Follow-up Essay by Kip Hansen — 28 June 2024 — 900 words
My recent essay titled “Why Do They Lie About Extreme Temperature Deaths?” highlighted the outright falsehoods being repeated in the mainstream media about the dangers of extreme temperatures, heat and cold, prompted and encouraged by the major Climate Crisis Propaganda cabals: Covering Climate Now and Inside Climate News. Of course, it is worse than that, in the United States, even federal governmental agencies, under the guise of informing the public, do the same.
For instance, the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, offers series of Climate Change Indicators. Why the EPA has a huge section on climate change is a mystery to me, other than rank agenda-pushing, but there you have it: the massive governmental Enviro-Climatism Agenda writ large. On the page “Climate Change Indicators: Heat-Related Deaths”, the EPA informs us, in the Background section of the page:
“Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States”
This is simply a “talking point” and is not true, not even according to EPA’s own Climate Change Indicators.
We at WUWT (and the dozens of other kindred spirits in the blogosphere) are not alone in this fight against propaganda surrounding the Climate Change issue. Allies are not restricted to those who normally cover climate, weather and related science news beats.
Here I call your attention to a helpful and very well-written editorial at Issues & Insights, “Heat Wave Sets Off New Round Of ‘Climate Crisis’ Lies” by the I & I Editorial Board on June 19, 2024. These folks are the professionals: “Issues & Insights is run by seasoned journalists who were behind the Pulitzer Prize-winning IBD Editorials [Investor’s Business Daily] page (before it was summarily shut down).” It was brought to my attention via the “WUWT Tips and Notes” page by John Merline at I&I (a sample of his past writing here). This editorial is well worth reading and has some very clear and useful graphics. There is a companion piece written a few days later “Google Doesn’t Want You To Know The Truth About Heat Waves And ‘Climate Change’”, which you should read as well.
Their lede: “There’s a summer heat wave going on, which gives journalists the opportunity to fill up their stories with climate change boilerplate. It no longer matters whether any of it is true. Just the opposite, in fact. If you point out the truth, you’re accused of being a denier.”
The web page has a little note at the top: “Follow up: As we predicted, Google is blocking its ads from appearing on this page because, according to Google, it contains “unreliable and harmful claims.””
I&I offer this graphic:
This shows annual Deaths per Million with data from the EPA’s to Climate Change Indicator pages, Heat-Related Deaths and Cold-Related Deaths.
[Aside: There is a funny and on-going story about those two pages, which I will mention in the Author’s Comment section following the essay.)
The EPA’s data, derived from the CDC database of death certificates, clearly shows that, in the United States, when counting data as entered into Death Certificates (see my essay on that here), in the most recent years shown, that cold kills people at a rate of 5 to 6 per million every year, which heat kills at the rate of between 2 and 3 per million. (In the “funny story” bit, EPA has updated heat deaths to “almost 5” in 2022 but has neglected to update cold deaths since 2016.) And, as is the case all over the intellectual map, EPA still insists that “Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States” contrary to its own published data.
It is oddly comforting to find that the Climate Realist viewpoint has allies in the business world, who are not cowed by the yammering propagandists and their enforcers.
What do you think this “Heat Kills More” talking point is based on?
I suspect that it is an agenda-serving comparison between Heat Related Deaths and deaths from tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding, lightening, cold, winter, wind and ‘rip currents’ only according to the false NOAA NWS graphic I have discussed so many times.
The real data on relative Heat and Cold Related Deaths worldwide are covered in “Why Do They Lie About Extreme Temperature Deaths?” which includes links to the definitive studies at the end.
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Author’s Comment:
The funny bit: As I was working on this, I was making my own, more complete version of the Heat/Cold Death rates graphic from I&I (which I’ll use in a second follow-up next week). As I labored on, through the morning, checking back to the EPA Climate Indicator pages repeatedly to pick up details, EPA updated the Heat-Related Deaths page adding several more years of (up-trending, of course) data:
I have been communicating with the Climate Indicators team at EPA about this: they up-dated the Heat-Related, but not the Cold-Related, Deaths page. And yes, golly, it does suspiciously look like they have managed to change down-trending data into up-trending data. Not jumping to conclusions yet. I’ll let readers know when I have sorted it out with EPA.
