By Gregory Wrightstone
A deception perpetrated by The Lancet is another example of how once respected institutions of the scientific community are not above abandoning principle to advance the fearmongering of a planet warming to purportedly dangerous levels.
As reported in the CO2 Coalition’s online newsletter, The Lancet published a study showing that cold-related deaths account for 10 times the number of deaths due to heat – a comparison similar to other research findings about the relative danger of temperature extremes.
However, The Lancet pulled a sleight of hand when depicting the data in a chart to accentuate deaths due to heat and diminish those from cold.
The trickery of The Lancet’s Figure A is revealed by the CO2 Coalition’s revision in Figure B. Note that the X axis at the bottom in Figure A is in increments of 50 on the left (cold) side and in increments of 10 on the right (hot) side. This five-fold difference in scaling serves to exaggerate the number of deaths due to heat and minimize the cold-related deaths. This is technically correct, but intellectually wrong.
From The Lancet (Figure A):
From the CO2 Coalition (Figure B):
The effect of the miscalibration is readily seen by comparing the two graphs. The bars for heat deaths are much longer in Figure A than in Figure B, whose X axis is calibrated the same for both cold and heat deaths.
So, The Lancet misuses a chart – when rightly employed, a tool for clarifying information – to obfuscate the fact that cold is significantly more dangerous than heat. This chicanery by a supposedly premier medical journal is not acceptable in any scientific journal.
Sleep well; global warming is saving lives.
Gregory Wrightstone is a geologist; executive director of the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, VA; and author of Inconvenient Facts: The Science That Al Gore Doesn’t Want You to Know.
Thanks for the first graph. Been collecting samples of graphs for an essay “How to draw your own bullshit graphs”. It’s been in the writing for past two years, but the thing keeps running into bouts of sarcasm and despair.
The “financial sector” are aces at this form of excrementus bovus.
I used the (published a study) link to the Lancet Article and there (contact) link to ask about the apparent disparity in the Figure 3 graphic. We’ll see what, if.anything, their response will be
I predict additional excrementus bovus piled upon their previous excrementus bovus.
excrementus bovus.
+ten
Shouldn’t that be excrementus bovi ?
Actually, excrementum is a neuter noun, and bos is a feminine noun, so taking the nominative and dative, respectively, it’s excrementum bovis.🤗
Been collecting samples of graphs for an essay “How to draw your own bullshit graphs”.
Cilo,
I hope you are making some money on that project. You have certainly generated full-time employment for several lifetimes!
Great idea. There is an old book called, “How to Lie With Statistics,” that really made an impact with me way back when. A similar one – How to Lie With Graphs – would be equally impactful with many students.
Greg, any indication that Lancet will fix their blatant “hot air?”
From the people who have yet to discover what a woman is….
I’m willing to volunteer for a discovery research project where suspected women are presented au naturel to a panel of hetero males for consideration.
(do you know how much I normally pay for that?)
Thats only for those who gentalia are binary. 2% of population at birth dont fit the 2 standard classifications
The number of births with ambiguous genitals is in the range of 1:4500–1:2000 (0.02%–0.05%).
Let Google be your friend and stop spreading bovine excrement. And this is from wikipedia, a left leaning site.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
There are people like Foekje Dillema, but her genitals were female-like, despite the testicle like organs in her body. These gave her high testosterone levels, which gave her an unfair advantage, not any dangling tackle between her legs.
Feeling like you would be happier as the other sex is not a physical trait.
duker must subscribe to lancet… appears confused about what is a woman
If, as some people are saying, that there are as many as 72 types of gender how come if you want to change your gender you are only offered a choice of 2? Seems unfair to me.
If your genitals do not define your gender, how does removing them affirm it?
Exactly.
In my ebook The Arts of Truth I have a number of similar examples. This Lancet one is particularly blatant.
Yes I have never seen this clear a deception. Usually it is a truncated graph to make small changes look big, or starting a trend line at a low point, etc. But combining two different x scales is uniquely artful extreme deception.
David, see JohnC’s apologist comment, below.
David,
Surely the Mann hockey stick graph with instrumental tacked onto proxy of different resolution is also bad, bad, bad. Geoff S
Should be the cover art for a book entitled “Graphing for Stupid People”.
Rud, see JohnC’s apologist comment, below.
