
A misleading graphic trivializes deaths caused by climate change
No, this graphic does not disprove climate change either. It is wrong for several reasons.
The claim
A graphic suggests that global deaths attributed to climate change have declined sharply since 1920.
Our conclusion
The graphic is quite misleading: it shows average values over 10 years, so extreme individual events are distorted. The data is also incomplete and based on cherry-picking. Climate catastrophes will continue to increase this century.
Supposed evidence is repeatedly circulating on social media channels that purports to show that climate change is a hoax or that its consequences are at least greatly exaggerated. Since the beginning of January, a graphic has been circulating on Twitter and Telegram in particular, which is intended to show that the number of deaths due to climate catastrophes has fallen massively since 1920. The graphic with the climate deaths originally comes from a paper by Bjørn Lomborg , who evaluated the numbers up to 2018. updated version through 2022 on Facebook on January 1st . This is now being diligently shared. However, it is misleading for several reasons.
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The data for graphics is probably not complete
The figures in the graphic come from the International Disaster Database (EM-DAT) of the Université catholique de Louvain (Leuven in Belgium). The database is filled by researchers at the “Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters”. According to the company's own information, it contains the "world's most comprehensive data on the occurrence and effects of more than 24,000 technical and natural disasters from 1900 to the present day". According to Lomborg, climate-related events were taken into account: floods, droughts, storms, forest fires and extreme temperatures. Geological disasters - volcanic eruptions, tsunamis and earthquakes - did not flow into its curve.
The data from EM-DAT is considered trustworthy by experts in the field, and the World Disaster Report, uses it. But there are also more cautious voices who question the completeness at the beginning of the 20th century, such as Katja Frieler from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Almost 90 percent of the climate-related disasters in the database were recorded after 1980.
Felix Creutzig from the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change also has legitimate objections: Many climate-related deaths would not be taken into account at all due to EM-DAT's specific criteria. By this he particularly means deaths caused by extreme temperatures. “Many heat waves are not taken into account, although their mortality is demonstrably very high,” tagesschau.de . Unlike, for example, a flood disaster, people die “more gradually over several days” in hot weather. And many of them would therefore not end up in the database at all. A study published in Nature suggests that around 37% of heat deaths can be directly attributed to man-made climate change.
Across all countries examined, we find that 37.0% (range 20.5–76.3%) of warm-season heat-related deaths can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change and that increased mortality is observed across all continents. The burden varied geographically, but in many places was on the order of tens to hundreds of deaths per year. Our findings highlight the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.
The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change (2021), Vicedo-Cabrera et al.
Frieler: A “pretty misleading” graphic
However, it is not only the possibly incomplete data that is problematic, but also how Lomborg implemented it graphically. The curve shows the average values over ten years. Extreme events in a single year are therefore spread over an entire decade. Katja Frieler describes this as “pretty misleading”. “The display creates the impression of a continuous progression from consistently high values to relatively low values. “It hides the fact that the high values at the beginning can be traced back to very few events with extremely high death rates,” she is quoted by tagesschau.de.

If you take the year 1931, there is only one event in the database. This year, 3.7 million people died in floods in China. Between 1900 and 1970 there were eight major events with casualty numbers in the millions. These not only dominate the above evaluation, but are primarily responsible for the shape of the curve in Lomborg's graphic. “The curve suggests a global trend, the extent of which can be attributed to the fact that none of these very catastrophic events have been recorded in recent years,” says Frieler.
Staud: Cherry picking
Toralf Staud from klimafakten.de confirms that deaths caused by climate disasters have decreased. We have learned globally and are now relying on completely different technical options to better predict storms and natural disasters, for example. But you should definitely be careful that causes and precautions are not confused or mixed up. In addition, the developments of the past cannot be traced linearly into the future.
Rather, it is the case that weather extremes are demonstrably increasing and becoming more severe as the world warms. Therefore, increasing numbers of victims are to be expected in the future, says Staud. This fact is practically undisputed in the research community. A paper in Earth's Future assumes that if global temperatures rise by two degrees, twice as many people will be affected by flood disasters than in pre-industrial times. The same applies to heat waves, storms and drought events. recent report, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) even assumes 9 million climate-related deaths per year by the end of the century.
According to Staud, what Lomborg does in his graphics is cherry-picking. Data that only supports your own opinion is highlighted. “This puts a false picture into the world, which is based on isolated, but in itself entirely correct information.”
A trick is always to leave out data. Only the direct deaths caused by climate influences, for example from storms, were taken into account in the graphic. But all the indirect deaths, like famines caused by climate change, are completely missing. […] If we continue as we are, at some point entire areas of land will no longer be habitable. Sea levels are rising, there are droughts and associated fires that at some point will no longer be able to be extinguished.
Climate researcher Niklas Höhne , New Climate Institute
The data sets from EM-DAT can be interpreted in another way: the number of deaths may have decreased, but the number of climate-related disasters has increased significantly over 100 years. More people are affected and the financial damage is becoming ever greater. Lomborg's graphic "suggests that in the future we will not have to worry about fatalities caused by climate change and weather disasters, but that is absolutely inadmissible and is in stark contradiction to the current state of research," tageschau.de Toralf Staud.
Update: February 6, 2023
An article in Die Welt took another look at Lomborg's arguments, but also at the criticism of them. Among other things, detailed figures on famines since 1860 are brought into play. These show that deaths from famine have decreased massively, especially since the 1960s. But here, too, the same problem emerges as already mentioned above: on the one hand, the causes of famine continue to increase, but on the other hand, our options for countering them have improved massively. However, it cannot be assumed that this trend will continue.
Unfortunately, other arguments in the article cited are also misleading: If you look at the economic damage caused by natural disasters since the 1960s relative to global gross domestic product , then they are not declining. They roughly doubled in the 1990s and have remained at this high level ever since. The arguments about cold deaths are no better: the study only refers to “global mortality trends in ischemic heart disease” due to heat or cold, which account for only a very small proportion of deaths from temperature extremes.
Conclusion: The graphic is based on incomplete data, misleading presentation and cherry picking. For example, those who die slowly within days in extreme heat or indirect deaths caused by famine are missing. The number of deaths from climate disasters has actually decreased due to technological advancements and global cooperation. However, one cannot derive a linear development for the future from this. Weather events are becoming more extreme due to climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change currently assumes nine million climate-related deaths per year by the end of the century.

Sources: tagesschau.de , ScienceDirect , EM-DAT , IPCC , New Climate Institute , Nature , AGU , klimafakten.de , PIK-Potsdam , International Red Cross , Université catholique de Louvain
More on the topic: Photo of the Schladminger Planai from 1988 does not disprove climate change!
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication
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The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual articles (not fact checks) were created using machine help and
were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )
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