Climate change could double U.S. temperature-linked deaths by mid-century | Currently, an estimated 8,000-plus deaths in the United States every year are associated with extreme temperatures, both hot and cold. Within the next few decades, that number could double or even triple, largely due to heat
Climate change could double U.S. temperature-linked deaths by mid-century
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>With help from previously developed projections of what temperatures and population sizes will be like decades from now, the team then estimated the number of deaths associated with extreme temperature in the middle of the 21st century for each hypothetical future.
>By 2036 to 2065, the annual number of deaths could double in a future with a lower increase in emissions, or triple in one with a higher increase in emissions, the team found.
[Read more here](https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-change-double-temperature-death) and [the study here. ](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2823849?guestAccessKey=b230898d-3a7f-4c5c-91f5-09a4f1ed76a5&utm_source=for_the_media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=092024)
On the flip side, how many currently die of exposure/cold, that won’t in a warmer future?
8,000 a year. That is almost a rounding error. 400,000 die from medical mistakes every year.
Heat deaths are like plane crash. They make the news and go from almost 0 to hundreds very quick only to go back to almost 0.
Cold deaths are like cars accidents, rarely make the news, but much more people die in car accidents than in plane crashes, and much more people in total die from cold than from heat.
The difference is that people rarely die from the extreme cold snaps, but people often die from extreme heat waves, and vice versa, people rarely die from prolonged moderate heat, but mortality during prolonged moderate cold is way higher than during moderate heat.
Pick your poison.
That 8,000 is likely far far lower than a real count, but that so many of the extra deaths are only counted as the primary/most obvious factor. Heat stress increases risk for all manner of cardiac events, stroke, respiratory issues, even diabetes.
*Could*… Titles with scary sounding headlines that use Could / Might / Possibly are the science paper version of clickbait.
485 million years of climate change on Earth:
[https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adk3705)
Take a good look at that chart: [https://imgur.com/a/GhlbNNe](https://imgur.com/a/GhlbNNe)