I appreciate John Merline at I&I for looping us in on their “climate lies” work.
Thanks for reading.
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KH, EPA has a vested interest in heat deaths but not cold deaths. CO2 is supposed to cause global warming, not global cooling. So a fair balanced representation is not in the EPA cards. And of course it is always worse than we thought before. Revising historical ‘climate science’ data is a ‘climate science’ norm—else no alarm, since with no alarm no need for more ‘climate science’.
Same with US Forest Service. Global warming is supposed to cause more forest fires (dryer, hotter, so morer), so USFS (after Biden was inaugurated) removed from their website all forest fires and fire acreage data for all years before 1949, their US ‘Smokey Bear’ forest fire nadir. Sure enough, they have risen some since. Except they could not remove their many previous year records from the Wayback machine, all of which were way worse than 1949, going back to the massive Wisconsin Peshtigo fire of the 1880’s that killed thousands. Tony Heller has posted the USFS now dishonest comparison several times in recent years.
It is a civic duty to continue calling out ‘official’ factual deceptions.
If the EPA pushes CO2 as a refrigerant, CO2 suddenly becomes an agent of less global warming (not really because that’s like saying you can reduce the temp in the kitchen by leaving the refrigerator door open), BTW, in Nerdville USA there is only Global Warming, because: no such thing as “Global Cooling”; i.e. no such thing as “cold” or “cool” All 🙂 Ergo, Global Warming is Good, and is Always Good.
Conventional refrigerants — HFCs primarily – have heat trapping effects thousands of times as great as CO2. So if CO2 is used as a refrigerant instead of HFCs, any leakage of refrigerant from the equipment will have a much smaller global warming effect. And in addition, CO2 is actually a very good refrigerant for low temperature refrigeration. The EPA has it right.
And those HFCs are measured in the atmosphere as, what, Parts per Trillion?
Rud,
“It is a civic duty to continue calling out ‘official’ factual deceptions.”
Why is it not a legal duty for some authority to bring factual deceptions before appropriate courts of law?
Is there a further test required, such as evidence that the perp knew that it was not factual and therefore knowingly misrepresented? Or is there simply no US structure to do this?
Geoff S
“Heat is the leading weather-related killer in the United States”
True statement for sure if we’re talking temperature related deaths. In Nerdville, USA, temperature-wise, heat only kills because there is no such thing as “cold”. There is only heat (varying amounts of molecular movement) “Well, I’m cold and freezing my ass off right now in Antarctica”. <– OK, that’s because your environment is shy about 100 F. of heat. Lack of heat kills more people than too much heat.
clay ==> I like “lack of heat” — cute.
I remember a high school science teacher telling us, there is no such thing as cold, just varying levels of heat. I guess he wasn’t wrong.
Jeff ==> He was right, which is what I think you mean. For human health effects, too much and too little, and other contributing environmental factors, are the key.
I have sons that happily head off into the mountains in the winter with one day’s worth of food and stay four days because they are having so much fun — at temperatures well below freezing. They think nothing of it.
Likewise, in the Caribbean, the temperature inside our boat could go weeks with never falling below 90°F or higher, day or night.
All the fuss about good hot summer are simply propaganda.
Safety warnings for the ignorant or the too old to understand (me excepted, of course), are important, both for high and low temperatures.
Here’s question:
Just where on the globe, regarding ambient temperatures, could humans survive without some form of energy? (Campfires or otherwise)
Without shelter or adequate clothing humans can and do survive in warm humid tropical climates because it stays warm over night. But anywhere else very few could survive for long and would die of “exposure” which essentially means COLD.
“Without shelter or adequate clothing humans can and do survive in warm humid tropical climates because it stays warm over night.”
Which would exactly coincide with the humid regions from 10N to 10S latitude which every other species of Family Hominidae has as their geographic range. (The ones that are NOT capable of modifying their living environment.)
Kip, good start on confronting the EPA. Yesterday the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that the “Chevron Doctrine” was unconstitutional, and that the various federal agencies, like the worst of them being the EPA, cannot treat their own rules like law. Looks like you and SCOTUS are double-teaming the EPA. Go for it.
Ron ==> I will be covering reaction to the Loper decisions later this week.
