Many alarmists would have you believe bad weather only began after the invention of the SUV. But as Chapter 10 of the last summer’s contrarian US Department of Energy climate report notes, not only have weather disasters been happening for a long time, because of adaptation they are far less damaging than they used to be. For instance, in 1900 the Galveston hurricane killed over 8,000 people (0.01 percent of the population) whereas the worst such storm in recent times, Hurricane Katrina, killed 1,800 people or 0.0006 percent of the population. Because we now have early warning systems, satellite monitoring, better infrastructure and, we would like to add, fossil fuel-powered vehicles to evacuate areas and send in emergency response crews, the death toll from weather disasters has fallen to all-time lows. But what of the future? The DoE team look at health-related mortality and point out a rather inconvenient fact: cold, not heat, is and will remain the big killer.
The DoE authors cite Environmental Protection Agency research showing that from 1999 to 2015 cold weather killed twice as many Americans as hot weather. And globally the contrast is even stronger:
“A 13-country study of 74 million deaths from 1985 to 2012 estimated that, on average, 7.7 percent of deaths were attributable to sub-optimal temperatures, of which 7.4 percent were attributable to cold and only 0.4 percent were attributable to heat (Gasparini et al. 2015). In other words, cold weather killed 18.5 times as many people as did hot weather.”
Additionally, research shows that people have learned to adapt to weather risks, and continue to do so. They cite a series of studies showing that in US cities, adaptive measures have reduced mortality risks by 60-90 percent, including among the elderly, since the 1960s. And they point out that the IPCC, in its latest Assessment Report, misleads readers on the subject. While in one section of the report they acknowledge that heat-related mortality has “declined over time in most countries owing to general improvements in health care systems, increasing prevalence of residential air conditioning, and behavioral changes”, elsewhere they focus only on mortality risks due to heat wave events:
“Yet the IPCC misrepresents the overall situation in its AR6 Synthesis report. Section A.2.5 of that document states: ‘In all regions increases in extreme heat events have resulted in human mortality and morbidity (very high confidence).’ But it is silent on the larger decline of deaths during extreme cold events.”
That decline being due to adaptation as well as the trivial warming since 1850. The DoE team then go on to make the important point that adaptation, to extreme heat as to extreme cold, depends on having access to affordable energy. The introduction of affordable heating and air conditioning is the primary means of reducing the risks of extreme weather. But low-income households are less likely to use air conditioning in hot weather compared to high-income households due to the cost:
“The implication is that even with widespread adoption of home heating and cooling systems, inability to afford energy leaves low-income households exposed to weather extremes.”
Thus climate policy that raises energy costs and leaves people worse off makes them, especially if they are poor, more susceptible to extreme weather of every kind. Which is why we think the best climate policies are those that make energy affordable and promote growth in income and prosperity. And as so often, the best policy of all is honesty.
Next week: Climate change and economic growth
