Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
A recent video news story on CNN claims that climate related deaths in Europe are 1.4 million per year. This is false. Climate change occurs on timescales longer than one year and unless a long-term trend is evident directly showing a causal connection between changes and deaths, one can’t attribute any percentage of the deaths in any one year to climate change. Further, data shows that deaths related to severe weather events and temperature related deaths both have declined significantly over recent decades globally, pollution is also trending down.
CNN interview is titled “W.H.O.: 1.4 million European deaths can be blamed on climate change, environment” features a conversation with the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Hans Kluge.
Kluge blames 1.4 million deaths per year in Europe directly on climate change and other environmental factors. He cites no data or evidence to back up his claim, because the data that exists refutes it. The interview not coincidentally coincides with The WHO conference during which the agency is calling for immediate action on climate change to prevent climate related deaths.
It is important to realize that climate change acts on long time scales. As described on Climate at a Glance: Weather vs. Climate, the World Meteorological Organization defines 30 years as the minimum for any climate related data. For deaths to be blamed on climate change one would have to see a consistent trend in deaths corresponding to changes in climate. There is no such trend. Severe weather events and sometimes extreme temperatures (more often cold than hot), experienced around the world on a day-to-day basis, can result in deaths, but those trends have declined steeply during the recent period of modest warming. Climate change can’t be causing more deaths when deaths related to weather are declining.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) AR6 report, Chapter 11, Weather and Climate Extreme Events in a Changing Climate, provides conclusions, summarized in Figure 1, illustrating the fact that severe weather events cannot be detected as increasing nor attributed to human caused climate change:
No evidence exists that any specific weather event is directly driven or worsening by so-called man-made climate change from increased carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Even the IPCC’s summary of the state of global climate science makes no such attribution.
Indeed, human mortality attributable to weather related disasters, including floods, droughts, storms, wildfires, and extreme temperatures has declined by more than 99 percent over the last 100 years. In the 1920s, death related to weather-related disasters averaged approximately 485,000 each year. By 2020 the average number of deaths attributable to extreme weather events had fallen 7,790. See Figure 2, below.
In addition to severe weather events, mortality can also be attributed to extremes of temperature. Climate change is often cited as being the reason for increasing temperatures and therefore increased heat related deaths. But the opposite is actually true. This was confirmed by a study in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet in 2021. The study reports that the number of deaths associated with cold temperatures decreased by more than double the amount that deaths tied to hotter temperatures increased over the 20-year period of the study. But, as seen in figure 3 below the number of deaths in Europe due to cold outnumber the number of deaths due to heat by a factor of three to one.
In part as a result the decline in cold temperatures, over the period of the study, temperature-related mortality has declined significantly, with a total of 166,000 fewer deaths tied to non-optimal temperatures.
This study confirms what research previously published in The Lancet, the Southern Medical Journal, and the Centers for Disease Control, and National Health Statistics Reports has consistently shown that cold is the biggest temperature related killer, not heat.
This contrary data flies in the face of the claims made on CNN by the WHO official Kluge.
But there’s more. In addition to blaming climate, WHO blames air pollution in Europe as a cause of death in the interview. But the data doesn’t even support that claim. Examining real world air pollution data from the European Environmental Agency, seen in Figure 4 below, show a sharp downtrend since 1990 on all types of air pollution in the 27 country European Union.
As with climate change, air pollution can’t be causing an increase in the number of deaths in Europe now than in the past because there is less pollution.
The bottom line is the claim that climate change is causing millions of Europeans to die each year as CNN and the WHO maintain is not supported in real world data no matter how you look at it. This is a clear-cut case of climate activism trumping truthful reporting and CNN should be ashamed to publish this interview.
If the WHO really wanted to cut 1.4 million excess deaths, instead of calling for action on climate change, they could call on the world to follow their own far more rational and practical advice in their report: “Improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene can save 1.4 million lives per year, says new WHO report.”
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
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The excess deaths in the U.K. in 1976 were very high, due to the cold winter 1975/76 followed by the long hot dry summer of 1976. More people died in that winter than in the summer. However, the effects of hot weather on health should not be underestimated. Unlike the USA, the U.K. has little in terms of air conditioning and people get a bit blasé about the weather. We have a maritime climate which tends to make our hot weather quite humid. We can have the same temperature as in the Mediterranean but it always feels worse here.
For the UK, the unusual aspect recently has been the reliability of the weather – warm and sunny, not particularly hot – as seen from the Wimbledon tennis television. So unlike the unreliable electricity supply, backed-up as it is by pathetic windmills and solar panels.
so they don’t have air conditioners- but how about dehumidifiers? They’re cheaper to buy and cheaper to use.
