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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Craig D. Lattig (07:34:59) :
I conclude that we are embarking on a great experiment…to see what happens when you try and run an industrial economy without any visable or viable form of energy…it remains to be seen how far faith will take us when the lights go out………cdl
We’ve already done the experiment in California under Gov. Gray(out) Davis. After a period of a couple of years of rolling blackouts the rules get relaxed. I now own 2 standby generators. Small one for the short outages, big one for doing laundry & running A/C… Honda makes the best ones. The 1 kw is fine for basic needs (TV, satellite dish, Internet, Lights, small beer fridge, charging laptop and cellphone 😉 You also end up buying a lot of your electric energy from nearby states that have different rules. Soo…
Buy stock in Canadian oil producers and refiners (PCZ is a good one, Petro Canada, or PWE or PGH for dividends from an oil /gas trust) and look for a sudden surge in coal powered electric generation being built on the Mexican side of the border from places like El Paso, San Diego, etc… (EWW is the Mexico exchange traded fund -in a new uptrend off a bottom, and FXM is the Mexican peso – presently ‘ringing down’ on a bottom against the dollar. Looks like a decent entry point to me for a long term investor.)
If you can’t change it, you can still make money off of it, and that makes up for a lot of the grief. I also expect FAN, GEX, and PBW to gain under Obama (wind, solar funds) but it may take a while for them to move. Honda HMC will be a good entry just after the blackouts start. (I’d like to put a smiley on that, but I can’t…)
Ed Scott (08:01:29) :
Christmas dinner with Pachauri.
“We haven’t come to grips with agricultural emissions,” warned Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, head of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change…”
All the “flakes” of the winter season are not snow.
LOVE the tag line! Wonder if we should break it to them that all those animal emissions came from CO2 extracted from the air… that, you know, it’s a cycle thing. Or that if the land were not farmed, the native plants reach a stable relationship with the litter fermenting to methane & CO2 but without the cow in between?
Just don’t let them see the swamps of Louisiana and all that man made swamp gas! Oh wait, it’s natural swamp gas… that’s OK… Never Mind…
I do wonder if anyone has pointed out that all the ‘green’ wetlands restoration projects are going to produce lots of swamp gas? I’m neutral on the projects (like the fishing, hate the mosquitos) I just find it funny that the rule for what’s acceptable is so, er, flexible…
Bruce Cobb (05:34:28) :
AGW = “Dead Meme Walking…”
Cheer Up Bruce, the “Zomboid Theory” of “Man Made Emissions of CO2 Cause Catastrophic Global Warming” will fall over sooner or later.
What we have to do is dodge is the raft of Government Taxes and Restrictions – and the popularity of both the Zombie and the Politicians will both take a dive once it really starts to hit people’s hip pockets.
And lack of popularity is anathema to the modern political classes.
E.M.Smith (14:09:09) :
It may not be solar magnetism that is critical, but solar impact on ozone. We’re running about -20% to -40% down on ozone as the sun takes a nap, that opens a 9-10 micrometer radiation window and allows cooling. Bingo, sun driven cold and cold poles and all that we are seeing now.
Interesting idea.
G
The anecdotal winter storm in the US Northwest of the past week was the biggest winter storm in the Portland area since 1980…
and the biggest DECEMBER snowstorm in 40 years
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/pqr/info/2008_December_snowstorm.txt
dang ol’ global warming man, I mean dang ol’ climate change man, it’s just causin’ all kinds of anecdotal chaos
Mr. Smith back at ya.
Here’s a link that shows that 50 years of data comparing cosmic flux to cloudiness confirms that on days of low cosmic flux there is a 20% greater chance of a cloudy day.
http://www.met.rdg.ac.uk/~swshargi/WebStuff/Pubs/Abstracts/Harrison&Stephenson06.htm
Some news releases describing the article:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18925365.700-cosmic-rays-linked-to-cloudy-days-.html
http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/earth_sciences/report-54047.html
Re: E.M.Smith (13:48:13)
[It has ever been thus. So not to worry. Remember the Mccarthy era? Witch hunting? Inquisitions (Spanish and otherwise)? Mao? The Civil War wasn’t exactly sane. The roman empire lasted a thousand years with lead levels that ought to have caused madness in the ruling classes.
The fascinating thing is that the world survives it all. Hyperinflation in Germany post WWII, food riots in asia, empires enslaving half the world then collapsing, Latin American dictators and communistas swapping places every few decades and both repudiating external debt, and any currency they may have printed. Heck, even nuclear bombs dropped on Japan and Japanese biological weapons dropped on China.
By comparison our crop of looneytoons are positively safe and sane 😉 So be of good cheer, pop open a bottle of beverage of your choice, and watch the show. If it gets too bad you just need to wait a while for the next lunacy to replace the present one. Give it two years and see what happens…]
E.M., your schadenfreude is showing. Is your middle name Pollyanna?
Graeme Rodaughan (14:49:47) :
E.M.Smith (14:09:09) :
It may not be solar magnetism that is critical, but solar impact on ozone. […]
Interesting idea.
Thanks! There are more pointers to resources under the ‘resource’ tab up top (at the bottom of the comments area) per ozone.
