Our successor to This Week in the Guardian, This Week in the New Normal is our weekly chart of the progress of autocracy, authoritarianism and economic restructuring around the world.
As usual, since there was no edition last week, we’re technically covering two weeks in the new normal today
1. Are you ready for “heat-related deaths” to spike?
Last week Sky News reported the last scary climate change numbers: “10,000 people a year could die as a result of heatwaves”
Now, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend those numbers aren’t just made up.
Firstly, let’s go into “early 2020” mode for some perspective: 10,000 people is not that many compared to the ~650,000 people that die in the UK each year.
Secondly, let’s reasonably assume that as more people die of “heat”, fewer people will die of cold. Since thousands of people are supposedly killed by cold weather per winter, increased “heat-related” deaths could have almost no impact on overall mortality at all.
Continue reading “This Week in the New Normal”
