Guest Essay by Kip Hansen
The Claim:
The venerable NY Times carries this headline: “In India, Slight Rise in Temperatures Is Tied to Heat Wave Deaths”.
The study cited makes this conclusion:
“Mean temperatures across India have risen by more than 0.5°C over this period, with statistically significant increases in heat waves. Using a novel probabilistic model, we further show that the increase in summer mean temperatures in India over this period corresponds to a 146% increase in the probability of heat-related mortality events of more than 100 people.”
Rating:
Heat waves can be killers. More Heatwaves = More Deaths. Longer Heatwaves = More Deaths. Heat waves are prolonged periods of excessively hot weather, which may be accompanied by high humidity, especially in oceanic climate countries. Heat waves tend to carry off the old, infirm, and vulnerable young ….(there is more, but you have to wait for it).
The rest of the study, the story and the claims are the result of questionable statistics, which even the study authors admit (or brag) are “novel”.
The whole case can be made using nothing but the study’s figures:
The authors insist “Figure 1A shows that summer mean temperatures have increased substantially from 1960 to 2009. The time series exhibits a statistically significant (95% confidence interval) upward trend confirmed using the Mann-Kendall (MK) trend test. The accumulated intensity, count, duration, and days of Indian heat waves have also increased over the analyzed time period over most of the country and especially in the northern, southern, and western parts of India (Fig. 1, B to E).”
Temperatures increased substantially if we look at a National Average (mean) — the actual increase in the National Mean Summer Temperature trend is from 27.55 to 27.9, an increase of 0.35 °C ) or 0.63 °F. (Note: not the claimed 0.5 °C, which is a rounded up exaggeration) In the fifty (50) years of the data set, this gives an increase of 0.07°C/decade. This increase we will simply have to accept as valid, though we must point out that the National Average Summertime Surface Air Temperature may not be the best metric to use to judge what are obviously very localized heat wave events, according to the sub-panels B thru E, and may be skewed by UHI effects in India’s massively huge urban centers. India is huge and geographically diverse — from the tropical southern provinces to high Himalayan plateaus — making a “national” average temperature meaningless in this context.
The rest of the story is contained in these two excerpts from Figures 2, 3 and 4:
The primary feature of these two graphs is that they are long-term flat, with a couple of spikes and dips.
Look back up at the National Average Temperature graph — it shows a particularly low national temperature in 1971, which shows up the these two graphs as extremely low population-weighted and income weighted heat wave deaths. And we see the existence of two (possibly three) unusually high years, 1997 and 2003.
Here’s where the “novel” statistics takes place:
Panel C shows what we expect — The more heat wave days, the higher the average temperature.
Panel B likewise is as we would expect — longer heat waves are more likely to produce more deaths.
Panel A however, compares a probability density of Mean Summer temperature of 27°C and 27.5°C .
Look at the original temperature graph one more time, where do 27°C and 27.5°C appear:
The apparent novel statistics involves comparing the data of a low temperature year, like 1971, (very near 27°C) — not with the most recent period, not the most recent decade, not the high temp end of the graph — with 27.5°C which appears at the beginning of the time series, in 1960 and looks like the approximate average low limit for the data set.
I am, admittedly, confused by this selection of temperatures for the probability densities in Fig 4A — but it appears to have been chosen to “prove” the hypothesis of the effect of a 0.5°C rise in temperatures. Where could they have gotten death data for 27°C ? Not even a single year in the 50 year time series has national average temperatures that low. Neither the full published journal paper nor the Supplementary Materials contain any explanation for the choice of temperatures in the Figure 4 probability distributions, however the SM have results different (by several percentage points) from those in the published paper [see fig. S6. Results of a conditional probability density analysis of mortality given certain thresholds for summer maximum temperatures].
The two Deaths graphs above reveal the more scientifically correct findings of the study, which do come to light in the whole journal article, but are not highlighted in the Abstract, the Press Release, or the MSM. Quoting from the paper:
“In an effort to understand the underlying mechanisms of heat wave mortality, we further explored its relationship with population and income levels in India. Figure 3 shows that the relationship between population-weighted heat wave days and mortality rates is only slightly better than that between mortality and summer mean temperatures …; however, the correlation between income-weighted heat wave days and mortality rates is better….”
“These observations reinforce previous work that highlighted poverty as a significant factor in climate-induced mortality, such as heat wave deaths..”
