I don’t agree with your points on natural disasters. I am going to post below the charts from OWID on weather-related deaths, including absolute numbers and per capita numbers. Some comments:
These numbers are (now thankfully) small, falling well well short of catastrophe.
There have been massive declines in the absolute and per person risk from the most threatenting risks (droughts, floods). This is due to economic development.
To characterise the trend in flood deaths as anything other than a dramatic downward trend seems clearly wrong.
For all the media discussion of wildfires and a world on fire, we have passed 1 degree and wildfire deaths are 140 per year, which is far exceeded by the number of people who die falling off ladders. Perhaps not today, but at some point the media and the scientific community are going to face scrutiny for exaggerating on climate change.
Extreme temperature deaths are increasing, but this would (I assume) include cold-related deaths and heat-related deaths. According to Zhao et al, cold-related deaths are 9x heat-related deaths today, so one would expect the 1C we have already experienced to have reduced the death toll. In the absence of climate change, the increase would be more pronounced. (I haven’t looked into the data source though)
There is large net migration (i.e. in the millions of people) to low lying coastal areas in Asia that are most vulnerable to coastal storms. This, rather than climate change significantly confounds trends in per capita or total storm deaths. Nevertheless, storm deaths are at historic lows for any ten or twenty year period in the 20th Century.
As indicated by your comment, if your concern is reducing deaths from climate change, the main thing to do seems to be to increase economic growth in poor countries given that is what drove the massive decline in weather-related deaths over the last 200 years.
I again genuinely appreciate this feedback, and what I said above also applies here: we’ll revisit the content with your comments in mind and will likely make some changes. Because I’ve already given some object-level discussion in this thread, I wanted to provide a response to this claim:
For all the media discussion of wildfires and a world on fire, we have passed 1 degree and wildfire deaths are 140 per year, which is far exceeded by the number of people who die falling off ladders. Perhaps not today, but at some point the media and the scientific community are going to face scrutiny for exaggerating on climate change.
Whilst you’re correct that direct deaths from wildfires are low, these are not what primarily drive deaths caused by wildfires; the indirect effects from wildfires (via air pollution) are much larger.
For instance, Ye, et al (2022) attributes over 130,000 deaths to wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure in Brazil from 2000-2016 (>8,000 per year), and Chen et al (2021) seemingly attributes around 30,000 deaths per year from 2000-2016 to wildfire-caused pollution, globally.
It is difficult for me to verify every assumption in these papers, but even if they’re significant overestimates, it’s clear that indirect deaths from wildfires vastly outnumber direct deaths. Several other papers that directionally support this point (with a fairly wide range between estimates):
Of course, the extent to which climate change drives wildfires, both now and into the future as warming increases, is an important crux in how many of these deaths we should attribute to climate change. But, when evaluating the importance of wildfires themselves (e.g. when thinking about adaptation), looking just at the direct harms will lead us to significantly underestimate their impact.
I don’t agree with your points on natural disasters. I am going to post below the charts from OWID on weather-related deaths, including absolute numbers and per capita numbers. Some comments:
These numbers are (now thankfully) small, falling well well short of catastrophe.
There have been massive declines in the absolute and per person risk from the most threatenting risks (droughts, floods). This is due to economic development.
To characterise the trend in flood deaths as anything other than a dramatic downward trend seems clearly wrong.
For all the media discussion of wildfires and a world on fire, we have passed 1 degree and wildfire deaths are 140 per year, which is far exceeded by the number of people who die falling off ladders. Perhaps not today, but at some point the media and the scientific community are going to face scrutiny for exaggerating on climate change.
Extreme temperature deaths are increasing, but this would (I assume) include cold-related deaths and heat-related deaths. According to Zhao et al, cold-related deaths are 9x heat-related deaths today, so one would expect the 1C we have already experienced to have reduced the death toll. In the absence of climate change, the increase would be more pronounced. (I haven’t looked into the data source though)
There is large net migration (i.e. in the millions of people) to low lying coastal areas in Asia that are most vulnerable to coastal storms. This, rather than climate change significantly confounds trends in per capita or total storm deaths. Nevertheless, storm deaths are at historic lows for any ten or twenty year period in the 20th Century.
As indicated by your comment, if your concern is reducing deaths from climate change, the main thing to do seems to be to increase economic growth in poor countries given that is what drove the massive decline in weather-related deaths over the last 200 years.
I again genuinely appreciate this feedback, and what I said above also applies here: we’ll revisit the content with your comments in mind and will likely make some changes. Because I’ve already given some object-level discussion in this thread, I wanted to provide a response to this claim:
Whilst you’re correct that direct deaths from wildfires are low, these are not what primarily drive deaths caused by wildfires; the indirect effects from wildfires (via air pollution) are much larger.
For instance, Ye, et al (2022) attributes over 130,000 deaths to wildfire-related PM2.5 exposure in Brazil from 2000-2016 (>8,000 per year), and Chen et al (2021) seemingly attributes around 30,000 deaths per year from 2000-2016 to wildfire-caused pollution, globally.
It is difficult for me to verify every assumption in these papers, but even if they’re significant overestimates, it’s clear that indirect deaths from wildfires vastly outnumber direct deaths. Several other papers that directionally support this point (with a fairly wide range between estimates):
Kollanus et al (2016): >1,000 deaths in Europe in both 2005 and 2008
Neumann et al (2021): 720 deaths per year in Western US, 1996-2005
Pan et al (2023): 4,000 deaths per year in US, 2012-2014
Johnston et.al (2015): 339,000 global deaths per year, 1997-2006 (from landscape fires—a broader category than wildfires)
Roberts & Wooster (2021): 677,745 global deaths per year, 2016-2019 (also from landscape fires)
Of course, the extent to which climate change drives wildfires, both now and into the future as warming increases, is an important crux in how many of these deaths we should attribute to climate change. But, when evaluating the importance of wildfires themselves (e.g. when thinking about adaptation), looking just at the direct harms will lead us to significantly underestimate their impact.
Yes, those are good points