January 04, 2024
On a recent cold winter day, residents of Munich were surprised to see people skiing in the street. Yes, that is how much snow fell in the German city and other parts of Europe during the early winter of 2023-2024.
Despite a disruption to both ground and air travel, the Germans survived the freezing weather with access to heating and basic utilities. But not everyone in our world is as fortunate as those living off reliable energy sources in Western economies.
Billions of people all over the world do not have access to secure sources of heat and electricity. For these, winter can be a death blow. A political war against fossil fuels is making matters worse for those unprotected from frigid temperatures.
Snow is deadly and is not going away
The gravity of winter’s hazard has been overshadowed by the prevailing discourse on purported man-made climate change. We have been inundated with warnings about the perils of warming. But historically, it is the cold that has been disastrous. It has altered the course of history across the world and left people scrambling for food as plant life dwindled.
Winter’s icy chill claims far more lives than scorching summer heat, according to global analyses of fatalities caused by various natural hazards. In fact, a 2023 health study conducted across 854 European cities reveals that an estimated annual excess of 203,620 deaths were due to cold while just 20,173 were attributed to heat. In comparative terms, only 1 in 10 excess deaths from extreme temperatures were attributable to heat while a majority were due to cold.
The fearmongering around warming aside, winter’s cold bite is going nowhere and will continue to test humankind’s survival mechanisms. Since August 2023, snow cover in the Northern Hemisphere has remained at or above the 57-year mean.
Pseudoscience endangers people with impractical energy policies
With climate science co-opted by a worldwide political crusade against allegedly human-induced global warming, communities may find themselves ill-equipped to face upcoming winter weather.
In regions with particularly harsh winters and limited access to reliable heating sources, the threat of death and illness due to anti-fossil fuel policies is grave.
In places like Mongolia, where economic hardship and energy converge, staying warm is a continual wintertime focus. This year, the country’s imports of electricity from Russia were disrupted, resulting in load shedding to millions of people in the middle of winter.
At minus 35-degrees Fahrenheit, the people of Mongolia were left to fend for themselves. To brave this harsh climate, they rely on just two crucial energy sources: internal electricity generation from their plentiful coal reserves and the direct use of coal for heating homes. When faced with below-freezing, snow-blanketed winter days, neither wind nor solar power can guarantee a steady energy supply.
In other countries of the region, the scenario is similar. Destitute communities in Afghanistan rely on coal to endure the winter. In Kyrgyzstan, the unreliability of hydropower results in a continuous need for coal. Likewise, people in Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan depend on coal for warmth, although the latter is also increasing its reliance on gas.
It is easy for hypocritical politicians who fly in private CO2-emitting planes across the Western world to champion the elimination of fossil fuels. But their activism blatantly ignores the bone-chilling grip of winter on faraway communities.
It is long past time for the western media to boldly report the critical role of fossil fuels in supporting human life during harsh winter conditions. Such fact-based reporting would put to rest the false narrative of a world doomed by warming.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
This article was originally published by RealClearEnergy and made available via RealClearWire.
Organic chemistry was largely based on compounds originally derived from German coal. Kill the goose.
Kill the goose. Kill the gander. Kill the people. Kill anyone who prefers to think for himself, rather than jump on the doomsday bandwagon.
As for the danger of warming, there’s an easy personal solution. It doesn’t give you a pretext to pose as a Thunbergian hero “Saving the world!” but it’s really, REALLY easy. Move someplace cooler.
The difference in mean temperature between Nashville, Tennessee and Columbus, Ohio is larger than the worst-case scenarios for the next century and a half. The difference in mean temperature between Minneapolis and Miami is over triple the worst case scenarios for the next century and a half. Moscow to Mumbai is even larger. Yet there are more people moving north to south than south to north, as we speak.
Could it be that warmist alarm is a doomsday fad with negligible basis in fact?
Look no further than what the harmaceutical industry is doing to us, or the food industry, or even MAID in Canada for answers to your question.
harmaceutical? nice!
I lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and moved to Los Angeles, California, where the temperature is about 30F warmer in the winter, then after 4 years in LA, I moved back to Cleveland.
Both were fine.
In Cleveland, there is snow in the winter and in LA there is rain in the winter.
In Cleveland, warm clothes are needed during the winter while in LA an umbrella and a raincoat are needed
Similar situation here, but comparing something more disparite- Hamilton Ontario and Jakarta Indonesia – summers can actually feel hotter in Hamilton than Jakarta, and I would definitely rather spend the winter in Jakarta than Canada, especially if transiting thru Jakarta to Bali!
There’s about 30°C of global warming between us now, and that’s only because of a mind El Nino winter, however there isn’t a massive flood of Indonesians headed here. They’re too smart, they already know they live in paradise.
