Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to Bob Ward writing on the London School of Economics website, if we don’t name climate change induced heatwaves where temperatures exceed 82F, people won’t realise how deadly they are.
Is it time to start naming deadly heatwaves?
Commentary 23 July, 2019
Bob Ward
Policy and Communications DirectorA failure by the media to convey the severity of the health risks from heatwaves, which are becoming more frequent due to climate change, could undermine efforts to save lives this week as temperatures climb to dangerous levels.
Based on the experience of the last three summers, during which more than 2500 people across England were killed by heatwave conditions, hundreds of vulnerable people could die across the country in the coming days.
Public Health England has estimated that there were 863 “excess deaths” (PDF) during three heatwave periods last summer, which was the warmest on record in England.
…
The Met Office started in 2015 to name storms that were likely to have a significant impact in order to “aid the communication of approaching severe weather”.
Although heatwaves do not receive official names, a hot spell across parts of Europe during summer 2017 was nicknamed ‘Lucifer’ (PDF).
Far more people have died in the UK from recent heatwaves than from storms, so it should be uncontroversial to start applying names to both.…
A heatwave officially occurs when a location records a period of at least three consecutive days with daily maximum temperatures meeting or exceeding the heatwave temperature threshold, which varies by UK county between 25 and 28 degrees Celsius.
By contrast, the ‘Heat-health watch’ on the Met Office’s website lists “heatwave threshold values” between 28 and 32 degrees Celsius for different regions of the UK.
The Met Office’s website does, however, point out that climate change is increasing the frequency of heatwaves in the UK.
Read more: http://www.lse.ac.uk/GranthamInstitute/news/is-it-time-to-start-naming-deadly-heatwaves/
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Where I live on the edge of the tropics, if the Australian MET started naming individual days or weeks when temperatures soar over 82F, they would run out of names.
While 863 or 2,500 excess heat deaths is a tragedy, Britain should probably be more worried about the massive spike in winter deaths, 50,000 excess winter deaths which occurred last year according to official figures, and the rampant British green energy fuel poverty which makes the elderly and other people with low incomes hesitate to switch on their air conditioners or heaters.
82 degrees? Fahrenheit? We used to call that “summer weather.”
Of course, they haven’t declared what names we have to use. I propose names from children’s books.
Weatherman: “Well folks, we leave behind heat wave wave Aunt Pettitoes which saw three days of 83 degree weather, but there are warnings about a new heat wave next week, Diggory Diggory Delvet.
Summer weather? Around here that’s spring and fall weather.
The low 80s is the inside temperature of my unit where I live, and that is with the AC on. Thankfully, I finally got an AC unit several years ago as it was getting tough on me to have to live with heat in the mid 90s F through the heat of summer.
80 on a cloudy windy day…and I”m cold as sh1t
FL. would love to have 82 degree days in summer. Some times in mid FL. it’s 82 degrees at dawn. 1st name Heaty McHeatface
“…more than 2500 people across England were killed by heatwave conditions,”
Nearly all of them were weak or old or both and measured their remaining life expectancy in weeks rather than years but why compromise a good Global Warming narrative with trivial details.
The Blizzard didn’t kill 86 year old George, it was all that snow shoveling.
Wherever that guy may be right now, be it hell vor purgatory, bis brain has died from dehydration long before.
And to get left of Trotsky they had to build a bridge to the 21st century using material provided by the IPCC and their paid spokesalarmist ALGORE.
Yes. Let’s name every weather “event”. Because that makes them more real and more “frightening”. It’s all about alarming people. That makes them like sheep, and more easily controlled.
There are not enough names.
Zactly.
We actually had rain flurry Zactly here earlier today, followed by sunny spell Overblowncrisis; then, after morning coffee, rain shower Positively-rounded-Al, cloudy period Abel, and another rain flurry, provisionally ‘Theresa-Mae’.
