Friday, 30 December 2016
Global Warming Alarmist NY Times Discovers Cold Is 17 Times Deadlier
Written by William F. Jasper

Even the New York Times, one of the biggest sources of fake news on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, or AGW, occasionally gets facts straight and the story right. Or, at least, partially straight and mostly right. Such is the case with the Times’ recent stories by Jane E. Brody on December 19 and December 26 regarding the death toll risks from cold weather versus hot weather. In her December 19 column, titled, “Beware: Winter Is Coming,” Ms. Brody cited an important study from The Lancet, the British medical journal, that found “Cold kills” as she put it — and at a rate 17 times that of hot weather.

The Lancet study was the result of a mammoth project involving over 20 researchers from many different countries analyzing data from 384 locations in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Italy, Japan, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK, and the USA. They analyzed over 74 million deaths in various periods between 1985 and 2012.

“While casualties resulting from heat waves receive wide publicity, deaths from bouts of extreme cold rarely do, and those resulting from ordinary winter weather warrant virtually no attention,” Brody reports. “Yet an international study covering 384 locations in 13 countries, including the United States, found that cold weather is responsible, directly or indirectly, for 17 times more deaths than hot weather.”

“In winter in the United States, mortality is generally 10 percent to 15 percent higher than on typical summer days,” the Times reporter notes.

“How, you may wonder, does cold exact its deadly toll?,” Brody asks, and then answers. “About half of cold-related deaths result from blood clots that cause heart attacks and strokes, the British researchers reported. Blood becomes more concentrated during exposure to cold because blood flow to the skin is reduced to conserve body heat. This results in an excess of blood in the central parts of the body.”

The Times article continues:

To counter the excess volume, salt and water move from the blood into the tissue spaces, leaving behind “increased levels of red cells, white cells, platelets and fibrinogen” — thickened blood that is more likely to clot. Blood pressure, an important risk factor for heart attacks and strokes, also tends to rise with exposure to cold.

During cold weather, people typically spend more time indoors and congregate in smaller spaces. This helps to spread respiratory infections like cold, flu and pneumonia that can take a heavy toll among people with underlying chronic ailments like heart disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, asthma and even cancer and dementia.

The fact that cold weather is much more deadly to humans (as well as plants and animals) than hot weather is not really news; The New American has reported on the extensive research proving this truth a number of times over the past several years: Forget Global Warming; COLD Kills; Heat or Cold: Which Is More Deadly?; Hundreds Die in Cold Waves — Media Keep Flogging Global Warming { http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/envir...-global-warming }.

Brody’s Times article, however, implicitly accepts that global warming is continuing. She writes: “Over time, milder winter temperatures are likely to result in fewer cold-related deaths, a benefit that could outweigh a smaller rise in heat-caused mortality.”

Warmer, milder winters would indeed be a good thing (fewer weather-related deaths, longer growing seasons, increased agricultural yields), but we have no assurance that this will happen, despite the non-stop AGW alarms claiming that our planet is in dire danger of total meltdown. In fact, now even many of the most prominent alarmists admit there has been no measurable global temperature rise over the past two decades — during the very period they have been crying “WOLF!!” in ever louder and more urgent tones. The failure of global temperatures to rise as predicted by the alarmists is variously and euphemistically referred to in the scientific literature as a “hiatus,” “pause,” “lull,” or “standstill.” ( http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/envir...arming-on-pause )

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http://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/envir...-times-deadlier