From the LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE & TROPICAL MEDICINE and the “who needs death certificates when you have RCP models?” department.
Study of impact of climate change on temperatures suggests more deaths unless action taken
The largest study to date of the potential temperature-related health impacts of climate change has shown that as global temperatures rise, the surge in death rates during hot weather outweighs any decrease in deaths in cold weather, with many regions facing sharp net increases in mortality rates.
Published in The Lancet Planetary Health, the study compared heat- and cold-related mortality across 451 locations around the world, and showed that warmer regions of the planet will be particularly affected. For instance, if no action is taken by 2090-99 a net increase in deaths of +12.7% is projected in South-East Asia, and mortality rates would also rise in Southern Europe (+6·4%) and South America (+4·6%). Meanwhile, cooler regions such as Northern Europe could experience either no change or a marginal decrease in deaths.
Encouragingly, the research, led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, also showed these deaths could largely be avoided under scenarios that include mitigation strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and further warming of the planet.
Antonio Gasparrini, Associate Professor of Biostatistics and Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and lead author of the paper, said: “Climate change is now widely recognised as the biggest global threat of the 21st century. Although previous studies have shown a potential rise in heat-related mortality, little was known about the extent to which this increase would be balanced by a reduction in cold-related deaths. In addition, effects tend to vary across regions, depending on local climate and other characteristics, making global comparisons very difficult.
“This study demonstrates the negative impact of climate change, which may be more dramatic among the warmer and more populated areas of the planet, and in some cases disproportionately affect poorer regions of the world. The good news is that if we take action to reduce global warming, for instance by complying with the thresholds set by the Paris Agreement[1], this impact will be much lower.”
The research, funded by the Medical Research Council, involved creating the first global model of how mortality rates change with hot or cold weather. It used real data from 85 million deaths between 1984 and 2015, specific to a wide-range of locations that took into account different climates, socioeconomics and demographics.
This enabled the team to estimate how temperature-related mortality rates will change under alternative scenarios of climate change, defined by the four Representative Concentration Pathways[2] (RCPs) established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for climate modelling and research in 2014.
Under the worst-case scenario (RCP 8.5), which assumes that greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise throughout the 21st century, the authors show the potential for extremely large net increases in temperature-related mortality in the warmer regions of the world. In cooler areas, the less intense warming and large decrease in cold-related deaths may mean no net change or a marginal reduction in temperature-related deaths.
Under the strictest pathway (RCP 2.6), which assumes an early peak of greenhouse gas emissions which then decline substantially, the potential net increases in mortality rates at the end of the century be minimal (between -0.4% and +0.6%) in all the regions included in this study, highlighting the benefits of the implementation of mitigation policies.
Sir Andy Haines, Professor of Public Health & Primary Care at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and study co-author, said: “This paper shows how heat related deaths will escalate in the absence of decisive action to reduce the emissions of carbon dioxide and short-lived climate pollutants such as methane and black carbon. Such action could also result in major health benefits in the near term by reducing deaths from air pollution.
“It is imperative that the actions are taken to build on the achievements of the Paris Treaty as the commitments made there are insufficient to prevent warming above 2 degrees C compared with pre-industrial temperatures.”
Antonio Gasparrini said: “The findings of this study will be crucial for the development of coordinated and evidence-based climate and public health policies, and for informing the ongoing international discussion on the health impacts of climate change that is vital for the future health of humanity.”
The authors acknowledge limitations in the study, including the lack of data for some regions of the world, and the fact that adaptation mechanisms and potential changes to demographics have not been accounted for.
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The paper: : http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30156-0/fulltext?elsca1=tlxpr
OMG! This article is hilarious!
Did the LONDON SCHOOL OF HYGIENE & TROPICAL MEDICINE have their ability to feel embarrassed when saying something dumb surgically excised?
No, global warming numbs the senses also and that includes the sense of embarrassment and sense of self stupidity.
Evidently, Britain’s National Healthcare System has attended to every one of their patients on multi-year waiting lists. They’re all caught up. All the medical professionals have delivered the needed care of their own people … so they have free time to study Global Warming.
Wait! This study says that human population has EXPLODED by 2 Billion … which they’ve identified as a planet-wrecking trend. So … it would appear as though these “medical professionals” must NOT heal the sick … but let them DIE in order to “save the planet”. Our medical schools appear to be training a new generation of Undertakers … not Doctors.
