Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
I found an interesting article on weather-related deaths.
Deaths Attributed to Heat, Cold, and Other Weather Events in the United States, 2006–2010
Abstract
Objectives—This report examines heat-related mortality, cold-related mortality, and other weather-related mortality during 2006–2010 among subgroups of U.S. residents.
Methods—Weather-related death rates for demographic and area-based subgroups were computed using death certificate information. Adjusted odds ratios for weather-related deaths among subgroups were estimated using logistic regression.
Here’s their money graph. It shows the number of deaths by the age of the person dying.
A couple of notes. First, at all ages the deaths from cold are more common than deaths from heat. Second, almost no infants die from excess heat, but some die from excess cold.
SO … if the globe gets slightly warmer, that appears to be a net benefit, as there will be fewer lives lost. This is particularly true since the feared warming is projected to be mostly in the winter, in the night-time, in the extra-tropics.
I would think warmer winter nights would be very popular in say Vladivostok or Anchorage. I wonder if that benefit is included in the calculation of the so-called “social cost of carbon”?
w.
PS—When you comment, please QUOTE THE EXACT WORDS YOU ARE DISCUSSING, so we can all be clear on your subject.
Agree.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/02/18/new-1918-style-flu-pandemic-fear/comment-page-1/#comment-2431116
COLD WEATHER KILLS MANY MORE PEOPLE THAN HOT WEATHER. This trend is true in cold and also in warmer climates.
Excess Winter Mortality is the number of people who die in the four Winter months, as compared to the 4-month average for the non-Winter months.
Excess Winter Mortality globally is about 2 million people per year, including about 100,000 per year in the USA and up to 50,000 per year in the United Kingdom. Excess Winter Mortality rates are high even in warm countries like Australia.
Paradoxically, rates of Excess Winter Mortality are sometimes greater in warmer climates than in cold ones, probably because people in cold climates adapt better to cold weather.
Sensible governments encourage practices that reduce Winter Mortality, such as cheap energy, central heating, good home insulation, and free flu shots.
When governments foolishly adopt costly green energy programs. they drive up Winter Mortality – real people die in increasing numbers due to doctrinaire government incompetence..
A common-sense approach for governments would be to encourage cheap energy policies, not to drive up energy costs and winter mortality rates. Governments that drive up energy costs to “fight (fictional) global warming” are following imbecilic polices that preferentially kill off the elderly and the poor.
How is this related to influenza? The flu is a major contributor to Winter Mortality. Greater and lesser flu’s are a chronic seasonal threat to all societies. Governments that adopt imbecilic policies that drive up energy costs and increase deaths from influenza are incompetent governments that should be defeated.
That includes most federal governments in Western Europe, Canada and the Provinces of Ontario and Alberta, Australia and some of its States, etc.. Governments in the United Kingdom and the United States recently were changed and adopted sensible energy polices, after years of delusional green energy nonsense.
Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple.
When imbecilic politicians fool with energy systems, innocent people suffer and die.
Regards, Allan
Reference
Cold Weather Kills 20 Times as Many People as Hot Weather September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
How come no one lives at either Pole, but humans do live at the Equator?
Twinkies won’t grow at the poles.
Tough to build an igloo at the north pole.
Eaten by polar bears.
Crunchy on the outside with a chewy center
Frozen Twinkies aren’t as tasty as warm Twinkies.
Who says you need to freeze food to keep it from spoiling?
https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahjewell/this-20-year-old-burger-from-mcdonalds-looks-brand-new?utm_term=.etG694MxN#.mnDWVzolY
Deep fried twinkies. Yum.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flu_season#Cause
very tenuous relationship between flu and temperature…
“The exact mechanism behind the seasonal nature of influenza outbreaks is unclear. Some proposed explanations are:
People are indoors more often during the winter, they are in close contact more often, and this promotes transmission from person to person.
A seasonal decline in the amount of ultraviolet radiation may reduce the likelihood of the virus being damaged or killed by direct radiation damage or indirect effects (i. e. ozone concentration) increasing the probability of infection.
Cold temperatures lead to drier air, which may dehydrate mucous membranes, preventing the body from effectively defending against respiratory virus infections.[6][7][8]
Viruses are preserved in colder temperatures due to slower decomposition, so they linger longer on exposed surfaces (doorknobs, countertops, etc.).
