The doom and gloom, hell and high water howling seems to have hit a traffic obstacle in the form of a new paper in the UK that shows warmer weather saves lives. I really liked this part:
…they found there were only 0.7 death per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year, but a decrease of fully 85 deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a phenomenal lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 121.4.
From CO2 Science:
Lives Saved per Life Lost Due to Global Warming
Reference
Christidis, N., Donaldson, G.C. and Stott, P.A. 2010. Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales. Climatic Change 102: 539-553.
Background
The authors write that “the IPCC AR4 states with very high confidence that climate change contributes to the global burden of disease and to increased mortality,” citing the contribution of Confalonieri et al. (2007) to that document.
What was done
In an effort handsomely suited to evaluate this very-high-confidence contention of the IPCC, Christidis et al. extracted the numbers of daily deaths from all causes from death registration data supplied by the UK Office of National Statistics for men and women fifty years of age or older in England and Wales for the period 1976-2005, which they divided by daily estimates of population “obtained by fitting a fifth order polynomial to mid-year population estimates, to give mortality as deaths per million people,” after which they compared the death results with surface air temperature data that showed a warming trend during the same three-decade period of 0.47°C per decade. In addition, they employed a technique called optimal detection, which they describe as “a formal statistical methodology” that can be used to estimate the role played by human adaptation in the temperature-related changes in mortality they observed.
What was learned
As expected, during the hottest portion of the year, warming led to increases in death rates, while during the coldest portion of the year it lead to decreases in death rates. More specifically, the three scientists report that if no adaptation had taken place, there would have been 1.6 additional deaths per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year over the period 1976-2005, but there would have been 47 fewer deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 29.4, which represents a huge net benefit of the warming experienced in England and Wales over the three-decade period of warming. And when adaptation was included in the analysis, as was the case in the data they analyzed, they found there were only 0.7 death per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year, but a decrease of fully 85 deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a phenomenal lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 121.4.
What it means
Clearly, the IPCC’s “very-high-confidence” conclusion is woefully wrong. Warming is highly beneficial to human health, even without any overt adaptation to it. And when adaptations are made, warming is incredibly beneficial in terms of lengthening human life span.
For more on this important topic, including results from all around the world, see the many items we have archived under the subheadings of Health Effects (Temperature) in our Subject Index.
Reference
Confalonieri, U., Menne, B., Akhtar, R., Ebi, K.L., Hauengue, M., Kovats, R.S., Revich, B. and Woodward, A. 2007. Human health. In: Parry, M.L. et al. (Eds.) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Lives Saved per Life Lost Due to Global Warming
Reference
Christidis, N., Donaldson, G.C. and Stott, P.A. 2010. Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales. Climatic Change 102: 539-553. Background
The authors write that “the IPCC AR4 states with very high confidence that climate change contributes to the global burden of disease and to increased mortality,” citing the contribution of Confalonieri et al. (2007) to that document.
What was done
In an effort handsomely suited to evaluate this very-high-confidence contention of the IPCC, Christidis et al. extracted the numbers of daily deaths from all causes from death registration data supplied by the UK Office of National Statistics for men and women fifty years of age or older in England and Wales for the period 1976-2005, which they divided by daily estimates of population “obtained by fitting a fifth order polynomial to mid-year population estimates, to give mortality as deaths per million people,” after which they compared the death results with surface air temperature data that showed a warming trend during the same three-decade period of 0.47°C per decade. In addition, they employed a technique called optimal detection, which they describe as “a formal statistical methodology” that can be used to estimate the role played by human adaptation in the temperature-related changes in mortality they observed.
What was learned
As expected, during the hottest portion of the year, warming led to increases in death rates, while during the coldest portion of the year it lead to decreases in death rates. More specifically, the three scientists report that if no adaptation had taken place, there would have been 1.6 additional deaths per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year over the period 1976-2005, but there would have been 47 fewer deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 29.4, which represents a huge net benefit of the warming experienced in England and Wales over the three-decade period of warming. And when adaptation was included in the analysis, as was the case in the data they analyzed, they found there were only 0.7 death per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year, but a decrease of fully 85 deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a phenomenal lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 121.4.
