This is it - climate change is really beginning to bite

I take your point. It’s not so much now that concerns me, it’s not too hot for a start it’s a nice temp. It’s more the AMOC collapse I’d rather avoid.

Timing on this is vague, a few articles said this year others not for a while, if at all.

Are you always such an obstinate arse?

Extreme heat kills
Extreme cold kills
Extreme winds kill
Extreme rain kills
Extreme drought kills
Extreme weather kills

Extreme weather is happening far more often than it ever has in recorded history.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mortality-insights-from-gad-april-2023/mortality-insights-from-gad-april-2023

"Between 2001 and 2020, the ONS estimates there was a net decrease in deaths associated with warm or cold temperature of around half a million."

It's not remotely comparable to the amount of deaths caused by flooding.

It's funny how in the article it's very difficult to compare the net benefits caused by an increase in temperatures in winter against the net negatives caused by an increase in temperatures in summer, almost as if they don't want to let people know the real numbers. They kind of loosely skirt around the issue to try and avoid directly saying that rising temperatures in winter are a significant benefit.
It's this sort of nonsense that gives the government a bad name on the issue IMO.

Of course correlation is not causation. Decreases in deaths in winter may be due to better housing, better diet, more government schemes etc. COVID has had a massive impact recently. But there seems to me there is little doubt increasing temperatures (no matter what the cause) helps reduce excess deaths in winter and is far more impactful than the increase during summers due to current warm temperatures or any impact due to flooding.

Forgot to add that there are also cargo boats that will take paying passengers.

Climate change means warmer summers, rising sea levels will mean the coast is closer.
Win win

Funny you should say that, I was curious the other week as to whether it was possible to get around the Caribbean without flying. For the larger islands forget it, but between the Lesser Antilles there are companies who offer berths on tall ships (old fashioned sailing ships). I did some sailing around the south coast of England when I was a teenager and loved it. A German friend did a transatlantic crossing when she was a teenager. A bit out of budget but I also saw sailings from Iceland to Greenland - Iceland is accessible by ferry from Denmark.

Anything is better than a cruise liner of course, those floating hotels are dreadful for the planet.

Well I would much rather die from the heat than the cold 😂 and we won't need to waste so much of our hard earned money trying to keep warm.

Floods in the last 20 years have killed a few hundred people directly, but from experience this isn’t the true number of deaths caused by flooding.

When people are evacuated from care homes or their home etc… their medication regime is disrupted and there is a big peak in fatalities in the two weeks after a flood because of it!

There are also the suicides to consider

There is some interesting research

https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/publications/floods-and-cause-specific-mortality-in-the-uk-a-nested-case-control-study/

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30062-1/fulltext

https://www.farmingmonthly.co.uk/news/8641-increased-suicide-risk-amongst-farmers-flooding-aftermath/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flooding-and-health-advice-for-frontline-responders/flooding-and-health-an-overview

@GasPanic

"The warmer winters on average will reduce excess deaths in the UK in winter more than any short duration extreme events will increase them."

Again - that's not the outcome that current projections are pointing to. There will be a small reduction in cold weather related deaths from generally milder winters, but this will be outpaced by a huge increase in heat related deaths.

I don't want to let this one pass because it's misinformation, albeit the kind of misinformation people want to accept because it makes them feel better about what's going on.

Arguing this way about the the average climate not having changed since the '40s involves bad-faith cherry-picking of which dates to compare. To get a sense of the magnitude of temperature changes over time, scroll carefully down the amazingly good XKCD cartoon linked to below.

It shows that in 20000 BCE (the last ice age) temperatures were 4.3C lower on average than the average ones between 1961 and 1990. There was a period around 5000 BCE when temperatures approached the current levels (following a long steady slow rise). For most of human history, the temperature has been stable around the 1961-1990 level. There was a warm period in Europe around 1000 years ago, but that was a local variation and global averages were unaffected.

There was a drop after that of perhaps half a degree until the Industrial Revolution. At that point the hockey-stick curve starts, and the global average has now risen close to 1.5C since that time. It is abrupt and unprecedented in its speed. No amount of trying to explain it away as just natural climate variation Is possible unless you want to completely ignore universally acknowledged scientific facts.

xkcd.com/1732/

Storms and floods don't kill many in the UK.

Unless you look back to 1953 before things like the Thames Flood Barrier.

