False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet

by Bjørn Lomborg

There is nothing good about heat waves—they are dangerous and kill people. But in fact, cold weather is far more dangerous and kills more of the population. This means that as the world gets warmer many people will actually benefit. Scientists who undertook the biggest ever study of heat and cold deaths, published in Lancet in 2015, examined seventy-four million total deaths from all causes in 384 locations in thirteen countries. These included cold countries like Canada, temperate countries like Spain and South Korea, and subtropical and tropical nations like Brazil, Taiwan, and Thailand. The scientists found that heat caused almost 0.5 percent of all deaths, but more than 7 percent of all deaths were caused by cold. For every heat death, seventeen people die from the cold.