Despite what a thinktank bleats to the Coalition, heat deaths are in fact ‘a thing’ | Graham Readfearn

WSo, is this something that is definitely a thing, not a thing? When you are a think tank trying to convince Coalition MPs they should not support policies to help Australia achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

As Guardian Australia reports, the Center for Independent Studies (CIS) made a presentation to coalition MPs in Canberra this week, telling them “heat deaths are not a thing” as part of a briefing aimed at convincing them not to adopt policies aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions to zero.

The CIS is a free market think tank which – like many other think tanks in Australia – does not disclose its funding. More recently, the IEC has criticized Australia’s shift away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, while advocating for nuclear power.

_{Subscribe: Email AU Breaking News}

So what is this thing that isn’t?

A slide presented to MPs was titled “Heat deaths are not a thing” and referenced a technical health report released in September as part of the National Climate Risk Assessment.

The CIS displayed graphs showing estimates of temperature-related deaths in Sydney and Melbourne and claimed the risk of dying from the cold was apparently greater than the risk from extreme heat.

The IEC highlighted the gray part of the curve which shows the risk from current conditions – rather than the green zone which shows the risk if the world reached 3°C of global warming.

The purpose of the risk assessment was to describe the risks of future climate change – or, to put it another way, the green part of the graph is the important part.

This green curve shows how global warming increases the risk of heat-related deaths in both cities.

At 2°C of global warming, the risk assessment indicates the estimated number of heat-related deaths in Sydney would increase by almost 200 per cent. In Melbourne, they would more than double.

A spokesperson for the Australian Climate Service, which compiled the risk assessment, said: “Australia’s National Climate Risk Assessment analyzed a range of risks. [of] across Australia including Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Bundaberg, Sunshine Coast, Townsville, Cairns, Darwin and Perth.

“This analysis shows that an increase in heat-related mortality is likely in all of these locations at a global warming level of 3°C.”

The spokesperson said extreme heat increased the risk “for many of the leading causes of death, including cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, dementia and diabetes.”

“Heat deaths tend to occur over a few days, potentially putting a strain on the healthcare system, while cold deaths tend to be spread over a longer period of time, with lesser impacts on the healthcare system. »

Bad or good timing?

The timing of the think tank’s claim was bad (or perhaps good if you didn’t want MPs paying attention to dispute the claim) given the publication a few days later of a report from the medical journal The Lancet on health and climate change.

Rather than removing heat deaths, the report found that between 2012 and 2021, there were an average of 546,000 heat-related deaths each year globally, an increase of 63% since the 1990s. That’s one death every minute.

Some of this increase was due to population growth, but not all of it. The number of heat-related deaths per 100,000 people increased from 5.9 to 7.2, an increase of 23%.

An Australian fact sheet released with the report reveals an estimated average of 980 deaths per year attributable to heat between 2012 and 2021, an increase of 83% since the 1990s, the report said.

Does more heat just mean fewer cold-related deaths?

Some climate science deniers like to claim that global warming will simply reduce the number of cold-related deaths on the planet. The CIS also drew the attention of the coalition deputies present in the room to the cold deaths.

Estimates vary on this question, but previous studies have suggested that there are more deaths associated with cold than heat.

But Dr Thomas Longden, of the University of Western Sydney, has said for several years that studies significantly underestimate the risk of extreme heat, now and in the future, and that the majority of temperature-related deaths in Australia are caused by heat, not cold.

He argued that data extracted from current death records could lead to a 50-fold underestimate of heat-related deaths and that death records needed to be modernized to include underlying causes.

“Heat deaths are definitely a ‘thing,’” he said. “But we need to be more careful in using statistical methods to measure excess mortality.”

A study published this year examined the net effect of rising global temperatures on temperature-related deaths in more than 800 cities. Would a reduction in cold deaths statistically cancel out the increase in heat deaths?

In most of Europe, the answer was: no. Global warming has led to a sharp net increase in temperature-related deaths.

In total, by the end of the century, global warming would cause between 616,000 and 2.3 million temperature-related deaths, depending on the extent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Heat deaths are just the tip of the iceberg

Australian government data shows that when it comes to extreme weather (think very cold or very hot days, or bushfires and storms), heat caused 7,104 hospitalizations between 2012 and 2022, almost 10 times more visits than cold.

Professor Ollie Jay, director of the Center for Heat and Health Research at the University of Sydney, said heat deaths tended to be concentrated in poorer communities, but the mortality was just the most extreme example of how heat can harm humans.

“Every heat death is preventable,” he said.

“But we know that there is a vast range of non-fatal thermal impacts that profoundly affect life and livelihoods throughout the human lifespan. We can view fatalities as the tip of a very large iceberg.”