Not one mention of fuel poverty in the entire article. Love the photo caption.
Maybe, just maybe. IT’S THE WRONG KIND OF COLD~ctm
Call for more NHS resources as elderly people and women among most vulnerable
Snow in Derbyshire last December. The temperatures last winter are thought to have been partly to blame for the excess deaths. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA
There were 50,100 excess deaths in England and Wales last winter, when there was a prolonged spell of extreme cold, making it the highest number since 1976, figures have shown.
The Office for National Statistics said flu and the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine were key reasons for the rise of excess winter deaths in 2017-18.
The deaths occurred during the NHS’s most serious “winter crisis” for many years. A lack of staff and beds meant all types of health services, particularly hospitals, were unable to cope with both the number of patients needing treatment and the severity of many of their conditions.
Women and people aged over 85 were among those most likely to die last winter, although the rate of winter deaths among males aged up to 64 doubled in just a year, the ONS found. A third of the deaths were due to serious breathing difficulties, including flu, asthma and bronchitis.
The 50,100 excess deaths were about 15,000 (45.1%) more than those that occurred in 2016-17 and double the total in 2015-16.
Nick Stripe, a specialist in health analysis and life events at the ONS, said: “It is likely that last winter’s increase was due to the predominant strain of flu, the effectiveness of the influenza vaccine and below-average winter temperatures.”
Doctors and groups representing older people said too little was being done to keep older people warm and safe, and to give the NHS the resources it needs.
Caroline Abrahams, Age UK’s charity director, said: “A toxic cocktail of poor housing, high energy prices and ill-health can make winter a dangerous time for many older people, and tragically it is the oldest and those who are the most vulnerable who particularly suffer the consequences.
“Last winter, there were nearly 46,000 excess winter deaths among people aged 65 and over – a shocking 92% of all excess deaths – equating to 379 older people a day. These distressing figures are now the highest we’ve seen in over 40 years.”
HT/JH, AB
Extreme Weather does it again! Is there no end to the dangers of CO2?
There is apparently no end to people who profit from the “dangers of CO2” and no end to the victims of these profiteers.
Can you imagine how bad it would have been without Global Warming (TM)
I posted the following earlier today on another thread, before seeing this article. That post is in limbo now, awaiting moderator approval – I must have used some bad words, like Carson, Blair, or Merkel.
The 50,100 Excess Winter Deaths from 2017-18 is an update from the 48,000 preliminary estimate of April. Note this figure is just for England and Wales, not the entire UK – Northern Ireland and Scotland are not included.
48,000 BRITS DEAD AFTER WORST WINTER IN 42 YEARS
Hayley Coyle, Daily Star, 7 April 2018
https://thegwpf.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c920274f2a364603849bbb505&id=cc6bacc6dd&e=da89067c4f
The UK is being hit by its worst winter death toll in 42 years. It is estimated that 20,275 Brits more than average died between December and March. It means this winter is set to total at least 48,000 deaths due to cold weather – which works out at an average of one death every three and a half minutes. Campaigners have called the deaths a “national tragedy” as cold weather victims fatalities could be prevented – especially in the elderly. –Hayley Coyle, Daily Star, 7 April 2018
______________________________________
I predicted this Excess Winter Death debacle several times on wattsupwiththat:
HERE IN 2013
AN OPEN LETTER TO BARONESS VERMA
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/10/31/blind-faith-in-climate-models/#comment-1130954
AND HERE IN 2015
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/11/20/terrorism-and-a-cold-winter-refugee-crisis/#comment-1649569
Excerpt:
“Contrary to popular belief, Earth is colder-than-optimum for human survival. A warmer world, such as was experienced during the Roman Warm Period and the Medieval Warm Period, is expected to lower winter deaths and a colder world like the Little Ice Age will increase winter mortality, absent adaptive measures. These conclusions have been known for many decades, based on national mortality statistics.
