Newsweek claims in the recent article, “Hundreds Die in Record-Breaking Europe Heat Wave: How Long Will It Last,” that the current deadly European heat wave demonstrates the growing dangers of climate change, suggesting that rising greenhouse gas emissions are making heat domes more frequent and more dangerous. This is false. The real story is not climate change, rather it is Europe’s decades-long failure to allow its people to equip themselves with the most effective protection against extreme heat: air conditioning.
There is no question that heat waves can be deadly, particularly for the elderly and those with pre-existing health conditions. Newsweek reports that hundreds of deaths have occurred across Spain, France, and other parts of Europe during the current heat wave.
The obvious question is why. If climate change were the primary cause of these deaths, one would expect countries with the hottest climates to suffer the greatest mortality. Yet places such as Arizona, Texas, Florida, and Nevada routinely endure temperatures well above 100°F every summer without experiencing comparable spikes in heat-related deaths.
The difference is not the weather, the difference is policies, in this case policies restricting or disincentivizing air conditioning.
More than 90 percent of American homes have air conditioning. In much of the southern United States, it is nearly universal. Hospitals, nursing homes, schools, offices, shopping centers, and private residences all provide refuge from dangerous heat. Europe chose a different, deadly, path.
In contrast, only about 20 percent of homes across Europe have air conditioning, and in the United Kingdom the figure is less than 5 percent. Germany’s adoption rate is similarly low. Those numbers are not the result of technological limitations. They are the result of decades of government policy and environmental ideology discouraging air conditioning in favor of reducing electricity consumption to avoid carbon dioxide emissions. Interestingly, it is the homes and business of wealthy elites, those who often endorse limiting air conditioning use, that most often have air conditioning.
Britain is perhaps the clearest example of this policy madness.
As recently reported by both The New York Times and AOL, British building regulations and planning guidance have long emphasized “passive cooling” while treating air conditioning as something to be avoided whenever possible. Many homes, schools, offices, and even some hospitals were built or renovated without air conditioning because policymakers viewed it as environmentally undesirable. Those decisions have consequences.
When temperatures climb into the 90s, millions of people simply have no practical way to cool their homes. That is not a climate failure, it is a policy failure. Ironically, many of the same governments that discourage air conditioning during normal times respond to heat emergencies by opening air-conditioned cooling centers. In France, designated public cooling centers (often called salles fraîches) can be found in city halls, gymnasiums, and libraries.
In other words, officials fully understand that air conditioning saves lives. They simply have spent years making it harder for people to have that protection in their own homes.
As Climate Realism explained in its rebuttal to Time magazine earlier this year, air conditioners are saving people from heat. They are not causing a public health crisis.
Newsweek also attributes the current event to a persistent high-pressure system known as a heat dome. That explanation is correct. Heat domes are well-understood meteorological phenomena called an Omega Block that have occurred throughout the historical record, as seen in the figure below by the Telegraph UK.
Where the article goes astray is claiming that climate change is making these events more frequent and more severe. The experts quoted give expectations based largely on climate model projections, not direct observational evidence. They argue that greenhouse gases shift the baseline temperature upward, making heat extremes more likely.
That is a hypothesis supported primarily by climate models. Models are not data, and some climate models are so bad they have been relieved of duty.
Europe has experienced devastating heat waves for centuries. The deadly 2003 European heat wave occurred long before today’s record emphasis on attribution studies. Earlier heat waves occurred throughout the twentieth century and well before modern concerns about greenhouse gases. A good example is the 1976 British Isles heatwave, at a time when the Earth was cooling and many scientists were warning the next ice age could the coming. There is no observational evidence of a long-term trend of timing, location, or severity of heat domes which might indicate climate change meteorologically modifying such events.
Omega block heat domes develop because of atmospheric circulation patterns, persistent high-pressure systems, soil moisture conditions, and regional weather dynamics. They are short-term weather events that have existed for as long as humanity has existed and long before humans studied weather.
What determines whether those weather events become humanitarian disasters are these preparedness factors:
- Affordable electricity.
- Reliable electric grids.
- Access to cooling.
- Emergency response systems.
These are the factors that save lives. Instead of emphasizing those practical solutions, Newsweek largely recycles the now-familiar narrative that climate change is the underlying culprit. That framing wrongly overlooks the far more immediate cause of Europe’s vulnerability.
The continent has spent years pursuing energy policies that increased electricity prices while simultaneously discouraging one of the greatest public health technologies ever invented.
