From ClimateRealism

By Linnea Lueken

A recent post by Just The News reports that a new Congressional Budget office (CBO) report estimates that modest future warming will avoid millions of temperature-related deaths, because the decrease in very cold days will result in fewer hospitalizations. This tracks with other research, and it is very good that the CBO and Just the News are acknowledging this fact.

In “Global warming will result in 2.5 million fewer elderly deaths over the next 50 years: report,” journalist Kevin Killough explains the CBO report predicts that warming will “reduce emergency room visits and spending in cooler regions,  increase both outcomes in regions with moderate climates, and increase emergency room visits but reduce spending in the hottest regions.”

One thing that makes this report, and the Just The News piece covering it, different than other times the media has reported on temperature-related deaths is that they acknowledge that adaptation and technology will assist in reducing them. A great point—seeing as data show deaths from extreme weather of any kind have dropped by 99 percent since the 1920s. Much of this is because of technology like air conditioning, central heating, and improvements to medical technology and expanded access to that care.

The CBO report, refreshingly, uses modelled scenarios that are “intermediate” like SSP2-4.5, with the high emissions scenario modelled by SSP3-7.0, rather than the impossible RCP8.5. The report explains that the “reduction in deaths is driven by warmer regions, which will experience fewer cold days and are projected to further adapt to hot days as their average climate gets hotter.”

Their estimate says that even without adaptations to temperature shifts, “the direction of the changes in outcomes would largely be the same, but their magnitudes would differ.” (See figure below)

Over and over, the mainstream media has hyped studies that predict larger numbers of heat-related deaths in the future, while downplaying the impact that modest warming has already had on reducing cold-related deaths. As Climate Realism has pointed out numerous times, and Climate At A Glance: Temperature Related Deaths illustrates with data, the number of lives saved as cold deaths decline vastly outnumber any increase in heat-related deaths. Net mortality is reduced amid modest warming, not increased. (See figure below) One study found that although approximately 600,000 people die of heat globally every year, 4.5 million die from cold.

It is not news to any readers of Climate Realism that deaths of the elderly are actually projected to decrease over the next few decades, but it is very important that Just The News publicized the CBO report.

Many people are not aware of any good news at all when it comes to the weather, being fed mostly alarmist propaganda from major outlets. It is also impressive that a government agency, even one under a Republican administration, is willing to publish an entire report demonstrating that climate-related issues are multifaceted.