From the Harvard School of Public Health , news that an extra 1°C temperature swing in summer will kill the elderly.
Summer temperature variability may increase mortality risk for elderly with chronic disease
Large day-to-day variations in temperature could result in thousands more deaths per year
Boston, MA – New research from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) suggests that seemingly small changes in summer temperature swings—as little as 1°C more than usual—may shorten life expectancy for elderly people with chronic medical conditions, and could result in thousands of additional deaths each year. While previous studies have focused on the short-term effects of heat waves, this is the first study to examine the longer-term effects of climate change on life expectancy.
The study will be published online April 9, 2012 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The effect of temperature patterns on long-term mortality has not been clear to this point. We found that, independent of heat waves, high day to day variability in summer temperatures shortens life expectancy,” said Antonella Zanobetti, senior research scientist in the Department of Environmental Health at HSPH and lead author of the study. “This variability can be harmful for susceptible people.”
In recent years, scientists have predicted that climate change will not only increase overall world temperatures but will also increase summer temperature variability, particularly in mid-latitude regions such as the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S. and sections of countries such as France, Spain, and Italy. These more volatile temperature swings could pose a major public health problem, the authors note.
Previous studies have confirmed the association between heat waves and higher death rates. But this new research goes a step further. Although heat waves can kill in the short term, the authors say, even minor temperature variations caused by climate change may also increase death rates over time among elderly people with diabetes, heart failure, chronic lung disease, or those who have survived a previous heart attack.
The researchers used Medicare data from 1985 to 2006 to follow the long-term health of 3.7 million chronically ill people over age 65 living in 135 U.S. cities. They evaluated whether mortality among these people was related to variability in summer temperature, allowing for other things that might influence the comparison, such as individual risk factors, winter temperature variance, and ozone levels. They compiled results for individual cities, then pooled the results.
They found that, within each city, years when the summer temperature swings were larger had higher death rates than years with smaller swings. Each 1°C increase in summer temperature variability increased the death rate for elderly with chronic conditions between 2.8% and 4.0%, depending on the condition. Mortality risk increased 4.0% for those with diabetes; 3.8% for those who’d had a previous heart attack; 3.7% for those with chronic lung disease; and 2.8% for those with heart failure. Based on these increases in mortality risk, the researchers estimate that greater summer temperature variability in the U.S. could result in more than 10,000 additional deaths per year.
In addition, the researchers found the mortality risk was 1% to 2% greater for those living in poverty and for African Americans. The risk was 1% to 2% lower for people living in cities with more green space.
Mortality risk was higher in hotter regions, the researchers found. Noting that physiological studies suggest that the elderly and those with chronic conditions have a harder time than others adjusting to extreme heat, they say it’s likely these groups may also be less resilient than others to bigger-than-usual temperature swings.
“People adapt to the usual temperature in their city. That is why we don’t expect higher mortality rates in Miami than in Minneapolis, despite the higher temperatures,” said Joel Schwartz, professor of environmental epidemiology at HSPH and senior author of the paper. “But people do not adapt as well to increased fluctuations around the usual temperature. That finding, combined with the increasing age of the population, the increasing prevalence of chronic conditions such as diabetes, and possible increases in temperature fluctuations due to climate change, means that this public health problem is likely to grow in importance in the future.”
Support for the study was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.
“Summer Temperature Variability and Long-term Survival Among Elderly People with Chronic Disease,” Antonella Zanobetti, Marie S. O’Neill, Carina J. Gronlund, and Joel D. Schwartz, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, online April 9, 2012.
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Do the people writing this garbage seriously believe what they are writing about, or are they so cynical and underhanded they know it’s utter BS and do it anyways for the money. People like Hansen are completely deluded but I think most go along with the Climate Change Cult for career advancement. They know they aren’t doing real science but what the hell, it’s a cushy job, the economy is tough, they’d hate to have to go out and find a real job.
Old people should be pleased to learn that the money they could have used to heat or cool their homes was taken as taxes to be used for studies that show they didn’t have enough money to heat or cool their homes, thereby increasing their mortality rates.
Little did they realize that the temperatures in the Harvard School of Public Health building were kept at a very comfortable level for the researchers.
Two big problems here.
First, with global warming (which is not now happening, but for the sake of discussion) the summers do not getting warmer as much as the winters become less cold, thus raising the average.
Yes, there are heat waves, but they can happen during cold or warm climate periods. In the late 1970s, when it was cold, Maine had a summer with no rain and a heat wave of about 120 deg F on the mainland which killed 12 million chickens. They had to call out the National Guard to help truck and dispose of 36 kilotons of dead birds.
Second, heat waves in Texas do not kill anybody, as they know how to deal with it. However, in Paris, people die, as heat waves are not the norm. The interesting observation from the deaths in the last Parisian heat wave was that, if the heat were killing people, then the death rate would go back to normal after the heat wave.
Instead, the death rate took a dip after the heat wave, indicating that the heat wave simply caused those about to die to die a week or two earlier than otherwise. These people already had one foot in the grave. It is simply not economical to set up Paris to handle the rare heat wave, just as many older houses in New England do not have air conditioning as there are really only a couple of weeks a year that are really, depressingly hot and humid—it’s not worth the cost.
Neither my father who published 3 papers in NATURE re atmospheric physics nor myself who has published 30 per reviewed papers in biology would dare associate ourselves or publish anything with the National Academy of Sciences as it stands currently. I don’t think they have the faintest clue what damage the climate scientist are doing to their associations and journals. They will find out the hard way. I think if you did a survey on membership dues etc you will find sharp drops after junk like this gets published same applies to current Nature magazine. .
Actually this research is completely wrong because it has been peer reviewed. My research shows that people are dying from laughter in their millions everytime a paper like this is published.
Have the social sciences morhed into climate science?