Wait! This is a classic example of negative feedback! More heat = more deaths = less people = less CO2 = less heat. Of course, these geniuses didn’t factor in the improved standards of living resulting from the availability of cheap. abundant (fossil fuel) energy which leads to lower birth rates (e.g. Europe, North America, Australia) and therefore less people and less CO2. No, let’s assume everything remains constant except CO2 increases over the next 100 years. Brilliant!
Not sure how a culture that can survive a desert environment nicely with an average temp of 30C (i.e. african) and no rain somehow dies from heat at 32C and no rain. But magic math is not my forte.
If the AGW crowd are really concerned about reducing deaths, how about teaching cultures to stop digging up their dead for a dance (http://nypost.com/2017/10/26/madagascar-plague-linked-to-ritual-dance-with-dead-bodies/).
Read the last paragraph
of the paper
The Invoice follows, but we don’t get to see it.
Sorry to say ,but i don’t get your comment Tony.Iwas trying to imply from their own words that this study & conclusion was conjecture based on lack of data,as they admitted,!!!
As you point out the authors are willing to admit the uselessness of thier own study, but only after averyone runs screening from the room in terror. I don’t need a climate model to know there are going to be more deaths – at least 7.5 billion of them (mine will be one of those), and every one of those deaths will happen in the presence of climate of all sorts. It must be our fault!
Amazing how global warming theory has morphed…..so muich for warmer low temps
If they used global averages in their mortality calculations, there is a problem: Warming is supposed to be asymmetric; higher latitudes will warm more quickly than traditionally hot climes.
Extreme cold weather usually causes a lot more deaths – ask Napoleon !
I love warm weather … who doesn’t ? Fat people ?
If cold is so good, why don’t people take winter vacations to Oymyakon , Siberia.
Why do people go to Spain for their holidays if hot is bad?
Ask General Friedrich Paulus the winter of 1941/1942 or any of the other german generals
Tom,
You – and Walt D, above – seem to be both worshipping at the church of Russia’s greatest general – General Winter.
I worship there myself.
Cold kills.
Warmth can be mitigated.
trebla’s comment above – “Of course, these geniuses didn’t factor in the improved standards of living resulting from the availability of cheap. abundant (fossil fuel) energy which leads to lower birth rates (e.g. Europe, North America, Australia) and therefore less people and less CO2. ” – applies in spades.
If folk have electricity – reliable electricity [and batteries might, possibly, contribute, perhaps . . .] – they can have fans or aircon.
Many near tropical and tropical cultures already build houses to minimise temperature highs; that will continue.
Plus CO2 greens the planet.
Not sure that the NHS has caught up, but Gasparrini et al, authors, should keep their jobs. More important – to them.
Auto
“Study of impact of climate change on temperatures suggests more deaths unless action taken”
This is possible since we are starting at a baseline of zero deaths due to CAGW.
More mindless alarmism.
not sure about the ‘mindless’ part….
mindless – acting or done without justification or concern for the consequences.
synonyms: stupid, idiotic, brainless, imbecilic, imbecile, asinine, witless, foolish, empty-headed, slow-witted, obtuse, featherbrained, doltish
Each of these words describes those engaged in climate alarmism.
Not sure why I would post this Too many idiots out there that would take it ‘literally’. On the other hand, the people pushing a New World Order and One Government should take great delight in this. Isn’t their agenda to DECREASE the population? It would be much more beneficial for them to blame us for killing each other then them being responsible for a world genocide. Wouldn’t it.
Isn’t their agenda to DECREASE the population?
The only thing these fanatics hate more than people are “facts”.
This should please Maurice Strong and his ilk.
True warmists should have no children. Al Gore has four.
Tipper has four. Al has – who knows?
The London School of Hype is turning out some great clinicians these days.
So they admit no notice has been taken of adaptation mechanisms but nevertheless proceed to make hysterical claims to pander to the alarmist lobby. Perhaps they should have talked to a few historians who could have put them very straight about what happens to large numbers of people when climates are cold as opposed to how whole regional populations flourish in warm conditions.
Have these people ever been to South East Asia? Or ever heard of Greenland? Or seen pictures of the rock cave paintings in North Africa?
A casual read might lead you to believe they compared X degrees of temperature INCREASE with a similar DECREASE.
But, no.
They only compared the impact of the several IPCC warming scenarios; (harmful) warming was a given. There was no consideration of the impact if temperatures DROPPED from current levels.