The Bottom Line:
The nugget of truth: Heat waves can be killers. Heat waves tend to carry off the poor, especially the poor elderly, the poor infirm, the poor vulnerable young.
But, primarily, it is Poverty that kills. It kills the old, it kills the infirm, it kills the very young, it kills the weak.
Any stressor, be it heat waves, cold snaps, drought, political instability, inflation, armed conflict or price increases of basic food staples will cause spikes in deaths, especially among the poor — and the poor in India are very, very poor.
We really didn’t need another study to tell us that — and the use of “novel statistical methods” [stretching the truth] in an attempt to claim that “moderate increases in mean temperatures may cause great increases in heat-related mortality” does not contribute to the sum of human knowledge.
If we want to save lives, to decrease the threat of changing climatic conditions, we need to fight poverty — at the household level where real people live.
# # # # #
Author’s Comment Policy:
I’d be glad to answer your questions and respond to your comments.
I am not an expert in climate science — so I don’t respond to Climate Warrior salvos from either side of the great divide.
# # # # #
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“Neither the full published journal paper nor the Supplementary Materials the contain any explanation . . . ”
That boldfaced “the” looks like a typo to me.
Roger ==> Thanks, my editor was not available yesterday…there are several other typos and such which I have corrected this morning.
I live in Canada, 27.0C vs 27.5C, might have to fire up the BBQ. If it’s over 35C, now we are talking hot, might have to go for a swim. If these persons are dropping like fly’s at these temps, probably more to do with dehydration or exertion.
Duncan, you have nailed it, it’s dehydration, lack of potable water with increased population in India. In 1960 the population of India was 450 million, now it’s 1.3 billion, that might have something to do with the change in death rates over that period.
I’m sure packing more people…into smaller spaces…has nothing to do with it /snark
http://www.iipsenvis.nic.in/WriteReadData/UserFiles/image/Pop_million.jpg
A study of heat waves in Paris showed that, while there was a spike in deaths during a heat wave, there was a dip in the death rate in the weeks thereafter. The death rate did NOT go directly back to normal. This was because the heat wave took people who already had one foot in the grave and was not killing otherwise healthy people.
Cold snaps are more likely to show death rates going directly back to normal because hypothermia can kill the healthy almost as easily as the weak and sick.
Do the authors provide the data or a data source that would allow one to estimate mortality rates in India associated with cold snaps. My guess is that more people in India die because of cold snaps than because of heat waves.
highley7
I think we can safely, and robustly say that it is neither cold snaps nor heat waves that cause the bulk of temperature-related mortality. It is chronic under-heating of homes in cold climates that is the biggest killer. People of ordinary health for their age are badly affected by living in a chronically under-heated environment. Children and elderly are the most affected, as are those with weakened systems as you might expect.
This past winter there was a home heating study by the World Bank in Kyrgyzstan monitored independently by Fresh Air, Netherlands. It showed a huge drop in medical and non medical symptoms in homes which were adequately heated compared with the ‘traditional’ systems. The change was made by changing the heating appliances and allowing people to operate them using the same fuels as before, until they were either comfortable or ran out of fuel. In all cases the new appliances were much more efficient so they reached ‘comfort’ before they ran short of fuel. All the neighbours were still running on the limit of their ability to afford or provide fuel. So the ‘test homes’ were warmer, about 5 C on average. The health result was remarkable.
A single example is that children developing bronchitis in the ‘normal’ situations was 33% and in the ‘improved’ situations was 0%. That is a direct result of being warmer.
This heat wave investigation does have a grain of truth in it – and taking the heat wave alone is not valid, as suggested in the analysis. It should cover the following 6 months to see of the ‘harvesting’ by the Grim Reaper was moved ahead a few weeks or months rather than being an additional cause of death.
It’s called harvesting.
When talking about heat waves the correct metric to use is shortened life. Or premature death.
“If these persons are dropping like fly’s at these temps, probably more to do with dehydration or exertion”
Exactly…
Ramadan
They can’t eat or drink anything during daylight hours, and this year the movable holiday season occurs now during the heat wave in late spring…
Hindus also fast, and it is possible that it is a contributing element, however it is also known that the weak, sick, the elderly and exempt are not required to fast which biases the sample.
http://kids.baps.org/thingstoknow/hinduism/50.htm
It would be interesting to see if the heat wave deaths in Indian and Pakistan are different, showing whether or not fasting is a contributing stressor.
