Page 6 - CodeWatcher Winter 2017 Issue

CODE WATCHER
News & Trends
Moderate Cold Kills People
New climate predictions suggest that states that ignore
energy codes could be making a fatal mistake.
OBY MATT POWER
NE OF THE GREAT PLEASURES of
living in places such as North Carolina
and Northern Florida is the temperate
climate. I’ve lived in both places, each Asia and North America in recent years, according to new
time in a cinder-block ranch with
no insulation, aluminum window
frames, central air conditioning, and
baseboard electric radiators. The
Florida home even had jalousied windows, little more than
a translucent shutter system.
But that was 20 years ago. And things are changing in
a way that none of us could have anticipated. It’s possible
that much of the United States could be facing a “big chill.”
This may sound absurd, and unfortunately, it plays into
the hands of climate change deniers. But the fact is that
the bizarre cold weather pattern that’s emerging may be the
direct result of global warming, and the melting of ice in the
Arctic region.
6 CodeWatcher / January 2017
According to insideclimatenews.org:
“Melting sea ice and warmer temperatures in the Arctic are
to blame for the brutal cold snaps that have plagued parts of
research by Korean and European scientists released Monday.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature
Geoscience, adds to the growing evidence linking rising Arctic
temperatures to changing weather patterns across the globe.
It also helps further debunk one of climate deniers’ favorite
arguments: cold weather proves the world isn’t warming from
the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.”
Now consider this study, published in The Lancet.
Researchers looked at deaths worldwide related to extreme
weather conditions, and found that cold temperatures cause
far more deaths than heat. What’s especially interesting
for the building industry is that when cold kills, it’s
usually because of prolonged exposure to moderate cold
temperatures, not because of an short-term spike.
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