As can be seen from Wimbledon tennis and Cricket matches we tend to stay outdoors throughout the hottest part of the day, whereas Mediterranean countries they tend to go indoors at those times. As the Noel Coward song says Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.
Our weather does seem to have become a bit more consistent, or maybe I’m looking at the past through rain soaked glasses.
Having said that about Mediterranean climate, they had severe hail and flooding in Northern Spain yesterday as the hot weather broke.
Spain is well-known for its extreme storms. I lived there in the 1960s and the destruction of some of them was impressive. There was a valley we used to go fishing in, which simply disappeared, filled with boulders after a storm. As for the storms yesterday, they were not confined to the north. There is video of a hail storm in Valencia which is in the south. Valencia is cut through with vast storm channels like those in L.A.. They are not there in response to a recent “climate emergency”; they were built at great cost because intense storms are so normal there.
“The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.” Should be mainly in deluges?
Did you notice that everybody in the Australian team was wearing sleeveless jumpers in most sessions of play?
Surely not cheaper than $200 trillion to be spent globally on NutZero to possibly lower the temperature by a small fraction of a degree after a century or so?
Only $200 Tn. I’m sure more than that can be spent by busybodies trying to change the weather.
They will A) tax you. B) borrow it, making money more expensive for everyone to borrow, not to mention paying it back, or C) print it, thus devaluing what you have already have.
Any way you cut it, the $200 Tn is being transferred from those who earn money to those who want that money for their pet projects…
“It’s always so attractive,” Milton Friedman said, “to be able to do good at somebody else’s expense.”
Bah….the humidity in the UK is comparable to many other areas. Example right now 13:30 GMT in the south of France on the Med coast it is 79F with 63% RH, which yields an absolute humidity of 21,505 ppm water vapor. And at the same instant in Brighton UK it is 67F and 85% RH which yields an absolute humidity of 19,324 ppm water vapor.
https://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/humidity
I grew up around the Great Lakes in N America which is a decidedly colder overall climate than the UK, and both relative and absolute humidity in summer were always higher than in the UK. I now live in South Florida and today the absolute here is 29,569 ppm water vapor.
Relative Humidity is somewhat of a false premise to gauge with. Start looking at the absolute values for some different insights. In terms of personal comfort, the RH tells you how readily sweat will evaporate with the evaporation being inversely proportional to the RH. However that alone neglects the effect of a breeze or wind which will literally overwhelm the low evaporation rate that high RH imposes. And the UK is decidedly windy.
The point about absolute humidity is as follows: given both south of France and Brighton are at ~20,000 ppm water vapor, if the temperature in Brighton rose to that of S France, i.e. 79F it’s Relative Humidity would drop to 63%. So really no difference in how it “feels” when two places have the same absolute humidity.
For further insight your link calculates enthalpy given the temperature and RH that is entered.
The U.K is at the same zone as Canada, so they likely do not need much A/C.
Note that the U. K. is about the same size and latitude as James Bay, off Hudson Bay, in Canada. You can find Polar bears there in Canada. The difference has to do with James Bay is an ocean bay in the middle of a continent, while the U.K is an island in the middle of an ocean. The surrounding temperatures and humidity can make a great difference.
Once it was 30 years plus and we were reminded endlessly that weather isn’t climate.
How times have changed. Now even an hour’s worth of weather is caused by climate change…
“”For years, experts warned that any given hurricane or heat wave cannot be attributed to long-term changes in average temperatures. But it turns out that climatologists and meteorologists sometimes can establish such causal relationships.
…
Every time you hear or read a claim about this or that disaster being linked to climate change, as interesting as the underlying science may be, what is actually being conveyed is a stealthy promotional message encouraging you to consider climate change to be important and thus to support efforts to decarbonize the economy,” notes University of Colorado political scientist and climate change researcher Roger Pielke Jr. ”
https://reason.com/2022/03/20/weather-is-not-climate-or-is-it/
Fear is key
“”UN says climate change ‘out of control’ after likely hottest week on record””
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/07/un-climate-change-hottest-week-world
They’ve been saying that for 30 odd years now and they’re still wrong.
“Now even an hour’s worth of weather is caused by climate change”
Once it was believed that God is the “primal cause” of everything – now it’s climate change.
Climate change is the new religion, it needs a Demi god
Can’t have commoners blaming natural disasters’ destruction of infrastructure on mismanagement by their rulers, can we?
I’m following the London climate and I see that today’s heat wave fizzled out and the drought reemerged as rain. Eventually, 30C will be exceeded this summer.