In nations where children do not go to school in the summer, there is a more pronounced beginning to flu season, coinciding with the start of public school. It is thought that the day care environment is perfect for the spread of illness.
Vitamin D production from Ultraviolet-B in the skin changes with the seasons and affects the immune system.[9][10][11]”
on the other hand:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitamin_D#Immune_system
Infectious diseases[edit]
“In general, vitamin D functions to activate the innate and dampen the adaptive immune systems.[94] Deficiency has been linked to increased risk of viral infections, including HIV and influenza.[95][96][97] Low levels of vitamin D appear to be a risk factor for tuberculosis,[98] and historically it was used as a treatment.[99]
Supplementation slightly decreases the risk of respiratory tract infections.[100][101] Evidence is lacking on whether it does so in children under five years of age.[102] No clinical trials have been done to assess its effect on preventing other infections, such as malaria.”
I’ve gone to Dominican Republic with the early stages of the flu and recovered in a day or two. It’s worse in the cold.
Colder temperatures per se don’t mean that more people will get colds and flu.
North Dakota is waaay colder than California and yet seems to have lower flu rates.
There are all kinds of observations and theories about colds and flu. There is always “on the other hand”.
Even with regard to excess winter mortality, there is plenty of confounding evidence. link
There is this study which shows that cold kills twenty times as many people as heat.
Self reported illnesses? Differences between snowflake country and Marlboro land?
It is amazing how Nevada’s Clark county (Las Vegas) skews data for the entire state. Much like New York City and New York State.
An excellent demonstration that self centered people who prefer blaming others and coddling by nanny state succor entities, can not be trusted to self diagnose any condition.
It has always amazed me, that whiners claim every sniffle and sneeze is an influenza illness; while the workaholics show up at work even when they are dragging their sick butts, never admit having the flu.
Nor can whiners or workaholics be trusted to accurately report a Doctor’s diagnosis.
As a dairy farmer once stated to me; the cows are hungry and need milking whether or not, I feel lousy. Try telling the cows you are sick.
@ATheoK
A crusty old front-line supervisor I used to work with would tell the crew, “You can be sick here at work just as easily as you can at home.” He was definitely from a different era.
Vitamin D is the key. Adequate Vit D prevents both colds and flu. It is thought by some that Vit D blocks the receptors that allow flu and rhinoviruses to enter the body. I am a pharmacist who gets exposed to the flu and cold hundreds of times every year. I have been taking 5000 units of Vit D daily for several years. No flu shot. In these years, I have had no flu and only one cold that lasted only two days. Nearly every patient who follows my recommendation on Vit D has similar results (including my kids). The kids have missed zero school days due to illness in the past 3 years.
commie Bob, population density could be a confounding factor in NY and CA re incidence of the flu. Much of Nevada is high country above 2000m and I’ve seen frosts in May. Maybe Vegas attracts much of their flu from outsiders, too.
The first thing that came into my mind when I looked at Willis’ graph was: the difference between warm and cold deaths seems surprisingly small.
According to D’Aleo’s and MacRae’s data, the difference is much greater.
Just one more reason why the mild global warming many of us have lived through has been of enormous benefit to humanity.
Chris
“The first thing that came into my mind when I looked at Willis’ graph was: the difference between warm and cold deaths seems surprisingly small.”
I’m thinking that that may be in part an attribution problem. My GUESS is that most deaths from temperature extremes probably aren’t all that clear cut and the death certificate may not mention cold or heat. For every lethal case of heat prostration or frozen corpse there are probably a bunch of fatalities with less clear cut symptoms. Even where temperature is clearly a factor as when an ice fisherman falls through the ice and can’t be rescued, is it death from cold or death from misadventure?
When the real agenda of the Alarmist climate changers is global de-population of the human species, one can understand better the motives of behind the Paul Ehrlich’s and John Holdren’s on the econutter Left. The road to their utopia of a depopulated Earth would take many dystopian side roads into wars, conquest, famine, and much death. In short, Climate Change policies of ending dossil fuel use is the Liberal Road to the Apocalypse.
