“Deadly heat stress could threaten hundreds of millions”
By Paul Homewood
h/t Patsy Lacey
Deadly heat stress is projected to affect hundreds of millions more people each year under relatively little additional climate warming. The Paris Agreement commits the international community to limit global warming to no more than 2℃ above pre-industrial (late 19th century) air temperatures, with an aspirational target of 1.5℃. In our latest research, which looked at the impact of global temperature rises on megacities, we found that even if 1.5℃ is achieved, large increases in the frequency of deadly heat are expected.
By 2050 about 350m more people living in megacities could be exposed to deadly heat each year.
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/deadly-heat-stress-could-threaten-190011364.html
Seeing as how we are told the world is already 1C warmer than those idyllic pre-industrial times, I might ask where all of the hundreds of millions are, who must already be dying.
In reality, of course, the UHI effect in big cities must totally dwarf the odd tenth of a degree resulting from any global warming, and it is that which needs attention.
But what Mr Matthews forgets to tell us is that cold weather kills many, many more times as many people as hot weather does, as this study in the Lancet proved in 2015:
Cold weather is 20 times as deadly as hot weather, and it’s not the extreme low or high temperatures that cause the most deaths, according to a study published Wednesday.
The study found the majority of deaths occurred on moderately hot and moderately cold days instead of during extreme temperatures.
"Although the risk of mortality due to extremely cold or hot days is actually higher, they are less frequent," said lead author Antonio Gasparrini of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.
The study — published in the British journal The Lancet — analyzed data on more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012. Of those, 5.4 million deaths were related to cold, while 311,000 were related to heat.
Because the study included countries under different socio-economic backgrounds and with varying climates, it was representative of temperature-related deaths worldwide, the study said. The sharp distinction between heat- and cold-related deaths is because low temperatures cause more problems for the body’s cardiovascular and respiratory systems, it added.
"Public-health policies focus almost exclusively on minimizing the health consequences of heat waves," Gasparrini said. "Our findings suggest that these measures need to be refocused and extended to take account of a whole range of effects associated with temperature."
This report backs up a U.S. study last year from the National Center for Health Statistics, which found that cold kills more than twice as many Americans as heat
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2015/05/20/cold-weather-deaths/27657269/
And this does not only apply to colder regions. As the analysis shows, countries like Spain and Thailand share the same phenomenon.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
Meanwhile, thanks to the advantages of our modern, fossil fuelled society, the death rate in countries such as India have plummeted since 1960:
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.DYN.CDRT.IN?end=2014&locations=IN&start=1960&view=chart
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
The heat of public opinion?
Our models show that if bad things happen, things will be bad.
Can it get any more banal?
Golly… the climate models project what is expected? But the Paris Agreement won’t help…even if the expected targets are reached thousands of years from now? Seems like those agreements should be ignored, dropped? Use the substantially projected funds expected to be saved for something that can actually be done.
“By 2050 about 350m more people living in megacities ….”
Yup Paul, you hit it in 1, UHI.
Ban mega-cities!
In terms both of body count and speciation, hugely greater numbers than anywhere else inhabit the hot tropical latitudes. Curious that greeny pinkos never seem to notice this.
A scary new climate gremlin to file alongside ‘ocean acidification, ‘sea level rise’, ‘Polar sea ice collapse” and ‘oxygen depletion’ has been a little overdue. Better late than never.
I would have to conclude, from his concern, that he most assuredly would be supportive of lower cost energy so these poor people that are going to be stressed by an increase in temperature of 1.5 degrees, can find adequate A/C space to survive in. Surely he’s not expressing a need to have even higher cost energy, right?
I live in hot, hot, HOT, Phoenix, Arizona, and I love it here. Summers are a bit warm, but stay inside in the AC; lounge by the pool, and when you go outside for a walk or hike, wear long sleeves and an undershirt and a hat preferably broad-brimmed. Drink a lot of water. No biggie. I finished building a nice pergola out by my pool and am already having a wonderful bar-b-que season. Warm weather is just fine.
As a species which evolved in the Tropics, hot weather is our natural thing!
It seems ironic that a warming “climate” is highly dangerous, but when the Arctic warms that’s highly dangerous also? But, saving UHI lives with fossil fuel-CFC provided air-conditioning keeps many “carbon feet” alive and adding more “feet” along with that “polluting” CO2? Avoiding eating meat but killing “polluting” CO2-sequestering vegetation to eat instead? Have a few well-funded inmates bought the asylum?
On Friday t’missus and I are jetting off to somewhere hopefully several degrees warmer than North Yorkshire.
Does that mean we’re going to die?
Thing is, we do this at least twice a year, and we haven’t yet.
In fact, we both find that we improve quite substantially for a spell in a warm climate.
Can anyone explain how a 2C increase in temperature (even if such a thing happened, which obviously it won’t) can cause “hundreds of millions” to suffer extreme heat etc etc etc.
What do they do on a warm day already?
It’s astonishing that anyone believes this risible nonsense.
Spain has always been a warm place (apart from the North West). This article is definitely tilting at windmills, seems a little…Quixotic. When Brits escaped to southern Spain, to come out from under the British cloud, the effect on those travellers was totally admirable and therapeutic.
2℃ is the difference in temperature between your feet & head levels in still air.
While we all understand it is natural – except for man-made UHI – today on Iceagenow is the suggestion that a mega El Nino is coming. This is a double-edged sword in that the Warmists will be wetting themselves – partially due to unexpected precipitation – that temps will rise up to near record levels again, but the Peruvian scientist says that the source of the hot water is underwater volcanoes that have become more active due to the arrival of solar minimum. So it has a natural cause but when has that ever stopped the warmist scammers.