Guest essay by Eric Worrall
An uncomfortable truth for climate alarmists is winter deaths, even in a warm country like Australia, far outstrip Summer deaths. Humans are tropical apes – our bodies do not cope well with cold weather.
More people die in winter than summer, but climate change may see this reverse
April 27, 2021 6.08am AEST
Ivan Charles Hanigan Data Scientist (Epidemiology), University of Sydney
Alistair Woodward Professor, School of Population Health, University of Auckland
Keith Dear Adjunct Professor of Public Health, University of AdelaideClimate change not only poses enormous dangers to the planet, but also harms human health. In our study published today, we show some of the first evidence climate change has had observable impacts on Australians’ health between 1968 and 2018.
We found long-term heating is associated with changed seasonal balance of deaths in Australia, with relatively more deaths in summer months and relatively fewer deaths in winter months over recent decades.
…
We found that in 1968 there were approximately 73 deaths in summer for every 100 deaths in winter. By 2018, this had risen to roughly 83 deaths in summer for every 100 deaths in winter.
The same trend, albeit of varying strength, was evident in all states of Australia, among all age groups over 55, in females and males, and in the three broad causes of death we looked at (respiratory, heart and renal diseases).
…
Read more: https://theconversation.com/more-people-die-in-winter-than-summer-but-climate-change-may-see-this-reverse-159135
The abstract of the study;
Increased ratio of summer to winter deaths due to climate warming in Australia, 1968–2018
Ivan C. Hanigan Keith B.G. Dear Alistair Woodward
First published: 26 April 2021Abstract
Objective: To determine if global warming has changed the balance of summer and winter deaths in Australia.
Methods: Counts of summer and winter cause‐specific deaths of subjects aged 55 and over for the years 1968–2018 were entered into a Poisson time‐series regression. Analysis was stratified by states and territories of Australia, by sex, age and cause of death (respiratory, cardiovascular, and renal diseases). The warmest and coldest subsets of seasons were compared.
Results: Warming over 51 years was associated with a long‐term increase in the ratio of summer to winter mortality from 0.73 in the summer of 1969 to 0.83 in the summer of 2018. The increase occurred faster in years that were warmer than average.
Conclusions: Mortality in the warmest and coldest times of the year is converging as annual average temperatures rise.
Implications for public health: If climate change continues, deaths in the hottest months will come to dominate the burden of mortality in Australia.
Read more: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1753-6405.13107
Delving into the study, the researchers appear to have performed a naive calculation of Summer vs Winter deaths, and concluded that since the ratio is less extreme today than it was in 1969, climate change is impacting the ratio of Summer to Winter deaths.
You don’t have to be a genius in statistics to see a problem. This would be a reasonable approach if nothing else had changed, but something important has changed since the 1960s – the quality of Australian houses.
Back in 1969, I lived, as did most Australians, in an uninsulated wooden house. Bitterly cold in winter, even with a wood or coal fire burning, blazing hot in Summer.
Nowadays many if not most Australian houses have decent insulation, either because they were constructed since 1969, or because they were retrofitted sometime in the 1970s or 1980s to make them more comfortable. Indoor temperature does not vary as much as it used to. Gas central heating and indoor toilets also became a thing in Australia in the 1970s. I remember the excitement when my family moved into a brick house with insulation and heated floor vents. I didn’t have to spend winter crammed into a small family room huddling up to the fireplace.
After the move, when someone caught the flu, they could spend time in their own room, kept warm by central heating, instead of sharing their viruses with everyone, breathing stuffy coal and tobacco smoke tainted air in the overcrowded family room.
So it should be no surprise that more desperately ill people are surviving Australia’s winters, only to finally expire in Summer. Most ill people in today’s Australia do not have to endure the same winter hardships their ancestors endured in the 1960s. This alone is likely enough to explain the smoothing of the ratio of Summer to Winter deaths.
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As I commented on the original TC post….
by this logic, women will be paid more than men, and Indigenous people will outlive non-indigenous
Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Made me think if there’s any other trends where one is in catch-up mode. So doesn’t the IPCC tell us that it’s the night time temperature that is increasing? Let’s see if I can find that:
IPCC’s AR4 Chapter Ten Page 750 Temperature Extremes:
Almost everywhere, daily minimum temperatures are projected to increase faster than daily maximum temperatures, leading to a decrease in diurnal temperature range.