Here in western PA and WV I have friends in the coal mining industry, they are expanding operations, not shutting down. Coal is going nowhere but up in usage no matter what crap anti-human asswipes like Joe Xiden say.
And where is the product of this expansion being utilized?
CHINA
The port at Newport News
Virginia.https://earth.google.com/web/@36.99234841,-76.44617824,0.87581466a,14445.25449271d,35y,0h,0t,0r/data=OgMKATA
The coal terminal is at the point. If you follow the RR tracks up you will see fully loaded trains waiting to unload and empty trains ready to head back to western VA and West Virginia.
During the oil embargo, hundreds of coal ships were in the Chesapeake Bay waiting to load there.
Follow the waterline up from the point and you will see 3 US aircraft carriers. The one farthest up the James River with 73 on the flight deck towards the bow is the George Washington, a Nimitz class carrier.
The one under construction must be the CVN 80 the new Enterprise.
The old one closest to the coal terminal is the old Enterprise CVN 65. This view is from April last year and I think at that time the Navy still hadn’t determined how they were going to remove the reactors. By now they have probably really gotten into the job of breaking her up.
THE US always needs a vessel named the Enterprise, so as not to forget that FREE enterprise is how this nation came to be so wealthy. If TRUMP! had not been elected, the name would not have gone on that ship. Hillbillary would have never allowed the name to be used again, the Commie she is. Note: No one has yet to release her Masters Thesis, for some reason.
My dad was a Plank Owner on the Enterprise and after he retired from the Navy in 65 he worked at the NNS&DD Co. He worked on radar, sonar and other electronics. Due to his navy service he went on many shakedown cruises for both nuclear powered carriers and subs. He finally retired from the shipyard in 82.
Electric generation plants, duh. And no, majority is remaining in CONUS.
My favorite right now says, “Fuel the world for a better tomorrow.”
https://investors.consolenergy.com/
Home was in coal/gas region of western PA.
Lots of relatives and friends in those industries.
Funnily enough we hit tipping points years ago – 2009 – and didn’t notice it
“”The climate is nearing tipping points.
The trains carrying coal to power plants are death trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.“” – you know who
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/15/james-hansen-power-plants-coal
You’re up against dogma.
Getting rid of coal…. The Habeck process
“This year, the country’s imports of electricity from Russia were disrupted..”
What caused that?
A Taylor Swift concert?
We have had a winter weather system moving across the eastern US currently and we have had day after day of cloudy and still conditions with only a little wind and sun prior to the arrival of the miserable conditions right now. Shove these alarmist out doors for a while and lock the doors.
And , looks like the next two months are going to be similar …
get ready !
This recent study shows that the cold weather we have every year causes about 4.6 million deaths a year globally mainly through increased strokes and heart attacks, compared with about 500,000 deaths a year from hot weather. We can’t easily protect our lungs from the cold air in the winter and that causes our blood vessels to constrict causing blood pressure to increase leading to increased heart attacks and strokes in the cold or cooler months.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
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This study from 2015 says that cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather and that moderately warm or cool weather kills far more people than extreme weather. Increased strokes and heart attacks from cool weather are the main causes of weather-related deaths.
‘Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multi-country observational study’ https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext
I have harped on and on how bureaucrats, administrators and councilmen have to be held accountable for making everyone’s life miserable for no good reason. I didn’t know how to punish them till now. They need to be sent to places like Mongolia long enough to spend several winters. It’s not fair to the people of Mongolia to have to accept these monsters so we will pay the Mongolians to guarantee that those we send them live in the most basic housing without the benefit of fossil fuels in any form and that they pay their own way by physical labor. I would also have a big pile of coal stacked outside their residence just for the sake of tempting them.
What has never been discussed is the CO2 ppm where life on this planet ends. I’ve read where it is around 140 ppm. CO2 has a history of sequestration since time began, either as coal or calcium carbonate. Volcanic activity did add CO2, but was never able to overtake the long term sequestration of carbon in both coal and reefs. It wasn’t until the last century that a meaningful attempt was made to reverse the decrease of CO2 in our atmosphere through the burning of coal, oil, and gas.
Unless someone can control volcanic activity or get serious about burning coal to calcine calcium carbonate, we will re-continue our march towards a dead planet at the behest of the maniacal left wing enviro nutters.
And the vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere is naturally occurring which means that what can be removed is minuscule and couldn’t possibly have an effect on the weather or the climate- trillions to accomplish nothing but the destruction of civilization
Mr. Lomborg, head of amSwedish NGO, reports that every year over 4 million people die because they don’t have access to follis fuels – ah but it is for the greater good
The author is advocating for COAL? Did he learn anything in his college studies? Or did the promise of employment at the CO2 coalition cloud his mind? Even for WUWT, this article is a loser.
Without coal there wouldn’t be a tree left after a few cold winters.