What it means
Clearly, the IPCC’s “very-high-confidence” conclusion is woefully wrong. Warming is highly beneficial to human health, even without any overt adaptation to it. And when adaptations are made, warming is incredibly beneficial in terms of lengthening human life span.
For more on this important topic, including results from all around the world, see the many items we have archived under the subheadings of Health Effects (Temperature) in our Subject Index.
Reference
Confalonieri, U., Menne, B., Akhtar, R., Ebi, K.L., Hauengue, M., Kovats, R.S., Revich, B. and Woodward, A. 2007. Human health. In: Parry, M.L. et al. (Eds.) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Lives Saved per Life Lost Due to Global Warming
Reference
Christidis, N., Donaldson, G.C. and Stott, P.A. 2010. Causes for the recent changes in cold- and heat-related mortality in England and Wales. Climatic Change 102: 539-553. Background
The authors write that “the IPCC AR4 states with very high confidence that climate change contributes to the global burden of disease and to increased mortality,” citing the contribution of Confalonieri et al. (2007) to that document.
What was done
In an effort handsomely suited to evaluate this very-high-confidence contention of the IPCC, Christidis et al. extracted the numbers of daily deaths from all causes from death registration data supplied by the UK Office of National Statistics for men and women fifty years of age or older in England and Wales for the period 1976-2005, which they divided by daily estimates of population “obtained by fitting a fifth order polynomial to mid-year population estimates, to give mortality as deaths per million people,” after which they compared the death results with surface air temperature data that showed a warming trend during the same three-decade period of 0.47°C per decade. In addition, they employed a technique called optimal detection, which they describe as “a formal statistical methodology” that can be used to estimate the role played by human adaptation in the temperature-related changes in mortality they observed.
What was learned
As expected, during the hottest portion of the year, warming led to increases in death rates, while during the coldest portion of the year it lead to decreases in death rates. More specifically, the three scientists report that if no adaptation had taken place, there would have been 1.6 additional deaths per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year over the period 1976-2005, but there would have been 47 fewer deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 29.4, which represents a huge net benefit of the warming experienced in England and Wales over the three-decade period of warming. And when adaptation was included in the analysis, as was the case in the data they analyzed, they found there were only 0.7 death per million people per year due to warming in the hottest part of the year, but a decrease of fully 85 deaths per million people per year due to warming in the coldest part of the year, for a phenomenal lives-saved to life-lost ratio of 121.4.
What it means
Clearly, the IPCC’s “very-high-confidence” conclusion is woefully wrong. Warming is highly beneficial to human health, even without any overt adaptation to it. And when adaptations are made, warming is incredibly beneficial in terms of lengthening human life span.
For more on this important topic, including results from all around the world, see the many items we have archived under the subheadings of Health Effects (Temperature) in our Subject Index.
Reference
Confalonieri, U., Menne, B., Akhtar, R., Ebi, K.L., Hauengue, M., Kovats, R.S., Revich, B. and Woodward, A. 2007. Human health. In: Parry, M.L. et al. (Eds.) Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Charlie A says:
November 23, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Observation #1:
This is why you see old people moving to Florida, Texas & Arizona, not North Dakota, Montana & Alaska. Warmer = better.
People intuitively know warmer is better – we didn’t need a study to prove it.,
And Observation #2:
Don’t know about the death rates, but I do know that the bikini ratio improves with warmer weather. 😉
This obviously calls for a scientific study to see if there is a causal relationship between #2 and #1.
I just hope it doesn’t mean that it causes more old people to wear bikinis. 🙂
solarbud says:
November 23, 2010 at 3:00 pm
This study looked only at the UK. The IPCC looks at the whole world. You people obviously don’t care about the folk who died in the Russian heatwave or the Pakistani floods this year, or the crop failures in both those countries and Africa and a host of other places.
Because the fact that it’s warmer in January in England is the only thing which matters in your little minds. We are OK, stuff the rest of the world, eh. Makes me proud to be British it does.
Makes me sad that you’re British, it does. Most of the other Brits (sorry, hope that’s not offensive) here have more thoughtful and intelligent comments.