All they did was compare the most extreme projected warming of the IPCC with the three less extreme scenarios.
They come up with the awkward conclusion that the “savings” in deaths of “cooler” scenarios compared to 8.5 does not make up for the deaths attributable to the delta between that cooler scenario and 8.5.
Anther reason why history classes in schools have been replaced with social studies classes?
“So they admit no notice has been taken of adaptation mechanisms but nevertheless proceed to make hysterical claims . . . ”
It’s worse than that. The study failed to account for the heat-related deaths avoided when CO2 is emitted by people using air conditioners to stay cool. Had they done the relevant comparison of a first scenario where people are forced to cut back on their electricity usage to prevent the theoretical increase in future temperatures, against a second scenario where electricity usage is not artificially constrained, they likely would have found that “actions taken to build on the achievements of the Paris Accord” would cause more heat related deaths than those actions would avoid.
Let’s see: start with some IPCC schmodels. Then plug in a concern, in this case, public health. Crank the “threat” level to 11. Presto, out comes more climate
garbageTruth. Add the icing on the cake, that we must act now, “before it’s too late”.ClimateTruth™ 101.
Models all the way down.
The single biggest killer related to heat is not heat itself, it’s availability of potable water, and/or behaviors that mitigate the effects of dehydration. Heat exhaustion is almost always co-diagnosed with dehydration. These researchers, (in name only), seem to be painfully ignorant of this, and have made conclusions as if heat, alone, were the offending force.
We must stop people from moving from New York City to Miami immediately! It’s for their own good. If they resist, shoot them, again for their own good.
How about a “Biting Sarcasm” tag, just in case Kenji is on the loose again.
Sigh…. if only we’d have listened and left that apple on the tree the world would be a much nicer place.
markl
DON’T OPEN THAT BOX PANDO………….Aw sh*t……….Too late.
That first temptation, “Ye shall be as gods.”, haunts us still, and likely always will.
warmer and more populated areas of the planet
There are good reasons warmer areas are “more populated”. Ice is bad (except in my sweet tea)
Probably the most graphic is Fig 2, looking at what happens to SE Asia, esp under the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5. That’s where more than half of humanity is.
The RCP scenarios are so bogus, they defy rational thinking. All they do is add a lot of additional uncertainty on top of the massive uncertainty (+/- 50%) regarding the effect incremental energy flux (forcing) has on the surface temperature. This seems to be for no other reason than to hide the underlying uncertainty behind the presumed climate sensitivity. Making this so much worse is that despite all the uncertainty, the presumed lower limit exceeds the maximum effect supported by the laws of physics.
Anyone who accepts this garbage as ‘settled’ is either not paying attention or so deluded by politics that their brain has turned to mush.
or not.
ReallySkeptical (or not).
Your object is noted, but is entirely invalid. The evidence supporting my position is overwhelming.
RCP 8.5 is bogus… It’s not even realistic enough to be called bad science fiction. If RCP 4.5 will doom SE Asia, then they were already doomed. RCP 4.5 is what the weather will likely do anyway, no matter how many windmills, solar panels and Tesla cars we “invest” in.
Fortunately for SE Asia, the error bar for heat-related excess mortality is YUGE…
http://www.thelancet.com/cms/attachment/2115454040/2084759273/gr2_lrg.jpg
Even more fortunately for SE Asia, the study assumes that people will neither adapt, nor move…
David,
Even RCP4.5 will not doom SE Asia. Given the true climate sensitivity range of between .2 and .3 C per W/m^2, 4.5 W/m^2 of forcing (approx 1.5 doubling of CO2 per the IPCC) will result in a temperature increase of only between 0.9C and 1.4 C and not the 1.8C to 5.4C claimed by the broken consensus.
Given the factor of 2 error with the 3.7 W/m^2 of forcing claimed to arise from doubling CO2, any temperature effect will most likely be between 0.45C and 0.7C.
BTW, the factor of 2 error arises because 3.7 W/m^2 is the decrease in emissions at TOA upon INSTANTANEOUSLY doubling atmospheric CO2. Since the atmosphere is absorbing the 3.7 W/m^2 from the surface and the atmosphere emits both into space and back to the surface, the LTE equivalent solar forcing (the equivalent effect after the system has adapted to doubling CO2) is only half of 3.7 W/m^2.
I forgot to include a /Sarc tag.
It’s been 20 years since this dystopian fantasy of CAGW was started. Shouldn’t there already be piles of dead bodies everywhere? Why still do these studies need to rely on models then? Don’t you ever even question if possibly these concerns were exaggerated to push a political agenda, or you really that stupid or naive? I think I know the answer to my own question.
The dead bodies are hiding in the deep ocean.
Thirty years… Hanson’s grandstanding in a deliberately hot and sticky Congressional hearing occurred in 1989, and 2019 is barely more than a year away. But Anthony already provided the answer to your question: …“who needs death certificates when you have RCP models?” department… In actual fact, this entire press release seems to have problems with word usage. It says “study” four times, before it finally talks about methodology(?), where we find the methods BEGAN with, “…creating the first global model…”. So in reality, there was never any “study” at all, just a “model”, which as we have discussed ad nauseum, is usually an exercise in wasting computer time by re-running the “model”, then tuning the parameters until it spits out the answer they’re looking for. As Anthony already noted, who needs evidence when you have a model?
I am still, even after 11 years of poking around in this Grand Deception, especially bothered by the approach, used in 99.9% of the Gorebull Warming “studies”, of taking in increasing future temperature of the Earth as a given, and producing predictions on what happens under those horrendous conditions. This just smells like a massive waste of grant money. But then, I’m only an engineer, where most things I design get built almost immediately and the whole world finds out whether or not my approach had merit. Why should these “scientists” be bothered by something as tiresome as verification by real-world events?
The Code of Hammurabi contains what may be the first building code in human history. “Should a man build a house, and should this house fall down and kill another man, the man who built the house shall be put to death.”
Engineers, dealing with real-world consequences since antiquity!
Important to note that RCP8.5 is already disproven.
For that to happen the past must not have been as it has actually been.
We aren’t abandoning energy efficiency and only using coal.
The only reason to consider RCP8.5 these days is to create exciting science fiction fro the grownups or scary campfire tales for the children. You decide what was meant here.
There is something that you should know about the Lancet – but you probably already do – and that is that a certain christina figures has become a guiding influence there:
-“The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is meeting these needs.3 By providing annual data across a range of indicators, the Lancet Countdown will lead and communicate on health and climate change; demonstrate the health co-benefits of mitigation and adaptation; and monitor global progress in meeting the Paris Agreement.
The Lancet Countdown has the potential not only to improve the response to climate change, but to transform it. The collaboration is therefore delighted to announce that Christiana Figueres will join as Chair of its High-Level Advisory Board. Much as she did with the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres will help guide the Lancet Countdown to maximise its impact and deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement.”-
But whilst one should bear in mind that there may be undeclared reasons for this study , at this time, the study itself seems to be well done and I am inclined to believe it (a bit patronising of me given my lack of knowledge of statistics ) but there are limitations to the work:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
So it’s not temperature extremes that cause mortality but “non-optimum temperatures.” And cold is 20 times more lethal today so in order for heat to become the dominant killer we have to pass through a regime where net mortality falls. Presumably the authors are advocating for additional warming over what we already have, just not too much, right? Right?
https://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/agu_2014_knappenberger_michaels.pdf
Davis RE, et al., 2003. Changing Heat-Related Mortality in the United States. Environmental Health Perspectives 111, 1712–18.
Kalkstein, L.S., et al., 2011. An evaluation of the progress in reducing heat-related human mortality in major U.S. cities. Natural Hazards 56, 113-129.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2011/06/10/the-paradox-of-urban-and-global-warming/#2f4d12f0c126
Sure, all of those studies are real life data, but they’ll never work in theory.
Tsk Tsk, having done both short and long range projections, anybody that gives projected values in the tenth and hundredth (!) percent (data accuracy of one thousandth to one ten thousandth) is deluded or attempting to convince, rather than illuminate.
Real peer review would bounce ‘papers’ (I won’t denigrate the word ‘studies’) claiming such accuracy in collected data and, especially, uncertain projections.
I don’t have time to read the article, but wonder whether they recommend that governments require warning climate refugees (retired people moving from cold climates to warmer locations) that making the move will reduce their life expectancy. More seriously, how often do people move from warm weather locations to cold weather locations when they retire.
In London, a lot of folk retired to the South Coast – from Devon to Kent. That pushed house prices up near the coast.
Some folk are now retiring northwards – much more baronial hall for your buck.
Probably nowhere near a majority, though.
Auto
And I liked the first name in the first reference. A distant relative, perhaps?
