Disinformation: Misleading graphic downplays climate change

A graphic is circulating online showing a decline in climate-related deaths over the past hundred years in order to downplay the consequences of climate change. The graphic is misleading in many ways.

Supposedly scientific evidence is constantly circulating, raising doubts about global warming. A graphic is currently spreading on Telegram, which is intended to show impressively how massively deaths worldwide have decreased in the last hundred years, which can be attributed to climate catastrophes.

Pascal Siggelkow

Telegram says: “In 1920 there were almost 500,000 deaths a year, in 2022 it was just under 10,000. A drop of 98%! The climate-hysterical press will probably never print this graphic.” The graphic refers to a study by the controversial political scientist Bjørn Lomborg and implicitly suggests that the effects of climate change could not be so devastating.

Database presumably incomplete

The data is the basis Emergency Events Database (EM-DAT) from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (CRED) at the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium. According to its own statements, the database 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”. All climate-related events such as floods, droughts or extreme temperatures were taken into account for the presentation of the graphic. Geological catastrophes such as earthquakes, tsunamis or volcanic eruptions are not included.

The data from EM-DAT are generally considered trustworthy by experts, as are other large studies such as the World Disaster Report refer to it. Nevertheless, it is at least questionable how complete and accurate the data are, especially with a view to the first decades of the 20th century, says Katja Frieler, head of the Transformation Paths research department at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Almost 90 percent of all climate-related disasters listed in the database were recorded after 1980.

In addition, according to Felix Creutzig, head of the Land Use, Infrastructure and Transport working group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC), many climate-related deaths are missing due to the Criteria of EM-DAT. “Many heat waves are not taken into account, although their mortality is demonstrably very high.” Because unlike, for example, a flood disaster, people would die slowly over several days during heat waves. Most of these do not appear in the database. According to a study About 37 percent of heat-related deaths are due to man-made climate change.

graphic “rather misleading”

From the point of view of Frieler, the form of representation chosen for Lomborg’s graphics is “pretty misleading”. Because the graphic does not show the number of deaths in the individual years, but average values ​​over ten years. “The representation creates the impression of a steady progression from constantly high values ​​to relatively low values. It hides the fact that the high values ​​initially go back to very few events with extremely high death rates,” says Frieler.

For example, there is a single flood event in China in 1931 that is on the database with 3.7 million deaths. There are a total of eight events in the period from 1900 to 1970 that are in the database with more than a million fatalities. This information far exceeds the number of victims of other events from the time, but they essentially determine the course of the curve shown.

“The curve suggests a global trend, but this is due to the fact that none of these very catastrophic events have been recorded in recent years,” says Frieler. A chart that shows the deaths of the individual events makes that clearer.

Better preparation for climate catastrophes

Specialist journalist Toralf Staud from the knowledge portal klimafakten.de explains why it is generally true that deaths from climate catastrophes have decreased over the past hundred years. People have learned, now have completely different technology than a hundred years ago and are therefore much better prepared for storms and other natural disasters – both in terms of prevention and rescue operations in an emergency.

“Of course, great progress has been made with early warning systems against storm surges or fighting bush fires, and fortunately the number of human lives has decreased thanks to this better preparation for natural disasters,” says Staud.

That is not to say, however, that warnings of a future increase in weather-related disasters with fatalities are exaggerated. “This is a logical fallacy because the issue of adaptation and preparedness against natural disasters is mixed up with the issue of the impact of climate change on natural disasters.”

Most extreme effects only visible in the future

“In purely logical terms, you can’t extrapolate in a straight line from developments in the past that it will be the same in the future. If there was no problem in the past, you can’t reliably deduce that there won’t be one in the future.” Weather extremes would demonstrably increase and become more violent as the earth warms, which will very certainly also be accompanied by an increasing number of victims, according to Staud. This is practically undisputed in research.

Although climate change has already begun, the most massive effects of climate change will only come to us in the future. According to a study If the global temperature rises by two degrees Celsius, twice as many people will be affected by flood disasters compared to the pre-industrial period. Significantly more people in the world would then also suffer from droughts, hurricanes and heat waves. To the according to the latest IPCC report despite adaptation, around nine million people could die at the end of the century as a result of climate change – per year.

“We absolutely have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in order to be able to adapt to the serious damage at all,” says climate researcher Niklas Höhne, co-founder of the New Climate Institute. If emissions continue as they are now, the impact will be much worse. “Then we won’t be able to adapt at all.”

Cherry picking as a strategy

The widespread graphic is therefore a typical example of cherry picking, says Höhne. Raisinenpickerei (or in English cherry picking) is a very common disinformation strategy of science denial, adds Staud. Only the data points that support one’s opinion are picked out and then highlighted. “It creates a false image, based on isolated information that is correct in and of itself.”

“One trick is always to omit data. In the graph, only the direct deaths from climate influences were taken, for example from storms. But all the indirect deaths, such as famine caused by climate change, are completely missing,” explains Höhne.

In addition, there would be other indirect consequences of climate change: “If we continue as we have been, then at some point whole areas will no longer be habitable. The sea level is rising, there are droughts and the associated fires, which at some point can no longer be extinguished.” This does not necessarily mean that people die, but they have to be resettled. And that is a huge effort. “If you think of coastal cities like Amsterdam or New York, you quickly realize that it’s almost impossible to manage. You can’t measure all of that in the number of deaths.”

From the EM-DAT database, to which Lomborg refers with his graph, completely different conclusions can be drawn if not only the pure death numbers are used. For example, the number of climate-related disasters has increased significantly over the past hundred years, as has the number of people affected by such events. And the financial damage caused by such events has increased significantly overall – all with the restriction that the data for the years 1900 to 1980 are presumably incomplete.

Invalid Suggestions

In this case, not only is the strategy of cherry picking applied, but also logical errors are committed. Wrong conclusions are drawn from correct information. “The graphic suggests that we don’t have to worry about fatalities from climate change and weather catastrophes in the future, but that is absolutely unacceptable and blatantly contradicts the current state of research,” says Staud.

While the graphic is used online and in various telegram channels to downplay climate change or at least the consequences, Lomborg’s study is primarily about putting the financial dimensions of climate change into perspective. In his opinion, spending on reducing CO2 is disproportionate to the damage caused by climate change.

However, the numbers he uses are from the 2014 IPCC report. In the latest version the damage is estimated to be significantly higher, so that, from the point of view of climate researchers, a reduction in CO2 emissions is the only long-term solution. Walking alone through humid heat According to a study more than 650 billion working hours lost worldwide – in some countries the economic damage as a result amounts to more than ten percent of the gross domestic product.

In addition, renewable energies, for example, would make it possible to make climate protection financially profitable, says Creutzig from the MCC. “We are now at the stage where renewable energies are cheaper than fossil fuels. And that’s why the research situation is now such that climate protection pays off in any case – also financially.”

“If Lomborg wants to suggest that we don’t need to reduce emissions, then that’s completely wrong,” agrees Staud. “Because it is very clear: the worse or the stronger the climate change gets, i.e. the less climate protection we do, the higher the material damage and fatalities must be expected in the future.”