Lots more names to go, although if Croydon, some three miles [5Km] distant, gets to name its own weather, we may face a name-drought in a century or so. But, of course, we only have eleven years, seven (IIRC) months to go [per AOC], so there isn’t even a weather-feature-name-crisis.
Oh well – another glass of red!
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You’re right, Bruce Cobb: We don’t start teaching our young people some resiliency pretty soon, the “developing” worlders who accept minor discomfort and inconvenience without a nervous breakdown will waltz right in and take the place over while we’re busy having hysterics over normal weather. Pretty soon the entire West will stay in bubble-wrap under their beds in the name of “health and safety.”
Exactly right. We used to name hurricanes then began naming tropical storms, aided by satellite technology that detects storm formation well out to sea. Now the alarmists love to point to the increase in “named” storms.
Let’s do it so, we can allow total burnout of the crusade and make it obvious for all about the hoax.
I love that phrase, “…burnout of the crusade…” I think CC is the last big cause for these people, the synergy CC has for all the leftists and greenies, they will not let this go, disaster is only a few years away, give us your money or the weather will get you!
Nope, they’re just honing their skills.
A few years ago I had a discussion with another enviromentalists who insisted we were all gonna die because of a shortage of oxygen.
Currently, those wonderful models are predicting we are going to lose a whopping 0.121% by 2100!
Crumbs! We are all gonna die! At least sooner or later
I live in California, the forecast out here is 92F+ for the forecast-able future. It’s called Summer and it happens every cycle around the sun. Triple-digit days are not uncommon for that matter.
82F would feel amazing to me right now.
I was just outside and the temperature was about 86F and I was thinking to myself that the weather today felt really pleasant.
I watched ABC news tonight and there are a couple of high-pressure systems building over the U.S., one in the southwest and one in the upper midwest/northeast, and ABC news is already hyping a new heatwave for the U.S. The MSM is relentless in their promotion of the CAGW fraud. They lead their newscast with weather reports. It might not be the first story but they will report on the weather in the first five minutes. They have been doing this for several years now.
Here is a nullschool link to the current jet streams over the U.S.:
https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-84.37,37.02,401/loc=-107.927,37.528
I marked the center of the high-pressure system in the southwest. You’ll have to find the one in the northeast yourself, as nullschool only allows that one mark. 🙂
As far as these being heatwaves, yes they will cause the temperatures to get warmer, just like the last short heatwave we experienced last week, and just like that heatwave, these new ones should move out about as fast as the last one, a week or ten days over any particular area, although the one in the southwest could linger a little longer in the central U.S.
In years past, we used to get a high-pressure system setting up over the central U.S. for weeks and even months at a time, which naturally caused those summers to be very hot and dry, but that pattern has changed and we haven’t been getting persistent high-pressure systems lingering over us for any length of time in the last few years. With the exception of the year 2010, which was one of the hottest summers I have every experienced. It equalled anything I can remember in severity. But then the deluge came soon thereafter and that was the end of that. Pleasant summers ever since. Like this one. :).
NorCal, just north of Sacramento.. heatwave? Nope, weather.. yes. Weather channel says 100, car says 108.. But I’ve officially named it heatwave “hotterthanballz”
What a crock of shiist !
Naming hurricanes was ridiculous enough, but to now name heatwaves??? Perhaps there should be a “special place” (asylum) for these nitwits to conduct their “work.”
“Perhaps there should be a “special place” (asylum) for these nitwits to conduct their “work.”
Yes! 🙂
whats ridiculous is that naming hurricanes wasn’t scary enough so they started naming tropical storms to pump up the numbers. A Couple of years back they named a tropical depression because they were sure it would become a tropical storm only to watch it fizzle and die a depressing death.
These deaths can probably be attributed to the lack of air conditioning due to much higher energy costs.
This of course being the result of wind, solar and anti fracking and everything that makes life better.
That was my first thought !
Yep. ”Heat related” deaths is a very obscure term. People head for the water, and sometimes they drown. That’s a heat related death. Often, there are underlying health issues too. Generally speaking, perfectly healthy individuals do not drop dead from the heat.
