Cold vs heat
Simon Wilson writes:
Kāinga Ora, the housing ministry, has made 15 bicycles available to tenants at a housing project in Rotorua and everyone is losing their defecatory matter. …
But when initiatives like this get into the public domain, the climate framing is often completely absent. Why?
Because it will have zero impact on the climate or the level of emissions in NZ. Transport emissions are capped under the ETS.
An average of 150,000 people are dying in heat waves and Europe is on track for its worst yet. Another study from ESSD gives the world an even chance of breaching the 1.5C warming threshold as soon as 2029.
I support economically sane measures to reduce emissions as a hotter world is bad for biodiversity, will lead to higher ocean levels, cause displacement etc. But the facts are that far far more people die from cold weather than hot weather.
Our World in Data reports:
In the Global Burden of Disease study, cold-related deaths were around four times higher than heat-related ones.
The study that estimates that 7.7% of deaths were attributed to temperature found that 7.3% were from cold temperatures; 0.4% were from heat.
In the “5 million death” study, 9.4% of deaths were related to sub-optimal temperatures. 8.5% were cold-related, and 0.9% were heat-related. This skew was true across all regions.
You can see these results in the chart below.
Globally, cold deaths are 9 times higher than heat-related ones. In no region is this ratio less than 3, and in many, it’s over 10 times higher. Cold is more deadly than heat, even in the hottest parts of the world.
So while global warming will have many negative impacts that we should mitigate and adapt for, it will also have some benefits and is highly likely to lead to fewer temperature related deaths.
The proportion of cold related deaths to heat related deaths by region is:
| Africa | 11.52% | 0.25% |
| Americas | 5.41% | 0.92% |
| Asia | 8.25% | 0.77% |
| Australia and New Zealand | 9.63% | 1.52% |
| Central Asia | 9.72% | 0.68% |
| East Asia | 10.25% | 0.71% |
| Eastern Europe | 7.96% | 2.41% |
| Europe | 8.07% | 2.19% |
| Latin America and the Caribbean | 4.71% | 1.06% |
| North Africa | 9.17% | 0.56% |
| North America | 6.30% | 0.74% |
| Northern Europe | 7.84% | 1.58% |
| Oceania | 8.45% | 1.67% |
| South Asia | 7.43% | 0.91% |
| South-east Asia | 4.37% | 0.55% |
| Southern Europe | 8.72% | 2.42% |
| Sub-Saharan Africa | 11.85% | 0.20% |
| West Asia | 9.87% | 0.73% |
| Western Europe | 7.88% | 1.84% |
| World | 8.52% | 0.91% |
So there are many good reasons to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. But temperature related deaths is not one of them (until you reach the tipping point when heat deaths exceed cold deaths).