Cold is not your friend

Not Eden

Comment on this Hannah Ritchie post on disasters:

Most global studies estimate that ~9 times more people die from extreme cold than extreme heat. It follows that warming will reduce deaths from extreme temperatures.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00023-2/fulltext

Indeed this has been reported for the UK for the period 2001-2021, during which 500,000 lives were saved by warming.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/articles/climaterelatedmortalityandhospitaladmissionsenglandandwales/1988to2022

There was a furious reaction to the initial report and the ONS were forced to revise it to disguise this inconvenient fact. It can be seen if you look at the data but was erased from the summary section.

What these data show is that we should focus more on preventing deaths from extreme cold as well as extreme heat. This involves better housing and accessible and affordable energy, especially electricity.

Any measures that decrease economic growth and/or decrease the affordability/ availability/ reliability of electricity will increase deaths from extreme temperatures.