Despite the Supreme Court punting in Murthy v Missouri, and denying the case on the basis of standing, there was considerable evidence that the federal government “jawboned”, i.e. coerced social media, including Google. The government encourages putting out The Narrative, whether on Covid or climate change.
Deep State operatives must be identified.
Did I really hit send?
Tom ==> While the majority opinion contained a lot of verbiage about whether or not the Government jawboned a specific single person, that was the foundation for denying standing. It has been sent back to a lower Court. It is a mistake to think that the issue is now somehow settled.
But still a step in the right direction?
A “regulation” should not automatically have the effect of a Law or overrule The Constitution and the Bill Rights just because Congress “dropped the ball”.
Gunga ==> Yes, at keast the issue is being raised at a high level.
‘It is a mistake to think that the issue is now somehow settled.’
I think that’s true, but historically, I think it’s always been difficult for the judicial branch to ‘buck’ the executive and legislative branches, e.g., Chuckie Schumer screaming about ‘reaping the whirlwind’ at the same time angry mobs are conveniently allowed to assemble in front of your home. We’ll take what we can get for now, but real change will hinge on racking up some W’s at the polls.
“Chuckie Schumer screaming about ‘reaping the whirlwind’ at the same time angry mobs are conveniently allowed to assemble in front of your home.”
It is illegal to demonstrate in front of the house of a U.S. Supreme Court Justice.
Unfortunately, for the U.S. Supreme Court, Joe Biden is in charge of the “Justice” Department and wants to put pressure on the U.S. Supreme Court to toe the radical Left line, so he allows Democrats to demonstrate in front of the houses of U.S. Supreme Court Justices and does nothing to stop them.
Joe Biden is the Worst President Evah!
Why don’t local police departments follow the law and disperse those protesters?
On matters like this, DC and its MD and VA suburbs serve the Democrat Party.
There was a lot of “nice business you have here, damn pity if something happens to it” from CISA and Homeland Security, as well as CDC.
‘CISA’ is a new one on me. Has the swamp run out of 3-letter acronyms? Kidding aside, I see it first came to life under GWB, but then ‘evolved’ into its current end-of-republic form under DJT, most likely at the urging of the same snakes who have been trying to do him in since 2016.
Presuming Trump prevails this November, he better be loaded for bear in terms of rolling back the administrative / security state. Otherwise, we can just kiss whatever is left of our constitutional republic goodbye.
Trump is going to need some help from a Republican House and Senate.
If Republicans get enough of a majority in both Houses, then they will be able to force reforms.
If the Republicans only have a small majority in the House and are the Minority in the Senate, like they have now, then Trump is going to have a more difficult time getting things done, although he managed pretty good in his first term when the numbers were not in his favor.
‘If Republicans get enough of a majority in both Houses, then they will be able to force reforms.’
I hope so. The key will be to entice whistleblowers to come forward in numbers the media can’t ignore by offering immunity in exchange for information on the higher-ups. The good news is that, as the party that invented ‘lawfare’, Democrats are very, very well aware of the costs of resisting Federal litigation. This means there’ll be much table and pillow talk in the ‘ranks’ in favor of rolling over on the ‘officers’.
Government agencies should give the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth all the time very time. I don’t give a damn what is in their interest. The lying has to stop now.
The inverse of human societies since there were human societies.
The TV news a little while ago reported on flooding in Minnesota and “Climate” was brought up in the by the CBS anchor as part of the story. Don’t know what the angle was, as I muttered, “Bullshit” and walked out of the room.
Of course it never flooded in Minnesota prior to the invention of “Climate change”; oh wait:
Explore the Worst Floods in Minnesota History | TPT Originals
To adjust a quote attributed to Elena Gorokhova in “A Mountain of Crumbs: A Memoir” [see quote investigator]:
The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and
we keep pretending to believe them.… fewer folks now pretend to believe them.
[Covid propaganda had a lot to do with this.]
The EPA is only concerned with protecting the environment from the activity of unnatural humans.
They take no preventative or punitive action against any natural pollution source at all.
If they did, then all oil and coal deposits (as well as many other mineral deposits) would be outlawed and the owners who maintain the hazard fined.
They must of found more dead people. No?
Hope I didn’t need the /sarc
eck ==> The Dead are sneaky….wearing all those ratty ripped clothes and eating living people… I saw it is a movie….