And before Griff gets in :https://www.castanet.net/news/Canada/193607/Stuck-ferry-freed.
PSA – This is the last day to enter the Nenana Ice Classic http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/Nenana%20Ice%20Classic%20Brochure%20%2717.pdf
Seasonal death rates must take into account non-weather events. Post holiday mortality and a spike in suicides around the holidays and spring winter months must be controlled. By comparing death rates in the Southern Hemisphere where Christmas occurs in the summer, this effect could be investigated.
Very good article Willis, short and to the point.
Just to muddy the water, I recall reading (probably Bjorn Lomborg) that people die more in the cold season even in hot countries. That is, the effect is relative cold, not absolute cold. One can reasonably guess that the effect of a 1K rise in ‘global temperature’ will be the square root of naff-all, in the end.
I also subscribe to the relative cold hypothesis. I was born and brought up in England where 20C was/is considered a heatwave. I have lived in Hong Kong, just technically in the tropics) for the last 28 years and to me, now, 20C is approaching thermal underwear temperature. The HK Observatory (incidentally virulent warmists to a PhD) issue cold weather warnings when the temperature is expected to fall below 12C.
I went to Nogales, Arizona around 1995 and crossed over to Nogales, Mexico. Reading the local paper there I found that over 30 people had recently died as a result of a cold snap. Temperatures had dipped to around the freezing mark but many could not afford warm clothes and lived in drafty and uninsulated homes. Many of these unfortunates actually died of pneumonia but it was ascribed to the cold. People don’t have to freeze to death. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable to respiratory illnesses. The degree of preparedness explains much of the relative aspect of the statistics I believe.
I lived in Singapore for a few years in the Nineties.
There, a cold weather warning was issued if temperatures were expected to go below 25C.
And there would be some folk up and down Orchard Boulevard (the swankiest bit of Town) in fur coats at 25C; mind you, the coats would mostly be open to display Balenciaga (I guess, right!) gowns.
Absolutely the relative cold.
Further, Willis writes: –
“I would think warmer winter nights would be very popular in say Vladivostok or Anchorage.”
I fully concur.
I am, though, not convinced 1K will make a great difference in either city in January – say.
Even in London, 1K warmer will be welcome in the winter. [Accidental alliteration, absolutely!]
Auto
1K of warming means slightly smaller heating bills.
For a death to be considered as caused by cold or heat than that cold or heat would have to be pronounced, and not a ‘slight’ change, so in fact a warming of perhaps 10 C is still net beneficial.
Don’t you think?
i notice that the ‘winter curve’ is very similar to the ‘summer curve’, too.
without the labels, there’s no big, obvious distinction
it just looks like people about to die in any year tend to do a little more of it when summer is over.
what would be interesting to resolve it better would be charting summer/winter deaths by latitude.
if the most significant factor is uv vit D, that should show up independent of actual temperatures.
Right or wrong, I see Willis formulating and idea, doing research, coming to conclusions, and writing up his thoughts and findings. You should try it. you might find it rewarding.
Willis,
A similar study in Europe shows a difference of a factor 10 between cold related deaths and heat related deaths. Moreover, heat related deaths during a heat wave are about compensated by less deaths in the months after the heat wave, thus probably were from people which would have died anyway a few weeks or months later (sorry, lost the link for that additional information). Not so after a cold wave, where death rates after the cold wave resumed normal. See further:
http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/321/7262/670 for Europe
and
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/155/1/80 for 11 cities in the US
Yes, lets make the planet warmer, great idea. More heat means stronger cyclones, tornadoes and more rain due to an increase in evaporation from our oceans. Its simple physics.
You can see that in the increase in land fall hurricanes in the US.
+1 Willis
+1 “Me” (but I wish you’d change your handle, it makes references to you confusing)
-1 “steve d”
The historical average since 1850 was about two major hurricanes hitting the USA every three years. Yet it has now been over eleven years without even one. It’s by far the longest such stretch in recorded history. (But I promise that when we eventually get one it will be blamed on your SUV.)
The predicted increase in the frequency and/or intensity of “extreme weather” events, like hurricanes and tornadoes, due to global warming, is purely hypothetical. It certainly isn’t “simple physics,” and there’s no sign of it actually happening.