The entry that really jumps out is Croatia where at a glance it would seem that more died from heat than Cold, when in reality more than 3 times as many died from cold. To play off an old adage: “Figures lie and liars figure” and then they make misrepresentational graphs.
Masselot et al (2023) is a follow-up to several earlier papers, including Gasparrini, Masselot et al (2022) and Gasparrini et al (2015).
Interestingly, they did not do that trick in their 2015 paper:
Back then, their press release was straightforward. Making cold weather slightly milder is far more impactful than making hot weather slightly hotter, because:
“Cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather.”
That’s quoted from this article about Gasparrini et al (2015):
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm
Unfortunately, as the years have rolled by, something seems to have changed with that team. The charts in Gasparrini (2022) had a similar scaling issue. Cold-related-deaths were scaled-down in one chart, and heat-deaths were scaled-up in another:
I re-scaled the heat-deaths chart to match the scale of the cold-deaths, and combined them into a single chart:
The bottom line is that the science shows that global warming saves lives.
It would save more, if we had more of it. But “global” (averaged) warming is slight. It’s generally estimated that we’ve only had a little over 1°C of warming since the Little Ice Age.
1°C is the temperature change (“climate change”) you get from an elevation change of about 500 feet.At mid-latitudes, 1°C is about the temperature change you get from a latitude change of just 60 miles.1°C is less than the “hysteresis” (“dead zone” or “dead band”) in your home thermostat, which is probably 2-3°F. Your home’s “constant” indoor temperatures are continually fluctuating that much, and you probably don’t even notice it.
What’s more, one of the nice things about “global warming” is that it isn’t very global. It disproportionately warms frigid winter nights at chilly high latitudes. The tropics are warmed less, which is good, because they’re warm enough already.
The scientific evidence is compelling that manmade warming is modest and benign, and CO2 emissions are highly beneficial. The benefits of more CO2 are large and well-measured, and the supposed major harms are merely theoretical, and mostly implausible.
https://sealevel.info/learnmore.html
Terrific comment. Thanks
Thanks, Rud.
BTW, if you’re wondering where the Error Bars went for the heat-related deaths in the combined chart, they’re covered up by the red dots. The broadest Error Bar for any of the heat-related death categories was ±1.15, which is 3/4 of the height of a dot.
BTW, the CO2 Coalition has an email list. Go to the main page on their web site, to sign up. (You might need to scroll down a bit.)
https://co2coalition.org/
Alarmist’s don’t do error bars. Everything is a certainty.
Thanks Dave. There is more.
Briefly flicking through it to find where they say how things change over time [I don’t find what I was expecting from a time-series analysis. Perhaps I have a naive interpretation of the definition], I came to reference 19:
“Todd N Valleron A-J
Space-time covariation of mortality with temperature: a systematic study of deaths in France, 1968–2009.
Environ Health Perspect. 2015; 123: 659-664”
There is also an author who comments on the results:
“Comment in
Increased Minimum Mortality Temperature in France: Data Suggest Humans Are Adapting to Climate Change.
Barrett JR.
Environ Health Perspect. 2015 Jul;123(7):A184. doi: 10.1289/ehp.123-A184.”
The legend in one of the data maps states: “As mean summer temperatures in France increased over time (right), so did the temperatures associated with the lowest mortality rates (left). Source: Todd and Valleron (2015)”.
My interpretation of this for the layman: Summer heat deaths are not rising as it gets hotter in summer. Or at least, not as much as expected.
Edited addition: …Which means that predicted future increases in heat deaths due to global boiling are wrong.
Thank you for the interesting observation, and for the references, Michael!
It’s consistent with my personal experience. I grew up in Michigan, in the cold and snow. I remember going out for ice cream cones with friends in midwinter, and walking back to the dormitory while eating them, when temperatures were well below freezing. I was well-adapted to the cold.
Then I went to Texas for grad school. I arrived in August, during a heat wave, and I was extremely uncomfortable. But I got used to it.
16 months later I went back to Michigan, and visited friends for Christmas. We walked around downtown Detroit together, on a blustery day, near the Renaissance Center. My friends were perfectly comfortable, with their jackets unzipped, and no hats or gloves. I was zipped up to my chin, with hat and gloves, shivering.
During the 1⅓ years I’d spent in the South, my body had acclimated to the warmer climate — and lost its ability to withstand the Michigan cold.
I still live in the South. I like it here. But perhaps if I moved north again I would again become acclimated to the cold.