It is also relevant to consider that unlike Western peoples, not everyone in the world considers the purpose of life to be its interminable extension. A person dying of heat stroke is not more dead than someone dying from the complications of type 2 diabetes. For the heat-stressed impoverished of India, death is a welcome relief more than an unjust imposition. Because the ’cause’ is extreme poverty more than anything else, the cure should be for the iniquitous extremes of wealth and poverty, not ‘raising the price of CO2 pollution’.
If the ice melts in a warming world, the increased surface area of oceans will have a moderating effect on all heat waves. There are no heat waves in Water World.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114898/
Crispin in Waterloo
You also don’t have to fast if the weather is unbearable.
Duncan, It’s not just temperature. Humidity makes a huge difference. I once spent a couple of delightful weeks in Summer in California’s upper Salinas River Valley with daily high temps around 120F(49C). Unpleasant but not life threatening as long as you stay in the shade and keep hydrated. OTOH in the often humid Eastern US,daily high temps much above 100F (37F) really can lead to heat prostration and heat stroke — either of which can be fatal..
Eleven authors in search of a citation.
I’m confused by what this “a 146% increase in the probability of heat-related mortality events of more than 100 people” actually means.
ie non validated, home-spun, Mannian data processing. Yet again.
David (and Greg) ==> They are studying massive heat wave deaths — “heat-related mortality events of more than 100 people” –. they derived the increased probability of such events from their Figure 4 — 32% minus 13% = 19%. 19% divided by 13% = 146%.
Pardon? 32 / 13 = 2.46 = +146% growth
But that’s an odd number because it depends on population growth? Also, on the brink of zero one gets large increase percentages which have low precision.
There are profound changes during the last 50 years in India; it is clear that access to shade, access to clean water, electricity, possibility to stop working and rest are the things to improve.
We can’t fix India by using solar and wind here. We can help India by providing means as much as possible for education, work, GDP growth, affordable energy, affordable medicine, etc.
The study did not concern cold waves, and is thus not capable of telling what else climate change does.
Hugs ==> The math works either way….
Thanks Kip.
Was the paper taking population growth into account?
By the look of it, yes. I’m just concerned because it is easy to bias results my people moving from cold regions to hot regions, for example.
Ok. Yet ??. How can average T be a proxy for heat waves. In general both UHI and GHG effect produce greater night time highs. Was this the case here? Did the study show day time highs increasing?
Additionally the low average T is produced near the peak of the ” Ice age Scare” in the late 70s. Hummm!
The fact that the authors round up to .5 degree increase is very telling of their bias.
Your point regarding poverty and poor energy infrastructure being the overwhelming cause of death from heat waves is VERY cogent.
Good article.g
Hugs ==> I have not been to India but I have been in the barracónes (literally ‘barracks’ — refers to the old slave quarters) and the Haitian “bateyes” (ghettos) of the Dominican Republic where the people own almost nothing and the summer heat and humidity quietly steals away the old, infirm, ill, and newborn profoundly poor. Even if the poor manage to acquire an electric fan, the power is liable to be off, especially during heat waves (the rich neighborhoods get priority power to run their air conditioners.)
Kip
Well noted – the poor getting no power during heat waves.
The linkage to look for is the GINI coefficient and heat wave deaths by income cohort. Being poor in a rich society create additional stresses that are not present in a more equitable society. For one thing, being really poor in say, Rio, means having to live with the heat exhaust of air conditioners adding to the pre-existing urban heat island effect of roads and construction. Leafy jungles are a lot cooler than open urban roasting pits. Urbanity is only more comfortable if you are rich.
The problem with the much hyped heat wave connection is that warming trends in the instrumental record are driven mostly by rising nighttime diurnal lows and not by rising daytime diurnal highs.
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2974794
chaamjamal ==> Thank you for the link and reference. (Is this your paper or is the author’s name a coincidence? )
Good point.
You can also say India is a hot and humid country. Yet it supports easily a huge population and while heat is uncomfortable, there is a reason why India is populated but Siberia not. Modern tools may help contemporary residents of India to bear the hot and humid monsoon air. Just make sure the GDP grows and people in India start giving some value to life of the poorest.
Much of the issues are caused by not poverty, but the steep hierarchy where some people are considered worthless. That is not a white man’s fault, but we can try to mitigate it by saying the problem aloud.
“You can also say India is a hot and humid country.”
You can, but it’s a perceptive generalisation.
