Tuesday
Nov262013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Far unfit to bear the bitter cold
Nov 26, 2013 Climate: WG2 
The FT reports that excess winter deaths have risen by 29% over the previous year, a figure that is at once astonishing and entirely predictable.
The Office for National Statistics estimates that there were 31,000 excess winter deaths in England and Wales in 2012/13, a rise of 29 per cent on the previous year.
Last March was the coldest since 1962, with an average temperature of 2.2°C, and the second coldest since 1910.
The majority of the excess deaths (25,000) occurred among those aged 75 or above.
Reader Comments (78)
The problem with these figures is what is mean't by premature, 3 months or 3 years, it makes a difference. So I doubt the true figure is 25K but significantly less as would the same stats for a heatwave. But even with that caveat there will be more people dying in future winters because of the Green Taxes on energy.
I have competition?
James Grainer spokesman for UK Uncut.
They had a protest in Trafalgar Square today with the so called Fuel Poverty Action group who are sponsored by Shale Gas Hating Lush Cosmetics.
http://bhesco.co.uk/category/news/
Check out their website they are Environmentalist masquerading as Fuel poverty campaigners .They were in the forefront at the demonstrations in Balcombe are campaign against the New Hinkley Point Nuclear power station.They just cynically want to fight fuel poverty with more wasteful investment in local Renewable Energy.Don't be fooled by these people
Ben Pile rightly points out High Fuel Bills David Cameron and the Environmentalist have realized that "Green Crap" has toxified their own brand Poisoned by themselves with their own Lefty Sanctimonious Arrogance and Ignorance.
The Sun Newspaper with its Stop Green Subsidies Petition Don't know how many or few signed but it was a Murdock master stroke.and shocked Cameron out of his Complacency .
SandyS wrote: "I remember reading somewhere on line that a researcher had shown that excess winter deaths were in fact just that, deaths that would not have happened had it not been cold."
I commented on the paper at the time. One of the conclusions was that heat waves reduce life expectancy by a few months, cold spells by a few years. Generally speaking, heat waves exacerbated existing conditions, cold spells invited new ones ie pneumonia.
DaveJR
That was my understanding of the article as well but it seems another example of climate change being an excuse to spend vast amounts of money researching the bleeding obvious.
I think it was established several centuries ago that warm is better than cold in all sorts of ways, premature mortality being one of them.
I agree with Geoff -not one of these deaths can be linked to fuel prices until it is individually demonstrated so. We cannot make use of corpses after complaining the alarmists' abuse of corpses.
In the meanwhile out of precaution given the reality of these deaths I'd massively increase fuel subsidies among those categories most represented in the excess deaths.
Evil Denier, RKS and others
I don’t deny that people die from cold, and that the world would be a nicer place if everyone could afford all the heating they want. But saying that green energy policies (or Greenpeace, or Ed Davey, or windmills) are killing people is precisely the same kind of intellectual dishonesty as that practised by warmists when they attribute x thousand deaths to climate change. Or by my fellow lefties when they attribute the same deaths to profiteering energy companies.
Statistics and sentiment are a dangerous mixture. There are a dozen reasons why expensive renewable energy is a stupid idea. Hauling the corpses of pensioners into the argument at the first opportunity cuts short the discussion. It’s like the endless “Stalin caused more deaths than Hitler” arguments that fogged political discussion for much of the past fifty years.
Thanks Maurizio.
I think Chandra makes some valid points regarding houses in the UK and their unsuitability for a cold weather climate. Not sure that making landlords upgrade the insulation levels would have the affect he desires though; it may well drive down the amount of property available for rental.
In my opinion there is an argument in favour of building regulations for new builds having better standards of insulation. Also perhaps tax breaks of some sort for upgrades in insulation in existing housing stock might improve the situation over time, perhaps offsetting the costs against income tax for a couple of years might prove more successful than the governments last strategy.
There is a lot of huffing and puffing going on this blog.
When the weather is cold, more old people die because their bodies are too frail to cope with low temperatures and the bugs that go around at that time of year.
In addition, more heating is required to maintain an adequate temperature in the home. If the people are very poor, they may have to choose between heat or food. Either way, their health suffers and more deaths result.
If green policies drive up fuel bills this makes the last problem much, much worse and more people die.
If green policies result in power cuts, then a great many more people die.