Thank you for this post…. in a web search you will find dozens of articles on The Lancet publishing papers that should never have been published and editorials on topics supporting positions and this just should not be done or permitted in big name scientific journals…
Climate change: fires, floods, and infectious diseases September, 2021
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanmic/article/PIIS2666-5247(21)00220-2/fulltext
Mainstream Misinformation: The Lancet’s Long History Of Anti-Science Advocacy
https://www.acsh.org/news/2022/03/07/mainstream-misinformation-lancets-long-history-anti-science-advocacy-16164
Covid-19: Lancet retracts paper that halted hydroxychloroquine trials https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/05/lancet-had-to-do-one-of-the-biggest-retractions-in-modern-history-how-could-this-happen
“It is natural to ask how this is possible. How did a paper of such consequence get discarded like a used tissue by some of its authors only days after publication? If the authors don’t trust it now, how did it get published in the first place?” The answer is simple, it happened because peer review, the formal process of reviewing scientific work before it is accepted for publication, is not designed to detect anomalous data. It makes no difference if the anomalies are due to inaccuracies, miscalculations, or outright fraud. This is not what peer review is for. While it is the internationally recognised badge of “settled science .At its best peer review is a slow and careful evaluation of new research by appropriate experts. It involves multiple rounds of revision that removes errors, strengthens analyses, and noticeably improves manuscripts… i.e., it is merely window dressing that gives the unwarranted appearance of authority, a cursory process which confers no real value, enforces orthodoxy, and overlooks both obvious analytical problems and outright fraud entirely.
Editor of Lancet: Medical Research is Unreliable at Best or Completely Fraudulent
June 2015
Being that medical science is, or should be, one of the more reliable scientific endeavours, this is shocking.
Climate change ‘science’ lags well behind medical science.
Good catch by CO2 Coalition!
Those lacking honesty and integrity when pushing an agenda rely on, if not outright lies, presenting information to deliberately give a false impression.
Gunga, see JohnC’s apologist comment, below.
Sorry but you’ve misunderstood completely the point of the graph, there is no conspiracy to suggest that the effects of heat are as bad as the effects of cold. You need to understand who the readership of the Lancet is.
Yes the x axis has two different scales, which anyone can see and comprehend, but it isn’t a comparison of absolute mortality in cold weather v absolute mortality in hot weather.
Healthcare professionals are fully aware that cold temperatures are worse than hot temperatures for mortality.
If you look you’ll see that both graphs have different shades of blue (cold) and red(warm). These different shades represent different age groups, which would not be visible if the hot side had the same scale.
This is an epidemiological graph, looking at the age profiles of mortality due to cold weather, compared with the age profile of mortality due to hot weather for several countries.
This could be useful for monitoring people during summer and winter, particularly the most vulnerable age groups.
If the graphs are not related to each other, they would not be presented next to each other.
It would make sense to look at the two independently. Two different graphs.
Or it would make sense to compare the two graphs across the age ranges. On the same scale.
This is just misleading. And it’s clearly misled you.
In what way has it misled me? I can read the data that is presented in a meaningful way. They could have produced a graph for each country with the y axis being the excess death rate in 10 per 100000 person years, and the x axis being the age groups each with a column for the two temperatures. That would be 31 graphs. They could have had two graphs one hot, one cold. The X axis being 31 regions, and the y axis being the excess death rate in 10 per 100000, with the different age groups being shown as sections in a vertical column.
JohnC,
While your argument could be valid if we were discussing a “politically-neutral” dependent variable across demographic groups such as ice cream sales by age group, it is at a bare minimum incompetent practice when it can be reasonably anticipated that the dependent variable will be compared with cold-hot as the independent variable, and that comparison is a highly politicized issue.
To generate a chart that obscures a politically-inconvenient fact, even if not done with intent, and not to realize the risk, would be a degree of obtuseness frightening given the importance of other matters analyzed by researchers published in that journal.
A far more reasonable conclusion would be that the obscuring was a goal or at least a happy side effect.
As McCourtney wrote, make separate graphs to make unrelated points. Or if one insists on presenting unrelated data sets together in a single graph, don’t mess with the scaling, present the data equitably scaled and let the data speak for themselves.
Of course, the entire point of presenting data in a graph, rather than in a table, is to allow the reader to very quickly and easily comprehend and gain a sense of what the data mean – functioning as a “Cliff Notes for Data Comprehension”.