In fact, worldwide storminess and extreme weather events actually seem to be declining slightly, rather than increasing, as greenhouse gas levels go up. Here are some graphs:
http://policlimate.com/tropical/frequency_12months.png
http://policlimate.com/tropical/global_running_ace.png
http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/images/tornado/clim/EF3-EF5.png
I don’t know why tornadoes are declining, but a possible explanation for the decline in tropical cyclones can be found in the most improbable of places: James Hansen’s 2009 book. He claimed on p.250 that global warming would warm higher latitude oceans LESS than lower latitudes, and THAT would cause stronger storms. Page 250 is not part of the free preview on Amazon, but here’s Hansen on Letterman, plugging his book and making the same claim:
He said that the “increasing temperature gradient [between high and low latitudes] is going to drive stronger storms” as lower latitudes warm faster.
I think pretty much everyone now agrees that’s dead wrong. As Willis wrote, “the feared warming is projected to be mostly in the winter, in the night-time, in the extra-tropics.”
Thanks to powerful negative (stabilizing) feedbacks, “global” warming actually has only a small effect on the tropics. Global warming mostly warms higher latitudes, where the air is drier, so less of CO2’s longwave IR absorption is masked by water vapor. This difference is called “polar amplification.”
Since global warming is now expected to warm higher latitudes MORE than lower latitudes, it should cause a DECREASING temperature gradient between high and low latitudes — just the opposite of what Hansen predicted.
Of course Hansen is still predicting worsening storms from global warming, but he’s had to find other excuses. I have yet to hear either Hansen or any other climate alarmist speculate that a DECREASING temperature gradient might make storms WEAKER. It’s always Worse Than We Thought.™
Anthropogenic CO2 has not increased storms or sea-level. The ONE thing which is definitely increasing significantly due to anthropogenic CO2 emissions is agricultural productivity. 15-20% of current agricultural production is a direct benefit of mankind’s CO2 emissions. That’s why _Scientific American_ called anthropogenic CO2 (from blast furnace exhaust) “the precious air fertilizer,” nearly a century ago. Here’s the article:
http://tinyurl.com/1920sciamCO2
If CO2 were still at 0.03% instead of the current 0.04% of the atmosphere, we’d need 18-25% more land under cultivation, just to maintain current agricultural output. If ALL the world’s rain forests were put under cultivation, that would almost, but not quite, make up the deficit.
BTW, skip to 7:25 in the video to hear Hansen say it.
@Dave Burton Hansen’s words versus reality per Willis 6 years ago –
?zoom=2
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/04/11/satellite-era-sea-surface-temperature-versus-ipcc-hindcastprojections-part-1/
Hansen – 0
Willis – 1
Is this sarcasm? Or just wrong?
Buck up Steve. Forget the lefty talking points for a higher level readership at WUWT and look up the data. Educate yourself, even by reading the IPCC report on extreme weather. Shame letting others knowingly substitute falsehood bites for your own thinking process.
Actually, it’s not simple physics. The ability to do work — which is what drives storms — requires temperature and pressure gradients, not just heat itself.
Evaporation is caused by the total inflow of energy. Since that isn’t increasing, evaporation can’t increase.
An increase in evaporation absent an increase in total energy inflow just cools the temperature back down.
Clouds over the sea reduce that total energy before evaporation applies, so you are wrong.
Geoff
Without evaporation, there are no clouds, so you are wrong.
Steve d,
All of your worries are due to a misunderstanding of the physics of extreme weather phenomena. Storms are heat engines. This means that the amount of work done by a storm is directly proportional to the difference in temperature. Since the effects of global warming are mostly noted as the cold parts of the world being a little less cold while the equator is no hotter than the past, that temperature differential has declined somewhat meaning the heat engine that is a storm has less energy with which to do work. Less energy = less storm intensity = less extreme storms. As weather is a chaotic system, that does not preclude local differentials “piling up” once in a great while to create one very big storm – followed by a whole lot of nothing.
The fact of some warming is not in dispute, only the cause of said warming and the perversion of measured temperature records to make them comport with CO2 theory are the sources of controversy.
A hurricane is a heat engine between the water and space.