Green activists seem quite happy with all of this, as far as I can understand, otherwise they would not call for fossil fuel power stations, the cheapest and most consistent available, to close.
geoffchambers
I for one wasn't blaming anyone in particular just pointing out that, from the evidence, cold can causes premature mortality by years whereas heat it seems to be weeks. A lot of attention is given to Heatwaves by certain sections of the MSM and environmental groups, this seems to be a hangover from the worst of the Global Warming scares,
Now fuel poverty is nothing new but has allegedly affected more people but actually measuring like for like is virtually impossible I would say. If we have a limited budget than concentrating on cold rather than heat would seem to be a sensible policy. Chandra, if I read him correctly, has it right about other nations handling cold better than the UK in addition to Germany Scandinavia does a lot better than the UK despite expensive electricity, probably attributable to better insulation in the housing stock. I don't know if (state) pension provision has any bearing on the figures, I have looked for data.
It's the childhood mortality you really want to watch: what kills the elderly also kills the young - and bear in mind that the 0-4 year olds outnumber the over 80 year olds by about a third.
@geoffchambers
Your cynicism does you no credit.
Nov 26, 2013 at 1:20 PM | Unregistered CommenterEvil Denier
++
For reference: Excess winter mortality, England and Wales 1950 - 2010
http://www.flickr.com/photos/7360644@N07/5770383378/
Spain and Portugal also have high winter mortality.
"Portugal suffers from the highest rates of excess winter mortality (28%, CI=25% to 31%) followed jointly by Spain (21%, CI=19% to 23%), and Ireland (21%, CI=18% to 24%).
....
Conclusions: High seasonal mortality in southern and western Europe could be reduced through improved protection from the cold indoors, increased public spending on health care, and improved socioeconomic circumstances resulting in more equitable income distribution."
http://jech.bmj.com/content/57/10/784.full
Translation: If its expensive (relative to your income) to heat your house in winter, many of you will die.
Re: Nov 26, 2013 at 6:31 PM | SandyS
"In my opinion there is an argument in favour of building regulations for new builds having better standards of insulation. Also perhaps tax breaks of some sort for upgrades in insulation in existing housing stock might improve the situation over time, perhaps offsetting the costs against income tax for a couple of years might prove more successful than the governments last strategy."
This has already happened Sandy and has brought its own problems. There have been a huge increase in firms fitting insulation to take advantage of government subsidies, many who employ young trainees who don't really know what they're doing. There are major problems now causing damp & condensation with resultant mould & fungi.
http://www.heritage-house.org/pages/insulation-causes-damp.html
The more governments interfere the more money is wasted.
One can't attribute the increase in number of deaths to climatic changes, but the individual deaths are likely to be more severe (high confidence). Can I have my IPCC Nobel certificate now?
The reason they are freezing is because they can't afford to keep warm. Partly due to criminally high fuel bills.
Marion
I agree that where there's a subsidy there's often a lot of easy money merchants following; and governments aren't the best at picking winners.
My thoughts were that the property owner would pay for the insulation which could be offset against income tax in the following one or two tax years. This has three advantages over direct government subsidy, firstly there is an incentive to keep costs down as payment precedes rebate, secondly the work would not be on a cash paid no questions asked basis increasing tax revenues to offset the rebate, thirdly the tax office staff would have more work (this could be seen as a disadvantage).
What if anything would you suggest as alternative, assuming that you agree there is and are not indifferent to the problem?
SandyS (6:54 PM)
Thanks for that informative post. I’m not a heartless Gradgrind character. I’m a poverty-stricken pensioner living in the South of France where temperatures are forecast to fall to -3°C this week.
I fully accept the assertion made above that deaths from heatwaves advance mortality by a matter of months whereas deaths from cold may be more “serious” in that they involve a more complex causation via pneumonia etc., shortening lives by years rather than months. The danger I wanted to alert people here to is of relying on concepts like “fuel poverty” or “cold weather mortality” which are statistical artifacts of the same order as “carbon footprints” - inventions of an age of information technology where every obsessive statistic freak can download an app which will prove anything he wants to believe.
“The poor are always with us”, someone said, and He didn’t even have an app at hand to prove it.
It would make more sense to attribute the deaths from high energy prices to poverty, just as it would make more sense to attribute the deaths from a hurricane in the Philippines to rotten building standards, rather than to global warming.