By introducing a visual bias with the unequal scaling, the data presenter is intentionally biasing the comprehension of the reader. It ain’t innocent to engage in such antics.
Yep two separate graph, with it clearly stated that the axes are different.
Removes any appearance that they are trying to con the reader.
Infact, use the proper comparison graph with equal axes.. then repeat the Heat graph with the adjusted axis so you can see the breakdown into different age groups.
The CO2 coalition graph loses the age breakdown.
I’ve seen another rendition with corrected horizontal axis that maintains that breakdown.
That is the graph that should be used… and fix the <85 to >85
Bullshit. The proper way to make such comparisons is to use two different graphs to show such fine distinctions of sub-classes. Placing them side-by-side in a single graph with different scales is designed for propaganda purposes only.
Your sophistry is easy to see, JohnC, by people used to dealing with official CliSciFi sophistry. The “oh, these results are meant for use by scientists for purely scientific purposes” when they are actually meant to scare the target audience of casual readers. That is why the UN IPCC and other climate researchers continue to use discredited excessive RCP8.5 CO2 scenarios in known too-hot-running CliSciFi climate models to fool the populace and their political decisionmakers.
Are there casual readers of the Lancet? I do read the open access articles when they are of specific interest to me, but I wouldn’t read it as a casual reader.
As explained elsewhere, JohnC, you are not the target audience of the Lancet editors.
There are casual readers of those who reproduce the graphs for political purposes.
When the Guardian reproduces it without explaining the subtle differences between the two, which it will, this will be interpreted by the casual reader that deaths from heat are catastrophic.
HotScot – exactly! They know the graphs will be published with (at best) limited context and the general public will see something totally different than what is actually the case.
I have a good friend, a heart surgeon, very intelligent man who is totally taken in by The Lancet’s misleading BS, often quoting it to support his views … just goes to show how easily the medical profession is led by the nose.
David Fair . . . exactly on point!
JohnC’s comment is indeed BS, and serves him ill since it thusly appears he has not spent much time at all reading scientific articles, let alone those in medical journals related to epidemiology studies and data presentation.
Many such articles provide, specifically for clarity, separate graphs for each class or subpopulation being reported on, just as you pointed out. This approach also avoids the problem that using different color shades to distinguish classes can be lost when B&W copies of the articles are made/distributed.
A color-shaded bar graph is also inconsiderate of the fact that 5-8% of human males—interestingly, <1% of human females—suffer from color vision deficiency (CVD), aka color blindness.
The Lancet bar graph (Figure A) in the above article is so poorly constructed/annotated that it does merit defense from any quarter.
Ooops . . . last sentence to read “. . . does not merit defense . . .”
If someone is down ticking, why don’t you show me why and how I’m wrong.
You see a deliberate misrepresentation of data implying that hot weather is as bad or worse than cold weather, whereas as I see that different age groups in different countries may have a different mortality rate in the two seasons.
The graph from the CO2 coalition loses this demographic detail and hence is of little value to medical professionals.
CO2’s visual was more honest.
If you want to preserve the age groups on the original graph, add the actual numbers to the plots.
That can be done without much fuss and would have given a more accurate impression.
More honest in what way? When this was put on Twitter a few days ago by Patrick Moore, there was a not insignificant number of comments that didn’t see a problem with it and interpreted it as I have explained. There were people who said it was deliberately misleading, but the paper itself states categorically that cold kills more than heat.
“These corresponded to age-standardised rates of 129 (empirical 95% CI 114–142) and 13 (11–14) deaths per 100 000 person-years”
The graph in question is one item in an eleven page paper.
Comment by Dr Empatistörda Elitistiska Therese on Twitter
“I don’t really see the problem with the X axes.. It’s clearly marked what the max is (250) and that it’s been truncated (//) for better visibility of the data. Anyone who’s used to reading data should see it without any problem.”
It is very rare that I disagree with any article on WUWT, certainly not as strongly as this.
You have just defined the problem.
Readers of Twitter are not, by and large, well educated.
90%+ of the worlds population do not have a higher education far less one in the sciences.
We see deliberate misrepresentation because we are used to seeing Leftist propaganda coming out of our formerly politically neutral scientific institutions and governmental agencies. You are not the target of the graph; it is the unsuspecting members of the general public and their political representatives that are the target for climate change propaganda.
