Climate deaths declined 97+% over last century

The number of people dying from climate-related natural disasters has dropped dramatically over the past century. These are deaths from floods, droughts, storms, and wildfires.

Why is this consistently not reported?

Over the past hundred years, annual climate-related deaths have declined by more than 97%. In the 1920s, the death count from climate-related disasters was 485,000 on average every year. In the last full decade, 2010-2019, the average was 10,973 dead per year, or 97.7% lower.

For the first four years in 2020s (2020-23), the annual average has been 12,270, or a reduction of 97.5% from the 1920s.

Half of all deaths in 2023 came from Libya when two dams failed in early September after storm Daniel, which flooded Derna, leaving 4,300 verified dead and another 8,500 missing. https://reliefweb.int/.../libya-flooding-situation-report ... . Here, the total death toll is estimated at 12,352.

This and another 307 other climate-related catastrophes from 2023 are measured by the most respected global database, the International Disaster Database (https://public.emdat.be/ ).

There is some uncertainty about complete reporting from the early decades, which is why this graph starts in 1920, and if anything this uncertainty means the graph underestimates the reduction in deaths. (There seem to be many more disasters missing in the 1910s than in other decades, see https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0040162520304157 .)

Roger Pielke estimates that the death toll in the 1870s could be about 10-times higher than what we’re seeing in the 1920s https://twitter.com/eyaven/status/1741055066738425919 .

Also note, the database has big problems with heat and cold deaths, where it has historically had counted more reporting on heat deaths (which it erratically includes), although globally, cold deaths outweigh heat deaths 9:1 (https://www.thelancet.com/.../PIIS2542-5196(21.../fulltext) . I've corresponded with several of their lead scientists, and they are fully aware of the problem.

For 2022, the International Disaster Database decided to include all estimated heat deaths, but only for Europe. But they include almost no cold deaths, although we know that even just extreme cold deaths are at least 4x bigger than extreme heat deaths (see e.g. https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1680966003759497217 ). This makes the heat and cold death measures hard to take serious. Moreover, only including Europe but not the rest of the world makes it useless.

It seems that the reason for incorrectly and inconsistently including heat deaths but virtually no cold deaths is just to be able to boost the number of dead from climate now (as in their annual report, https://cred.be/disasters-numbers-2022 ).

In Roger Pielke's overview of the quality of disaster databases (https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/.../global-and-us ...), he points out that they simply use this paper, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z , although the data they present in their annual report inexplicably only incorporate a smaller part of the full Europe data.

Since we already know that the global fraction of heat and cold deaths have declined over the past 20 years (https://www.thelancet.com/.../PIIS2542-5196(21.../fulltext) , the inconsistent heat and (almost no) cold deaths are not included here.

That climate deaths are becoming much rarer is clearly the opposite of what you hear, but that is because we're often just being told of one disaster after another – telling us how many events are happening. The number of reported events is increasing, but that is mainly due to better reporting, lower thresholds, and better accessibility (the CNN effect). For instance: the first 1-person death in the database only occurs in 1963, and it is now very, very common https://twitter.com/BjornLomborg/status/1609568102093660162 . Of course, many 1-person deaths happened before, but they were just not recorded.

Instead, look at the total number of dead per year, which is much harder to fudge. Given that these numbers fluctuate enormously from year to year (especially in the past, with huge droughts and floods in China, India, and elsewhere), they are here presented as averages of each decade (1920-29, 1930-39 etc.).

In 1921, for instance, 1.2 million people died from heat waves and consequent starvation across much of Eurasia. The New York Herald ran a full-page story on September 4, 1921, with the telling headline: “Deaths for Millions in 1921’s Record Heat Wave” (https://www.newspapers.com/image/471536051/ , h/t https://twitter.com/TonyClimate/status/1737160503775154587 ). Incidentally, this is the only climate-related disaster measured in the International Disaster Database for 1921, compared to 308 in 2023. This again highlights why we hear much more about destruction today.

If we look at the absolute number of people dying from climate-related disasters, it is simply incontrovertible that these have declined dramatically. This is because richer and more resilient societies with better technology and forecasting abilities (smarter) are much better able to protect their citizens (see: https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0040162520304157 ).

Each of the 12,270 people dying from climate-related disasters in the 2020s are a tragedy. But it is also important to keep a sense of proportion. Each year in Japan, it is estimated that 19,000 mostly older people die in their bathtubs, mostly from drowning (https://www.jstage.jst.go.jp/.../89.../_article/-char/en ).

Also notice, this decline does not mean that there is no global warming or that possibly a climate signal could eventually lead to further deaths. Global warming is a real problem that we should fix smartly.

But panic from bad media reporting, scaring kids and adults alike, does not help us be smart.

This graph shows us that our increased wealth and increased adaptive capacity have vastly overshadowed any potential negative impact from climate when it comes to human climate vulnerability.

This is an update of my graph in my 2020 peer-reviewed article which you can read for free here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/.../pii/S0040162520304157