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 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