,,,
In Europe, where green energy schemes have been widely implemented, the result is higher energy costs that are unaffordable for the elderly and the poor, and increased winter deaths. European politicians are retreating from highly-subsidized green energy schemes and returning to fossil fuels. When misinformed politicians fool with energy systems, innocent people suffer and die.”
Joe d’Aleo and I also wrote this article on Excess Winter Mortality in 2015:
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Regards, Allan
_________________________
Joe d’Aleo and I co-authored the following paper on Excess Winter Mortality in 2015. We were about to publish it when the landmark Lancet study appeared, so we incorporated that excellent paper into ours. Our title, derived from the Lancet study, is
“COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER”.
There are about 100,000 Excess Winter Deaths in the USA per year, equivalent to about two-9-11’s per week for 17 weeks every year.
Canada experiences 5000 to 10,000 Excess Winter Deaths every year, whereas Great Britain, with only about twice Canada’s population and one-fifth the population of thee USA, typically experiences 35,000 to 50,000.
Canada and the UK have similar health care systems and similar ethnic populations, but energy is much less expensive in Canada and our homes are better adapted to Winter.
British (and other European) politicians, through their costly, destructive green energy policies, have been killing off their elderly and their poor for decades. When politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.
The great killer is “Heat or Eat” – fuel poverty, poorly insulated housing and lack of proper heating systems.
Imagine if the Euro politicians (including the Brits) had focused on cheap, reliable energy, and home insulation and central heating programs – Granny Nan and Great Uncle Bill would be “down the pub” enjoying a pint, instead of pushing up daisies.
The Greens are the great killers of our age. Just including increased malaria deaths from the 30-year ban on DDT and Excess Winter Deaths from green energy fraud, the Green death toll now rivals that of the great killers of the 20th Century – Hitler, Stalin and Mao could soon be surpassed by Rachel Carson, Tony Blair, Angela Merkel and successors.
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER, September 4, 2015
by Joseph D’Aleo and Allan MacRae
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
Allan MacRea
A good comment as usual.
You have to realize that
Charles the Moderator,
just to show who is boss,
now deletes every 13th comment.
He used to delay every 13th comment,
back in the old days,
when his “office” was a bar stool
in a seedy corner bar,
down by the docks,
but now he is a big shot,
so he sits on a throne
(not THAT throne)
and deletes every 13th
comment instead.
If you ask why, he will claim
you included a micro-aggression,
whatever that is.
But seriously now, the website
seems to have improved
under CTM’s leadership.
.
.
.
Allan:
I wonder if you know
if there’s a large margin of error
for the “excess deaths” estimate,
and maybe it is close
to being a wild guess?
It would seem that “excess deaths” would be
a very small percentage of total deaths,
so its possible small, normal, random
year-to-year variations are thought
to be a meaningful trend.
What do you think?
Richard wrote:
Allan:
I wonder if you know if there’s a large margin of error for the “excess deaths” estimate, and maybe it is close to being a wild guess?
It would seem that “excess deaths” would be a very small percentage of total deaths, so it’s possible small, normal, random year-to-year variations are thought to be a meaningful trend.
What do you think?
_____________
It is not a guess – Excess Winter Deaths (EWD) is a defined parameter.
It is actually a significant percentage of total deaths, especially in some countries. British EWD’s are high, but not the highest – see our paper and the Lancet paper for more country stats.
Excess Winter Deaths = (Deaths in Dec-Mar inclusive) minus 0.5*((Deaths in Previous 4 months)+(Deaths in following 4 months))
Excess Winter Deaths can be influenced by higher or lower deaths in the previous or following 4 months – for example, the April 2018 EWD estimate for Winter 2017-18 for England and Wales was 48,000 but the actual EWD announced was 50,100, which was influenced by the April-July 2018 death stats.
Best, Allan
Thank you
These figures would inspire the Left and the Greens to go even harder into renewable energy
Proof that their plan is working – the depopulating and de-industrialisation of first world nations.
Dr Evil couldn’t do any better.
To be fair, it does mention “high energy prices” it just does not say why they are high.