Althiough it is great to see another nail in the alarmist coffin …. it kind of makes me mad. Why is it that something which is SO BLOODY OBVIOUS to the ‘man in the street’, indeed to anyone who just applied a tiny portion of common sense, took so long to be formally recognised by the scientific establishment. This whole sorry episode has done so muich damage to science in general and it will take a generation to repair. It is a tragedy. I am sure there are plenty of scientists out there that also have common sense and can think normally …. why have so many of them not spoken up? Tragedy.
Wombat says:
November 23, 2010 at 4:17 pm
The mortality from anthropogenic climate change is not occurring in England and Wales, but in the Sahel and horn of Africa, and in South Asia. (see:Patz et al. (2005).
CO2 science;
Four stars for spin.
One and a half stars for reading comprehension.
———————————————————————————
I read that the warming would be the most in the higher latitudes…..
and little or none in the lower latitudes
@SolarBud
When you have compared how many Russians died in the 2010 heatwave to how many have not died during winters over the last decade, then maybe you will have a serious point to make.
Are you sure?
I thought that my understanding that food production would increase for up to a couple of degrees was from the IPCC. So I looked up the summary of WG II 2007.
Food, fibre and forest products
Crop productivity is projected to increase slightly at mid- to high latitudes for local mean temperature increases of up to 1-3°C depending on the crop, and then decrease beyond that in some regions. * D [5.4]
That’s the first point in the section.
’nuff said.
Oops Sorry Mark T.
I misread your comment as did not consider positive effects of GW. My bad.
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg2/en/ch8s8-2-1-2.html
Cold waves and hot waves are both considered by the IPCC.
Smokey says:
November 23, 2010 at 4:06 pm
“Visitor From Venus,
No, you just don’t understand. Temperature isn’t increasing because the IPCC is wrong. Of course they’re wrong, but that’s beside the point. Temperature is increasing because of U.S. postage.”
At the risk of a triple (it’s getting late here), this has very significant ramifications for the mitigation of global warming. U.S. postage is going up because fewer people are sending posts through standard mail. Increased Government subsidies of postal rates would drive the cost of mail down, thus reducing global warming and would be a lot cheaper than all of the schemes already in the works.
manicbeancounter says: “Last winter was the coldest in the UK for 30 years. In 1981 I remember statistics coming out about the weekly death rates. Last year nothing. There were statistics about accidents through slipping on the ice. Maybe it is another area where the government has stopped caring, along with the increase in fuel poverty as a result of paying for green energy.”
When a government is ashamed that its policies are resulting in deaths of citizens, they arrange for the relevant statistics to go down the memory hole. The People’s Republic of East Germany stopped reporting suicide statistics in their “Workers’ Paradise.”
I like the politics of this result, but I do not consider it real. As Milloy of Junkscience.com likes to say about scares or wonders: Where are the bodies?
And judging my the number of cars sliding into ditches and into each other after the snowstorm in Seattle yesterday, I would project a similar reduction in the number of traffic accidents. Here is a video from Queen Anne Hill in Seattle last night: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILDOqppQL-U&feature=player_embedded
Oh Dear, Phil R believes we’re all going to die if we don’t die. Ho-hum. Say what, Phil R, how about over 6 billion people will die this century? Scary, eh, ain’t it?
Of course, nothing to do with global warming. How about some perspective?
I am now throwing wood into fire like a fireman on a wood burning locomotive.
we in NE Oregon are expecting -10f and lower tonight, faucets running, gas heater isn’t keeping up hence the wood, local records in the Colmbia basin fell or were tied. I
notice a lot of these were set in the last cold PDO period. hmm.
I await Pamela Gray’s report from Wallowa, county,as they are higher and colder…
Yes, 3.5 degrees warmer by 2100 means the British won’t have to go to Spain for their holidays any more, and the Americans won’t need to go to Mexico. Wonderful! If this is what it takes to bring the skeptics around to the IPCC temperature prediction, fine by me. Let’s all support the IPCC science, even if it is just AGW, not the CAGW part, or is it too good to be true?