India is a massive country extending from, roughly, the Himalayas to the equator so there is a considerable temperature range.
Hugs and HotScot ==> India is a continent-sized nation with widely varying eco-regions:
As a citizen of a definitely cold place, I can’t admit India isn’t hot and humid. But this is not to say there were not some places in (spacetime & India) which are not humid nor warm. On the contrary. Thanks for the map, it emphasizes the variety neatly.
“India is a massive country extending from, roughly, the Himalayas to the equator so there is a considerable temperature range.”
But virtually all of it has a monsoon climate. And incidentally heat deaths in India don’t happen during the monsoon when it is hot and humid, but before it when it is very hot and dry.
Hugs:
Siberia lost a lot of people to malaria! 600,000 at least in the 1920’s, with 13m cases per year. What with the chromic under-heating and malaria, it is a wonder anyone survives. McIntyre comments on it.
https://climateaudit.org/2005/08/30/mosquitos-malaria-and-the-ipcc-consensus/
tty, actually, leading up to the monsoon is very hot AND very humid. It’s only the monsoon that cools it down.
I found that most people suffered when it fit particularly cold, which can often happen inland (like Australia).
HEAT WAVE AND STORMS.
CALCUTTA, June 1.
Scores of people have died and the towns
are strewn with the bodies of birds, cats,
dogs, and goats as the result of a heat wave
in the lower area of South India. Record
temperatures were reported yesterday at a
number of towns, the highest being 120F [48.8C]
degrees at Bezwads.
The heat was so severe in Ellore, that
cocoanuts, usually impervious to heat, cracked.
Many people died of heatstroke at Aliganj,
in the United Provinces, where 150,000 pil-
grims in sweltering heat with piercing hot
winds, crawled on all fours for two miles up
a hill to seek favours at the temple of the
Goddess Mahabir.
Several persons were killed in fierce storms
in North-eastern India, where houses were
wrecked. Trains were blown off the lines
and towns and villages were inundated by
flood water.
THIS WAS IN 1934
http://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/17051448
Thanks for that history lesson, Duncan.
“where 150,000 pil-grims in sweltering heat with piercing hot winds, crawled on all fours or two miles up a hill to seek favours at the temple of the Goddess Mahabir”
Pastaferianism looks better and better all the time.
Don K ==> I wonder if by “Pastaferianism” you mean some religious sect in Italy that believes in eating only spaghetti and noodles.
Kip, no it’s a real religion (at least as real as any other). Something to do with a flying spaghetti monster or similar, I believe.
It’s about as believable as any other…
Sorry Kip. Didn’t mean to distract or confuse you. Jer0me has it right. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_Spaghetti_Monster
Poverty or the lack of energy availability is the culprit of more human deaths globally. The mortality rates are generally higher in poorer countries from low nutritional food sources and availability as well as modern protection from the elements by cheap energy. Even in wealthy countries it is the poor that suffer the most with higher mortality rates for those reasons. When you think about it. The greatest humanitarian thing any country should be doing is to provide cheaper energy to their populations
With hundreds of nations in the Paris Agreement with their hands out to collect aid from the few wealthier nations, it’s the leaders of those poorer nations that need to assess their failures of providing energy to their people. By providing an abundance of cheaper energy those countries could reduce their poverty rates through advanced farming to increase food production, reduce the mortality rates with electricity energy replacing burning dung and wood, and many other mortality rates caused by diseases because of poor living conditions would decrease.
I am not my brothers keeper and their problems are ones they have made for themselves by the governments they keep. It’s the ignorance of the generations of people in those poor countries that don’t know how poor they are – in comparison to wealthier countries – that they don’t know there are better ways to live.
It depends on how you look at the issue of being my brothers’ keeper. You cannot possibly be expected to personally fund improving the lives of the millions who live in poverty, though you may choose to make some contribution in some way. That is entirely and properly your business.
But making a protest when the already wealthy or ignorantly well off do things which impoverish and deny the world’s poor the chance to have a better life, or even one that is as comfortable as ours, in pursuit of some cynical and scientifically unlikely theory of climate catastrophe is something which we should all call out for what it is : A means of lining the pockets of people who need no further help by telling outrageous lies.
“Using a novel probabilistic model” LOL, LOL
Quick, tell Michael Mann, he needs to touch up his rhetoric. He pioneered the use of “a novel probabilistic model” to fineagle some results made to order to an agenda.