So in the future, nights will be warmer than the days.
And this was “peer reviewed”? The missing factors such as home insulation are so blindingly obvious, how could the reviewers not see them.
Correlation <> causation!
Originally published in a public health journal, publishers and readers are more concerned with sociology and political “science” than experimental proof of a theory or validating hypotheses. Stated objective “determine if global warming has changed the balance of summer and winter deaths in Australia.” What do you care to wager that the objective was written before the research was conducted?
Medical research is having the same, if not worse problems, with it’s studies as climate science.
Why Most Published Research Findings Are False

https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
* Published: August 30, 2005
* https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
* Uncovering new peer review problems – this time at The BMJ https://www.healthnewsreview.org/2018/04/uncovering-new-peer-review-problems-this-time-at-the-bmj/#.XYE-IQKZiBQ.twitter
The Lancet claims 50% of peer reviewed studies are non reproducible and Bayer claims 75% are non reproducible.
http://bit.ly/2BfsZc9
And medical research is probably way better than climate science in that respect.
IPCC. 30% OF SOURCE MATERIAL NOT PEER REVIEWED
http://bit.ly/2BfsZc9
so youd have to ponder on the rushed “science” proving the new vaccines are safe?
someone did..
https://nationalfile.com/report-pfizer-vaccine-confirmed-to-cause-neurodegenerative-diseases/
ok on the page CLICK the BLUE link to REPORT and read it
Read the report. It’s junk reporting. It talks about mRNA embedding into a genome, something that it doesn’t do. References an article that if you don’t know what you are reading may look scary but has nothing to do with the vaccine.
“how could the reviewers not see them”
They saw them and ignored them.
Why do the reviewers think that general public that stupid and that it would go unnoticed?
Answer is that, the sheep have been following them for the last 20 years, so they thought a business as usual approach would work out just fine.
So, a drop in winter deaths is taken as evidence of a rise in summer deaths ?
Bizarre.
Meanwhile an increase in total life expectancy is completely ignored.
An abuse of both the scientific method and common sense.
Modern science in all its glory.
Exactly. Showing us a ratio tells us nothing at all. Are the data available anywhere? This seems to be a totally incompetent piece of work.
This has been up for ten hours now, and Stephen Wilde’s take-down is the best.
Australia had heatwaves before CO2 was a problem.
The 1895-1896 heatwave with during the Federation Drought holds the record as Australia’s deadliest heatwave, closely followed by 2009, which recorded at least 432 heat-related deaths. The town of Bourke lost at least 40 people — 1.6 per cent of its population — during the 1896 event, while Sydney authorities reported hospitals at breaking point and pedestrians collapsing in the streets.
Next, in central australia 1932, a hundred or so died, again before the CO2 curse happened.
http://www.warwickhughes.com/blog/?p=1797
This is really poor scholarship. One cannot say that recent heat waves are worse because we do not have enough info on how bad the old ones were. Remember as well that air conditioning has had a major effect on countering human health effects.
Raw number graph by decades of deaths from Australian heat waves are here –
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/heatwaves-australias-deadliest-hazard-why-you-need-plan/9338918
I prefer to deduce from the graph more than from the ABC opinion. Geoff S
To be clear, CO2 has never actually been a problem except maybe on submarines and Apollo 13.
JO’B,
Could be a problem that there has not been enough for trees and grasses etc to grow properly. But I get your point, thanks. Geoff S
It was my understanding that the decreasing CO2 was responsible for the evolution of the grasses … but likely more complicated than that.
Awesome, thanks for posting! Deaths per 100000 are way down, and trending lower, in spite of the CO2 baba yaga, and even in absolute numbers, in spite of a huge population increase the last decade in the gragp had less deaths than ~120 years ago during the Perfect 300ppm Age.
I wondered why there was no mention of total deaths.
Now just think how bad the winter deaths will be after they take away the cheap and ubiquitous heating fuels. I can’t imagine a public health official admitting that coal saves lives.
