Guest “WTF?” by David Middleton
Welcome to the Anthropocene
The Anthropocene
Join thousands of researchers, policymakers and educators who rely on our Weekly Science Dispatch to keep up to date on the latest sustainability science.
Welcome to the Anthropocene… It doesn’t exist. Now, on to the story…
DAILY SCIENCE
How climate change could change the way we die
A new study predicts more deaths from injuries in a warmer world.
By Sarah DeWeerdt
January 14, 2020Global warming of 1.5 °C could result in an additional 1,603 deaths from injuries each year in the United States, an international team of researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature Medicine. They calculated the death toll from 2 °C of warming at 2,135 excess injury-related deaths yearly.
[…]
The Anthropocene
1,603? Are they sure it’s not 1,602 or 1,604?
[…]
The researchers mined 38 years’ worth of US government data on weather conditions and deaths from injuries in the United States (excluding Alaska and Hawaii). They calculated the average temperature in each month of the year for each state from 1980 to 2017. They identified months when the temperature was warmer than average in a given state, and compared the death rate from injuries during these months to the background rate of injury deaths.
This enabled them to calculate how mortality from injuries might change if average temperatures in all states increase year-round by 1.5 or 2 °C, the benchmarks set out in the Paris Agreement.
The number of excess deaths for 2 °C of warming, 2,135, represents 1% of all deaths from injuries in 2017. California, Texas, and Florida are likely to have the largest number of these increased deaths.
[…]
“These new results show how much climate change can affect young people,” study leader Majid Ezzati of Imperial College London said in a statement. “We need to respond to this threat with better preparedness in terms of emergency services, social support and health warnings.”
For example, officials could design public health messages specifically targeted at young men warning of the risks from traffic accidents and drowning, and implement additional blood alcohol level checkpoints on roads during hot weather.
Source: Parks R.M. et al. “Anomalously warm temperatures are associated with increased injury deaths.” Nature Medicine 2020.
The Anthropocene
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
1603 out of 330 MILLION people????? These people are 100% insane. We can save more than that by making drinking and driving impossible and texting and driving (we have the technology). If they cared about humans (and they DO NOT), they’d go for things like that. It’s all a way to control 330 million people’s miserable lives and rule as gods. Give it up. Some of us can actually do math and understand tyranny when we see it.
Like I said before, the predictions of an increasing death rate are part of the orthodoxy. The reality is a decreasing death rate as well as an even more decreasing birth rate.
The madness of the crowds, it apparently has no boundaries Why is it that common sense has become a white male vice?
Basically, when the weather is nice, more people are outside having fun.
Can’t have that.
I don’t believe the “scientists” properly account for how the younger generations are increasingly glued to screens. I dare say video games are the favored form of exercise right now.
So don’t take this too seriously as sedentarianism is the prefer lifestyle of the modern world.
The true number is 1608…they forgot to include the five people who will slip each year on discarded ice cream cones.
“. . . might change. . .”
And if Carthage had beaten Rome we’d have world peace now.
chemman: “And if Carthage had beaten Rome we’d have world peace now.”
I vaguely recall that one. What was it; Rome 42, Carthage 13? Didn’t the Carthage coach get fired after that one?
The power of soft-science statistics astounds.
So, if this theory is correct, the farther south you go in the United States, the higher the rates of accidental death. Come on.
There are very few inhabited areas on Earth that are not cooler than someplace else that is also inhabited. If global warming really does happen, Vermont may then acquire the same climate as Arizona exhibits today. But people live in Arizona now, and few of them seem to view this as any great tragedy, so why should the citizens of Vermont worry unduly about a warming climate?
Did those who did the study ever try to take into account the fact that a month with “above average” temperatures, particularly in the spring or summer, was more likely to have more sunny days than an “average” month? People are more likely to do outdoor work, which may involve using potentially hazardous tools or climbing on ladders, on sunny days than on rainy days, so a month with more sunny days will have more people doing outdoor work and more opportunity for accidental injury.
For those states that get snow in the winter, people are likely to reduce outdoor activity (other than snow shoveling or winter sports) during a snowy winter, but might decide to use unusually mild winter days to do outdoor work that they would ordinarily put off until spring, which would again increase the opportunity for accidental injury.