According to the published words of the UN and its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) political leaders it is their ultimate aim to do away with Western free market capitalism. I believe them when they publicly say such things.
Isnt that confirmation bias in that you see it as a problem because there have been problems in the past with data misrepresentation?
JohnC, you misinterpret the meaning of confirmation bias in scientific research. Confirmation bias is shown where a researcher allows his bias, consciously or not, to affect his evaluation of processes (including computer algorithms) and study design or evidence (facts) to be used in his study such that the results move towards a pre-determined conclusion that supports a particular narrative.
Here, it is a case that I have run into Leftist propaganda like this so often from formerly reputable science institutions that have been corrupted by ideology and/or money that I’m aware of the propaganda techniques they are consciously and consistently using on unsuspecting people like you.
As an electrical engineering manager back in the year 2001 I believed Dr. Michael E. Mann’s Hockey Stick paleo-climatological reconstruction of temperatures proved that mankind was responsible for dangerous climate change. Later, after lengthily exchanges with a NOAA scientist about their 20th Century decadal temperature graph that seemed odd [Note the current issue.] and having received nonsensical answers I began to question the science behind Catastrophic Anthropological Global Warming (CAGW) as it was then known.
After a couple of decades of considerable reading, listening and questioning I have come to the conclusion that governmental monies and Leftist ideological rigidity have fundamentally corrupted science, its institutions (including The Lancet) and academia. Further, politicians, Deep State actors, wealthy nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), crony capitalist profiteers and activists of all stripes are constantly pumping out propaganda to support self-serving unscientific narratives that are eagerly seized upon by feeding-frenzy media.
That’s were I am coming from.
Dave,
Me too. I wrote about corruption of science here a week or two ago, thank you WUWT.
There was an embarrassment of riches when selecting corruption examples, so many were left without a mention.
Commenters sometimes say that anti Global Warming people are often from geological sciences, as am I. I suspect there is a reason. A lot of climate research is directed towards mental items like “ambition”.
Geological sciences like exploration go for tangibles. There is an ore body or there is not. You cannot fake the signs with misleading graphs or ambitions or optimistic confidence limits because that can get you into jail.
Those who knowingly fake will suffer from it in later life when their consciences will refuse to let them forget the disgrace. Geoff S
Those who knowingly fake will suffer from it in later life when their consciences will refuse to let them forget the disgrace.
Would that it were true….
Speaking of using politics to enrich oneself.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/ebay-billionaire-supported-defund-police-movement-poised-cash-private-security-investments
In public, the founder of e-bay has been verbally and financially supporting the defund the police movement.
In private, he’s been investing in private security companies.
Yeah, I saw that. At the time it reminded me of Al Gore making his millions off of the climate scare he flogged into a Nobel Peace Prize.
there have been problems in the past with data misrepresentation?
Which means that it SHOULD be questioned, and be called out when it’s seen.
Now be Fair Dave. What’s a few tree rings and thermometer readings amongst astute scientific minds eh? These things are not for lay consumption.
I agree, that’s why they spread the Hockey Stick graph throughout the world in screaming headlines, with the Canadian government actually sending a copy to every household, IIRC. It was needed to sell the Kyoto Protocol to the world’s politicians.
They mass-down-tick me often , too. It was surprisingly hurtful to begin with; my fragile ego was wounded.
But then I realised that, if they don’t put a reason for disagreement then they don’t disagree – they just feel unhappy with what has been said.
Think of votes as scalar values, not vectors.
It doesn’t matter how up or down it is, the magnitude shows you have had an impact.
That might be a great insight no-one else has shared or it may be a total gaffe that everyone scorns but, either way, you have added to the debate and got people thinking.
If I down-vote you I tell you why unless somebody already had explained the reasoning. In that case, I’m just piling on for the fun of it.
What purpose does the ‘250’ figure serve on the bottom right of the graph, other to imply that the right side goes from 0 to 250, as does the left? At a glance, both scales are the same.
Particularly given that none of the totals on the right exceed 40.
That I cannot answer, but the two diagonal line used to indicate a break in the axis I have a vague recollection of seeing them or using them before but I can’t remember in what context.
Why can I not have an issue with the graph and it’s purpose but in doing so I am called an apologist? Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen similar graphs in the past possibly on my nursing course 20 years ago, maybe with ethnicity instead of countries, and the two sides being long term conditions like diabetes, coronary heart disease or asthma.
