[Vision2020] Fwd: Earth Policy News- Setting the Record Straight: 2003 Heat Wave Revisited

[Tom Trail]

Visionarie:

With the hot days of summer this article from the Earth Policy Institute
should give us all something to reflect on.

Tom Trail

><Earthpolicynews at earthpolicy.org> [db-null]
>
>Eco-Economy Update 2006-6
>For Immediate Release
>July 28, 2006
>
>SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT:
>More than 52,000 Europeans Died from Heat in Summer 2003
>
>http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/2006/Update56.htm
>
>
>Janet Larsen
>
>
>Following a string of high heat days and meteorologists’ warnings that
>this summer could be another scorcher, European public health officials
>and politicians are revisiting the devastating heat wave of 2003. The
>severely hot weather that withered crops, dried up rivers, and fueled
>fires that summer took a massive human toll. The full magnitude of this
>quiet catastrophe still remains largely an untold story, as data revealing
>the continent-wide scale have only slowly become available in the years
>since. All in all, more than 52,000 Europeans died from heat in the summer
>of 2003, making the heat wave one of the deadliest climate-related
>disasters in Western history.
>
>Temperature records were broken in a number of countries in 2003 as Europe
>experienced its hottest weather in at least 500 years. The unusually warm
>weather began in June and culminated in an unrelenting heat wave during
>the first two weeks of August. With both daytime and nighttime
>temperatures remaining high, large numbers of vulnerable people,
>particularly the elderly, succumbed to the baking heat.
>
>Hospitals were faced with unusually large burdens, and undertakers and
>funeral homes were overwhelmed. In France, doctors’ warnings of a heat
>epidemic were largely quashed with the
>Ministry of Health’s refusal to acknowledge the massive problem,
>reminiscent of the early political denial of the 1995 Chicago heat wave
>that killed more than 700 people in a matter of days. But as the bodies
>piled up, requiring makeshift morgues, “ignore and neglect” was no longer
>a viable option.
>
>While news reports gave estimates of a potentially large human death toll,
>it wasn’t until well after the event that more accurate tallies became
>available. After facing criticism for its inadequate health facilities and
>lax government response, France became one of the first countries to
>release an epidemiological study revealing the true extent of the heat’s
>damage. At the end of September 2003, the French National Institute of
>Health reported that in the first 20 days of August, heat had killed more
>than 14,800 people. During the peak of the heat, fatality rates topped
>2,000 in a day.
>
>Using this French report and other early figures, in October 2003 the
>Earth Policy Institute detailed a preliminary mortality tally for the 2003
>European heat event (available at
>www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/Update29.htm). At that time, it appeared that
>some 35,000 people had died because of high temperatures. We now know that
>even this was an underestimate.
>
>Of the new information that has trickled out over the last few years, the
>biggest surprise has come from Italy. According to the Italian National
>Institute of Statistics, the summer of 2003 yielded more than 18,000
>excess deaths when compared with 2002. In August alone, 9,700 fatalities
>were likely connected to the high temperatures, which in parts of Italy
>averaged 16 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than in the preceding year. These
>elevated numbers far exceed the Italian Health Ministry’s early assessment
>that some 4,000 people died from heat country-wide during the hottest
>days. (See attached table and additional data at
>www.earthpolicy.org/Updates/2006/Update56_data.htm.)
>
>Another upward adjustment was published for Portugal by the European
>Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, where August 2003 temperatures
>exceeded 104 degrees Fahrenheit for many days. There, 2,099 deaths have
>been linked to the hot weather, up from the Portuguese National Institute
>of Health’s preliminary estimate of 1,316 fatalities. In Belgium, where
>the mercury rose higher than at any time in the Royal Meteorological
>Society’s register dating back to 1833, high temperatures brought 1,250
>untimely deaths between June and August, nearly a tenfold increase over
>what was initially predicted. And more recent information from Switzerland
