Across 30 countries heatwaves kill 20,000 people in European cities every year (and cold kills 200,000 but nevermind.)
The new paper by Pierre Masselot et al, is another round of medical investigation showing cold is somewhere between six and twenty times as deadly as heat is. Other studies looked at various countries, or specific regions. This study looked at cities across the whole of Europe. It was pretty big, covering 854 cities of 50,000 or more, and about 40% of the European population.
They picked cities because they are “particularly affected by environmental stressors and potential impacts of climate change”. So they’re admitting they looked at the worst possible living conditions for heat deaths. Obviously cities will be hotter than farms and ski resorts — so if heat deaths were a problem, this study would show it, except it didn’t.
Nobody mention coal, oil or gas…
Mysteriously Northern people in frigid climates were strangely “adaptable” to the cold compared to people in Eastern Europe. What could it be that helps people in Scandinavia deal with the cold so much better than people in Bulgaria?
Northern countries showed the lowest risks for heat but also relatively low vulnerability to cold given the much higher exposure to low temperatures, suggesting an adaptive capacity to rigid cold climates, especially when compared with countries in the eastern region.
The authors have many suggestions, none starting with f or rhyming with “cruel”:
The disparities observed in vulnerability to heat and cold could be associated with a number of factors, including the local climate, urban heat island effects, access to health care, or land cover (eg, the accessibility of water or trees). Previous studies have found associations between vulnerability to heat and green areas, PM2·5, population density, or economic inequalities.
Big-Government killed science
So this is modern “peer reviewed” science, packed with data, published in a supposedly “great” journal but speaking nonsense, and seemingly avoiding the obvious conclusions at every step.
In 2015 the giant Gasparrini paper showing that among 74 million people, cold kills 20 times as many people as heat does. But the government monopoly stranglehold is so strong these researchers cite that paper with no mention of the astronomical numbers — saying just that it “shows heat and cold are well established health risk factors.” Oh yes indeedy. They follow that with the ritual nonsensical incantation: ” The associated health burden is expected to increase with climate change.” How does that work in anyone’s head? Cold causes 95% of temperature related deaths but if we warm the world, more people will die?
As usual the study was funded by organizations that spend trillions on policies to “cool” the world, yet the authors declare they have “no competing interests”.
The study was funded by Medical Research Council of the UK (MR/V034162/1 and MR/R013349/1), the Natural Environment Research Council UK (NE/R009384/1), the EU’s Horizon 2020 (820655), and the EU’s Joint Research Center (JRC/SVQ/2020/MVP/1654). AU and JK were supported by the Czech Science Foundation (22–24920S).
The numbers:
Across the 30 countries, we estimated an annual average excess of 203 620 (empirical 95% CI 180 882 to 224 613) deaths due to cold and 20 173 (17 261 to 22 934) due to heat, which amount to attributable fractions of 7·01% (6·23 to 7·73) and 0·69% (0·59 to 0·79), respectively.
REFERENCES
Masselot et al (2023) Excess mortality attributed to heat and cold: a health impact assessment study in 854 cities in Europe, The Lancet, DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00023-2
Antonio Gasparrini et al. (2015) Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study. The Lancet, May 2015 DOI: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)62114-0. Full PDF.
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