I should know better, never correct someone’s typo cos to be sure you will make one 🙂
Morhed should read morphed.
I’m sure the study is correct. It’s sort of like noting that some people die under anesthetics without noting how many more people live as a result. We need a warmer climate if the argument is about the number deaths due to temperature. I’m sure I’m not saying anything anyone (including the researchers) doesn’t already know…
The proliferation of ‘could’, ‘might’ and ‘may’ papers should dissipate after Rio+20.
They are starting to remind me of Burma-Shave signs on the road to Rio.
Excellent news. As is well known, global warming consists mainly of raised averages due to raised minima. Thus, if this study is completely correct, then we can expect reduced mortality due to global warming, directly as a result of the reduced temperature variations, as a result of reduced minima.
Odd that the authors didn’t spot this.
How many more older people will survive winter as a result of an overall 1C increase in temperature? Is the moon made of green cheese? I don’t know the answer to these questions but I think the Harvard School of Public Health should be paid large sums of taxpayers’ cash to find out.
The claim is to stupid to deserve a sane response.
I never would have guessed that the ever increasing number of elderly migrating to warmer climates like Florida and Panama to escape winter in reality are pushed by suicidal motives.
One thing must be clear. Don’t send your kids to the Harvard School of Public Health.
AW Solar 24: Probably aware but SSN is again 25! after the max average of 55 for March are we not looking at a complete fizzle (ie Max is over)
Then why artificially increase the cost of electricity with subsidized solar panels and wind turbines if the elderly are so fragile?
You can bet if it goes from 36c to 37c all us old folk are dead. Here in Florida, they’ll be sweeping us off the streets with push brooms.
Interesting paper. Now all the authors need to do is to prove that CO2, or climate change or in fact any single factor causes short-term temperature variability. Until they can do that it’s worthless.
Backers of Obamacare say that this isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.
How likely is it that people suffering chronic medical conditions in urban areas are likely to step out of their air-conditioned homes during periods of hot summer weather?
Further, it is known that people exposed to air conditioning are more susceptible to colds, flu, etc; and it is these minor ailments that may tip the balance for those suffering from chronic medical conditions.
So there my be an indirect link between mortality and summer extremes but that may be due solely to the growth upwards in the number of air conditioned homes, offices and public buidlings at large, and not climate change.
1. This paper seems to assume that “climate change” will result in more day-to-day variability in temperature, and I don’t think that’s been proven. Just “predicted”. Like Hansen’s prediction that by 2010, most of New York City would be flooded. In fact, it seems to me – given the fact that much of CO2’s absorption spectrum overlaps with water vapor’s, the fact that atmosperic water vapor content is highly variable temporally and geographically, and the fact that CO2 is well distributed throughout the atmosphere – that higher levels of atmospheric CO2 would be a stabilizing force on local temperatures.
2. There’s no mention of all the elderly lives that would be SAVED from cold-weather-related causes by the warmer winters. Far more people die from cold weather than from warm weather (or from high variablity in temperature for that matter), and the elderly are the hardest hit.
3. It looks to me like this paper, unkown to its authors, makes a great case AGAINST mitigation. Currently, elderly people can seek refuge from high temperature variability inside their homes. Their homes have central air and heat, fueled by relatively cheap electricity from coal, and precise thermostats, that THEY control, to keep the temperature inside their homes very stable, compared to the widely-fluctuating temperatures outside. But the strategies the alarmists recommend for mitigating climate change will force (either by law, by central control, or by prohibitive cost) elderly people to keep their thermostats set high in the summer. Their homes will not longer be the safe havens from high temperature variability that they would otherwise be. And thousands more will die thanks to mitigation.
Typical public health BS. I won’t be surprised if deaths from heart and lung disease will decrease because global warming will take their place as cause of death. Reminds me of the study released a few years ago about prostate cancer in men over 65. The headline was men over 65 who did not get treated for prostate cancer were twice as likely to die from the cancer than those who did get treated. Buried in the study were the statistics – 2% of all deaths in men over 65 were attributable to prostate cancer if the men did not get treatment, 1% if they did get treatment.
Jay Davis
Oh noes, a PNAS publication again…
Why these “may” science papers are always published on journals like PNAS or Nature?
I would pay good money to get the authors of this “research” in the same room with a few of y’all and watch them try to defend their garbage.
@mfo April 10, 2012 at 5:15 am “I suppose next they will try to correlate the rise in obesity with climate change.”
Too late, buddy, the National Health Service here in the UK states quite categorically that “fatties
cause global warming!!
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/04April/Pages/Obesityaddstoclimatechange.aspx
I find it hard to believe that older people have a hard time adjusting to warmer temperature. Down here in Florida I see older people with sweaters on when it is 85.
I have to admit that this one gets me angry. I have impaired lung function. My lungs are hyperinflated to 145% of normal. In an FEV1 test I can only expel a volume of air that is 15% of normal. I am on oxygen 24/7. So this study, funded through the EPA, has the audacity to tell people such as myself that a mere 1 degree C. swing in temp. will increase our mortality. No, what will increase our mortality is when we can’t use our air conditioners because our electrical rates have ‘skyrocketed’ thanks to recent EPA dictates. Have they done a study about what will occur with mortality rates when AC is no longer affordable. Noooo. Then let’s think about the elec. operated home oxygen concentrators. I can assure these people that there is no comparison between summer & winter with lung disease. Winter is deadly, not summer.
MattN says:
April 10, 2012 at 3:33 am
1C higher will kill more elderly? Then why in the hell do they all move from the mid-west and northeast to Florida and Arizona?
++++++++++++++
They die after moving to Florida and Arizona, so clearly it is the increased temperature that killed them. Statistics don’t lie. Had they stayed in the mid-west the cold would have preserved them.