But they can counter with following the Pope’s advice and getting rid of indoor air-cooling (for the masses only, of course).
(I have a request for the Vatican … Please provide the temperature in the Pope’s private chambers, on an hourly basis).
My god they’re desperate. So now if you have the misfortune to die of a heart attack in summer….climate change.
According to Our World in Data the actual death rate per 100,000 from all natural disasters, including hot and cold extremes, has fallen by -47% between 1990 and 2017, 0.09 to 0.05.
Your Mickey mouse study is shameful.
A reduction in winter deaths could be wholly attributed to better flu vaccine, more flu vaccine or better flu prevention and treatment protocols in aged care facilities.
souped up mega doses of the over 50s fluvax…are a paltry 29 to 32% effective and thats FROM the ausgovt info sheet ON the flu vaccine
so frankly NO its not vaccine but warmer homes better food clothing etc and owning cars so the oldies arent freezing in the cold for buses and trains etc as much as priorly like my poor mother did
Ozspeakup
Noted.
But I will have to disagree with your frankly NO versus my could..
The study just totally fails to look at any of these other factors.
WUWT commenters are essentially do what should be the first cut of peer review.
BTW the study is comparing the change from the late 60s.
FLU vaccines/protocols in aged care is a package deal that includes vaccination of both staff and residents and constant training.30% individual effectiveness could mean 100% effectiveness for keeping flu out of a facility on any given year.
Sadly, the resident may die but not from flu in winter.
They don’t show the actual number of winter deaths, only the ratio. I guess they looked at them and they found they had fallen, which would certainly ruin their preconceived hypothesis.
Why don’t they call it by it’s real name?
The Conversion
The Conflagration.
You are forbidden from voicing certain views, about climate in particular. So you can hardly call it a “conversation”. More of a sermon or lecture.
It’s rather more like The Church Times
https://www.churchtimes.co.uk/
The Con would be more apt.
Not a single death certificate states the cause of death “climate change” or even _insert illness here_ due to climate change
And yet hundreds of thousands of poor people die each and every year through a lack of clean water
(Have I flogged that dead horse enough yet?)
In the US now, you can petition some federal agency to reclassify a family member’s death as Covid related. Big money to be made.
Yes, that’s one of the biggest and most heartbreaking issue with climate change hogging the spot light and government and even business money – worthy causes, like clean water, electrification of poor areas, hospital and school availability, even other environmental causes that are a real problem – are pushed aside and trillions wasted on virtue signalling for an empty, fake cause. Climate Change B.S. is killing people, 1°C over 100 years not really.
And hundreds of thousands die because they have to use renewable energy to warm their houses and cook their food. The WHO estimate is that 400,000 people die each year due to air pollution because they must use wood-fired rather than electric heating and cooking.
Any study like this coming out of Australia should be used correctly. Printed off and used to line bird cages.
What do you have against those poor caged birds?
Have we reached peak stupidity yet?
Every time I call peak stupidity, something happens which proves me wrong.
Peak stupidity is cyclical like claims of Peak Oil. We are in a super cycle of stupidity right now so it’s difficult to call this local peak. Let’s just hope it doesn’t become a runaway greenhouse of policy stupidity like 1930s Germany or Peronism or Lenin on the train.
I hate to keep repeating myself, but what we’re now seeing is the result of two generations of Marxist, social programming in our schools. It just looks like stupidity, but is completely predictable.
Also Pigs might fly!
Vitamin D deficiency contributes to winter deaths.
Humans are the only ape which presently lives naturally outside the tropics. There were others in the past.
Check out China and Japan’s apes. There are also the Barbary apes.
Nope. Gibbons, the only apes in China, live in the tropics. Its other primates aren’t apes. Japan has only macaque snow monkeys, a type of Old World Monkey. Barbary “apes” aren’t. They’re also macaques.
That tiny little bit of extreme gibbon range along China’s border with northern Myanmar is technically out of the tropics, but its climate and habitat are tropical.
Thanks for that correction (and the lesson). It’s amazing how long one can live with misconceptions and not know it.
You’re most welcome!
The macaques of Gibraltar received their colloquial appelation “ape” back when tailless monkeys were commonly lumped in with true apes, despite Linnaeus and others’ recognition of the distinction.
