More than 70k people may have died due to 2022 summer heatwaves in Europe | Hacker News Reader

More than 70k people may have died due to 2022 summer heatwaves in Europe

euronews.com

12 pointsaegypti5 comments

Living in the EU, and certainly not one to avoid reading uncomfortable news, I cannot fathom how this number can be true.

In France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Romania, Austria there were reports of single- to low double-digit heat deaths reported in our news. In Greece, there were around 50 IIRC deaths reported (after a massive heatwave).

A random source, which seems to be quite certainly not on the side of climate change denial: https://www.worldweatherattribution.org/extreme-heat-in-nort...

This isn’t measuring reported deaths attributable to eg organ failure via heat stroke, it’s applying epidemiological models to quantify the burden of heat-related mortality in unusually high excess mortality rates for the summer of 2022 and by extension compare it to 2003 and intervening years

Study: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z

"Researchers at ISGlobal and Inserm said in July that the European continent will face an average of more than 68,000 heat-related excess deaths each summer by 2030 and more than 94,000 by 2040 unless there is an effective response to climate change."

Quite a staggering prediction.

"May have died"

Do they have any actual evidence to this? The closest thing I saw in the article is

>ISGlobal and Inserm scientists previously had estimated that more than 61,000 people died in the 2022 summer heatwaves with Italy the EU country most impacted.

But that is not "more than 70k" even if you add the 10.28% they claimed were underestimated.

Even if we accept 61k + 10% as more than 70k (which it is not) then I'm not sure where they are getting their numbers from. Do they have any evidence of that many deaths? All I am seeing is "estimates".

> "May have died"

> Do they have any actual evidence to this? The closest thing I saw in the article is [...]

> Do they have any evidence of that many deaths? All I am seeing is "estimates".

The article is about estimates based on models, and so accordingly says "may" and "estimates".

> >ISGlobal and Inserm scientists previously had estimated that more than 61,000 people died in the 2022 summer heatwaves with Italy the EU country most impacted.

> But that is not "more than 70k" even if you add the 10.28% they claimed were underestimated. Even if we accept 61k + 10% as more than 70k (which it is not) then [...]

That quote notes "previously" and immediately afterwards says that they've revised that estimate.

> I'm not sure where they are getting their numbers from.

Paper can be found at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z

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