This Cold House
Saturday, January 24th, 2015This Cold House
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/24/opinion/this-cold-house.html Low ‘excess’ winter #mortality for Scandinavians; their motto: “No bad weather, only bad clothing.”
“Excess winter mortality” seems to be a useful number to remember in keeping warm in the winter
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Life at 45 degrees isn’t for everyone — I wouldn’t recommend it for the sick, the elderly or children. And there are, of course, legitimate hazards to the cold. The National Weather Service reports that there were 66 cold- and winter-related deaths in 2013 in the United States. A more useful measurement, popular in Europe, is “excess winter mortality,” which simply compares deaths during winter to those during the rest of the year. The resulting figures tend to be much higher than the weather service’s: In England and Wales there were an estimated 31,100 such deaths in the 2012-13 winter.
Using this measure, paradoxically, warmer countries like Spain and Portugal suffer more cold-related deaths than colder countries, because they aren’t as well versed in the art of keeping
warm….Scandinavians, who also have a low excess winter mortality rate, have a common saying: “There is no bad weather, only bad clothing.”
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