There is something that you should know about the Lancet – but you probably already do – and that is that a certain Christiana Figueres has become a guiding influence there:
-“The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is meeting these needs.3 By providing annual data across a range of indicators, the Lancet Countdown will lead and communicate on health and climate change; demonstrate the health co-benefits of mitigation and adaptation; and monitor global progress in meeting the Paris Agreement.
The Lancet Countdown has the potential not only to improve the response to climate change, but to transform it. The collaboration is therefore delighted to announce that Christiana Figueres will join as Chair of its High-Level Advisory Board. Much as she did with the Paris Agreement, Christiana Figueres will help guide the Lancet Countdown to maximise its impact and deliver on the promise of the Paris Agreement.”-
But whilst one should bear in mind that there may be undeclared reasons for this study , at this time, the study itself seems to be well done and I am inclined to believe it (a bit patronising of me given my lack of knowledge of statistics ) but there are limitations to the work if I have read it correctly
1. the geographical area does not include India, Africa or central Asia .
2. The cold related mortalities far exceed heat related mortalities (their Fig2) and only under the most extreme conditions of global warming do heat related fatalities exceed cold related , and then mainly in SouthEast Asia.
Well it’s hardly a surprise. Those cockroaches get everywhere and infest all of the institutions of higher learning and the journals.
I love it when medical doctors “guide” me in my behavioral choices. I remember that way back in the 1950s, most cigarette ads featured a doctor with the de rigeur white smock and stethoscope around his neck touting the health benefits of one brand over another. In fact, the smoking rate among doctors was HIGHER than that of the population as a whole. The British Doctors study was based on an analysis of 50,000 British physicians, most of whom smoked and many of whom succumbed to lung cancer. Medical doctors aren’t scientists.
“1. the geographical area does not include India, Africa or central Asia ”
I wondered about that as well. I am guessing that they don’t have collaborators in this areas? Or that the records are not sound? It seems that the results of S Europe and SE Asia would cover those regions, since all the more northern regions are similar to each another.
As noted, they did NOT compare heat related mortalities vs cool related. They only compared the 4 increased temperature scenarios of the IPCC.
But now let the MSM get ahold of the abstract of the study and half the world will think that a temperature increase is worse than a decrease.
Sorry for the double post , a sticky finger sent it off before I finished my comment
An afterthought … I’m only surprised these people didn’t think of claiming a huge expected increase in mental ill health. While mental illness is not something to politicise, it is clear that the alarmists are perfectly happy to invoke the immediate prospect of any human misfortune being made hugely worse to shamelessly plug their climate narrative, so I guess it is only a matter of time. The rest of us can draw the obvious conclusion…
Thinking/worrying/fretting about global warming causes additional mental illnesses.
Another scare paper based on the assumption that the climate will in fact warm
How can deaths from increasing temperatures be “difficult to predict” when we have solid historical data on that subject stretching from the mid 1800’s at the end of the Little Ice Age, to the present? Are these people so inept they can’t use recorded birth, death and population statistics?
Or maybe that just doesn’t count since now is good and the future is bad?
But how do you then control for all the massive advances in medicine and technology since the mid-1800s?
And the supposed “unhealthy” diets we now eat?
And so on?
That is the fundamental problem with epidemiology. You can’t just compare numbers.,
Are the temperatures going up? Or are the mean temperatures going up? If the
latter then my bet would be that the increases are primarily because the minimums
are less cold than they used to be. Is this something we should be worried about?
Not me.
Considering most of the warming has been in the far northern hemisphere, and also at night, just how do they conclude that anyone is going to die early from global warming? If anything, it is exactly the opposite. And also why the planet supports 7.5 billion people, thankfully to warming, and the vast use of fossil fuels to replace animal/slave power. A much better world on balance.
Every advance in science has a link to Carbon increases in our environment. Nothing would be possible Without it.
I wonder why nobody lives permanently on Antarctica and Arctic populations are very low. Could it be that cold kills most of the people that try? Perhaps it is just because your garden does not thrive or that polar bears might eat you. Perhaps babies do not thrive on walrus milk. I wonder why populations are so high in tropical or semi-tropical areas. Could it be that survival rates are much higher? Given a choice, would you prefer to live in Moscow or in Miami? All a reasonably healthy person needs to survive a heat wave is water and shade. There is really nothing but fuel and fire that can ensure your survival for long periods of extreme cold. A polar winter is, basically, mostly shade and extreme cold for several months. At the equator about twelve hours of every day are shade.