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Why are Australians in denial about how cold our homes really are? ‘Winter stoicism’ is partly to blame | Reena Gupta (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (8 children)

The reasons our houses aren’t as well insulated comes down to climate and cost.

Climate, people don’t die from extreme temperatures here like they do in places like Europe and North America.

Cost, we don’t have the demand for better thermal protection so anyone who wants to improve their home has to pay.

I’m in the process of trying to improve my home atm. I’ve had the blow in insulation replaced with batts, I’m replacing the windows with double glazing and I am trying to seal all of the gaps and vents that let out the heat. It will cost me 10’s of thousands of dollars by the time I’m finished, but it will make our house comfortable without costing us a fortune when we are retired.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

https://www.healthyhomes.org.au/news/heh1pp76ot3hpljgf9x3mp7umqndch

A new study published in The Lancet shows 6.5% of deaths in this country are attributed to cold weather, compared with 0.5% from hot weather. Most deaths will be from cardiovascular and respiratory disease, as it’s the heart and lungs that struggle when we are outside our comfort zone.

Cold weather causes twice as many deaths (proportional to population) as in Sweden. Australia's cold weather problem is, when measured in deaths, twice as bad as Sweden's. People DO die from extreme cold here in Australia, much worse than they do in Europe.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 months ago

People DO die from extreme cold here in Australia

From looking at the study, the definition of "extreme cold" is based on percentile temperature local to the area. So Sydney's "extreme cold" is less than about 11 ℃, while for Stockholm to be considered "extreme cold" it needs to be below about -6 ℃. The problem with this is that it means any deaths caused by temperatures between -6 and 11 ℃ will inflate Stockholm's "moderate cold" rates, while they increase Sydney's "extreme cold".

Still, I think there're some really interesting conclusions from this data. Across the board, high temperatures seem to be associated with a lower temperature-related mortality rate than low temperatures are.

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