Where I worked and the “extra” duties I did involved a lot of trends and graphing.
I’d never seen one X axis having two different scales.
I’ve seen and made them with two X (or Y) axis for comparing, say, water temperature and Cl2 doses because the values were so different, but never two different scales on one axis.
The Lancet has become another tool in the Leftist ideological march to convince people climate change is real and dangerous. We who have been engaged in the climate debate for some time have recognized that fact in the Lancet’s editorial policies.
The Lancet ignores the decline in extreme weather-caused death globally over time. The Lancet ignores UN and U.S. scientific reports that document the fact that globally the statistics of extreme weather events have not changed over the past 120+ years. That detailed scientific analyses show there has been no change in the frequency, intensity nor duration of hurricanes, major storms, floods, tornadoes, droughts and wildfires since at least the year 1900.
JohnC
Like the Lancet editors who maintain innocence in this matter and refuse to acknowledge any legitimate concern, your intentions would not be questioned if you acknowledged the reasonable concerns others have expressed.
Fwiw I give you the benefit of the doubt, but if you can’t see a different point of view, it makes it harder for me.
The legitimate purpose is in conjunction with // to indicate to those familiar with the convention that indeed the scales are NOT equal.
Ironically as you point out, it may very easily confuse the uninitiated and give the exact opposite impression as it is ostensibly intended to convey.
I’m reminded of the story of a slick politician relying on the unsophistication of his audience to imply something that he definitely didn’t say: “Are you aware that she matriculates with thespians?”
// is used to indicate the axis scale extends beyond the data range. Here it is used to hide the fact that the axis scale has been changed. I’m aware of no circumstances where the axis scale needs to be extended to four times the data range.
An epidemiological graph, showing devastating consequences of the pandemic of aging 🙂
It’s excess deaths where temperature could affect the same age group differently when it’s low compared with when it’s high. For example there were reports of younger people dying of heart attacks in Italy during the current high temperatures, whereas during cold weather they are less likely to be adversely affected.
Name the agency reporting such excess death. Name the specific study and show its supporting materials. We have often seen here that the unreliability of such “reports of” is rampant in the media.
John I appreciate your explanation but I have a couple questions.
Actually I think that’s a typo! Not <85 but either 85< or >85. The authors or the peer reviewers didn’t spot this, I did a double take when I looked at the graph above.
Pal review. False studies are rampant in the medical and sociological fields.
How convenient.
I did notice that the Lancet version purported to show deaths due to temperature extremes by age group. However, it fails at doing even that properly. Note that the last category is <85 (less than 85) which is clearly supposed to be >85. This is a obvious failure of peer review and competent editing.
Then try to figure out about how many in each age range are represented for any particular country. The colors appear to overlap or blend and are not readily discernable as matching the legend. e.g. there appear to be almost not deaths in the upper age groups except in the regional totals. A table would have been far simpler as a method of conveying the details.
Finally I think it is naive to assume that this chart is fine because it’s intended for professionals who would not be misled by the scale difference. The mass media frequently pull stories including graphics from scientific literature and biased journalists use stuff like this to push their propaganda. In fact, many institutions will put things like this in press releases to try and get mass media publicity for their “research”.
I agree, it fails to be anything close to clear.
Colors are way too similar, and the scale is too small to discern what the actual numbers are.
Is it also a vision test?
If it is a vision test I assume the British National Health Service is trying to save money the way they tend do by rationing health care.
In other words, if both graphs X axis were scaled similarly, the data representing Heat related deaths by age group would be indistinguishable from background noise … practically meaningless.
Actually the ratio is about 10 cold to 1 hot according to the abstract, I haven’t read the full paper although it is open access.
Are such small differences between age groups even statistically meaningful? Did the study even mention statistical relevance?
Maybe JohnC is getting an idea of the difference between pal review in the medical profession and the knowledgeable reviews by the various penetrating comments and questions here on WUWT relating to the presentation of scientific data.
All fine until a journalist uses the graph in an article or a propagandist uses it in an argument.
I’m baffled that anyone would attempt to defend this blatant attempt to deceive, a sign of the times I guess.
Hahaha. What a load of excrementus bovus, to coin a new phrase I just learned 🙂
Cultural appropriation.
The point of a graphical input is to visualise patterns. If it were to make the age trends more visible, you would have separate graphs for the regions with two separate plots for heat and cold deaths as a function of age, pointing to two separate y-axis on either side with different scales. As it is, it’s less informative than a table of data.