MarkW,
Only partially. The initial cyclone is caused by a disturbance that is induced by the poleward energy migration. It is sustained and grows due to warm water in the tropics – which has not measurably increased in temperature. Global warming as measured, happens at the high latitudes where surface water goes up by a few degrees while tropical water stays in the same general range as always.
Of course the thing is, this argument is based on the Earth temperature actually increasing, which rather blows the anti-human warmists argument about us denying warmth. The whole 97% thing is a bait and switch – scientists agree it is warming, and scientists agree in the laboratory CO2 absorbs photons in a precise band, therefore they accept that it is CO2 induced. The “therefore” in that sentence is a non-sequitur.
Higher temperature = higher potential thermal energy but .. higher temperature ≠ more heat.
Heat is only realized by the FLOW of the thermal energy.
Electricity makes a good analogy. Which node condition will cause more amperes to flow thru a 1 ohm resistor? A) node1=1000V, node2=999V B) node1= 2V, node2=0V
I think an argument can be made about enthalpy, but without including the specific heat figures for the air mass in question, your argument is right.
You forgot the /sarc tag.
steve , does the d stand for doh ? https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/04/06/hey-algore-explain-this-bottom-drops-out-of-us-hurricanes-in-past-decade/
So many factors… my story.
30 years ago, I had a (5 yrs) younger brother. He was running the family farm in Cumbria while I gallivanted in sunny Essex doing electronic research for the Marconi part of GEC.
Seemingly the summers of 1985, ’86 and ’87 were a bit wetter, shorter and colder than normal, never very great in Cumbria anyway.
Single handedly keeping a herd of dairy cows is not easy and considerably less so in an ocean of mud.
Add in the stress of an ever increasing bureaucracy and rules changes, October ’17 will be the 30th anniversary of his (self inflicted) death.
Where might that fatality come in the record of weather related deaths?
He was not alone. UK farmers are right up there in the top 3 high-risk vocations, along with doctors and vets.
Sorry to hear that. Newark, England? Miss that place. For farmers a lot of the problem is isolation, some people don’t do well without social interaction, whereas I would happily not see another soul from one week to the next. In Ireland there has been a campaign to raise the rural drink driving limit so that people can get to the pub and socialise without losing their licence, I guess it might raise deaths but would increase the quality of life for many.
So on a similar theme, how much of the world’s population will actually experience any effects of the mooted 2C increase in temp over the next 83 years?
I read that tropical zones will not really notice the projected warming – most of it will be recorded in arctic and temperate zones.
So is concern about agw really only about discomfort for developed societies in non-tropical zones?
+2°C (+3.6°F) should shift U.S. growing zones by an average of at most perhaps 100 miles.
http://sealevel.info/zones-2015_258pct.png
How can that be a catastrophe? Especially if it gets us benefits like these?
http://sealevel.info/CO2-pineGrowth100120_white_bg_50pct.png
http://sealevel.info/ScientificAmerican_1920-11-27_CO2_fertilization1.png
Dave,
Those 2 pics (and similar others) should be widely disseminated. A picture is worth more than a thousand words!
I don’t think concern about AGW has ever been about discomfort…
Warm weather brings with it a whole host of benefits, not simply a reduction in the death rate/extension in life expectancy.
People living in warm climates tend to be healthier for significantly longer. I recall reading a report that life expectancy for women in Spain was approximately 2.5 years longer than for women in the UK, but the average age where a woman in Spain sustains a serious disabilitive illness was almost 6 years older than in the UK. The position with respect to men was similar but not quite as stark. Ditto with other warm climates.
All around the Med, people live longer and more healthier compared to their Northern European neighbours and this is predominantly a factor of the better weather. People live outdoors a lot more and get a lot more fresh air, walk a lot more, promenading along the sea front or just window shopping at midnight is a pass-time, the diet is much more fruit and vegetable based because of this local produce grows well in the warmer climate, because of the sunshine they get a lot more vitamin D, the azure blue sky is an antidote for depression etc.
Bring on a warmer world, it will be a better world. It is no coincidence that all the large land based land feeding animals are found in warm climates. It is no coincidence that most bio diversity is found in warm tropical rain forests. It is no coincidence that least bio diversity and smaller animals are found in high cold arctic/antarctic regions. Bring on more CO2 and that will green the world for the benefit of all, and if by some happy coincidence more CO2 leads to warming then that is a win win scenario.