It’s 22C, and raining
It was one warm day
Over here in Better England, sorry, New England, we’re at 27°C on the way to a forecast high of 31°. Currently 73% RH.
This will likely be our fourth consecutive day above 30°. I have not seen any bodies.
The bodies are in the green blobs cyber morgue
Warmer still here in Central Washington State.
No bodies here either.
Reminds me of all the sightings of a living Bigfoot, but never a found body.
There is a rumor that the Bigfoot clan takes the body and hides it in a place only they know about.
98℉ here in Las Vegas, NV at 11:36 am. Heading towards a balmy 105℉ later in the day. Of course, we don’t give a shit about the idiots that die every year when they go out hiking unprepared in hot weather.
Airconditioning takes care of us old folks from croaking prematurely by our foolishly not staying hydrated and in the shade.
Just drove from our home in Vegas to our cabin on Cedar mountain.
At 3:40 Mountain time it is 78 F outside, 71 inside, no AC on this cabin, no need.
It was 40F when I got up this morning around 6:00.
One of those rare occasions, if LV only hits the 105 projection, where we are less than 30 degrees cooler up here.
UN says climate change ‘out of control´, which implies that we had control of the climate in the past, but have now lost it. Presumably ever since discos took over from rain dances. What are these people on?
They’re not wrong though, if their agenda is to make billions from the brain washed masses, they’re doing a great economic self serve
“For years, experts warned that any given hurricane or heat wave cannot be attributed to long-term changes in average temperatures. But it turns out that climatologists and meteorologists sometimes can establish such causal relationships.”
Should be: But it turns out that UN IPCC CliSciFi climate modelers sometimes can fraudulently establish such false causal relationships by misusing unvalidated models that do not model the actual climate. Competent mathematicians have conclusively shown that “attribution studies” are scientific nonsense and an ideological ploy to misinform policy makers and the public.
The fact this is on Cancelled Non News (CNN), would suggest is a non-issue and heavily wrong.
Besides that the evangelists of climate change call weather, climate change, they are just interchangeable terms.
It is as expected the evangelists never have charts etc. to prove their point. Simply because it would disprove their point.
Anyway how is CNN supposed to get a rating above zero?
Here’s Dr John Campbell talking about excess deaths.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95T2Bqht4Xg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiWj9Jf2o-I
recent weather in the Sydney area of Australia has been unusually cold.
Covid is still around, the aftermath of the restrictions, the reduced availability of healthcare, delayed diagnoses and in the U.K. waiting lists that should be no longer than 18 weeks are stretching to 52 weeks or more.
18 weeks is the acceptable norm?!!
Gotta love your “free” socialist healthcare! NHS – post-Great Britain’s proudest achievement!
I’ll have to read about this “acceptable” delay. If true they shouldn’t be calling it “health care.” Genocide seems a more appropriate term.
Oh my, you’re having chest pains and shortness of breath are ye? That could be an emergency couldn’t it? Well if you’re also feeling pain radiating up your arm, I can pencil you in for a consult on the 23rd of September, love. Shall I put you down for that? Sir? sir? Oh bother. Another one Jeeves! Trundle over the body cart will you be a dear?
Yeah, but it saves alot of money to have your “clients/customers” die early since most healthcare costs are incurred later in life. Socialism doesn’t care about the individual.
The horse in Animal Farm comes to mind.
I respect him for methodically analyzing published data. He slowly changed his opinion from support of the jabs to disgust with what is occurring at the hands of our government systems.
His review of the recent paper showing adverse reaction rates are lot dependent is sobering.
Interesting
But sir…, they don’t want to save lives…
.. they want to REDUCE the world population… and by a large number..
They have made that very clear many times.
No, no, no, farms are a bad thing that need to be abolished for our own good.
Even Attenborough is on board with the over populated sect – IMO, the worlds population will continue to grow and grow, particularly in Africa and Asia – the UN never seem to cure famines, disease, dehydration etc in these poor places, no matter how many billions taxpayers send, I’m unsure why!
India overtook China last year and now has the largest population but Africa is the fastest growing continent and its share of world population is expected to rise from 17% to 40% by 2100. More than 8 in 10 people will live in Asia and Africa by the end of this century.
https://ourworldindata.org/region-population-2100
Don’t worry: Asian and African tourists, along with resource extraction for their industries, will support or Western Third World economies.
You youngsters should learn Mandarin. I tried but my combat-damaged hearing wouldn’t allow understanding all the related tonal variations of the language.