The whole of modern climate science appears to be a giant exercise in novel probabilistic modeling. Or to give it its proper title – pseudoscience.
or even, simply crap
The mortality rate of Science is approaching 100% as the result of “novel probabilistic models.”
Isn’t it strange that there are never any articles pointing out the lessening of cold related deaths due to higher temperatures? There are deaths related to both types of extreme temperatures, but strangely only extremely high temperatures attract any attention. How
about that for obvious bias in research?
Cold weather show a much higher mortality rate (factor 10) than hot weather. Moreover, after a hot period, mortality rates do drop, as most people dying from the extra heat would probably have deceased a few weeks to months later. Not so for cold related mortality: the extra mortality goes back to normal after the cold period, without a dip.
For each region there is an optimum temperature range where there is lowest mortality. People living in warmer regions have a higher optimum than in colder regions.
I don’t know if that is simple adaptation (as one can experience by moving from a colder or warmer place or period to the same inbetween temperature place or period), or in part genetically.
See:
http://www.bmj.com/content/321/7262/670.full
The accesability to AC in warmer regions and heating in colder regions also plays a role:
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/155/1/80/134292/Temperature-and-Mortality-in-11-Cities-of-the
Ferdinand Engelbeen June 10, 2017 at 5:13 am
I prefer calling said adaptation or adjustment to different “seasonal temperatures” as a result of one moving from a “colder to warmer” or a ”warmer to colder” seasonal climate …… as an act of being “climatized”, which is in fact a “conditioning” of one’s body to better regulate the emission of body “heat” via the epidermis (skin) ….. as well as an adjustment to one’s “tolerance threshold” to the newly experienced increase or decrease in air temperatures.
And there is nothing “simple” about being “re-climatized” because it can take up to 6 months to a year to complete. And I speak from my experience of moving from the “90F days of summer” and the “mild winter temperatures” of a mid-Atlantic state ……. to the “80F days of summer” and the extremely “cold winter temperatures” of upstate New York.
Samuel C Cogar ==> I have experienced being “acclimatized” in both directions — moving from upstate NY to the Caribbean where my wife and I lived for ten years on our sailboat — and then (now) contemplating the move back Upstate. As a result, I am uncomfortable at anything under 75°F and have to put on a long-sleeved shirt. Wife and I are rather concerned how we will fare through a real winter here.
Samuel,
Didn’t know that it did take that long to get “climatized” to other climates. There must be some genetic part too: some people are more comfortable in colder temperatures, others in warmer. I prefer colder, maybe some remains of the Vikings in my ancestors which occupied the coastal parts of the North Sea countries and part of the Atlantic (Normandy)…
Kip,
“Wife and I are rather concerned how we will fare through a real winter here.”
I suggest beginning early (fall) to allow yourselves to be slightly uncomfortable.
JohnKnight ==> Good suggestion — but i fear that with this many more years under the bridge I may have a more difficult time adjusting.
When we came back to tge Uk from a trip to India and Australia for a year, having had a perpetual tropical summer, it took us a year to reacclimatise. We came back in UK summer, but that winter was brutal.
Now I live in the Australian tropics, and anything less than 20C is very uncomfortable. I actually found a breeze of 30C ‘cool’ one summer here 🙂
Kip Hansen, …… I agree with JohnKnight only I suggest a move no later than mid to late August so when the days and nights start cooling down in September your body will start getting used to the cool/colder temps. Lucky for you, the winter temps during the past 10 or so years haven’t been as brutally cold as they were during the 60’s and 70’s. I’ve become good friends with the couple that bought the farm that I owned ……. so I’ve been getting weather reports for the past 10 years or so.
And keep in mind now, you are older and iffen you are not an active, energetic, outdoorsy type person then your “heat generating” metabolism is slowing down and it might require extra clothing to keep you warm.
I moved from WV to the Mohawk Valley about the 1st of February and I literally froze my arse off until the “heat wave” of July 4th arrived. Then I moved to Philly for 3 years and then back north to the Village of Herkimer for about 4 years and then moved to a farm high up on a hill in Herkimer County about 3/4 miles NE of the Utica city limits where I could see the “city light” at nighttime.
So I wish you luck with your move and am sure you and your wife will cope just fine with the now milder winter temps.
There are genetic adaptations for climate adjustment. There is a gene common in NA peoples that permits the body to quickly adapt to a suddenly colder environment, generating heat rapidly. I think my wife has two copies. I have not heard of a heat tolerant equivalent. Maybe there is one.