I note the politically correct mention of women, it is a safe bet that age corrected men are dying at a higher rate, it is just that more women get to be very old.
Also, nobody cares about male welfare anymore. Only female.
Nor white; the Australian Senate recently resolved that it isn’t ok to be white.
Nope.
As a white cis-gender heterosexual middle-class male, I am actually an endangered species, but I can’t even mention it…
Likewise I didn’t hear that and in further breaking news it seems blokes can’t get away with lying about their age-
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/emile-ratelbands-attempt-to-slash-20-years-off-his-age-rejected-by-court/ar-BBQrZnD
They’re high, in order to pay the massive subsidies to renewables – paticularly the intermittents.
This year, subsidies will be £9.3bn; up 55% from last year’s £6bn!
As ever we have to be very careful in drawing conclusions from snapshot statistics presented by biased media with various narratives to follow (in this case one narrative being “fund the NHS without restriction”). Also, to be fair, the quote from the Age UK charity did mention “high energy prices”. To comment more fully, we would need to know, inter alia:
– what excess deaths we would normally expect as a result of a (perfectly normal) colder-than-average winter or just prolonged cold spells (it wasn’t a particularly cold winter overall);
– what the “highest we’ve seen in over 40 years” means in the context of a significantly higher population;
– just how many people died of ‘flu who had been given that ineffective flu vaccine, and compare that to the performance of flu vaccines in a normal year.
The saddest part of all this is the fact that, whilst it would be wrong to shout “you ain’t seen nothing yet”, the main price rises to result from the UK government’s simply insane green energy policies are yet to hit anywhere near as hard as they will in future years. As yet, they amount to £hundreds per household per annum but this will become £thousands perhaps even within 10 years from now. Energy poverty (however it is defined) will thus inevitably become a far greater factor in poor winter health in the coming years. Yet, not a single senior government minister seems capable of grasping that outcome.
At least the good thing about CO2-induced warming is that it happens more in cold climates, in winter, and at night.
Cold comfort, I know, in the face of the avalanche of stupidity that we face. They ought to be celebrating the fact, not taxing it.
Mr. Hart
Assuming CO2 is causing the warming in the Arctic,
that theory conflicts with the lack of warming in Antarctica,
except for some small areas near underwater volcanoes.
which can’t be blamed on CO2.
There is no scientific proof that CO2 caused any warming.
That is just an assumption based on simple,
closed system laboratory experiments.
There is nothing in the (corrupt)surface temperature
record of the 20th century that could not be
explained by natural climate variations —
adding CO2 to the air
in the second half of the 20th century
produced almost the same average temperature
pattern as in the first half of the 20th century,
when much less CO2 was added to the air.
Well said, Sir.
I will borrow the gist for a pre-emptive social media strike.
It’s a combination of high energy prices due to heavily subsidised renewables together with the closure of cheap coal fired power stations, and the prolonged cold spell resulting from the “beast from the east” when we had cold winds and snow blowing in from Siberia (we used to call it winter weather). The NHS does not suffer from a shortage of resources. It suffers from bad management and inefficiencies. It was revealed recently that the NHS is the biggest purchaser of fax machines in the world (and I naively thought fax machines were phased out last century when we got email).
One thing is certain – the Grauniad is not a source of the facts (just like the BBC, which heavily relies on the Grauniad for its fake news).
And I love the caption too. Derbyshire represents my childhood.
“People over 85 were most likely to die last winter…”
Pretty sure they are the most likely group to die at any time. And the UK has an increasing number of deaths as the “bump” caused by increasing longevity unwinds, so I doubt if these deaths are nearly as bad as claimed.
People over 85 experienced a slightly-more-likely-to-die-last-winter anomaly that is ever increasing in our weather models. If this trend continues… children born in the future will never know people over 85.
Hocus…lol
Is there a hockey stick in that model?
