Yet U.S. death rates have been falling and life expectancy rising for some time now.
Weather is most important when it's extreme.
In general, summer deaths are more closely linked with weather than winter deaths in the United States. But more important, notice at the right-hand side of the graph that when apparent temperatures exceed 30 C, the rapid mortality increase so prevalent in the 1960s has decreased over each decade, to such an extent that the 1990s' curve is nearly flat. In other words, on any given day in the 1960s, every degree above 30 C would mean an extra 1.2 deaths. In the 1990s, the death increase per degree is only about 0.1. Which brings us back to the original global warming pronouncements.