Whereas even healthy elderly routinely die from cold. These alarmists are thick as a whale omelette.
Whelp… Ima gonna start naming my morning “movements”, starting with colossal dump Bob, forecast for 6 a.m. local time tomorrow.
Global warming theory started with Svante Arrhenius. He thought it would be a good thing.
A bit of global warming should be a good thing.
His experiment is often quoted as proof all one needs to show CO2 drives climate change however, I have never been able to find any documentation that describes his experiment.
Looks like Bob Ward needs attention in a ward …. 😉
The temperature where I am right now, in my boat in Nanaimo BC, is 29.9C , that makes it a heatwave according to this nonsense. What should I call it? Other than Bullschist?
We already name time periods with temperatures in excess of 82F. We call it “summer”.
But of concern here is, notice how the media in U.K. has latched on to the “OMG, it’s warm! The end is nigh!” whilst totally ignoring the thousands more deaths due to cold. And, in both cases, the solution is simple: easier access to cheap fossil fuels for heating and cooling of homes. Giving weather conditions a fancy name doesn’t actually change the temperature.
I thought a heat wave was 3 consecutive days at 90 and above. Hmmm…
Over 82 degrees? We have a name for that already in North Carolina. It’s called summer. And large parts of spring and fall also. What a bunch of useless dipshits.
Does this mean that I am dead since I live in Florida, and 82 degrees is a warm winter day.
28 C a heatwave? It is only two degrees over what I have my AC set to here in Texas.
The heat and cold related deaths vary enormously with adaptation to local climate.
Back in 2001 Lomborg noted “heat-related mortality started around 17.3 C in north Finland,……. and at 25.7 C in Athens”.
In the hotter parts of Australia the start is more like 40 C !
Picking 28 C for heatwaves shows how much some people live in their own little blinkered world.
They are the ones who are unable to consider there is much better information available.
And many alternatives!
The Skeptical Environmentalist p291
I live in Canada. The second coldest country in the world. We just had a couple of days below 82F which were the first in quite a while and people were complaining about it being cold. We don’t get enough summer and we’re not happy when we get short changed on it.
About the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard.
I thought that days already had names, e.g., Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Addams, Thor’s Day, Fried Fish Day, etc.
This really does come near to making these people look like idjits, when they have to name everything, especially with ridiculous names like Bob or Bill (Bob was the coldest day, Bill was the hottest day). Whatever will they do when they run out of names???? The horror!!!
I’m not sure I want them as neighbors, or even living in the same county as I do.
I don’t want Bob Ward living in the same country as I do! (or even the same planet.)
The events and mutterings of these people have already made them look like idjits, as you describe them. They have passed the point of coming close a long time back.
Giving nice summer days in UK names is about as barking mad as it gets.
Bob spells his name with 2 o’s.
If we do start naming heat waves, I think it would only be fair if we started back in 1900. Then maybe these alarmists would begin to see that this sort of weather behavior is not so unusual, after all.
I thought the definition of a heat wave was based on being X degrees over the avg temp for a certain number of days?
No! Really????
That’s apostasy in the Religion of the Temple of What We Cannot Control, a/k/a climate vs. weather.
82F? That’s what we call a cold spell here (kidding a little, it’s only 103 at the moment).
If anyone needs any further evidence that Robert Jeremy Grantham is a fool, I would like to understand why.
On a hunch I checked the Wikipedia entry for Honolulu. Turns out that the average daily high is 82F or above for eight months of the year. It drops to 80.1 in January. Those poor people. Developed nations should take up a collection to assist the doomed inhabitants of Hawaii in moving to someplace like Inuvik or Novosibirisk where they might have some chance of survival.
😂😂😂😂😂👍🏼
Public Health England has estimated that there were 863 “excess deaths” (PDF) during three heatwave periods last summer, which was the warmest on record in England.
And on average there are 30,000 excess deaths each winter.
But of course, those 30,000 deaths don’t matter to the eco-nutter climate cult members like Ward.