But the real damning detail is the 40__//__250 on the heat scale.
I see the issue more as the Misleadia misrepresenting the graph with their “Climate Crisis, we’re all gonna die because CO2” bullshit and The Lancet and the papers author not correcting the misrepresentation by the Misleadia.
Where it says Total should it not be average?
I would agree, again the authors +/- proof readers +/- peer reviewers should have picked it up.
Agree. And speaks poorly to the editorial quality of Lancet. Back when I was a senior partner in a global consulting firm, if a consultant had brought me something like that for a client presentation I would have fixed it then fired the consultant.
How old fashioned of you, Rud. I’ll bet you still believe that facts trump somebody’s truth. Keep it up and I’ll have to report you to AOC.
Most people have never fired anybody. I have fired multiple hundreds over three separate careers. Never fun, always when necessary.
My record of firing people is much more modest than yours, Rud. It picked up when I became a senior manager then CEO. Earlier, as a supervisor and manager in the Federal government, I had to fight tooth and nail to even get the deadwood and disrupters out of my sight. It was fun, though when a bad apple would walk into a sexual harassment charge! Idiots have always been idiots and always act like idiots. Ron White: “You can’t fix stupid.”
My comments seem to have hit a nerve, but no one has actually answered my questions that I’ve asked of my critics.
Well, you’ve been defending a misleading graph. It makes it look like heat kills more than cold.
That is not true.
Shouldn’t a graph in Lancet give a more honest impression?
Wouldn’t two graphs have been a more honest and accurate presentation?
But it doesn’t, as the 11 page report says categorically.
It would have fooled me. I saw it immediately when it was pointed out, but I probably would not have noticed the scale change were it presented in my local newspaper without attention being called to it. I can’t presume to know the personal motives of the Lancet authors, but I do believe you can fool most the people some of the time, if that is your intent.
Most people are unaware that cold kills far more people than heat. When they simply look at the graph they are given the impression that cold and heat kill about the same numbers of people. That first impression is all the professional liars are trying for; it guides the Low-Information Voter. Click-bait headlines is about all that many people look at. The climate change industrial complex is huge, sophisticated and extremely well funded.
Heck.. even a note that the axes were different would have helped !
I first looked at the graph and took a double-take…
… then looked at the axes and said “what the ****”
First impressions… in this case, DELIBERATELY MISLEADING.
Reread this Thread to find the answers. To sum them up: You are naive regarding the reason the graph was published by the Lancet.
Odd, I’ve seen multiple answers to your question.
Just because you don’t like the answer is not proof that you weren’t answered.
No wonder you approve of the Lancet’s tactics.
The BBC came out with the verbal/written equivalent very recently
(I think it was BBC and I soooo now wish I’d bookmarked it)
The article was about the European ‘deadly’ heatwave.
The only significant fatality I read about and in multiple sources was a 44yr guy who passed out/away while painting pedestrian crossing on a road somewhere in Italy (Milan?)
Atlunchtime in the blazing midday sun.
Somebody should be up for manslaughter, who sent that guy out to do that job?
But the article very clearly stated, (on first sight) that ‘heat’ is The Biggest Climate Killer
and I thought to myself, “Jesus wept you lying scumbags – that is just soooooo WRONG”
But it was masterpiece of Weasel Logic because when you re-read it and parsed it slightly differently, what it actually said that:
“Heatwave deaths are the biggest cause of heatwave deaths during a heatwave”
That sums up Climate Science – its sooooo circular as many commentators here are saying.
A most shameful piece of work that can only damage the Lancets reputation as an authoritative publication. whoever funds them should stop.
OT, maybe story Tip
I just found that Palermo site that gave the “heat record”
As surmised, it is one of the most bizarre sites you would ever se.
Le stazioni meteorologiche dell’Osservatorio di Palermo – EduINAF
Terra cotta roof, directly adjacent to several air-conditioner outlets.
This is how “global warming” (lol) is measured.
But it serves the purpose.
Class 1 are the good stations, well designed etc etc.
Unfortunately, many of those, while meeting Class 1 criteria, have been dragged into the urban heat island by expanding urban areas.
It gets gradually “less good” from there.
