There’s a catastrophic black hole in our climate data – and it’s a gift to deniers | George Monbiot

Climate sceptics tell us that more people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. What's the truth?

I began by trying to discover whether or not a widespread belief was true. In doing so, I tripped across something even bigger: an index of the world's indifference. I already knew that by burning fossil fuels, gorging on meat and dairy, and failing to make even simple changes, the rich world imposes a massive burden of disaster, displacement and death on people whose responsibility for the climate crisis is minimal. What I've now stumbled into is the vast black hole of our ignorance about these impacts.

What I wanted to discover was whether it's true that nine times as many of the world's people die of cold than of heat. The figure is often used by people who want to delay climate action: if we do nothing, some maintain, fewer will die. Of course, they gloss over all the other impacts of climate breakdown: the storms, floods, droughts, fires, crop failures, disease and sea level rise. But is this claim, at least, correct?

George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist