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A comment on Five billion people will face extreme heat at least a month each year by 2050. Parent comment

Re:Five billion people will face extreme heat at least a mon... by somenameforme on Sunday September 10, 2023 @04:07PM (#37459503)
There was a recent study on this issue here. [1] Globally from 2000-2019 there were about 5 million deaths per year associated with "non-optimal" temperatures. This accounted for more about 9.5% of all global deaths. 8.5% of these were because of cold, and less than 1% were due to heat. So if the heat increases, it could be expected to lead to a global reduction in temperature related deaths, which is pretty neat!

The most interesting thing about this study is an initially paradoxical (but not really when you think about it) finding. The most mortality from high temperatures came from Eastern Europe, whereas the most mortality from low temperatures came from Sub-Saharan Africa!

[1] - https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5...

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Re:Five billion people will face extreme heat at least a mon... by ndsipa_pomu on Sunday September 10, 2023 @04:14PM (#37459570)
Deaths due to cold can only decrease so much (i.e. they can't go negative), so it would seem reasonable to assume that increasing deaths due to heat will surpass the deaths due to cold.
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