Phoenix44,
Statistics reveal that cold related deaths are about ten times higher than heat related deaths. Moreover, after a heat wave, death rates drop somewhat, so that most people passing away during a heat wave probably would have passed away a few weeks to a few months later. Not so after a cold wave, as there is no drop in death rates… See:
https://www.bmj.com/content/321/7262/670.full
Good comment, as always, Ferdinand.
Imposing boutique (and expensive) “solutions” to non-problems on everyone costs lives . . . now.
A thing you won’t hear from the globalists.
“Not one mention of fuel poverty in the entire article”.
Try this one:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/cold-weather-uk-winter-deaths-europe-polar-vortex-a8224276.html
It seems that older and low income people are dying because of increased energy prices. This is a direct result of the renewable energy dictates of a global elite. Vaccines are a red herring and never have been proven effective.
Could it be that CO2 reduction equates to population reduction? Useless eaters beware.
Perhaps a new metric could be used deaths per subsidy unit. So for each landowner or feed in tariff recipient there could be a score of the number of deaths ’caused’ by that subsidy.
The closest they come to mentioning fuel poverty is to note that it was a cold winter.
From this side of the pond, the usual thought is that the British housing stock is woefully inadequate for cold weather. I remember a story from quite a few years ago which noted that water pipes ran up the outside of British houses and most of them froze during a cold snap. I am also told that the windows are mostly single pane and the houses are drafty with little or no insulation. That appears to have changed for new construction.
commieBob. As you say not many houses here have waterpipes outside and the majority probably have double glazing nowadays and many do have wall insulation. I’m sure other countries with more severe climates do better in this respect. I was brought up in a council house (1959-1985) with single glazing, no central heating and no fancy insulation as were my parents and grandparents and it wasn’t a problem because fuel, predominantly for coal and gas fires was cheap. That’s not the case now, fortunately we’ve had very spells of severely cold weather, I dread what will happen to poorer people if that ever changes.
“.. water pipes ran up the outside of British houses..”
Not so. Drainage pipes, yes. Which is just as much a pain when they freeze, It’s difficult to use water when you can’t get rid of it afterwards.
commieBob
Sorry, but we have been suffering cold winters for hundreds of years in the UK. Even we’re not daft enough to run water pipes up the outside of houses.
The housing stock is, well, a mixed bag.
We have a great deal of Victorian and older houses of old traditional but robust construction, commonly 9″ solid brick walls. The problem is they were designed to work with coal fires but of course burning coal was largely outlawed in smokeless zones, predominantly in cities. Now, almost no one burns the stuff.
The replacement was central heating, usually gas fired but frequently oil fired, which, as convenient as it is, almost necessitated the blocking up of chimneys and installation of double glazing. Successive governments encouraged double glazing and insulation without thinking it through properly…….Now there’s a surprise.
Draughty Victorian houses had lots of air flow encouraged by open coal fires drawing cool air into the house through unsealed windows and doors. Even floorboards played their part, consequently the houses were warm and, yep, mould free.
Double glaze these places, block chimneys and lay carpets and laminate floors down and the house is almost sealed off from airflow. Condensation builds up on walls and rapidly starts to generate black mould which is unsightly and unhealthy.
Our governments never bothered thinking the whole thing through, encouraging a simple mechanical ventilation system with heat exchangers would have largely solved the problem.
Even today, new houses are built to a budget, invariably cheap and nasty with many of the same problems manifesting themselves because no one thinks to design in mechanical ventilation. The best they have come up with is trickle vents on windows.
Domestic mechanical ventilation is an excellent opportunity for solar panels, or domestic wind turbines with not much more than a car battery if grid independence is desirable.
My objective on retiring in 3 years time is to build a house for my wife and I. You can bet your bottom dollar it will have a form of heat exchange ventilation installed, be it mechanical or otherwise. I would like to build it in Scotland but I suspect the SNP will have saddled the country with so much debt through their insane renewables policy consumers will be paying for over generations, so I think I might stick to the north of England.
You obviously never lived in one.
I did
Condensation running down the walls and ice inside the windows despite the coal fires.