Most of us have to feel the cold for a while before the metabolism catches up. That is why 0 C feels terrible in October but warm in March. We adapt seasonally.
As a native of Arizona that spends more time outdoors than indoors the temperature changes don’t seem to effect me while others that are not natives complain when it changes. It has to get above 100 degrees before I feel uncomfortable and into the 30s before I feel uncomfortable enough to dress a lot warmer. Genetics or not, I think it has more to do with how people live inside more and are effected more when they’re outside during the changes. Obviously it’s just my opinion.
In the meanwhile according to Wikipedia India is projected to be the world’s most populous country by 2022, surpassing China, its population reaching 1.7 billion by 2050. Not that projects would mean a lot, but still
http://www.indexmundi.com/graphs/population-pyramids/india-population-pyramid-2014.gif
There is no meat in the story to explain why the numbers would be wrong and how more correct numbers have been reached. It is interesting to see how WaPo writes about ‘worse’ development. Didn’t they use to say population growth is the problem? It appears people can’t come up to a common conclusion what is good, but that does not prevent them being hotly for and against.
WaPo cited a story in the South China Morning Post. Did you click the link? it’s here:
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2095311/china-population-much-smaller-you-think-researchers-say
(Not that IT contains much meat either, but not necessarily because there isn’t any, but likely because it would be too long and tedious for a daily paper.
Heh heh – there are millions of unrecorded births in China. When the census taker comes to the door to count inhabitants, a small bribe sends her away. The number of children hidden in this way may be 150m. The population is probably closer to 1,5 bn than 1.3.
As the US knows, legally counting illegal people is difficult.
Notice that India is selected as the subject of this study. This is yet another bias in this study : cherry pick the place where heat related deaths are almost the norm and where even a tiny increase in temps can have a detectable effect.
Looks like India is a minor player in global heat wave deaths.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/267708/number-of-deaths-globally-due-to-heat-or-cold-waves/
arthur4563 ==> To be fair, the main authors have names that imply they are from India and may just be concerned with, and have special interest in, their native land.
India: 19.3 births/1,000 population (2016 est.) and 7.3 deaths/1,000 population (2016 est.). For some reason this type of situation cannot be observed in colder climates.
If Eskimos figured out how to survive and thrive in – 40 C, why can’t Indians figure out how to survive in + 40?
Mick ==> Would I be right to assume that you live in a house with electricity, running water, heat in the winter and a/c in the summer? That there is food on the table at every meal? That you have flush toilets, windows with screens, medical care when you are ill? That you don’t share a single-room-house with two other families? and that it seldom , if ever, gets hotter than 100°F there?
The well-to-do, the rich, the middle classes in India do not die from the heat either. Only the poor.
And to put emphasis on ‘poor’, it is not the people who are just poor, it is the people which are considered worthless in India. Castless people. This is something that is fairly difficult to fix from outside.
A few important tidbits:
1) Most of the temperature increase in India has been attributed to Land-use and Land-Cover changes rather than greenhouse gas emissions. http://www.hydrol-earth-syst-sci.net/20/1765/2016/hess-20-1765-2016.pdf
“Our results also show that LULCC alone causes warming in the extremes of daily mean and maximum temperatures by a maximum of 1–1.2 ◦C, which is comparable with the observed increasing trend in the extremes. Decrease in forest cover and simultaneous increase in crops not only reduces the evapotranspiration over land and large-scale convective instability, but also contributes toward decrease
in moisture convergence through reduced surface roughness.”
2. I always wonder why nobody tries to understand the reduction of high energy uses (air conditioning and refrigeration) in an environment of high energy prices. The proposed “solution” to warming is higher energy prices. One effect of this is bound to be a reduction in air conditioning and high energy food storage and a delay in implementation of these technologies in poorer nations. The impact of such policies during heat waves is bound to be more deaths, not fewer.
If the goal is to reduce deaths from heat waves, then the policy should not make the problem worse.
Well, there is a long way to AC for castless in India. But shade, water and rest are technically possible.
If you’re expecting clear thinking, I’m not sure that either “climate science” or economics is the place you should be looking. But note that something like a third to a quarter of Indian households don’t have to worry about electricity prices as they have no access to electricity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_states_ranking_by_households_having_electricity
And when they do, it’s intermittent at best.
When there I was often asked if we had electricity all the time. When I confirmed that we did, people really did not fully believe it.