Even if we take the results at face value, 1,602 extra injuries out of 330 million people represent 0.00049%, or 0.49 injuries per 100,000 people, which is much less than the murder rate in large American cities. It is also much less than the number of people who die from unusually COLD weather.
Still, if I have to climb a ladder, I prefer doing it on a warm, dry day than a cold, wet day. Less chance of slipping or losing my grip due to numb fingers!
There are far fewer drownings in the northern hemisphere during months with an “R” in the name. Clearly, we should change the names of the other months to have an “R” in them too!
“1,603? Are they sure it’s not 1,602 or 1,604?”
Actually it’s -1,603, they got the sign wrong. The colder months are the deadliest part of the year, with a warmer world, there will be less wintertime deaths, hence why the number is actually a negative not a positive number.
“…officials could design public health messages specifically targeted at young men warning of the risks from traffic accidents and drowning, and implement additional blood alcohol level checkpoints on roads during hot weather.”
New warnings on hot days might read; “It’s going to be hot today so drive extra careful” “Drowning Advisory, stay away from the pool because it’s a little warmer today than yesterday”, “DUI Checkpoint Ahead: because it’s hot today”, “All males under 30 are required to stay indoors because it’s hot outside”, and etc……
This study is just plain silly.
1.0 °C of global warming has resulted in the world’s population increasing by about 6 billion since 1850.
Yet we are supposed to believe that a further 0.5 °C of warming will be catastrophic?
Perhaps they should have run the statistics to show the death rates in Singapore versus Alaska?
The study is actually quite interesting from a couple of viewpoints. The majority of the “additional deaths” stem from drownings and “transport” (driving). Drownings naturally increase in warm weather and “warmer” weather as the young seek the water — people don’t swim much in winter or on cold summer days. Young people also hit the hiways — and drink — in warmer weather.
The “1.5°” above normal has no real bearing on their results.
The whole thing is a statistical house-of-cards and supposition.
Obviously needs an education campaign to take the doomsters’ minds off the plant food-
“While sepsis kills more people in Australia than lung, bowel or breast cancers, Professor Finfer said only 40 per cent of the population have heard of it”
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/twice-as-many-australians-die-from-sepsis-than-previously-thought/ar-BBZ1rCo
On second thoughts they’ll just blame it on global warmening and add it to the list-
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/globalwarming2.html
The number of deaths is what they want to go up, so take away the energy for more cold (homes), hence Shrinkage of population. So they write a paper saying warmth is a problem. Its not really a problem for mankind, maybe so for some animals, but probably not polar bears. That’s my 2 bits…
In the UK being temperate it is cold that kills and the UK government tracks it.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/excesswintermortalityinenglandandwales/2018to2019provisionaland2017to2018final
“There were an estimated 23,200 excess winter deaths which occurred in England and Wales in the 2018 to 2019 winter, the lowest since the winter of 2013 to 2014.”
It has been reducing and is now starting to increase again. (5 year average – see website above) 1950-51 it was over 100,000.
Guess what, warm is good for life.
Figure 2 (National age-standardized death rates from 1980 to 2017, by type of injury, sex and month) in their report clearly shows a decline in injury related death rates since 1980. This decline is most significant for transport related death among men where the age adjusted summer rate has fallen from ~4/100k to ~1/100k over the period of 1980 to 2017. So if the temperature in the US has increased over this time period shouldn’t the main conclusion be that increased temperatures cause fewer accidental deaths?
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-019-0721-y
Music for schizoid climate doomsday scientists to dance with Greta and her Xtinct Rebells:
https://www.google.com/search?client=ms-android-huawei&sxsrf=ACYBGNT_u_QzyqgEjcAsZe0BiThLCbYUtg:1579256778916&q=tool+fear+inoculum&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjoy8P6tYrnAhUOpIsKHW3VCE8Q1QIwGnoECBUQPA&biw=360&bih=574&dpr=3
Oh….my….Gawd!
Is there *anything* one can get published in a Nature journal??? Do they use a Magic 8-Ball for peer review?
It’s hard to pick which is more moronic:
Correlation as Causation Assumption
Linear Behavior Assumption
Non-Threshold Assumption
I’ve seen much better work at the junior-high science fair.
I thought the hit-job on climate change skeptics was bad. Guess they hit bottom and started to dig.