Tim Williams says:
November 23, 2010 at 1:05 pm
“A well studied example is the 2003 European heatwave which cost
the lives of more than 30,000 people””
30,000 people dying from temperatures from temperatures that in most places were barely over 100F, in what is theoretically the developed part of the planet, is an indication of something much more ominous than changing climate. It indicates that living in a socialist nanny state, of the exact type suggested as a solution to the looming “climate catastrophe”, can result in a population that is so enfeebled that it is completely incapable of taking even the most basic steps to ensure its own survival.
I’ve never been to Europe, but around here the local Walmart has had window air conditioners on sale every summer for well less than $100 since before that european heatwave. More than half the summers of my over six decades of life have had spells of weather that meet or exceed that heatwave and around here high heat is usually accompanied by maximum humidity. During a personal rough patch I worked in a manufacturing plant here, that produced molded FRP parts. The extruders and presses threw off enough heat to make the temp in the building 25-30 degrees higher than the ambient. The work was quite strenuous, involving moving 15-20 pound parts several times a minute. Nobody died.
Robert of Ottawa says:
November 23, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Oh Dear, Phil R believes we’re all going to die if we don’t die. Ho-hum. Say what, Phil R, how about over 6 billion people will die this century? Scary, eh, ain’t it?
Of course, nothing to do with global warming. How about some perspective?
With all due respect (if in fact due), [snip] Which post are you responding to?
But apparently the IPCC made some wrong deductions from its citation of a 2007 UK study by the same authors, which errors they are now in effect protesting. That’s all they’re claiming (regardless of what posters here are saying).
Don’t forget agricultural loss. Tonight we will be at minus 15. That kind of temperature is brutal to fall calving operations. And we have a few in Wallowa County, though most have stuck to spring calving. Fall calving allows for a bigger heifer during market season. However, these fall calves are not old enough to withstand these kinds of temperatures for long. On the other hand, with any luck, we will see some wolf pups dying as well.
Winter wheat (the premier wheat used for the best flour) may also be harmed by these temperatures. Winter wheat is intended to be planted during the warm season and then over-winter. The cold spell is necessary to produce a high-quality product. However, if the ground freezes solid at too low temperatures, winter wheat will not rebound in the spring. Grape vines are another agricultural product that does not withstand ground temperatures that are too cold. If the roots are too shallow, they will not make it.
Direct human death is of course an important statistic and rather easily figured, but there is a lag involved regarding food production that can have negative impacts for months (years?) afterwords, though the temperatures may rebound. This statistic is much harder to figure but certainly affects 3rd world countries.
Well now at least we know where not to look for the truth. Its certainly not in statistical data that totally discounts the rest of the population like this has.
More of the lies, damn lies and statistics. Oh and you can almost say anything you like using statistics. Reality is the truth and there is damn little on this site.
All I can say is that in the last 30 years, climate refugees have turned this once sleepy corner of the world into a rat race. They sure aren’t moving here for the culture. Every time I get a friend visiting from a cold city, it’s always ‘oh, we should move as well, such a better quality of life’.
Humans prefer warmer temperatures. Most people look forward to summer. No science needed.
My Email sig, for the last 2 years +, has read as follows:
Help keep the planet Green! Maximize your CO2 and CH4 output!
Global Warming=More Life; Global Cooling=More Death.
😀
LOL
James Sexton says:
November 23, 2010 at 12:28 pm
HAHAHAHAHA, is it ok if we gloat for a minute and say “Told ya so!”?
Gloating is an unattractive behaviour, like Schadenfreude.
But irresistible!
😉
Certainly CO2 absorption overlaps with water-vapour absorption, and so the CO2 greenhouse effect is stronger where there is less atmospheric water vapour.
But it does not overlap entirely, so there will be warming everywhere, and the poles (or other deserts for that matter) are not thermally isolated from other parts of the earth.
I imagine that ocean currents will move a lot of heat around in the 25-50 year time period that it takes for the climate to have completed 60% of its response to an increase in CO2.
About all the storms and hurricanes:
Cooling preferentially chills the poles, while the tropics remain almost constant. Thus the contrast is heightened, which boosts the strength and violence of the migrations of heat to the poles.
The LIA, e.g., was notorious for huge killer storms. When the ice caps melt, we can expect nice, placid weather everywhere.