Air conditioning has saved millions of lives worldwide. It dramatically reduces heat stress, prevents dehydration, and protects the elderly during extreme weather. Treating it as an environmental problem rather than a public health solution has been one of Europe’s most costly mistakes.
According to the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, air conditioning is one of the most significant public health interventions in history, averting hundreds of thousands of premature heat-related deaths annually. By dramatically reducing vulnerability to extreme heat, residential cooling has become a critical lifeline, especially for the elderly and vulnerable populations worldwide.
Newsweek presents Europe’s heat wave as another chapter in the climate crisis, but the evidence points to it being another chapter in a political/social policy crisis, putting unjustified fears of future climate change based on non-existent evidence ahead of the needs of real people living today.
Europe’s recurring heat deaths are the predictable consequence of governments discouraging the very technology that has protected Americans, and elites in in their own countries, from deadly summer heat for generations.
Until policymakers stop treating air conditioning as a climate villain and start recognizing it as a lifesaving technology, Europe will continue paying the price for ideology disguised as environmental policy. Newsweek is derelict in their journalistic duty to point this out.
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.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
I actually don’t believe these numbers whatsoever. I think they are totally fictitious, entirely fabricated by the mainstream media. Not backed up with real cause of death attributions, not that we can really trust the medical world these days after the covid-19 scam. Note that they never report deaths in the depth of the winter.
Many of the deaths in France were Drownings….
Swim lessons are unnatural.
It is child abuse in Australia if you do not teach your little children to swim, at least amongst the locally born.
I’m sure you will find that many, if not most of those drowned can swim. Non swimmers don’t jump into deep water.
The killer is the shock of an overheated body reacting to relatively cold water. This can causes a seizure of action, and some just panic and drown. if they relaxed and let natural buoyancy take over until the shock recedes they may well have survived.
Thermal shock?
The waters are not that cold.
If this happened, then heat stressed people would be dying in their showers.
They are racsist.
Younger people including children in rivers, lakes and flooded quarries here in the U.K.
Many are immigrants and illegals who can’t swim. It shows how low their IQ is. In Africa they don’t learn to swim, they come here and jump into the water. Even monkeys are smarter.
what has iq got to do with the inability to swim? What has nationality or ethnicity got to do with being able to swim? I am white British with an IQ above 100 and I cannot swim, shall I go and move in with the ring tailed lemurs at Twycross zoo as I am clearly not part of the human race?
Those children who died in my area were all white British.
Huh?
People do swim where there is water.
They do lack artificial water – swimming pools, because they are poor.
But they do not lack intelligence – they lack peacefull constructive societies.
Both heat and cold can contribute to the deaths of people who are old and with co-morbidities though for different reasons but how many of these would die anyway even if it were a milder summer or winter? I do not believe we have actual comparative numbers.
Search
“Population of Europe”
“life expectancy in Europe”
Calc number of people who die in Europe every year.
Look at the numbers….hmmm….
Search
“Traffic deaths in Europe”
Calc how many days of “traffic deaths” are equivalent to “heat wave deaths” in article.
Look at the numbers again….hmmmm…go back to breakfast cereal….
Rember data from the 2003 European heat wave.
Deaths dropped for the following 2 months after the heat.
So they only lost a month or two due to the heat.
AC for cars? Fine. It is expected as standard equipment. AC for homes? Lacking, and even discouraged, according to recent reports. It seems absurd to me.
I asked Google, “How prevalent is air conditioning as a standard feature in new automobiles manufactured in France, Germany, and the UK?”
Answer: “Air conditioning is highly prevalent in new automobiles manufactured across France, Germany, and the UK, with roughly 80% to 90% of all new vehicles rolling off assembly lines equipped with some form of AC.
While historically lagging behind the US due to milder European climates, air conditioning transitioned from a luxury add-on to a standard or universally-available feature during the 2000s. It is now considered essential, primarily because AC systems also serve as vital dehumidifiers to clear frost and condensation during the colder winter months.
The exact prevalence across these markets can be broken down as follows:
That is all for now.
Whenever I travel to Europe in summer, I always check to make sure my accommodations have AC.
Stayed in a heritage stone building hotel in Marseilles in July in the 1990s.
No AC.
Almost dissolved, must have been > 40 C at night.
Tried soaking the sheets in water and sleeping under them.
Didn’t work.
If I tried that now, I’m sure I would be counted among the elderly deaths from heat.
And it would serve me right.
Outside at the harbor it was quite comfortable, according to friends.