The English term “monkey” isn’t a valid taxon, because OWMs are more closely related to apes than to New World monkeys. Other languages are closer to the phylogenetic fact. Spanish uses “mono” for nonhuman apes and “monkeys”, while German uses “Affe” for both “monkeys” and apes, with “Menschenaffe” for “ape”.
Linnaeus wanted to lump chimps and humans in the same genus, but knew he couldn’t get away with it for religious reasons.
Gibbons are lesser apes. The other hominoids are great apes, including orangutans and our fellow African apes.
Even that cladogram is now outdated. “Prosimian” for instance no longer includes tarsiers, since they’re phylogenetically closer to “monkeys” and apes than to lemurs and lorises. For instance, they share our broken vitamin C gene.
Thanks again for taking the time to make that clear. It explains so many things I was misunderstanding.
What other site could I get such information on a thread about a completely different subject? Talk about one stop shopping.
One of the points I make when talking to people who want to reverse climate change is, that without heat,, clothes and shelter most of the Earth’s surface is uninhabitable for humans.
Unfortunately it cuts no ice with those like Attenborough who think we shouldn’t be here anyway. Nobody I’ve met in the UK is prepared to try a year without all 3. Even the homeless in London wrap up as warmly as possible most of the year.
A friend who lived in London, sadly deceased, tried in his final months to give a home to a homeless woman. She was delusional, started attacking him, accusing him of trying to rape her, smearing the wall of her room with unmentionables. I doubt he did try to do anything untoward – he was always a gentle soul, and towards the end he was very frail, totally messed up with chemotherapy drugs.
Changed my view of London homeless people. Not so much people down on their luck, more people in desperate need of psychiatric care.
The practice of letting severely psychotic people roam the streets of British cities to harm themselves and others is known as “Care in the Community”.
Or as right thinking people call it Neglect.
It happened everywhere that Liberals abide. When my local institutions were closed a few decades ago and let all the inmates hit the streets, they never really did any better than living on the streets. Liberals were patting themselves on the back for “releasing” those poor, caged unfortunates. Now they’re free to sell their meds, set up a tent in the park and live on garbage.
Maybe Attenborough can get Ghalfrunt’s idea for drinking bleach that surely could kill off some people.
Next up a study of whether thinking gives you wrinkles.
I think frowning at the constant bombardment of cagw junk has given me wrinkles. My brow is now so deeply furrowed I have to screw my hat on.
Stats – doncha just luv ’em
Is is (still) true that Hong Kong (HK) doesn’t have an Office of National Statistics?
(It effectively didn’t for a very long time, until The Takeover anyway)
The UK certainly does, unimaginatively it’s called ‘ONS’
UK folks are bombarded endlessly, via BBC not least, by its output.
It is rarely ‘Good News’ or if it is, there are myriad caveats attached.
Constant depressing doom mongering smothered in warning after warning after warning.
(Just like The Grauniad as it ‘appens…)
Being depressed and in a constant state of fear is ‘Not Good For Anyone’s Health’
Well established Anecdotal and Medical Fact
So, we can create our own ‘statistic’ ### and assert that:
The UK ONS has, for every single Covid de4th in Hong Kong, caused 65 Covid de4ths in the UK
Is our statistic any less valid than the one presented here?
(###) Data from World of Meters about 10 days ago.
Very roughly BoE style viz:
HK: Pop: 7.5Million, 207 Covid de4ths
UK : Pop 70Million, 127,000 Covid de4ths
Big hugs & kisses to the ONS. We know you mean well, but just for once, can you not just ‘tone it down a bit’
Thus, with ten times the HK population, UK fatalities should have been about 2,000 in toto to date mid April 2021
Just think, how much tax those 125,000 UK folks, had they been still alive, could have been paying?
Instead of costing, in borrowed and printed money, easily £3 Million each
depressing or what
does anyone see a positive feedback loop going on there……
John Cowperthwaite, legendary HK Finance Secretary, refused to compile statistics or send them to the UK, on the grounds that public servants who received the statistics would misunderstand, and their idiot meddling would f*ck up the HK economy.
