Essay by Eric Worrall
But more people still die in winter.
Disabled and elderly Aussies tagged as most vulnerable by bombshell extreme heat report
A natural disaster that leaves “very little visible destruction” is killing Australians in droves, and things could potentially get worse.
Jack Nivison
May 1, 2026 – 1:55PMA bombshell report has shockingly revealed more Aussies, most of whom are elderly or disabled, have been killed by extreme heat than all other natural disasters combined over an 18-year period.
According to the NSW Net Zero Commission, extreme heat has been responsible for more than half of all listed natural hazard fatalities between 2000 and 2018, with western Sydney bearing the brunt of these reported incidents.
Sweltering Cities executive director Emma Bacon has campaigned to raise awareness around heat inequality and the severe impacts of extreme heat conditions since founding the organisation in 2020. She said the report accurately highlighted “key problems when it comes to recognising heat as a disaster”.
“We don’t have the same really shocking visual story or evidence that we have with other disasters. For floods, fires and storms, you can really see the destruction. For heat, what we see is empty streets,” Ms Bacon said.
“People who are most likely to get sick and die are often falling ill in these isolated, really private circumstances, so you don’t have the photographic evidence of how bad things are getting.”
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Read more: https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/disabled-and-elderly-aussies-tagged-as-most-vulnerable-by-bombshell-extreme-heat-report/news-story/cc2582a4101466aca81de1b7b4ba8bf5
Back in the real world, mortality in Australia in winter is far higher than mortality in Summer, as it is everywhere else. Even in hot countries like India this trend holds.
Why do greens keep pushing this absurd fantasy, that heat presents a more serious problem than cold?
Perhaps for the same reason they keep claiming renewables are cheaper, despite overwhelming evidence from Europe and California and many other places that renewables are an unmitigated disaster. Without alarmist fairytales, they’ve got nothing.
They know they are lying? Or is it Noble Cause corruption?
Well, to paraphrase Michael Crichton slightly: Corruption + Good intentions = Corruption. Sad, but true.
Heat inequality?? The Marxists say the damnedest things. The morons listen.
One cannot have heat without inequality.
Heat is the flow of thermal energy across a temperature inequality (aka gradient).
There you go again. Invoking the Laws of Thermodynamics! I thought they had been repealed to support Net Zero.
I live in the UK, we suffer from heat inequality all year round.
Why does Spain get all the good weather?
I feel discriminated against, this is heatism! Who do I sue?
Spain get all the good weather?
Like my hometown in W Oregon, UK has the best Climate with few very cold or very hot days. It just has lousy weather.
Yes that term drew my attention and you immediately knew it was written by a LEFTARD and ignore it.
The disabled and elderly are not allowed to have air conditioning powered by fossil fuels?
Just as expected.
Phase AC’s out with unafordable cheap green energy,
then blame the increase in heat related deaths on global warming.
Same trick is being used by sabotaging forest management and then blaming the increase in forest fires on global warming.
And none of the mainstream experts will dare to point out the real cause of the problem,
or try to tell people that the only reason hot regions are densely populated are AC’s.
Many AC units are designed to be switched off centrally so that when renewable energy etc fails to meet actual demand, demand can be turned off.
Excellent article, thanks !
So we learn that people most at risk of health problems during extreme heat are therefore the elderly and those already weakened. Thanks for the info, guys—I’ll pass it along to my colleagues in the “It’s a blatantly obvious fact” department while you keep trying to discourage people from installing air conditioning because it “destroys the planet,” conveniently ignoring the fact that cold kills on average far more than heat.
Thought experiment: would you rather sleep outdoors at -40°C or at 40°C? Take your time to think about it, gentlemen journalists—I must say the question is particularly challenging for people as well-trained as you are at denying the most basic reality.
Would the 40C have lots of bugs?
in the subtropics where I live there are lots of bugs, but we’re not overrun. The place is also full of critters which eat bugs.
Geckos?
Australians.
Hey 🙂
Sorry Eric, it was there, I had to use it.
Yes they are.
The coolest assassins you’ll ever witness practicing their natural hunting prowess.
Chameleons are much cooler.
Geckos, frogs and bats. Without them we’d be stuffed.
I mean, I’ll take 40C over -40C to spend the night. I don’t want to freeze to death. I just remember one weird summer night camping out in southern Arizona. Hot, humid, sheet lightning all around…and bugs. I didn’t get much sleep.
A muslin veil should do the trick, I think.
and if the bugs are really bad, go the full burqa 😞
Actually, one thing that needs to be considered is that by far the majority of people in Australia don’t live in places that get what could be called “Extreme cold”..
Meanwhile, here in the real world (Texas) it’s 55 degrees at 2:00 Pm on the first day of May–miserable, cold and rainy (we don’t complain about the rain) and not at all conducive to getting out to the garden where some much needed work awaits.
In my real world of NW Chicagoland, NWS has issued a frost advisory for tonight—May 2!
OUCH!!! Damn that climate change.
Really nice here on Whidbey Island, WA. Mid 60s, sunny, been out mowing.
Cliff Mass has a blog post on WA’s early summer weather; it’s not going to be here long. Ellensburg is 75° F. mid-afternoon.
Around here it’s more likely to get warmer, into June, then for no explicable reason, it ends up being 50 and rainy on July 4th.
55? So you’re currently suffering climate change in your little corner of the world? 😜
When there’s hot weather spells like the 1896 episode – 437 people dead from heat stroke – then there will be something worth reporting.
https://joannenova.com.au/2012/11/extreme-heat-in-1896-panic-stricken-people-fled-the-outback-on-special-trains-as-hundreds-die/
They have lost, they know they have lost. Losing is an ugly thing.
You know they got nothing when they keep recycling the same already easily debunked alarmist tropes over and over. Just in the first four months of this year we have had:
—AMOC collapse
—Renewables cheaper
—Coral reefs endangered
—Greening bad because reduces food nutrient value
—Our problem is communication, not credibility
—And now heat more deadly than cold
Dihydrogen monoxide is responsible – actually the most prevalent greenhouse gas, implicated in car accidents, boat and ship sinkings, drownings, worsening infections, making rate of hypothermia onset much faster, avalanches, mud slides, flooding and much much more. Definitely the most dangerous substance on earth by a long way.
This is no boating accident!
“Why do greens keep pushing this absurd fantasy, that heat presents a more serious problem than cold?”
You know why, Eric, but you seem unwilling to say.
I apologise for my excessive subtlety 🙂
Old people die. Who knew?
“Old people die. Who knew?”
And certainly more often in cold weather than in warm weather.
Is the colder weather in Antarctica the cause of the weather in Australia?
Rather than comparing summer and winter weather-related deaths, shouldn’t the questions be… Is there a discernible trend in overall weather-related deaths? If so, what is the underlying cause of this trend?
If only there were some way to keep people cool in hot weather. /sarc
I have close family members living in Western NSW for decades. I have visited more than 10 times for long durations, months and know the community very well, their clubs, their sort of idiosyncrasies, barbeque evening discussions, what they talk about, etc. Their climate is as crazy as can be, draughts and floodings, sudden changes from 43C at 2pm down to 17C by 5pm and a storm in between. That’s not climate change, but it’s what Australian climate does.
What I have never heard them speak about is deaths due to the heat. They know what to do during heatwaves: They live it out. Great people those Aussies are.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror
The wide brown land for me!
Second stanza of Dorothea McKeller’s poem My Country My Country – Dorothea Mackellar