Death Effects of Hot and Cold
John D. Dunn, MD JDJuly 15, 2023
Antonio Gasparinni and many other authors in 2015 published a study in Lancet, the famous British medical journal that is the most comprehensive and authoritative study on the impact of temperature on health and death across the planet Earth. Gasparrini tallied deaths in 384 locations across 13 countries around the world from 1985 to 2012 with the goal to assess the impact of anomalous (above or below expected) temperature changes, both hot and cold on death rates.. Not only does heat kill less people, it does by a wide margin of difference. What Gasparrini found was that “Our findings show that temperature is responsible for advancing a substantial fraction of deaths . . . 7.71% of the mortality. . . Most of the mortality burden was caused by days colder than the optimum temperature (7.29%) compared with days warmer than the optimum temperature (0.42%). So cold produced 17 times the number of deaths compared to hot temperatures. [1]
Gasparrini followed up with a study, also in 2015, of warming deaths published at Environmental Health Perspectives that found that there was a “statistically significant decrease in the relative risk for heat-related mortality in 2006 compared with 1993 in a majority of countries included in the analysis that was attributed to a heightened level of alert for heat illness.” [2]
A March 2023 study in Lancet [3] by Masselot studying anomalous deaths attributable to cold and hot days in 854 cities in Europe found the same phenomenon as Gasparinni’s 2015 worldwide study. For the study period cold produced 203 thousand excess deaths and hot produced 20 thousand excess deaths. Cold produced 10 times the number of deaths as hot.
A 1.5 Centigrade degree increase in the average temperature of the planet predicted by the IPCC in their reports would produce more warming in the middle and higher latitudes as well as night time temperatures—the planet equilibrates that way, an increase would return some of the benefits of ancient higher temperatures that produce a greener planet, particularly if combined with an increase in ambient atmospheric CO2, a vital element in plant photosynthesis. [4]
Warming and carbon dioxide increases invigorate plant life and make barren and poorly productive land more arable. Warmer temperatures would increase evaporative circulation from surface water (think oceans in particular) and that would also contribute to more arable, previously less productive regions. There has been a measurable greening of the Great Sahara
[1]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fullt ext
GOOD GRAPHICS IN THE ARTICLE
[2] https://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/doi/10.1289/ehp.1409070
[3]
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00023-2/fulltex t
[4] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/photosynthesis/
