Tuesday, December 23, 2008

Quiz #8 (With Chart Answers)

Assuming climate change is real, how would global warming affect mortality?
  1. Would warmer weather kill more people?


  2. Is there evidence that weather-related deaths have increased?


  3. Is there evidence that climate change already increased mortality due to more extreme weather?
Answers:
  1. No. As I have already noted, cold weather causes more "excess" deaths than warm. A 2007 paper from Indur Goklany has the numbers:


    source: Indur Goklany at 8

    So, it's reasonable to assume that warming would save lives.


  2. No. As Goklany details, both deaths and the death rates are down:


    source: Indur Goklany at 4


    Recent U.S. data is similar:


    source: Indur Goklany at 8


  3. No. With temperatures about the same or less than a decade ago, excess mortality due to cold in England and Wales have been steady for the past seven years as Anthony Watts notes:


    source: U.K. National Statistics Office


    And, even given the spike produced by Katrina in 2005, the trend is down:


    source: Indur Goklany at 10

(Previous entries in series here, here, here, here, here and here.)

(via CATO blog, Watts Up With That? twice)

2 comments:

OBloodyHell said...

> Recent U.S. data is similar:

Yes, but this doesn't include all the thousands dead (covered up, of course) in New Orleans after Bush summoned Katrina to Louisiana during that secret weather-control weapons test, now, does it?

:oP

@nooil4pacifists said...

OBH:

True, but is it fair to ascribe the deaths to warming when everyone knows we bombed the levees?