Floods do cause a lot of economic damage. Which is why investing 20 billion in flood defences is probably much better value than investing 20 billion in carbon capture.

The warmer winters on average will reduce excess deaths in the UK in winter more than any short duration extreme events will increase them.

IMO the only time climate change will lead to more deaths in the UK is either through catastrophic flooding (I don't think this will happen as although there is a lot of low level flooding in the UK large events that are likely to hit big cities and make a significant difference to the statistics are mitigated) or via indirect effects such as food supply shortages.

It's unclear to me whether in isolation climate change will be good or bad for the UK. There is probably a fairly strong argument that if we can't stop climate change (my belief is we can't) we should be investing less in silly technologies like carbon capture and more in mitigating infrastructure like flood defences and drainage. Increasing our food supply independence would probably be smart too.

It’s interesting that people are only talking about the impact of climate change on temperature and not the impact it has on generating more extreme storms, more extreme rainfall and droughts!

Storms not only kill people, but damages our infrastructure and impacts businesses and the wider economy.

eciu.net/analysis/briefings/climate-impacts/flood-risk-and-the-uk

@GasPanic

"So my guess is if the temperature rise on average it will actually reduce the number of deaths due to weather, as the increased deaths in hot weather will be matched by the decreased deaths in cold weather."

That's not what climate projections show.

They show that there will be more of ALL extreme weather events, cold, heat, flooding, high winds, droughts, not fewer.

@Fearfulsaints

"I think what people are suggesting is that if climate change means we get a lot of hot weather much more often in the uk we might need to start thinking about how we help the elderely/vulnerable in heat over an above saying well 'the world' just gets on with it. When all the evidence is the world loses a lot of the vulnerable in heat and a lot of the world are concerned about it getting worse."

I think the problem is that the venn diagram of those who don't believe man made climate change is real/a problem, and those who quietly approve of vulnerable people being culled by pandemics/natural events, is a circle.

But we generally try and prevent deaths from avoidable things in the UK.

So we recognise that someone dying of cold in a country where heating exists is a bit shit. We give winter fuel payments to the elderly on pension credit, my council opened warm hubs, we also have insulation standards, people on the news literally say check on your elderly neighbours during freak cold snaps. My disabled friend is on some thing where if the electric goes put he is a priority to get it running again due to he can't get cold. He also can't get hot but it doesn't cover heat soecifically (doen syndrome, wheelchair users non verbal heart and kidney problems). There are often insulation and boiler grants for the vulnerable.

I think what people are suggesting is that if climate change means we get a lot of hot weather much more often in the uk we might need to start thinking about how we help the elderely/vulnerable in heat over an above saying well 'the world' just gets on with it. When all the evidence is the world loses a lot of the vulnerable in heat and a lot of the world are concerned about it getting worse.

.

Are they the same people who thought men could really change into women?

Ah no, that was left wing mugs......

Deaths related to cold weather in the UK far outnumber those from hot weather.

A quick scan on the internet suggests 25-50x more.

So my guess is if the temperature rise on average it will actually reduce the number of deaths due to weather, as the increased deaths in hot weather will be matched by the decreased deaths in cold weather.

@SouthernNights59

"And no-one ever died from the cold, did they?"

Extreme heat and extreme cold are hazardous for vulnerable people, which is why the increase in the intense weather events that is likely the result of climate change is particularly concerning for this demographic, or anyone who thinks about or cares about the welfare of vulnerable people. That's obviously not you as you keep demonstrating on this thread with your 'who CARES about the weather!' posts.

And no-one ever died from the cold, did they?

Only a complete idiot would laugh at this.

Only right wing mugs think climate change isn't real. If reform get in we will definitely not be prepared for what is to come.

You understand that very high temperatures are dangerous for vulnerable people everywhere?

https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-change-heat-and-health

"Between 2000–2019 studies show approximately 489 000 heat-related deaths occur each year, with 45% of these in Asia and 36% in Europe (2). In Europe alone in the summer of 2022, an estimated 61 672 heat-related excess deaths occurred (3). High intensity heatwave events can bring high acute mortality; in 2003, 70 000 people in Europe died as a result of the June–August event. In 2010, 56 000 excess deaths occurred during a 44–day heatwave in the Russian Federation."

I think we have had quite enough of experts.

How are you going to decarbonise aviation then?

Sail the world.