Thanks, Anthony, for calling out CNN. Where I live it is one of only two English speaking TV channels available. CNN starts out with some news report, then rapidly morphs into a damnation of Donald Trump, Fossil fuels/climate change, Israel, or conservatives, as the responsible factor. When I get angry enough watching CNN, I turn to the other English speaking channel, the BBC, and this makes things even worse. Just saying.
“starts out with some news report, then rapidly morphs into a damnation of Donald Trump, Fossil fuels/climate change, Israel, or conservatives, as the responsible factor”
Just like the NPR station in Albany, NY. whose director makes almost 200K/year. Not bad for a hard core socialist.
For months after the last presidential election- this NPR station just couldn’t stop ranting about Trump. I have mixed views on Trump- but see no reason for that station to spend so much time on Trump. So I emailed the honcho there and said “take a break- Trump is not longer president- move on to some real news”. He wrote back and told me to apologize. I then wrote back using some less than polite language. 🙂
Yes JZ, you nailed it! Libs just can’t help themselves! The way they fixate on certain things (you listed) tells me so much about their thinking, they are neurotic.
In the good old days Radio Tirana (Albania) was the most laughably extreme communist propaganda on shortwave. Albany’s npr affiliate is just keeping up their namesake legacy.
I wonder what the fossil fuel consumption of the WHO glitterati per year is…
… compared to “ordinary” people.
One or two magnitudes, at least, would be a rough guess.
These “elites” would put themselves on the same pedestal as the UN bureaucrats, WEF clowns etc etc…
They are “special people”
A report by the UK Cambridge Sustainability Commission a few years ago estimated the combined emissions of the richest 1% of the global population accounted for more than the poorest 50% In 2015 they said the top 1% of income earners were responsible for c.75% of emissions and the bottom 50% of income earners under 2%.
Socialists to the left of me
elites to the right
here I am, stuck in the middle with you.
A good place to start investigating excess deaths in Europe is the weekly data from Euromomo, now up to week 27 this year.
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps
It completely undermines the heat death idea. Covid waves and cold spells dominate.
Whilst I haven’t investigated the underlying issues across all European countries it is certainly the case that crippling strikes in the NHS have undermined care resulting in deaths from preventable causes due to lack of treatment. The closure of much normal treatment during the pandemic had a similar effect. There is also some evidence being put forward that I have not evaluated in depth to suggest that covid vaccines have increased deaths from conditions such as myocarditis in young people.
What they never dare to mention, are the deaths by “vacces”.
We may never get to the truth in this arena. For example, it is known for a fact that in both the US and UK hospitals received extra payments for deaths attributed to covid and so many deaths were attributed to it which may not truly have been the case. Not sure if something similar happened in other countries.
“If the WHO really wanted to cut 1.4 million excess deaths, instead of calling for action on climate change, they could call on the world to follow their own far more rational and practical advice in their report”
Or if they REALLY want to reduce excess deaths- they could DEMAND that Putin get the f**k out of Ukraine and to NOT blow up that nuclear power plant.
I thought I had some potassium iodide pills in my medicine cabinet but I couldn’t find them, so I’m shopping for a new supply.
It would be far cheaper in the case of nuclear war to simply bend over and kiss your ass goodbye.
The National Center for Environmental Information claims that there are NINE distinct climate zones in the United States alone. These claims of weather-related deaths would mean that anyone that moved from a colder zone to a warmer zone would be killed by the change in climate. How many climate zones in the world? 5 officially, but about four sub climates in each.
England is in the maritime, moist and temperate climate zone, one of the best for humans. But the little ice age brought famine and disease, killing thousands. Yes, that’s right, the cold did that. In England.
The current interglacial is about to end, and then the cold will come. THAT will make perhaps half of the known habitable world inhabitable. That will kill millions, if not billions. Food will become scarce. And that will last tens of thousands of years. Envision a Canada that is fully covered with ice. Where will they go? eh?
“The current interglacial is about to end, …” [jshotsky – July 8, 2023]
Timeframe please? Check one:
3 months { }; 3 years { }, 30 years { }; 3 centuries { }, 30 centuries { }
Average length of an interglacial is 10,000 years. The current interglacial, named the Holocene, has lasted 11,500 years.What do you think? I just hope it waits until I’m dead and gone.
Any plans beyond the first two periods are questionable, and any plans beyond 30 years are meaningless. Plans out to 100+ years are Leftist insanity. Go back to the early 1990s and ask any planner what the early 2020s would look like. I would not let any of my utility departments plan beyond 20 years, plus they were reviewed for relevancy every year and updated as necessary.
A Trump descendent will simply build a wall. By the time the ice wipes it out, no problem.
