Global warming is going to increase both cold and heat related deaths, given that it's likely to (and has already started to) produce more extreme temperatures at both ends of the spectrum.
"This Is Why Global Warming Is Responsible For Freezing Temperatures Across The U.S." (Forbes): https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2019/01/30/this...
"Climate change: Arctic warming linked to colder winters" (BBC): https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-58425526
"How global warming can cause Europe's harsh winter weather" (DW) https://www.dw.com/en/cold-winter-global-warming-polar-vorte...
"Record cold, intense storms and tornadoes amid global warming: Could there be a connection?" (USA Today): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/02/17/global...
"How Warming Winters Are Affecting Everything": https://www.npr.org/2020/02/18/803125282/how-warming-winters...
"5 reasons why your warmer winter is so alarming": https://www.edf.org/blog/2020/02/12/5-reasons-why-your-warme...
"Winters are warming faster than summers. These US cities could lose weeks of freezing days by 2050." https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/12/20/18136006/c...
I’ll give an anecdote. I’m working on a project that tracks the length of the rainy season over time in a certain region. There is no clear trend one way or another, but what does stick out as a super strong and clear trend is that the variability of both extremes occurring is increasing.
"50 percent more extreme cold weather events under RCP8.5"
Not
"This is how a polar vortex works, therefore there will be more cold weather events"
(which is obviously faulty logic since that doesn't account for an increasing mean temp, which is why modelling is needed to balance out these offsetting considerations)
See:
Anyway - the next article, from the BBC, is a report on a study published in Science. The study is linked to in the text, it’s called “Linking Arctic variability and change with extreme winter weather in the United States” if you prefer papers over news articles summarizing them.
I reject the accusation that I'm pulling a "citation needed" trope. The citation I shared above, which more directly addresses what I'm asking and is from more reputable bodies than your citations, says the exact opposite thing to what you're claiming and so what I'm doing is not an example of this trope (which is where someone asks for a citation for a well established fact as a rhetorical device).
Anyway: it’s definitely interesting and surprising that the IPCC’s report states that extreme cold events will decrease, when you’ve got experts and studies and mechanisms claiming otherwise, not to mention non-stop record breaking winters. The IPCC report is 4000 pages long and I’m not qualified (or blessed with the time) to pick through it and reconcile those things. Maybe the IPCC paper doesn’t consider the impact climate change is having on the polar vortex settled enough to factor it in (at least one of the articles above claims it’s still not universally accepted); maybe, as you suggest, the net warming will offset it; maybe, as someone else suggests in that thread, we're operating on different definitions of "extreme"; maybe certain areas will see an increase of extreme cold spikes but on net they’ll go down around the surface of the planet, which depending on where they are still complicates the calculus in the fine article quite a bit - if Texas has increased days or intensity of extreme cold but Antarctica has less, well, there’s a whole lot more people who might die in Houston than at McMurdo Station, even if Antarctica is quite a bit bigger than Texas. I’ll revise my priors and was wrong to state with certainty that extreme cold events will increase given the IPCC report, but after a near-decade of unprecedented winter weather disasters happening annually and a well-established mechanism that explains it, I’m not willing to write the claim off.
I reacted in such a way because I interpreted your initial response to be a "let me google that for you" flavor of borderline sarcasm, as if the question I was asking had an obvious answer and was clearly settled, when the articles you shared don't answer the question I was asking. My initial read on your sarcastic intention was confirmed when you accused me of repeating a "citations please" trope. So if you're going to take such a sarcastic approach, then I am not going to pretty up my language when you share news articles that do not address the question I'm asking.
"when you’ve got experts and studies ... claiming otherwise"
"there’s a whole lot more people who might die in Houston"
1. Average global temperature increases. 2. Winters get colder on average 3. Summers get hotter on average, more strongly than 2.
Or if you prefer simple arithmetic, the average of -1 and 1 is 0. The average of -2 and 4 is 1. The second one has a colder "winter" but it's still warmer on average.
I have never heard this. Do you have a reference?
I am no expert, but I looked for any statement about winter temperatures from the latest IPCC report. I found this in TS.2.6:
> Warming of the land surface during the period 1971–2018
> contributed about 5% of the increase in the global energy
> inventory (TS.3.1), nearly twice the estimate in AR5 (high
> confidence). It is virtually certain that the average
> surface warming over land will continue to be higher than
> over the ocean throughout the 21st century. The warming
> pattern will likely vary seasonally, with northern high
> latitudes warming more during winter than summer (medium
> confidence). {2.3.1, 4.3.1, 4.5.1, Box 7.2, 7.2.2,
> Cross-Chapter Box 9.1, 11.3, Atlas 11.2}
> The frequency and intensity of hot extremes (warm days and
> nights) and the intensity and duration of heatwaves have
> increased globally and in most regions since 1950, while the
> frequency and intensity of cold extremes have decreased
> (virtually certain). There is high confidence that the
> increases in frequency and severity of hot extremes are due
> to human-induced climate change. Some recent extreme events
> would have been extremely unlikely to occur without human
> influence on the climate system. It is virtually certain
> that the further changes in hot and cold extremes will
> occur throughout the 21st century in nearly all inhabited
> regions, even if global warming is stabilized at 1.5°C
> (Table TS.2, Figure TS.12a).
Also the most recent National Climate Assessment says this in its summary finding (https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/):
> Declines in snow and ice cover caused by warmer winter
> temperatures are expected to negatively impact the winter
> recreation industry in the Northwest, Northern Great Plains,
> and the Northeast.I can find references in the latest IPCC report to increased frequency of droughts, heavy rain, and heat waves, but I can't find much mention of extreme cold events; I was under the impression that these were predicted to be increasing too (i.e. more severe winter weather systems with most non-storm winter days being warmer, or put differently increased variance as the mean increases), but maybe that's not correct.
I stand by my main point which was that you _could_ have an increase in both extreme cold events and extreme hot events while the average temperature is increasing, to correct an oversimplification I believe the GP was making. I think this sibling made that point more concisely though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28961979.
I believe my quoted text above states that the frequency and intensity of cold extremes has decreased, as a "virtually certain" fact.
> I stand by my main point which was that you _could_ have an increase in both extreme cold events and extreme hot events while the average temperature is increasing, to correct an oversimplification I believe the GP was making.
Yes, as a mathematical fact this is undoubtedly true.
Note in your quote how they refer to both:
> The frequency and intensity of hot extremes (warm days and nights) and the intensity and duration of heatwaves
And for cold they say:
> while the frequency and intensity of cold extremes have decreased
But no mention of extreme weather events like storms. This might sound pedantic but I think it’s two different meanings of “extreme”, they discuss the differences a bit in https://www.ipcc.ch/srocc/chapter/chapter-6/.
Anyway, low epistemic confidence on this bit, just my read is a bit less certain on that last point than yours.
average(20, 20, 20, 20)
=> 20
average(40, 23, 23, 5)
=> 22
The term "global warming", while scientifically correct, was dropped for "climate change" to remove this type of confusion, you know the kind - "if the whole world is warming, why did we just have a huge ice storm in Texas?"