>shows that 975 people died from heat in the warmest Swiss summer since
>1540. Altogether, new data boost Europe’s heat-related mortality for the
>summer of 2003 by 17,000 over preliminary estimates, to a record 52,000
>casualties.
>
>Unlike hurricanes or tornados that leave obvious damage and death in their
>wake, not to mention vivid images for the media, heat waves are silent
>killers. Coroners’ reports rarely list “heat” as the primary cause of
>death, even when high temperatures may have precipitated cardiovascular or
>respiratory failure or dehydration. Thus it is generally not until a heat
>wave is long over, when death counts can be compared to what would
>otherwise be expected in a “normal” year, that we begin to learn the full
>human toll. Yet governments, reluctant to admit public health failures,
>often release such numbers with little fanfare.
>
>In late 2005, the world focused on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, one
>of the most destructive storms to ever hit the United States, with massive
>monetary losses and over 1,300 deaths. While this was a significant
>catastrophe, the number of lives taken by Katrina is but a tiny fraction
>of the toll from Europe’s 2003 heat wave. Because reports of the heat
>wave’s casualties trickled out of individual countries over more than two
>years following the actual event and never received widespread media
>coverage, policymakers and the public at large have not grasped the full
>dimensions of the catastrophe and therefore underrate the risk of rising
>temperatures.
>
>People, particularly government officials, need reliable information on
>the threat that extreme heat can pose. Indeed, after the 2003 event a
>number of European countries beefed up their heat-health alert systems and
>took additional measures to prepare for future heat waves. Following the
>public outrage over its 2003 failures, France’s Ministry of Health
>announced increased funding for hospital beds and more jobs for health
>workers, as well as a renewed focus on care for elderly people who suffer
>the most during warm spells. The Spanish government’s heat wave action
>plan includes an awareness campaign for social service and health care
>professionals, a voluntary register for people at high risk to receive
>special services, and a daily mortality monitoring system.
>
>Projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a global
>body of some 2,000 scientists, show more extreme weather events ahead as
>the planet heats up. By the end of the century, the world’s average
>temperature is projected to increase by 2.5–10.4 degrees Fahrenheit
>(1.4–5.8 degrees Celsius). As the mercury climbs, more frequent and more
>severe heat waves are in store. Accordingly, the World Meteorological
>Organization estimates that the number of heat-related fatalities could
>double in less than 20 years.
>
>Scientists from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research and
>from Oxford University reported in 2004 that human activity, namely the
>emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere from fossil fuel
>burning, doubled the risk of extreme heat waves like the one that cost so
>many lives in Europe in 2003. Avoiding “loading the climate dice” even
>further in favor of future weather calamities will take a concerted effort
>to cut carbon emissions quickly and dramatically.
>
>-----
>
>
>The Human Toll of Heat Waves: Selected Examples from Europe in Summer 2003
>
>Country				Number of Fatalities
>
>Italy (1)				18,257
>France (2)				14,802
>Germany(3*)				7,000
>Spain (3) (4)			4,130
>England and Wales (5)		2,139
>Portugal (3)			2,099
>Netherlands (6)			1,800
>Belgium (7)				1,250
>Switzerland (7)			975
>
>Total of Above Countries	52,452
>
>Notes on data:
>(1) Data are for July through September 2003.
>(2) Data are for 1–20 August 2003.
>(3) Data are for August 2003.
>(4) Data for Spain are a range of 3,574–4,687 deaths.
>(5) Data are for 4–13 August 2003.
>(6) Data are for June through September 2003, with an estimated range of
>1,400–2,200.
>(7) Data are for June through August 2003.
>(*) No official assessment has been made by the German government.
>
>
>#    #   #
>
>
>Additional data and information sources at www.earthpolicy.org or contact
>jlarsen (at)earthpolicy.org
>
>For reprint permission contact rjk (at)earthpolicy.org
>
>
>
>---
>
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-- 
Dr. Tom Trail
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