As I wrote in another comment on another thread, I have found AR6 is proving to be my best tool. The hysteria over climate change and our alleged part in causing it—in the media and in private conversation—is far beyond what even IPCC science says, Being able to contradict a climate-worrier using AR6 is a good way to shake their confidence in what they’ve been reading and parroting. Once they are willing to ask hard questions about their sources they are on the way to being reasonable.
Ah! The old “tear off their arm and beat them to death with it” strategy.
I tried that. Climate enthusiast was not the sharpest tool in the box, kept mentioning Wikipedia and ‘summary for policymakers’ as scientific studies whilst I was using AR6 and actual studies. He was still denying everything I put up as ‘outdated’ so I gave up in the end – you really can’t fix stupid.
May be of interest or a story tip?
Lithium-Ion Battery Inventor and Nobel Prize Recipient John Goodenough
Sadly, John B. Goodenough, professor at The University of Texas at Austin who is known around the world for the development of the lithium-ion battery, died Sunday June 25th 2023 at the age of 100.
He developed a lot of things in his time and laid the groundwork for many others. Very inspiring list of achievements.
Worse than you thought story tip
“”Catastrophic climate ‘doom loops’ could start in just 15 years, new study warns
….
Our main finding from four ecological models was…””
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/catastrophic-climate-doom-loops-could-start-in-just-15-years-new-study-warns
And… repeat
Media Doom Story Loops ?
Loopy Media Doom Story.
Fruit Loops Doom Climate?
Almost sounds like they are moving towards blaming high excess deaths on Climate when in fact there is another bombshell reason for severe excess deaths for the past 2-3 years which we are not allowed to speak about the likely evidence based cause of the excess mortality.
John Campbell does his best to enlighten despite it being verboten to speak of the most plausible cause:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95T2Bqht4Xg (International excess deaths)
what nonsense – hot weather doesn’t cause people to just keel over dead – that would be the result of the non-vaccine jabs that put spike proteins into the blood stream causing clots,strokes, heart failure, etc. Meanwhile Mr. Lonborg from a Swedish NGO reports that 4 million people die each year because they don’t have access to fossil fuels – heating & coooking with paraside infested dung – wonder when the MSm will pick up that little nugget
The cash register goes ‘Ching!’ for every climate scare story, and they actually confessed they would go back to the climate scare after Trump.
“Blaming deaths” on something is a well-established process.
A coroner dictates a death certificate:
Write Cause of death: COVID-19.
But, Doctor, he has seven deep stab wounds.
Add With complications.
Cold weather causes far more excess deaths, than warm weather – science fact
W.H.O. … “could call on the world to follow their own far more rational and practical advice in their report: “Improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene can save 1.4 million lives per year, says new WHO report.””
In the USA this is a plan followed by “tort lawyers”, namely find a group of people that can claim they were harmfully impacted by something and then sue the person or agency responsible.
It’s CNN… it has no sense of shame
Weren’t we told, the lab leaked Corona Virus was due to climate change?
Now Anthony, you know that CNN has no shame. It has no conscience! But just sit back and watch, as this leftist propaganda ship which has not been an actual “news” source for a very long time, continues to slowly sink.
They’re a big time loser for Warner/Discovery. And if they could sell that derelict at a price that was not too humiliating they would do so. But so far there have been no takers.
This despite Benchmark analyst Matthew Carrigan said in a Wednesday research note that Warner Bros. Discovery would have to consider “any fully financed mid-single digit billion bid for CNN.
But Nobody seems willing to make an offer. At least not in that range.
Individuals who have been floated as potential buyers of CNN in recent weeks but haven’t publicly expressed an interest include Zucker, the former CNN CEO; Amazon founder and Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos; and billionaire Bloomberg News owner Michael Bloomberg. Meanwhile, John Catsimatidis, the conservative billionaire owner of the Gristedes supermarket chain, has offered to run CNN for a salary of $1.
Leftwing propaganda isn’t so profitable it seems.
This is really important, some one needs to print these charts and graphs and distribute them everywhere. Every climate skeptic needs to take this information for every debate or news interview or what ever. What comes to mind is Steve Milloy taking part in that fiasco in In Israel. He was trying to say what these graphs and charts say but they blew him as a denier. He wouldn’t have had to say a thing except let me show you what IPCC says.
Anthony – on what page of the Chapter 11 link is that summary table of the lack of severe events ? I looked through the IPCC Chapter 11 link, but it was huge and I couldn’t find that table. I’d like to keep that table as a reference. Can you point us towards where in the IPCC document it is. Cheers !