“Warm weather brings with it a whole host of benefits, not simply a reduction in the death rate/extension in life expectancy.”
I dunno Richard. It’s true that California and Hawaii have higher longevity than the rest of the US. But that may be due to their large asian populations. The rest of the states with high longevity have cold to really cold winters — Minnesota(!), New York, New Jersey, New England, Utah, Colorado. The warm weather states in the South and Southwest have substantially lower longevity rates although social factors (poverty) may be a factor. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_life_expectancy
One of my children has a memory (under 3 yrs old) of a hot dusty trip by Landrover in Nigeria in the mid 1960s. I was with the Geological Survey of Nigeria and had to make a trip from Jos in the middle of the country to Yola (520km- like three times that far in N America today) near the border with Cameroon. The temperature was near 40C as we were acclimatized for a couple of years and it was darn hot for me. The baby was only in a cloth diaper and even naked from time to time and we were careful to keep the kid hydrated. All windows were open as A/C was unheard of. All of us were red, not from the sun, but from red laterite dust. We crossed the mighty Benue R. on a one vehicle non-motorized ferry run by river current. Two days later, we made the return journey.
Recently when I asked him if he remembered anything about Africa, he said he remembered being on a long car journey and crossing a big river on a raft. He said it was one of his best memories. It was so nice and sunny and warm.
It probably is included. Since the net benefit of warmer weather will be greatest among senior citizens, they will live longer, drive up the cost of Medicare and then move to Florida and die in Gorebal Warming-induced flood-storm-lighting swarms… /Sarcasm.
Sorry to go slightly O/T, but I thought that this is rather interesting as it is a good example of how money is wasted due to the fear of the social cost of carbon and efforts to stop the globe from warming.
See generally: http://dailycaller.com/2017/04/03/idahos-4-3-million-solar-road-generates-enough-power-to-run-one-microwave/
My 50 year old fishing buddy is on all sorts of medication and I think it is the high blood pressure ones that make him extremely sensitive to cold. The standing fishing rules are (1) Air temperature under 40F … no fishing (2) If the water is 55F or less and he falls in don’t bother pulling him back in the boat because he died the instant he hit the water, just lash a rope to a leg and drag back to the dock. He isn’t joking either. I’m the same age and on no medications and temperature isn’t a factor with me. I wonder if modern medications drive older people to migrate south when they retire.
There are very few pensioners that leave Miami to winter in Edmonton, the reverse is commonplace.
Ok, I know the subject is serious. However, I can guarantee you that everyone reading this blog today will be dead by 2150. Regardless of cold or hot! And the graph proves it!
The subject appears to have as its basis, that eternal life is possible if we just get the temperature right. Unfortunately (and to the consternation of some), Biology says otherwise.
Nature is a hard taskmaster. It does not care about feelings and political correctness.
“I would think warmer winter nights would be very popular in say Vladivostok or Anchorage.”
But 40 degree C plus for longer periods of time in the Middle East and tropics isn’t so good.
Nor are more well over 30 degree C plus heatwaves in europe
Plus since climate change does not warm things an even few degrees across all countries and all seasons, there’ll still be extreme cold events in Anchorage.
As always, Griff works overtime to miss the point.
It’s not the absolute heat that matters, it’s the relative heat differences.
PS, in areas with lots of water in the air, CO2 has no impact on temperatures.
I looked at the historical temperature profile for Kuwait City. It showed about 1F warmer for 1990 to 2012. 2012 to present is pretty well indistinguishable from the period before 1990 except that back at the start of the 20th century it was even drier. So Griff, you want it colder and drier in the middle east. Is that correct?
Griff has probably never left his air conditioned office. The reality of the outside world isn’t relevant to him/her/it.
Office? It’s highly unlikely that Griff has ever left his mom’s basement.
AGW will explode the population time bomb.
In the current Federal budget proposal, the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program would go down from $3.3 billion to $3.0 billion. The states expected to be hurt most by this reduction are all northern states. Go look it up. Meanwhile the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program is proposed to be zeroed out.
Every policy and idiotic idea we read about makes perfect sense, if you remember that the goal is global depopulation. You cannot reduce the population by “saving lives”, somebody has to die.
