
By Greg Gordon, McClatchy Newspapers Greg Gordon, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Sun Dec 21, 6:00 am ET
WASHINGTON — Ron Ace’s idea to cool the planet by evaporating water could provoke controversy because it collides head-on with a concern of environmental scientists: that water vapor is a potent greenhouse gas.
A recent Texas A&M University study, based on satellite data from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration , warned that if water vapor levels in the atmosphere continue to rise, it “could guarantee” an increase of several degrees Celsius in the Earth’s temperatures over the next century.
These scientists warned of potential “positive feedback,” in which water vapor traps heat near the surface, the warmer temperatures cause increasing ocean surface water to evaporate, producing even more water vapor, further heightening the trapping effect and beginning the cycle anew.
Kenneth Caldeira , a climate scientist for the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University whose computer simulation of Ace’s invention suggests it would significantly cool the planet, said that scientists are still trying to sort out the complicated role of water vapor.
Among its mixed effects:
— It absorbs latent heat near the earth’s surface and transports it to higher altitudes, for a cooling effect.
— When it condenses at higher altitudes, it releases the latent heat, which then can radiate into space, producing more cooling.
— It’s a greenhouse gas, trapping heat and causing warming.
— It can form low clouds that reflect solar energy, a cooling effect.
— It can form more high clouds, which block some sunlight but mostly prevent the release of infrared radiation from below, another warming effect.
Robert Park , a retired University of Maryland physics professor, said scientists are right to worry that water vapor and other greenhouse gases could lead to thermal runaway — a cycle where two or more factors feed off another to propel temperatures higher — but that no one has proved that it’s occurring because the atmosphere is so complex. “This is what makes climate such a horrendously difficult thing to calculate . . . by far the most difficult calculation that man has ever attempted,” Park said.
Ace hopes that his global cooling invention will help settle the matter.
You should be happy for the heart healthy effects of shoveling snow. A report on studies on obesity in 20,000 doctors found that exercising enough to “break a sweat” three times a month reduced the risk of heart attack by 18%… roughly countering the increased risk of being 30 pounds over weight.
Bring on the snow. I have 200 ft of 8 ft wide sidewalk around my store… I may never die.
Here’s a graph from the UK showing all deaths during four years:-
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947392655
There is a slight doming effect for winter 06/07 and 07/08 but then these were very mild winters. They were also quite cold summers so there would be very little chance of heat related deaths. However, look at the winter peak for 99/00, almost double the average. That was a colder year for global temperatures and saw a spike in flu deaths.
However when you look at this graph:-
http://www.hpa.org.uk/web/HPAwebFile/HPAweb_C/1194947381241
99/00 is dwarfed by 89/90.
For a real shocker, (unrelated to temperature, sorry) look at the chart on page 4 of the Institute of Medicine’s report [770KB].
1900-2003 All Cause Death Rates per 100,000 for Children and Teenagers by Age Group:-
http://www.iom.edu/Object.File/Master/38/139/Carter%20Mecher.pdf
The spike for child deaths in 1918 show how deadly influenza can be. If duplicated today it would wipe out the same number of kids as would normally die of all other causes for between 15-20 years! That pandemic killed the very young and the old but it also targeted young adults.
That was H1N1 which, in a mutated form, still causes seasonal flu.
A fair amount of people die from flu every winter in the UK making reports such as this;
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/3916367/GPs-extend-Christmas-hours-following-triple-winter-bugs-outbreak.html
“The flu outbreak is the worst for a decade and internet search engine Google said twice as many people are searching for “flu” than is usual at Christmas.”
seem to point to a good match for a lack of increased global warming since last century.
I am sorry if I seem sarcastic, or even non-committal, regarding something as serious as the deaths of the most vulnerable humans, but I consider the cold, and proposals to “mitigate” a phantom menace, to be a threat that is orders of magnitude higher than that posed by the tiny, tiny warming we have “suffered” since the 19th century. It is well documented that we have far more to fear from the cold.
Lamont, I think you may be missing the point.
PDO, ENSO, Solar Cycle 24… Where is the human factor?
This Earth may warm up or cool down, but, my 6 billion fellow humans and I will have no more affect on it than spitting on a forest fire.
WestHoustonGeo,
It might be unprecedented, but I believe what they are reporting is the truth. The Sea Ice has stopped growing for right now because several bodies of water that usually freeze over are not quite cold enough but they should be soon. The Sea of Okhotsk, The Labrador Sea, The Gulf of Saint Lawrence, and the Barentsz Sea. Don’t worry though, they will freeze up soon enough.
As for Cognitive Dissonance and the like, I honestly wish I could say tell you all not to worry, but it seems to me that religious convictions are the dominent human trait and this is one of our national religions du jure, and we have officially entered an age of madness in our political casts. How long can we survive with lunatics, crooks and morons running the country? I do not know, but I do believe that we are about to find out.
Frank Ravizza (21:51:33) :
“How could anyone, intelligently make the argument, warm is more deadly then cold, when that data plainly shows the winter (cool) is more deadly then the summer (warm)?”