People can argue till the cows come home about "premature death" statistics, but the bottom line is that it is barbaric and cruel to put older people, especially, the the position where they have to be chronically cold in winter in wealthy societies than can well afford, and have the infrastructure, to prevent it.
Most older people suffer from some form of arthritis or other degenerative bone and joint conditions. These are very painful and debilitating, and being cold exacerbates the suffering considerably. The body's heating system does not work as well as it used to either, and mobility problems make it even worse.
Being condemned to spending one's waking hours in winter in one room, huddled before a heater, wrapped up in multiple layers of clothing is a pretty miserable way to spend the declining years. Not good for mental health either - another predictor of premature morbidity and mortality.
Things have come to a pretty pass when people have to actually die before anyone is prepared to concede that unaffordable heating is unacceptable in a civilised society.
cold, hot , wet ,dry there is nothing that the 'miracle' CO2 cannot do .
Meanwhile although they longer say it in public , the greens have long thought energy to cheap and to readily available.So see both price increases and shortages as good things for them.
Mad you say ? But you need to understand that 'cheap and available ' energy gets in the way of their end game . With amongst green wet dreams being an end to personal motorised transport, and much more 'collectivism'
As part of a return to some mythic rural ideal past before all the 'nasty industry .
Energy shortages are a way they hope that can be brought about, and if your 'saving the planet ' what is few frozen old people as a cost to pay for it .
This is Labours plan which Milliband admitted to. People will be forced to use less energy because it's price will be driven up by government energy policies!
Mailmab
What I'd like to know is whether the proportion of pensioners and other poor elderly among these excess deaths goes up during cold spells. If more poorer people die in winter than in summer, then fuel poverty could reliably be blamed as the cause.
geoffchambers
Point taken I feel the same about children growing up in poverty. At one time the definition included something about average income, as far as I remember, which meant that a section of the community could never "get out of poverty". Although there are some very deprived families for whatever reason the lot of the poor, who are indeed always with us, seems to be much improved from the days of my youth.
I have swapped a stone farmhouse in Perthshire without any mains services for a stone farmhouse in Limousin so understand all about sub-zero temperatures and old houses fortunately we've escaped the snow so far but there have been falls close by. I live in dread for both myself and the rest of the UK population of a repeat of 1962/63 when we were reduced to just in time for wood for the fire and climbing out of a window when snow and ice froze the doors shut.
Bon courage.
Geoff,
Let's take as a given your point that "It would make more sense to attribute the deaths from high energy prices to poverty," It's the same kind of point that Ben Pile makes about climate change. Fair enough.
But what happens if, as a government, you CHOOSE to deliberately make energy MUCH more expensive? At a stroke, you artificially increase the pool of people affected by "poverty". More people cut back on their heating. more people die from cold. There is, it seems to me, a direct nexus between government policy (make energy more expensive to "save the planet") and increased winter mortality. If energy is much more expensive, people cut back on their heating, more people are exposed to cold, and more people die. It is inevitable.
On the other hand, no-one can say that bad weather is caused by climate change. We could all go back to living in caves tomorrow and you know what? Hurricanes and tornadoes and floods and ice and snow and punishing heatwaves would all still happen. I know that you know this. But make energy cheap and abundant - reverse current policies - and for sure, more people would keep their houses warmer in winter, and fewer people would die.
So yes, put it down to poverty if you like. But your moral relativism of equating sceptics who highlight winter excess deaths with alarmists who point to deaths from the latest storm is, in my humble opinion, misguided. We can't wave a magic wand and make all poor people in the world, nor even those in the UK, wealthy. But we can, easily, remove the burden of expensive energy in the UK. If we choose to.
A point made on Tim Worstall's blog is that following the shrieking headlines yesterday: Energy companies making £53 profit on each household, was that if the average energy cost is in the region of £1,200 a year (which sounds about right), that is less than 5% profit. Outrageous profiteering, no? (No) It is rather like the old Soviet Union when economic policies driven by ideology failed disastrously, and the hunt was on for economic saboteurs. It couldn't be the government's fault could it?
Translation: If its expensive (relative to your income) to heat your house in winter, many of you will die.
Nov 26, 2013 at 7:22 PM | Unregistered CommenterBruce>>>>>
Try telling that to geoffchambers - He thinks it's politically incorrect to mention universally known facts like that! The guy's a bit too fond of his own verbosity.
The report is complete nonsense, the stats do not say that in the least. I wish these journalists would at least make a pretence of checking their facts.