Sadly, that may not be true now as renewables take hold…
Right — however the quickest way for lesser developed nations to develop strategies to mitigate the effects of warming is through inexpensive electricity. Higher electricity costs push the solution further away, not closer. http://reason.com/archives/2016/11/25/energy-poverty-is-much-worse-for-the-poo
“Current renewable sources of energy are not technologically capable of lifting hundreds of millions of people out of energy poverty. Consequently, the Breakthrough writers see “no practical path to universal access to modern levels of energy consumption” that keeps the projected increase in global average temperature below the Paris Agreement on climate change goal of 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial level. This implies that atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will exceed 450 parts per million. They correctly point out that forcing poor people to forego economic development in order to prevent climate change is a “morally dubious proposition.” They additionally observe that the wealth and technology produced by economic growth increases resilience to climatic extremes and other natural disasters. When bad weather encounters poverty, disaster ensues.”
In addition, I’m not just referring to India. The poorest people in America and Europe will suffer the most from high energy costs.
Shouldn’t the flight of the New Yorkers to Florida in winter also lead to massive loss of life? After all, we’re not talking just a fraction of a degree warmer, nor a gradual increase in temperature, nor a relative higher temperature lasting just a few days…
Why are the heat waves always in west India? This is very stark for duration and intensity. For number of days and frequency, there is a secondary “hotspot” east of Bangladesh.
That is the area where the monsoon is weakest and starts last.
But of course, the liars will have some other “explanation” for why Indian life expectancy continues to increase despite the increase of temperature.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.LE00.IN?locations=IN
(Maybe the ones dying from heat waves were just rich enough to afford an air conditioner but then die of a massive coronary when they receive the massive electric bill?)
Urban heat island and urbanisation might have some effect.
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL?locations=IN
This bothers me, Indias population is 1.3 billion, at an average life expectancy of 68 years. This means that on average 19 million people die every year and around 52000 every day. The is a 46% greater chance that 100 more people die due to the extra heat on hot heatwave summer days, amounting to 52100 / 52000 = a 46% increased chance of a 0.19% increase in deaths on hot days !, if we assume 4 weeks of heatwave a year then that’s 2800/19,000,000 or a 46% increased chance of a 0.015% increase in deaths on an annualised basis. This is meaningless since the increase in deaths is below the noise floor. 0.015% (0.00015). Given the 52000 deaths a day average we need to understand the average rate of clusters of 100 deaths or more due to any cause to know whether the increase due to non existent warming is significant.
And, given the proven research that 20X more people die from cold weather than hot weather …..
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
… they are NOT including the greater number of lives being saved by global warming.
What they are doing is simply lying with statistics as usual, like stating that automobile air bags cause 100% of automobile air bag inflation deaths.
Heat-related deaths in India are frequently due to heat-stroke which is easily diagnosed.
The time frame appears to be a complete cherry pick. The start is during the last combined negative phases of the AMO and PDO. It then ends right near the end of the +PDO near the peak of the +AMO.
Richard M ==> They picked fifty (50) years. India is a bit slow on vital statistics and COD (causes of death) thus the end in 2009, takes them a while to get all the data in and tabulated from the provinces. I pretty sure the authors did not choose the data for result.
The US has the same problem with opioid-overdose deaths — the data is always a bit out of date.
Why anyone in their right mind could possibly believe that a temperature increase of less than one degree centigrade could make any difference whatsoever is very much beyond my understanding. I have personally experienced temperatures ranging from below 30 minus to 34 plus in the same little country called Norway. (Some places has had minus 52 dC in winter and about 34 in summer).
My point is: Life thrives anyway! It’s all up to adaptation.
These doomsayers are just copying from medieval times – pay for your sins, or else…….
The professor should return the research money they stole from India’s taxpayers.
Bernie ==> The study in question was funded by “the U.S. NSF Award No. EAR-1316536, [US]
Army Research Laboratory (ARL) Award No. W911NF-14-1-0684, and the [US] National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration Award No. NA14OAR4310222.”
