An Overheated Climate Alarm The White House launches a scary campaign about deadly heat. Guess what: Cold kills more people. By Bjorn Lomborg

Posted By on April 7th, 2016

http://www.wsj.com/articles/an-overheated-climate-alarm-1459984226

The Obama administration released a new report this week that paints a stark picture of how climate change will affect human health. Higher temperatures, we’re told, will be deadly—killing “thousands to tens of thousands” of Americans. The report is subtitled “A Scientific Assessment,” presumably to underscore its reliability. But the report reads as a political sledgehammer that hypes the bad and skips over the good. It also ignores inconvenient evidence—like the fact that cold kills many more people than heat.

Climate change is a genuine problem that will eventually be a net detriment to society. Gradually rising temperatures across decades will increase the number of hot days and heat waves. If humans make no attempts whatsoever to adapt—a curious assumption that the report inexplicably relies on almost throughout—the total number of heat-related deaths will rise. But correspondingly, climate change will also reduce the number of cold days and cold spells. That will cut the total number of cold-related deaths.

Consider a rigorous study published last year in the journal Lancet that examined temperature-related mortality around the globe. The researchers looked at data on more than 74 million deaths in 384 locations across 13 areas: cold countries like Canada and Sweden, temperate nations like Spain, South Korea and Australia, and subtropical and tropical ones like Brazil and Thailand.The Lancet researchers found that about 0.5%—half a percent—of all deaths are associated with heat, not only from acute problems like heat stroke, but also increased mortality from cardiac events and dehydration. But more than 7% of deaths are related to cold—counting hypothermia, as well as increased blood pressure and risk of heart attack that results when the body restricts blood flow in response to frigid temperatures. In the U.S. about 9,000 people die from heat each year but 144,000 die from cold. CONTINUE AT SITE
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