I think this one probably belongs in Class 11… where 10 is absolute worst ! 🙂
It is just a pointless paper either way- so who didn’t know that extremes of temp effect old people more? And it is all circumstance related anyway( a confounding variable if their ever was one) I have to be careful about over doing it shoveling snow in minus X temps or mowing my yard in +++ x temps now that I am getting old. But if I was in a survival situation I would take a ,albeit miserable ,humid tropical rainforest over a arctic waste land any day. Does any medical professional desperately need this study or graph to do their job- I think not -assuming they have any common sense at all.
I strongly disagree.
Even though the reader is forced to tease out the data, the Lancet paper does in fact document that, looking across diverse geographical populations and diverse age groups within each identified population area, deaths due to cold ARE a factor of 5 to 25 or more more prevalent than deaths due to heat.
So, yeah, based on this Lancet-provided data, I can go with the rule-of-thumb that excess cold is ten times more deadly than excess heat.
That IS the point.
It is the graph that was meant to deceive the Low-Information Voter and serve as fodder for alarmist journalists. Most people won’t dig into the data.
That both sides of the X axis are the same scale, as in going up to 250 but one being broken (and, actually, a scale to 40) shows a deliberate attempt to mislead the reader. While differences in scale can be justified on the grounds of better showing trends with regions, to have 40__//__250 tacked at the end is purely to deceive, as a good scientist would go out of their way to make sure the reader appreciated that the scales were different at first glance.
As indicated before by some others, there is no hiding trick in the Lancet article.
It starts with a summary. Under the findings, the numbers of cold- and heat related excess deaths are quoted as respectively 203 620 and 20 173. These numbers are repeated several times later in the article, together with an extensive regional breakdown in Table 2. Both in the text and in the caption of the incriminated Figure 3, its purpose is explicitly mentioned. This purpose is showing the raw excess rates broken dawn by age groups at the country level. The alternative presentation, by Wrightstone, hides the original figure caption and removes essential information from the original figure. Instead, it shows now his own preoccupation. This causes self-inflicted harm for the CO2 Coalition. The intellectual competence and the moral integrity of the authors and editor of the original figure remain unaffected.
The criticism points out that the article does inform readers that the scales are different. It’s not going to fool careful readers.
But, as pointed out above, they labelled the graph in a deliberate way so that it can be misused to misinform casual readers. I wrote “to better see trends in regions” not ages because the graphic is still less useful than the table for that.
There is no data between 40 and. 250, and yet the axis goes to 250. It’s not a simple mindless error.
Sorry folks but there absolutely no chicanery in that graph.
The scale value has been changed on heat deaths just to show the different categories of age concerned, AND THAT’S ALL !
(If you don’t believe me, just try to make the difference between the 45-65 and the 75-85 in Bjorn’s graph…)
When you see a once great, well respected organisation prostitute it’s reputation this way, you know you’ve reached peak insanity and the dis-service it does to science will be irreparable
In my view this should be considered a terminal illness of the Lancet. If we had a properly functioning news media as the [American] founders intended, this blatant lie would be amplified across the headlines of every news organization with the conclusion that nothing the Lancet has ever published, nor ever will published should be accepted nor believed. Thus letting the entity die by falling on it’s own blade. Which might also put the fear of god into all other so called scientific publications by the death of the Lancet at their own hands.
It is not a simple mistake, it is a blatant lie as evidenced by their putting the max scale of 250 at the right most position in the false scale on the right side. So as to dupe people who do not look closely at the values. This is deliberate, not mishap!
As a result of this falsehood, the Lancet should be considered as credible as The National Enquirer.
The Lancet was using completely made up data to argue in favor of the removing the sanctions against Iraq prior to the second phase of the Gulf War.
The Lancet abandoned science in favor of advocacy decades ago.
That’s one weird and misleading graph. I must point out that this doesn’t change that climate change is greatly, catastrophically sped up by human activity. Hot or cold, we will make this poor little planet uninhabitable by us and untold other species.
Past natural warming episodes, like the Younger Dryas termination, and two dozen earlier Dansgaard-Oeschger events, were at least an order of magnitude more rapid than recent warming.
Is this what you mean by “catastrophically?”
https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn2811-africas-deserts-are-in-spectacular-retreat/
Or this?
http://sealevel.info/greening_earth_spatial_patterns_Myneni.html
These are two different graphs. They aren’t the graphs of the same thing. The Lancet graph is by age group while the second is by all the age groups added together.