Few topics in the modern day are more contentious than that of climate change. Well, let’s face it, almost every topic is contentious today but climate stability has been the subject of much debate for decades and that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon.
This fact has just recently been demonstrated yet again by a recent study released by Bjorn Lomborg that looks at the effects of climate change. One part in particular is interesting, which would be the graph.
The graph in question shows the number of deaths related to climate plotted out from 1920 to 2020. Climate-related deaths here means anything involving flood, droughts, wildfires, extreme hot or cold temperatures, and storms.
This graph has garnered a great deal of attention because it shows the deaths going from around 250 per million per year in 1920 to virtually none today. Many people are looking at this graph and deciding that climate change isn’t anything to be concerned about.
On the face of it, this isn’t a totally unreasonable conclusion. However, there are a couple of important points to emphasize. The first and most significant is that no one should be reaching conclusions about anything based on one graph, or on any other single point of data for that matter. The second point is related, one graph, while reflecting something true doesn’t necessarily take any number of other data points into consideration.
What do we mean? First, for the sake of argument, we’ll take the numbers presented for granted, that the numbers of climate-related deaths for each year are what the graph says they are. After all, the article is only a few pages and there isn’t time or space here to dig deep into the methodology. Second, we should stop and consider some reasons that climate-related deaths might have gone down other than climate change not being a thing. After all, even if we don’t take other factors into consideration, the graph doesn’t really argue against the idea of climate change. Rather, it would seem to argue that climate has gotten better, which virtually no one believes.
What are some of these other factors we should consider? These are mostly centered on the fact we have made a lot of material advances in the last hundred years. Our medical treatments have improved by leaps and bounds since 1920, dramatically improving life expectancies. We live longer and healthier so what once might have been major changes in air quality or temperature swings can be managed by individuals much better than before.
Housing for vast numbers of people has improved as well. While once, a major thunderstorm could have destroyed rudimentary shacks out on the prairie killing everyone inside, now there are sturdy homes with concrete basements that can handle anything short of a tornado.
Disaster response has also gotten much better. While today, helicopters deliver pallets of sandbags to flood zones practically on demand or patrol areas looking for people to rescue, or airplanes dump tons of water scooped out of a local lake onto a wildfire, such technology didn’t even exist outside of a notebook in 1920.
Related to that is the fact there have been major migrations to the cities which by their nature are less susceptible to climate-related issues. A big contributor is the rise in quality and affordable heating and cooling. In 1920, the relief from a blistering hot summer was a breeze or a cool stream, not turning up the AC. It’s the same with heating. How many people froze to death in 1920 while it is practically unheard of today?
None of these things seem to be considered in this graph of death rates, yet factors like this are necessary to get the whole picture. That’s why TARTLE is such a proponent of getting accurate data from as many direct sources as possible. When you are dealing with large samples of high quality source data, you get a better and less skewed view of the whole picture.
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