I suspect HK has done a better job of dying “of COVID” rather than dying “with COVID.” also being under the repressive control of the CCP might also be a tiny factor.
As opposed to being under the repressive control of the Board of Deputies? So the Bolsheviks in Beijing are more honest than the ones in the City of London?
Imagine that!
That magical ‘may’ word provides license for most of the climate horror prognostications. What it really means is it may or may not occur, we can’t be sure.
The way the information is distorted in this article in The Conversation is mind-blowingly awful. Excess winter deaths are a problem in most of the western world (and inevitably elsewhere too). Solution of the problem will result in winter and summer deaths being approximately equal, and this of course would be major positive progress. These researchers have found that there has indeed been some positive progress, but instead of celebrating they manage to distort it to make it sound like climate change is killing people. They are scum. I don’t usually use language like that, but in this case …….
That is why they are better than you or I, that’s why they are at the top of the social laddder, that’s why they are so far above us; because nothing floats higher than scum. Never use the term “elite” when you mean to talk about the scum. They tell us they float because they are the cream of society, but anyone that has ever had to handle filth can tell you: Ain’t nuffin’ floats higher than scum!
You can call a spade a spade, but only scum would insist you call it a “hand operated excavation device”. So as not to hurt the shovels’ feelings… anything to distract from the fact that their foamy richness is actually just their base-line manifestation as scum.
as the summers get colder and food supplies dwindle more of us will die in the summer, yep.
Summer total deaths are unlikely to exceed winter total deaths, for the following reasons:
1. Contrary to current propaganda, climate is cooling, not warming. This is a big, unrecognized problem.
2. Excess winter deaths occur even in warm countries like Brazil and Thailand. See the excellent Gasparrini et al study from Lancet, referenced in our 2015 paper.
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET
A Climate And Energy Primer For Politicians And Media
March 21, 2021, Updated April 22, 2021
https://thsresearch.wordpress.com/2021/04/25/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset/
MORTALITY RISK ATTRIBUTABLE TO HIGH AND LOW AMBIENT TEMPERATURE: A MULTICOUNTRY OBSERVATIONAL STUDY
May 20, 2015
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
COLD WEATHER KILLS 20 TIMES AS MANY PEOPLE AS HOT WEATHER
September 4, 2015
https://friendsofsciencecalgary.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cold-weather-kills-macrae-daleo-4sept2015-final.pdf
I just sent this to many journalists. I call this Treason. USA = same.
THE GREAT RESET – PRESENTATION FROM THE BANK OF CANADA
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/presentation-2020-08-20.pdf
https://www.bankofcanada.ca/profile/paul-beaudry/
Regards, Allan MacRae in Calgary
Climate Change hotter or cooler will weed out the weaklings.
I appreciate my ethnic heritage leveraging the benefits of where I choose to live.
Right you are.
“Well you see, Norm, it’s like this… A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the heard is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first.
This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells.
Now, as we know, excessive intake of alcohol kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine.
And that, Norm, is why you always feel smarter after a few beers.”
~ Cliff Claven
Da convo is desperate for column-inches, setting a very low bar on click-bait.
bet the actual death ages were a LOT higher and I wonder how many were people OUT in the heat more like lawn bowls farmers etc?
because aircon in cars n homes now is demanded by most but then they go from too cool to pretty warm and keel over.
heart kidney n lung issues do seem to flare more in warm weather
a hot day or even a hot shower will bring my A fib on
and winter which I used to dislike is now my favoured time to be moving round n doing stuff
Admittedly I didn’t read the study. Along with housing improvements and better vaccines/treatments, did they control for the age of those who died? Could it be that the population is aging and this caused some of the increase in deaths?
You seem to perpetuate the myth that vaccines have any beneficial effect. Prove it, without using statistics presented by those with shares in the vaccine business. Before you start, please take note that the CDC is a Private entity, with Private shareholders, Private profit motives, and dozens of vaccine patents from which they make a lot of Private sector profits…
Frankly, having grown up before the invention of the “flu vaccine”, I was utterly shocked the first time I heard a guy “died of the ‘flu”. That never happened before the “vaccines”, then we died of pneumonia, heart failure, a plethora of organ failures, but no-one blamed the sniffles.