For an asthmatic, the black moulds were hell on earth.
If condensate is building up on the walls, they don’t have enough insulation and/or ventilation.
If you’re building a new house, an HRV (heat recovery ventilation) makes sense and in some places it’s mandatory. They do have issues. link Some folks think you should have exhaust fans in the kitchen and bathroom anyway.
“Draughty Victorian houses had lots of air flow encouraged by open coal fires drawing cool air into the house through unsealed windows and doors. Even floorboards played their part, consequently the houses were warm and, yep, mould free.”
Yes. This is true. Late Victorian and Edwardian houses were built to keep enough airflow going through the buildings to keep condensation from forming on the walls and windows. This was regarded as building health into buildings because by then it was well known that keeping water vapor trapped inside was a health hazard, and also unpleasant to smell.
Years ago a builder pointed out all the features of the Victorian house I was living in that encouraged air flow, and described how the bricks were made to “breath” in surplus water vapor then release the water when the air had less water vapor content. He said the Victorians got the idea from the Romans, and even made the same kind of mortar as them.
That’s very old stock. Modern stick is double glazed insulated to the hilt and very energy efficient.
You have to go a long way to find a house such as you describe these days: they do not command high prices dues to their ‘energy ratings’ and are usually – even as rented properties – upgraded to the max whenever they get renovated – typically every 25 years or so.
Leo: I’d be very surprised if the energy rating of a property affected its price much in the UK.
I’d be more interested in where a house is located and what structural work needed doing to it. I’ve never come across an estate agent’s (‘realtor’ in the USA) analysis comment on energy rating as a factor affecting price.
I’m selling a house at present and the agreement among the estate agents is that no-one pays any attention to the compulsory EPA.
“I’ve never come across an estate agent’s (‘realtor’ in the USA) …”
REALTOR® is a trademark of the National Associan of Realtors®. It is not a generic term to indicate real estate brokers. The latter is the US term.
The new houses on Wethersfield Road — housing association* designed and built — are so air-tight they need fan ventilation. Let’s hope the lights don’t go out.
JF
*A replacement for council housing. Someone earning a reasonable wage as a council employee is then paid two or three times the salary.
The coldest i ever felt indoors was in the early 1960s in a house (cottage?) In Oxford in February and I’m from Winnipeg!
In the Northern Isles they came up with a solution for draughts. Very effective keeping your feet warm helps a grest deal too.
http://www.orkney-chair.co.uk/orkney%20chair%206.asp
Except for the flammable cladding they put on high rise apartment buildings
It was UK governmental CO2-reduction specifications that called for additional insulation for Grenfell Tower during refurbishment. The insulation specification was changed at some point from galvanized steel to aluminum, reducing its fire-resistance.
– Well this just proves what the warmists have been saying all along – Greenland ice cap outflows are submerging the Gulf Stream – all Europe is gonna’ freeze.
WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!! /sarc
Sorry doctors, all our resources have been allocated to saving people from warming, AGW that is
Too old to work, too poor to pay taxes. Inexpensive death by cold, aquamation, fertilizer, problem, solved.
Hey, those zillions green fund claims have to come from somewhere, old horses need not apply.
I have a strong suspicion that deep within the UK governmental bureaucracy there lurks an anonymous functionary who reads the monthly excess death statistics and gives a satisfied little smirk whenever they rise.
Most of the excess deaths being caused by breathing problems. No mention of the increase in air pollution caused by the government’s promotion of diesel vehicles and the German car industry’s loose interpretation of emission legislation.
And as we all know dar Bloke, lack of heating has a high therapeutic value in the process.
The NHS must have run out of coal.
Reuters article, don’t get to much AGW before breakfast.
http://news.trust.org/item/20181204081741-7ca88
Mac
Thankfully the Guardian’s activists will stay nice and warm this winter. This will be helped by the £300m clear profit the newspaper’s owner gained by selling its stake in Auto Trader and having the foresight to run it through a tax-free exempt shell out of the Cayman Islands.