India is the proverbial elephant in the AGW room. Because since it is perceived by the left as poor and downtrodden it is given a pass when it comes to restrictions on all sorts of pollution but especially greenhouse gas emissions. For example, over half of Indian households have telephones but not a toilet. Toilets in your house is considered by many unclear and they don’t use the local public toilet. The Indian government has campaigns trying to get people to poop in the right place. So 400 to 500 thousand children die each year in India due to water born illnesses. But back to the subject, India is third in energy use, 44% coal and 23% waste and biomass. The first thing an Indian buys when they can afford it is a refrigerator. (I guess to keep cool during heat waves.) I cannot imagine India as a government or a people wanting to stop or even slow economic growth. They know, as China found out, spur economy growth for the average worker and population growth will slow. While I was in China in 1980s on a technical delegation China would start each meeting with a slide show about their troubles and the world’s troubles. They saw India as a major threat not just to China but to the World’s security. Interestingly one of the issues was religious conflicts within India and with its neighbors that would spill over.
Ed ==> If electricity is available, the poor buy a fan then a refrigerator (less intelligent buy a TV first).
A refrigerator is necessary to be able to keep fresh food safely for more than a day. One can store dry goods in metal cans (with metal lids) but perishables must be refrigerated …. if not, they must be bought every day or one meal at a time. Mothers want gas (bottled) stoves and refrigerators.
The same is true in the Caribbean — many poor have refrigerators, but intermittent power so they are simply cupboards.
“I guess to keep cool during heat waves”
You guess wrong. A refrigerator heats its surroundings, particularly in hot weather. But it keeps food fresh (and safe). A lot more people die from gastrointestinal infections than from heat in India.
When I worked in Nigeria in the mid sixties, long before CAGW was possible, a statistic I was told (unfortunately no link I can find readily at hand ) was that 50% of the population didn’t reach the age of 12yrs.
Nigeria was one of the better off countries on the continent. Oil was already being produced, there was a significant mining industry and the land was fertile, even in the Sahel, where the seasonal rains then were fairly reliable. It was hot in N Nigeria (two clinical thermometers I brought with me burst in my luggage) and in the dry season, temperatures over 45C were common and this was the season I mapped geology on foot, two-day compass and pace traverses (one day out, offset a half mile at right angles to my line and one day return) by myself through the heat of the days and I passed farms with the whole families out working in fields harvesting. Disease was the killer, malaria, other and a host of parasites and the poor the most vulnerable.
A civil war broke out while I was there and continued on after I managed to get out with my family. Three million people died, the largest number from starvation in the turmoil and I’d be surprised if the poor weren’t completely wiped out.
I think you would need novel statistics to prove this weak thesis in Nigeria.
Gary,
Not much changed since then… Our youngest daughter worked several years in Nigeria (helicopter pilot in a company working for Exxon) until a few years ago. It was getting more dangerous by the day. 2% of all people earns all the oil money, 98% is poor to extremely poor. Corruption from high to low, kidnapping for a ransom, political or religious reasons, drilling in high pressure oil lines to distill the petrol out of it on open fires (!), sometimes with hundreds killed by explosions as result… You have nothing to loose if you have nothing…
One day there was an oil leak from an old undersea line between an oil rig and the coastal refinery of Exxon. Local fishermen hasted themselves to the leak to drench their nets in the oil to claim huge compensations from Exxon for their bad luck… Who can blame them?
Another day, one of the local Exxon directors was killed in a road accident. His wife was badly injured and should be transported to a hospital in the capital. My daughter flew to a nearby airfield of the accident. There she waited 3 hours before the ambulance showed up. They had refused to pay an (illegal) “fee” at the entrance of the airfield and only after threatening that they would accuse them with murder if the patient died, they were allowed to enter the tarmac…
Ferdinand, I was back in 1998 briefly, my ultimate destination the neighboring countries of Benin and Togo to lay out a gold and diamond exploration program for a client. After over 30yrs I didn’t see much of a change except the population of Lagos had gone from under 200,000 to many millions. The temperature in Lagos (and Cotonou and Lome) was 30C, virtually the same as my 60s visit.
I worked in Tanzania in the 1980s and climbed Kilimanjaro (temporary gastric illness kept me from making the last 4th day push to the top) while waiting for an electrical inspector to okay our stone cutting plant. I have a new project in D. R. Congo and an invitation to discuss one in Zimbabwe.
I know that foreign investment and development of abundant natural resources is the key to raising Africa out of poverty. One of the major obstacles is NGO pressure against this form of economic development. Interestingly, China has created a competitor fund to the World Bank and is investing in coal fired electricity plants, an end run around the West’s refusal to fund them. Ironically, after almost 60 years of impotent “development” by the west, China is likely to accomplish this in a couple of decades. This rich continent will be China’s treasure trove and Africans’ pathway to prosperity.