You could make the argument as follows:
When people of age are reaching the age of dying they are likely to postpone their dying until the miserable cold winter period. With global warming the winters will become less cold. And so why wait? Hence there is less preference for the winter and so the chance of the dying folks to close their eyes permanently in the summer will increase. Resulting in more deaths in the summer than before global warming.
Lamont wrote:
1998 was a warm phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a warm phase in the cyclical PDO and a warm phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle. 2008 is a cold phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a cold phase in the cyclical PDO and a cold phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle.
All of these cycles, including solar cycle 24, are going to eventually turn warm again in the next few years, and before 2012 the 1998 records will be solidly broken.
The cognitive dissonance here is assuming that this time its going to be different in all these cyclical factors. The skeptical crowd needs to generate a major failure in solar cycles in order to avoid dealing with AGW. That is textbook cognitive dissonance.
If it’s cyclical, doesn’t that debunk AGW? The “A” supposedly stands for anthropogenic (man-made). Where’s the human factor in those cycles you named? Personally, I think temperatures have a quite way to go before they get above temperatures during the Roman Optimum, around 2° Celsius warmer if I recall correctly.
Regarding the UK and deaths in winter/summer this press release by the National Statistics Office is very revealing http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=480
Quote
On each of the ten days from Monday 4 August to Wednesday 13 August 2003, the numbers of deaths in England and Wales were above the average for those days over the last five years. There were 15,261 deaths over the period in 2003, 16 per cent (2,142) above the average for the last five years.
The Central England Temperature peaked at 31.5°C (88.7°F) on 9 August. The average August daily maximum temperature in the south of England is around 21.2°C (70.2 °F). The number of deaths peaked at 1,696 on 11 August, 370 more deaths than the average for that day over the previous five years.
The impact was greatest in the southern half of England, particularly in London, where deaths for all ages were 42 per cent (616) above the average. London experienced a maximum temperature of 37.9°C (100.2°F) on 10 August. In all regions, deaths for the 75 and over age group were above average levels. In the London region, deaths in the 75 and over age group were 59 per cent (522) above the average.
In England and Wales during August as a whole, there were estimated to be 1,976 deaths above the average for that month over the last five years. Temperatures and mortality did increase in mid-July, but high temperatures were not sustained. Overall, there were fewer deaths than expected during that month.
Although numbers of deaths in August 2003 were higher than the average in that month, the peak number on 11 August was still lower than typical daily mortality in the winter months. Over the last five years, December and January had daily averages of 1,725 and 1,872 deaths respectively. Average daily mortality in August 2003 (1,375 deaths) was also lower than annual average daily mortality over the whole of the previous five years (1,485 deaths).
OK Lamont, before 2012; that’s earlier then Keenlyside et al predicts, and I think they missed the point; so, how much do you want to bet that 1998 temperatures are exceeded before 2012? The condition is, we use UAH records.
Lamont (00:11:14) :
Congratulations. Your discovery of natural cycles driving temperatures is more marvellous than the discovery of powered flight.
Let us see, say within the ever popular metric of 30 years, how much greater the influence of the PDO is over even the cumulative effect of ENSO and solar. The very same PDO that was unmentioned/undiscovered in the Year of Al Gore 1998. The very same ocean cycles that cyclically emit, or cyclically fail to emit, their “heat” as a result of some mysterious mechanism deemed “definitely non-solar” by the anti-cycloons.
As we are talking combined factors maybe we should place bets. As a dedicated cyclomaniac I am willing to bet that 1998 will not remain the “hottest” year in the record (sometime in the 2020ies possibly) as-
1) our biosphere is rising, cyclically, out of a glacial period(again)
2) CO2 levels have continued to climb higher year on year
3)Solar cycles 24/25 power up
Pick whichever part of my answer appears to yourself as sarcasm, and which dissonance (or arrogance, or even misdirection).
All of the above is subject to Hansen’s secret recipe. One wonders how long 1998 will remain the hottest year in the (NASA/GISS) record if temperatures plummet over the coming decades.
Lamont
“1998 was a warm phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a warm phase in the cyclical PDO and a warm phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle. 2008 is a cold phase in the cyclical solar cycle, a cold phase in the cyclical PDO and a cold phase in the cyclical ENSO cycle.”
What do you base this on? These three cycles are not known to be in sync. Is this your opinion or is it based on scientific fact? You predict that everything will change by 2012. What do you base that on? Do you have a peer reviewed article that you could reference?
Perhaps AGW is real. The cognitive dissonance comes when you believe that a worldwide governing body regulating CO2 emissions will solve it. C’mon! UN is an example of such an organization. It’s littered with corruption and failures such as Rwanda, Darfur, Yugoslavia and “oil for food”. You cannot with a good conscience propose that such an organization is our salvation. Cognitive dissonance, indeed.
Why isn’t the base period 1979 -2000 like every other base period we see being used?