All perfectly legal of course. Guardian hacks on large London salaries are hardly likely to suffer fuel poverty. The soaring cost of energy in Europe is saving the world, just like offshore tax havens have saved the Guardian.
Well for a while anyway. The newspaper is hemorrhaging cash and depends for its long term survival on a business busting combination of falling subscriptions and advertising revenues along with charitable begging letters.
Cynically, the “excess deaths” are not a bug, but a feature of green programs on energy. Dead people do not use resources, so. . .
One year is weather, not climate.
It may well be that the flu jab was prepped for the wrong strain last year.
Cold weather invariably increases human mortality due to disease. It lowers the body’s ability to fight off infection. Starvation, also associated with cold spells, does the same.
That’s why most of the great die-offs in human history were coincident with lengthy (multi year, and multi-decadal) cold spells.
Cold weather is bad for humans. Warm weather is good for humans. The climate alarmists, of course, refuse to acknowledge that which history and archaeology and medicine have long taught us.
Old people commonly die in winter. Perhaps if not only because they are already old and will succumb to Flu or other sickness, or of SAD syndrome when it is cold and dark by 4 Pm to 5 Pm. And it could very well be because of cold and drafty living conditions due to inability to keep the heat up to a comfortable degree because of insane electricity and fuel prices. As the story stated, it was lack of hospital beds and resources while experiencing a greater than average outbreak of flu. If it had been an exceptionally warm winter, this probably never would have been so bad, because all the rest of stressors in Society would also not have been as bad.
The loneliness of the onslaught of winter has always been since time immemorial, been shown at Halloween, an ancient custom describing the horror at the loss of the Sun in the northern hemisphere. I feel dead too every beginning of winter, and is why next week I am off to Southern Thailand and SE Asia for 2 months. Just the thought is enough to keep me going through this ice and snow.
Illegal immigration may also had a hand in this, wherein the illegal migrants get priority access to shelter and health as a human right, but local citizens are on their own. This is playing out in USA and Canada, while illegal migrant refugees are pouring across the borders and in the case of Canada, called irregular border crossers, are immediately put up in nice hotels in big cities with free health and dental & welfare allowances, while the homeless are left to fending for themselves out on the street. Hard to believe, but it is true. And most, if not all, are just economic migrants, taking a short cut in front of legal immigration.
Or the military vets are ignored, or the elderly are just ignored when their time of need is the most. But the illegal border jumpers get a billion dollars in aid over several years, just to make the Gov’t look good to the international community and the UN. And that was at the invitation of PM Trudeau to the worlds poor welcoming them via Twitter. At the expense and detriment to our own citizens. And then we are called racist if we complain, while tax rates are put up and the deficit explodes. How is this fair to the tax payer?
It is no wonder when an election comes, it is out with the socialist/marxists, and in with the populists. And so it should be, as long hard fought freedoms are eroded away by strokes of the pen by ignorant politicians, with increasing carbon taxes like that also in Canada or France, and now that they protest, the media don’t even mention it is the carbon taxes being protested to halt climate change, but now it is just fuel taxes. Get me a Yellow Jacket… /rant off
Of interest there are many payments from the government that provide assistance over winter:
winter fuel allowance £200 baid to all pensioners.
clold weather payment approx £100
What you’ll get
You’ll get £25 for each 7 day period of very cold weather between 1 November and 31 March.
After each period of very cold weather in your area, you should get a payment within 14 working days. It’s paid into the same bank or building society account as your benefit payments.
Warm Home Discount Scheme £140
You could get £140 off your electricity bill for winter 2018 to 2019 under the Warm Home Discount Scheme.
That’s about 2.4MWhrs of electricity
that’s 50 days at 2kw 24/7
“that’s 50 days at 2kw 24/7”
Which is what a single electric storage heater would use, so you could keep one room warm on that. Yes, it would not be switched on all the time, but the rate you pay is dependant on when you use it and pensioners are going to be home all day and will need to supplement the night-time (low tariff) heating with at least some use during the day when rates are a lot higher.
