From ClimateRealism

By H. Sterling Burnett

Governing, a nearly 40-year-old publication focused on informing state and local policy makers, published an article blaming climate change for causing more extreme heat, and detailing ways for city governments to combat heat. The recommendations for mitigating peoples’ heat exposure and limiting harm are pretty good, but its unjustified foray into false climate attribution is distraction from the valuable portion of the story. Climate change is not causing more days of extreme heat, but expanded urban development, and the associated urban heat island effect is raising nighttime temperatures, in some instances, causing problems for the elderly, the homeless, and vulnerable populations with pre-existing health conditions.

In the Governing article, “A Toolkit for Surviving Extreme Heat,” author Carl Smith writes, “[d]angerous heat is coming to more parts of the country than ever.”

“Extreme heat . . . kills more Americans than any other weather event — more than floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes combined,” Smith continues. “Very hot days are a fact of life in states all over the country, but there have been more and more of them in recent years.”

Almost every sentence Smith wrote in his opening paragraphs is wrong.

Real world data recorded by various agencies of the U.S. government shows that extreme heat has not become more frequent or intense in recent years (See the graph, below). As Climate at a Glance: U.S. Heatwaves points out:

• Data indicate heat waves have been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.
• The all-time high temperature records set in most states occurred in the first half of the twentieth century.
• The most accurate nationwide temperature station network, implemented in 2005, shows no sustained increase in daily high temperatures in the United States since at least 2005.

Although U.S. average temperatures have increased slightly, that is due to higher nighttime average temperatures stemming from the urban heat island effect in growing cities and suburbs. The number of extremely hot days is not increasing nor are temperatures on extremely hot days rising higher.

Smith’s assertion that “[e]xtreme heat . . . kills more Americans than any other weather event — more than floods, hurricanes, and tornadoes combined,” is partially right, but essentially wrong. While high temperatures do account for more premature deaths each year than floods, hurricanes, and tornados combined, heat deaths remain far lower than the number of lives lost in the United States and around the world each year to extreme cold. Research conclusively proves that cold weather kills more people each year – 10 to 17 times more depending upon the study – than hot temperatures. (See the chart, below).

In short, since temperatures are not becoming more extreme, climate change can’t be blamed for “[d]angerous heat . . . coming to more parts of the country than ever.”

Despite these fundamental failings of attribution of extreme heat and heat related deaths to climate change, the article does have some redeeming virtues: primarily the recommendations is offers based on the advice of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS). The FAS recommends, for example, requiring air conditioning on school buses and requiring cooling actions if indoor temperature thresholds are crossed, requiring childcare facilities, and I would add nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities, to have indoor temperature standards and working air conditioning to be licensed. The FAS also recommends cities operate cooling centers, perform wellness checks, and ensure critical infrastructure such as water, energy, and transportation facilities are operational during extreme heat events.

Opening suitable public facilities to the homeless during periods of extreme heat and providing water to keep the homeless, the elderly, the destitute, and those with particular sensitivities to heat stress due to preexisting medical conditions hydrated can also mitigate some of the harm to those exposed daily to extreme heat. Some cities are working to find more housing for the homeless, which, if the new housing facilities are air conditioned, would go a long way to reducing heat related deaths.

The point is extreme heat is and always has been a fact of life and does and always has caused premature deaths, climate change hasn’t altered that fact at all. But ways exist now to minimize daily exposure to extreme heat and mitigate it – with air conditioning and the public availability of hydration being the most prominent. The latter is the message Governing should have limited itself to. Had it done so, readers would not have had to wade through a false climate narrative before getting to the recommendations part of the story – making the latter more credible and the story more likely to be read in its entirety by people who are busy.