Again, before you start in on me, the 1918 “flu epidemic” was actually proven some time ago to have been a form of bacterial pneumonia, Tuberculosis… They actually dug up thousands of bodies all over the show, whereas the “flu virus” evidence hangs on one frozen corpse from Alaska? Anyway, I can proof to you, in person, that “the flu” is actually just a dietary imbalance affecting your kidneys. As are nearly all kidney “problems”. Think about that in 3D, then consider gangrene in diabetics and the “loss of feeling in my extremities, I musta got Covidiocy1984!!!”
As for SARS and MERS and so on, I think only the most obtuse do not see the Doublespeak in those names. “Severe and Acute Respiratory Syndrome”? Really, is there a degree in naming stuff in jest? That’s how the Scum ridicule our credulity. Consider the Tetragrammoton vs. Jeshua vs. Kovud Naentin, took them some weeks to settle on that name, not so? Had to be “perfect” you know. Spiritual significance and all that…
Anyway, just wanted to smack you one for advertising Baal Gates’ Holy Waters.
It’s looking at the relative ratio, but doesn’t mention the overall death rates – I’m sure less people are dying per 100,000 and less in each season, with a larger drop in winter deaths due to the improvements mentioned by the original poster. There has been a flood of such contrived propaganda articles in recent years – any positive climate news gets the eco-Goebbels working overtime to conjure up a negative spin.
How did they specify “summer” and “winter” periods?
Not by the calendar months I hope.
The aboriginal people in some of the southern areas of Australia identified 6 seasons, which prevailed when they prevailed, not by any set schedule.
Tell that to the snowbirds and the U.S. states losing population and political representation to migration away from cold.
Since we evolved near the equator where billions live with A/C today, its a safe bet that slightly warmer at the poles and at night means less death overall not more.
So much stupid
I went to go sign up on The Conversation, to hone my mockery skills but they are not taking new registrations at this time.
What is the point of them being there if i cannot mock them?
Ding-ding!
What is “jumping to conclusions”?
What did I win?
Conflatulation
Correlation is not causation.
Every sophomore enrolled in college science or engineering knows that.
What is the causation?
When you set out to ‘find evidenced ‘ it amazing how often you will find it , even when its not there. Meanwhile humans will continue to have sweat glands and no fur as it seems evolution is a ‘climate change denier’
What is the sense of talking here about winter / summer aka cold / heat deaths in a country of 8 Mio km² surface, inhabited by a bit over 20 Mio people? Sheer nonsense in my opinion.
Currently, the cold/heat death ratio in the US is 2/1 (18000 deaths/year vs 9000), probably quite similar to that in Europe (my bad: I didn’t check).
Again in my opinion, it would make much more sense to investigate how the ratio developed / will develop in these two ‘a bit more populated’ contries.
J.-P. D.
Climate is defined as 30 years of weather in the area of interest. So in order to see if more people die in summer than winter, we have to wait 30 years. I suspect I’ll be long gone by then as well as the author who wrote this drivel, so reading the entire manuscript is a waste of my remaining time.
Indoor toilets only became a thing in the 1970s?
Seriously?
Maybe those conversational twits should consider the thousands of excess Winter fuel poverty deaths they have caused by their fool’s-errand solution to the fake problem of global warming.
They have blood on their hands, these people, if only by collusion before (and after) the fact.
If any of them are actual policy-makers, then the crime is direct: negligent mass homicide.
Err, correct me if Im wrong, but wasnt 1969, and the years around it, the coldest period last century? Having reduced from the 30s and 40s – glaciers advancing etc. And all of Europe in the years of recovery following the War? So very cold weather, much less wealth than years since, medical support and treatments nowhere like what we have today – heck, the prevalense of smoking at that time, with the attendant respiratory problems. It would be astonishing if the winter death rate hadnt reduced drastictly, at least in the wealthy cold countries. Are these people incapable of honest critical analysis?
Yes
That is the answer to your question
The ratio of summer to winter deaths is meaningless. What are the absolute numbers? Even a small increase in the winter temperatures will decrease deaths in winter, especially due to heart attacks. That would make the ratio larger even though the summer deaths were no different.