I think that calculation sums up the UK system in one short piece: Let’s make basic items expensive and then give people discounts and rebates, which all have to be administered by government workers on much higher salaries.
None of these payments help the elderly to get out and buy food without the risk of falling on the ice and breaking bones. Warmth inside the home is not the only health consideration in a hard winter.
It seems to me that anyone over the age of 85 is an excess life.
That’s because fuel poverty wasn’t at the root of this. The flu vaccine failed.
– Flu? FLU? They were eatin’ too much fresh fruit!*
*{ – gratuitous Monty Python reference…}
What about a pointed stick?
Strangely, the number of excess deaths going back decades correlates well with how cold the weather is and not to vaccine efficacy.
Flu severity is somewhat correlated with cold. Flu viruses do much better in dryer air, and the air is drier in winter. So if you happen to get a especially bad flu virus mutation that hits in a colder than normal winter and the doctors didn’t predict the right flu strains for the vaccine…you get a lot of deaths. Determining that one condition accounts for all the deaths is very difficult, only that it contributed.
Tens of thousands of citizens perishing while bureaucracy tallies the numbers and finds fault elsewhere.
Bureaucracy notes that excess deaths occurred. Bureaucrats guess at reasons why and happily point the reason why at others.
Doctors, i.e. the people who must sign death certificates and talk to any remaining relations, provide a blunt statement that bureaucracy is failing their citizens.
Bureaucracy provides meaningless tragic sound bites and insulation from responsibility.
Western Civilization keeps rough tallies for Mao and Stalin allowing millions to starve.
Who is keeping tally as Theresa May and her Administration, along with Merkel, Macron, Jerry Brown and other senior officials who are allowing their citizenry to perish from the cold?
What is more, who is correctly attributing these deaths to the senior officials, not the nameless faceless bureaucracies?
Er, none of the extra deaths were the result of “the cold” in Derbyshire last winter. It wasn’t even that cold. Just a fraction of a degree below average and warmer than four of the preceding 10 winters.
As the article states, people in Derbyshire likely died in greater numbers than normal last winter because of flu and the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine that was used.
Nothing to do with “the cold”.
Who who have guessed?
Not resorting to scare tactics from the rational (minority) side but the next winter will be worse from solar minimum in combination with the doctor Brexit outmigration. I put some extra insulation in my attic myself and take anti-viral resveratrol supplements. Those DIY projects might help in the return to the 1970s cold or further below that.
I am still astounded by the complete disconnect between media reporting such as at the BBC and The Guardian that they still regurgitate catastrophic global warming claims that more and people will die in summer due to heat waves etc…..And yet they continue to report the excess winter deaths and the winter burden on the NHS every year without seeing the contradiction with the CAGW meme they keep spouting.
If it was going to get worse, you would think by now we would notice in the mortality statistics and might have begun to see at least no excess winter deaths, if we are presumably going to be switching from excess winter deaths to excess summer deaths in the future due to global warming.
ThinkingScientist
I read recently that the uptick in deaths from suicide and opioid overdoses has resulted in a decline in the average life expectancy of US residents, for the first time in decades. However, there is rarely any analysis presented as to why those deaths are increasing.
Who decides what is and isn’t excess?
How many times are places where people ‘have lots of children’ slagged off ?
Is not the reason for ‘lots of children’ that some of those children will return the favour/custom their parents did them? i.e. Look after them But no. Westerners don’t have children because they are Rich & Clever.
Run that by me again….
Are these folks not dying because they are eating, being TOLD to eat, a sh1t and nutrient free diet.
(One composed of refined & fruit-derived sugar and cooked starch)
Lack of proper nutrition – Death – in any critter. Even rich & clever ones.
Are these folks feeling the cold because their body’s thermoregulatory system has been trashed by a lifetime of (haha) Moderate Alcohol Consumption?
How many of these folks are dying while living alone? Is it beyond belief that they were lonely.