I just also found that this link:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011207iceage.html
also has an ozone rift in it:
In this case, the low solar activity depicted by fewer sunspots) during the Maunder Minimum meant decreased UV radiation which impacted the protective ozone formation in the upper atmosphere (stratosphere). The changes, then, in the upper atmosphere, feed down to the surface climate and affect many systems, including the Arctic Oscillation/North Atlantic Oscillation. These are jet stream systems that would transport warmer air to America and Europe. SUPER: NASA / ESA
So it looks like someone else beat me to the idea… No Nobel for me 😉
davidgmills (16:36:49) :
Mr. Smith back at ya.
Here’s a link that shows that 50 years of data comparing cosmic flux to cloudiness confirms that on days of low cosmic flux there is a 20% greater chance of a cloudy day.
Please don’t get me wrong, I’m quite certain that cosmic ray flux and clouds go together and that “the sun did it”! I said ‘may not be critical’ not ‘is not important’!
That both go in the same direction and at the same time and from the same cause helps both of them dispel the notion that the sun does not have enough influence to be the cause. Basically, CR flux doesn’t have to carry the whole burden alone and folks who say it can’t do it have to explain away BOTH the clouds AND the ozone mediated 10 micrometer cooling working together.
Joseph (17:17:25) :
E.M., your schadenfreude is showing. Is your middle name Pollyanna?
I take no joy in the misery of others, I just think it’s important to make lemonade from all the lemons we have right now… and I guess I have to admit that I do like to ‘drown my sorrows’ from time to time by popping open a beverage and contemplating that in the long run we’re all dead so maybe it’s not so bad right now after all…
Pollyanna? No, but perspective, yes. Our crop of loonytoons has yet to live up (live down?) to the criminals of the past… Then again, the century is young…
E.M.Smith (13:48:13) :
From the Wikipedia Ribbon Seal article mentioned earlier, I took the link to the Sea of Okhotsk article in which there is the paragraph below, that supports part of your remarks about variability.
“In winter, navigation on the Sea of Okhotsk becomes difficult, or even impossible, due to the formation of large ice floes, because the large amount of freshwater from the Amur lowers the salinity and raises the freezing point of the sea. The distribution and thickness of ice floes depends on many factors: the location, the time of year, water currents, and the sea temperatures.”
OT, any visit to Wikipedia can be a long duration event. The links are too intriguing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_shark
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9Eorramatur
Observe the Icelandic use of the old English letter þ “Thorn”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%9E
Ye olde pizza parlour. Bah, humbug.
A good Yuletide to everyone.
John S:
You are right ‘on topic’ when you ask about the usefulness of wind turbines for power generation in this thread.
This thread is about probable mortality effects from AGW as a result of anthropogenic GHG emissions. And the AGW-scare is being used to justify progressive destruction of secure, reliable energy supplies. Many people will die as a result of it this destruction if it continues.
I address the issue you raise in the item that can be accessed at
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/reprint/richard_courtney_2006_lecture.html
Your specific question is answered in Table 1 on page 7 and the two paragraphs of text above it.
And an overview of an assessment of the possible alternatives to windfarms for non-GHG-emitting power supplies is provided as its Section 14 on its pages 13 to 19.
I hope this helps.
Richard
Mr. Smith:
Well I have to admit I think that a decrease in solar magnetism may cause a number of factors all of which lead to a cooler climate.
Not only cosmic radiation, but lessened UV to heat up the ionosphere and a gaping hole in the ozone. All could produce global cooling and combined could have a significant effect.
We are seeing all three right now and man it has been cloudy and rainy here this winter. Heating degree days are well over normal. Anecdotally, of course.
E.M.Smith (14:09:09) :” It may not be solar magnetism that is critical, but solar impact on ozone. We’re running about -20% to -40% down on ozone as the sun takes a nap, that opens a 9-10 micrometer radiation window and allows cooling. Bingo, sun driven cold and cold poles and all that we are seeing now.”
According to the atmosphere composition link under “Resources” at the top of the page, O3 comprises only .07 parts per million of our total atmosphere. If we are to we scoff at the 386 ppm of CO2 as miniscule and not worthy of changing temperatures, shouldn’t we do the same for O3? Is there a way that O3 acts that allows such a tiny amount have an effect on the temps?
Non-news. The extra deaths have not been attributed directly to cold weather. The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays usually increase the stress factor on people and these deaths could be delayed results from increased stress during that time. Also, January tends to be a cash strapped month as people are paying for their Christmas excess. Finances are another major stress causing factor. This article does not tie in the extra deaths directly to cold weather. This article is just as bad as other main stream news media articles.
Please post more newsworthy articles.
“Please post more newsworthy articles.”
Don’t worry, Anthony will continue posting more and more newsworthy articles!
Could you manage to identify your state or country?
The City.
Daniel,
There is a reasonable correlation between temperature and cold/heat related excess deaths, where the temperature band with the least mortality increases with average temperature of a region. Thus Finland has the least mortality around 17 degr.C, while in Athens it is around 25 degr.C.
See Keatinge e.a.:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/321/7262/670
From that source:
“Over the seven regions together, annual cold related deaths averaged 2003 per million compared with 217 per million heat related deaths (difference, P<0.001 by paired t test). ”
Thus cold related mortality is about ten times more important than heat related mortality. With other words, a warmer climate saves lives…
But that depends of how humans adapt(ed) to different climates. If it is just an physiological adaptation to changing temperatures or maybe (partly) genetic, as in the case of skin cancer case differences between pale Anglo-Saxon descents and dark skinned aboriginals in the Australian deserts…