{"id":50936,"date":"2023-06-27T11:39:31","date_gmt":"2023-06-27T15:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=50936"},"modified":"2023-06-27T11:39:31","modified_gmt":"2023-06-27T15:39:31","slug":"about-that-climate-change-thing-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=50936","title":{"rendered":"About That Climate Change Thing…"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, The Federalist<\/a> posted an article about the deadly summer heat Americans experience in the summer.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

“Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard,\u201d is the first claim in this Washington Post piece<\/a> warning about the deadly summer heat \u2014 and it is almost certainly false.<\/strong><\/p>\n

First off, the only reason \u201cextreme\u201d temperature kills more people than other weather hazards is that deaths from weather have<\/a> plummeted<\/a> over the century, even as doomsday climate warnings about heat, hurricanes, tornados, floods, and droughts have spiked. Extreme weather accounts for only about<\/a> 0.1 death for every 100,000 people in the United States each year. The Post should be celebrating the fact that humans have never been less threatened by the climate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Post warns that 30 million people in the U.S. may be \u201cexposed\u201d to dangerous heat \u201ctoday.\u201d That\u2019s a lot of people, even considering nearly all of them live in the southernmost spots in the country and it\u2019s the middle of the summer. The Post counts anyone exposed to heat over 90 degrees as being in some level of danger. Fortunately, most Americans enjoy<\/a> the luxury and health benefits of air-conditioning, one of the great innovations of the past century.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nowhere in the piece, however, do the authors tell us exactly how many Americans have perished from the oppressive heat. Anyway, it\u2019s around<\/a> 700 people a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention \u2014 if you liberally count heat as both the \u201cunderlying\u201d and\/or \u201ccontributing\u201d causes. It is about 400 people<\/a> when heat is the underlying cause. And that\u2019s terrible. But, also, it\u2019s around 3,600 fewer people than those who drown<\/a> every year.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article also notes:<\/p>\n

And most of those deaths, despite the Post\u2019s claim, are from the cold<\/em>, which is far more lethal. I come to this information via a Washington Post piece that ran this very winter<\/a>, which noted that for \u201cevery death linked to heat, nine are tied to cold.\u201d That piece relied on a peer-reviewed Lancet study. Another peer-reviewed study<\/a> in The BMJ found that \u201ccold weather is associated with nearly 20 times more deaths than hot weather.\u201d Other studies have come to the same conclusion.<\/strong><\/p>\n

During extreme heat, you have the option of filling up the bathtub and sitting in it until you cool down. During cold weather, if you lose power and have no way to heat your house, it will be a matter of hours before you either have to leave your home or find some way to keep your family warm.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Friday, The Federalist posted an article about the deadly summer heat Americans experience in the summer. The article reports: “Extreme heat kills more people in the United States than any other weather hazard,\u201d is the first claim in this … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16713,11815,8367],"class_list":["post-50936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-extreme-heat","tag-the-federalist","tag-the-washington-post"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=50936"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50936\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50937,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50936\/revisions\/50937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}