One of the interesting phenomena has been the lack of killing freezes on the northern Gulf of Mexico coast. These are severe cold fronts that can last several days lowering temperatures to as low as 10 (F), high barometric pressure, exceptionally low sea levels, fish and other temperate and subtropical animals die with subsequent scarcity evident, many sublethal affects (alligators getting pneumonia) and with ice on the bays, especially in low salinities. Galveston Bay was said to be frozen in 1899. The last severe one was in 1989, with records back to the 1880s or so showing one or two a decade, Texas the most affected when the cold air trends to the west, but some have killed fish, especially tropical types, even in the Bahamas, Key West and other more southern locations. Queen palms, which a botanist told me cannot stand below 25F, have proliferated although a freeze a few years ago in Louisiana took out some.
I have not counted, but it appears that the heat scare has moved most physiological/ecological research on marine organism temperature from looking both at heat and cold to almost all heat. There are many factors related to cold death in marine animals of interest. Can we expect the climate to shift back, or are higher minimums a thing of the past? We need to know for the protection of pipes and maybe for the next fad from the granting agencies.
The province of Ontario Canada could be used as a study for eat or heat. Since its policy of shutting down coal power instituted by Maurice Strong and relying on wind, solar its electrical costs have skyrocked in the last ten years. Being very cold in winter it would be a perfect study for cold kills. What is the cold related deaths in the last ten years.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/why-does-electricity-cost-so-much-in-ontario/article33453270/
You left out the part where local content rules drove out the low cost leaders of global solar to reward local companies also at ratepayers expense. I wonder who all benefited from that little move?
As a fellow Canadian I say repeatedly, the Liberal government of Ontario is the most corrupt and incompetent provincial government I have ever seen. The voters of Ontario put her back in office at the last electiob even though a kindergarten child could see that she was utterly amoral, crooked and anti-democratic
Not to fear….there are plenty of insects to eat
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-04/fos–nfl040517.php
I wonder what role Income, Employment rates, Drug use, & etc. play in the death rate stats. Proximate cause is a whole lot easier to quantify than contributing factors.
Willis, you may be extrapolating too far, or perhaps not far enough. Warmer temperatures -> fewer clothes -> more bare skin -> more sex -> more babies -> and ultimately more deaths (usually in old age).
For anyone who’s ever slept outside, this is a no-brainer. If it’s too cold out, it’ll kill you.
History tells us that warmer is better. So does common sense. But neither of those can withstand a Warmists’ Belief system. So we are lucky to be living in warmer times, which may not last. In the end, though, poverty is the biggest killer. And cheap, readily-available energy is crucial for raising living standards, which is why Warmunists hate it so much. Because essentially, they hate humanity.
Willis, you need to get with the program. Yes more people die from cold rather than heat, but per John Kerry a warming globe produces more extreme cold. In other words cooling is the surest sign of warming. Lol.
The worlds biggest scare con job and it’s taken this long
to prove warming is positive and cooling isn’t .
Any global warming we get can only help plants and animals .
Rich folks in Malibu get off your ass and move your beach furniture
an inch every 10 or 20 years . Poor little cream puffs .
Since the last ice age, the Earth has not yet warmed to optimal temperatures. According to a recent global study published in The Lancet, 17 times as many people die of cold in winter that of heat in the summer ( Gasparrini, et al. “Mortality Risk Attributable to High and Low Ambient Temperature: A Multicountry Observational Study.” The Lancet, May 2015. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0 ). Excess winter mortality kills 95,000 a year on average in the USA alone, and that is in a wealthy nation with a modern electric grid and climate-controlled homes. Another 2 degrees of warming, especially if it lifts the lows rather than the highs, would be a boon to humans and nature.
In northern Canada one day the news was minus 60 deg C including chill factor. (It was then I realised the crossoverver where -40 C = – 40 F). Two weeks later at Mount Isa in Queensland, I felt +40 C, so in a fortnight the change was 100 C. What might be called scoring a century. Not many people have done this.
Definitely, warm is better than cold. People worked outdoors at Mt Isa, while outdoors up north of Uranium City were lethal.
It is one thing to speculate about temperature, another to feel it.
Geoff