Lonely people run exactly the same risks as stressed people – especially that they self-medicate on substances that they find/discover makes them ‘feel better’
Hence Comfort Food = Junk Food = starch, sugar & vegetable oil.
is it beyond belief that they are simply ‘letting themselves die’?
They are lonely, nothing good to eat and EVERYBODY, including their own children are so effing selfish, money & power grubbing and generally ‘out on the make’ (or telling everybody else how to live their lives) that they effectively just ‘end it all’ at their own hands.
Especially when the only friend they might have is a TV – and what’s on there.
Junk. Doom. Gloom. More junk. Advertising tat. Dysfunction etc etc etc.
Blame them for wanting out…….. can you.
I can tell you that the cold was far more extreme in December 1981 and the winters of 1984/5 and 1985/6, not to mention December 2010. So cold per is not the primary driver of excess winter deaths.
March 2018 was cold, but not extreme. The rest of the winter was not extreme in the least.
I suspect poverty has more to do with this than temperature, since even in average winters, inability to heat homes will lead to consequences.
Fair points Rhys.
Derbyshire is more or less covered by the northern part of the CET series. It’s pretty much central England moved slightly north. Using CET as an approximation, temperatures in that region were just 0.3 C lower than average (using 1981-2010 as the base) in winter 2017/18. The winters of 2008/09, 2009/10, 2010/11 and 2012/13 were all colder in CET than last winter.
Whatever caused those extra regrettable deaths, it wasn’t unusual coldness. Likely it was just what the Office for National Statistics said it was, as quoted in the article: “… flu and the ineffectiveness of the flu vaccine were key reasons for the rise of excess winter deaths in 2017-18”.
Poor nutrition is incredibly debilitating. Ginger, Garlic & Chillies keep the winter away.
https://thewoksoflife.com/2016/01/ginger-scallion-oil-with-chilies/
Living alone does not mean being lonely. I enjoy it & I just turned 76. What’s mine is my own. I entertain friends at home & socialise in many places, but I do not feel lonesome when I return home. Instead, I relish hopping into a snug, comfortable, electrically heated bed, reading for a while & then sleeping until I am ready to enjoy another day. I feel free to do this, because true freedom is the willingness to accept the results of one’s thoughts & actions. Cowards die many times. A brave man dies but once.
I do fear for anyone living in old drafty houses with decadal cold cycles coming their way….and misguided leaders at the helm making excuses.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NOAA%20SST-NorthAtlantic%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
I’m sure that someone will be able to show that the flu virus was more active due to global warming. Oh, wait, it was colder?
CO2 warming, we’re told, is from elevation of the emission height with a decrease in the temperature thereof; thus the stratosphere (where the emission height is located) cools, less energy is electromagnetically radiated to space – and the planet warms.
Fair enough. So that’s why for the last few decades the stratosphere has been cooling and the earth’s climate warming.
Until now. Now, radiosonde data show that in the most recent decade, stratosphere temperature is increasing. What does this mean? Should be obvious, but apparently it’s not.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018JD028901#.W_N0tbiL7tA.twitter
Parsimonious explanation: warming has stopped, now earth’s climate is cooling.
Explanation that we’re given instead: either another factor – ozone – just cut in and caused the change. Or, although the radiosondes show stratosphere warming, higher up where they don’t measure (so we have no data, just conjecture) – it’s still cooling.
What’s so horrifying about the parsimonious explanation, that folks have to perform such contortions to escape from it?
Last year winter cold deaths in the UK were the highest for 40 years.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/nov/30/excess-winter-deaths-in-england-and-wales-highest-since-1976
Perhaps fewer people than normal died in the glorious summer of 1976, kept alive by the warmth for a few extra months, and died in the winter instead.
Be the excess winter deaths on the heads of Jim Hansen, Al Gore, Michael Mann, Kevin Trenberth, Phil Jones, and all the rest of the “cause”- forwarding science-betrayers.
And on those who support them. That includes you, Nick Stokes and Steve Mosher. The excess deaths be on your head, too.