Those old heritage stone buildings are pizza ovens in European summers.
truely a good point, didn’t think about that. upvote deserved
I don’t want anyone to think I would defend the mainstream media (Newsweek) but I can see Newsweek claiming with a straight face that what they are saying is true because someone in the government said the same thing. When we allow our government to lie to us how can we expect those who listen to the government to not lie to us. Government lying and cheating has to stop.
Adaption is the only option.
The high latitudes of the NH have not even reached minimum peak solar yet. The present heat across Europe is coming from the South.
Within this century, the peak sunlight at 60N will begin a 10,000 year increasing trend in peak solar intensity. It will not reach the solar intensity presently experienced at 60S but it will get close.
Australia is a continent surrounded by ocean but the land surface temperature nudges 50C. That is Europe’s future. Adapt or die.
The Med is close to reaching 30C already this year where deep convection sets in. That will bring monsoon rains to provide some decent rain.
earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions
Convective potential already building:
earth :: a global map of wind, weather, and ocean conditions
It gets warm and humid here in east Texas and we don’t die from heat. Of course, we have air conditioning, a magic technology seemingly unknown in Europe.
They know about AC. They just didn’t need it before:
https://tamino.wordpress.com/2026/06/28/not-just-another-summer/
They do now.
Yes, they did. European heat waves are not new but people like you lying about it is.
https://climatechangedispatch.com/france-1911-heatwave-41000-deaths/
Do your research.
South and Southeast Asians, living in even hotter and humid climate, do not die. On the contrary, these lands are extremely well-peopled.
No, it’s easier to do the blame game than admit policy errors.
One could strike through “policy” and it would still be an accurate statement.
In the desert southwest we even have AC at places at high elevation where it rarely gets hot. The only people that don’t have AC are some campers and they head to even higher elevation as needed.
Given the fact that german summers back in the days used to be so lousy, rainy and cold that this regularity even inspired a song (wann wirds mal wieder richtig Sommer – by Rudi Carell) I wonder that depressed people didn’t commit mass suicide. Oh wait yes, they took to the south for a few weeks to seek EXACTLY what they have now at their doorstep (and curiously didn’t die in droves).
Seems so that some idiots want to sour every little bit of joy somone could have. It’s like that retard that has to point out that the young chick you’re talking to is a lesbian. If she’s cute and a funny chat who cares?
So when this utter nonsense end? Maybe clubb all these idiological arsonists like seals, canadian style. Season? No, all year round.
It’s not policy failure it’s a failure to throw more red ink at the problem-
More storage is vital, but there’s a much cheaper and easier way to manage winter demand and wind droughts
Is heat dangerous in the first place?
Hundreds of millions of South Asians, Southeast Asians and Africans regularly experience extreme humid heat without much in way of ACs and other mod-cons. And by and large, do not die. On the contrary, these hot and humid places are and have been extremely well-populated.
Big Green Misleadia:
“Heat pumps, goooood”
“Air Conditioning, baaaaaad”
And governments force people to install heat pumps with a bung from the tax payer, while denying people the right to install air-con”
“And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you ’cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles, it’s a very, very mad world
Mad world, mad world, mad world”
~Mad World, Tears for Fears
Actually, A/C units are heat pumps. They “pump” the heat from the inside to the outside.
Yes, I know.
Doesn’t follow. The countries with the warmest climates, at least the developed ones, are already set up for very warm conditions. They have had air conditioning in homes, hospitals and schools, etc, for decades. Likewise their transport infrastucture.
Many countries in Europe do not have this infrastructure. They didn’t need it in the pre-warmed environment, or else these events were so infrequent that the costs-to-benefits ratio was too high to justify the expenditure. Now, here we are, exactly where the scientists have been telling us we would be for at least 40-years.
Of course, we still won’t listen to them.
Not THE scientists, SOME scientists.
Some self-proclaimed scientists.
So, what did they think would happen while following all of this net zero loonacy? That global warming would just stop and heat waves would no longer occur so why invest in AC?
No. They knew that AC would be turned on during heat waves, which occur, and that would stress the grid because they did not install enough electric production capacity.
They spent $trillions on infrastructure over the past decade or so. They couldn’t scratch out a little for AC? Goodness. So much cash; nothing achieved. Nothing.
Neither heat nor cold kill healthy people (apart from a few random isolated cases like a bloke lost in a desert). The vast majority of these deaths claimed are ones that would have occurred in short order anyway. Someone is merely more likely to finally die in a period when the temperature has deviated substantially either way from that to which they are accustomed.
Cold weather and pneumonia which accompanied it was historically dubbed “the old man’s friend” because it provided the frail and elderly with a fairly swift and painless death, compared to bone cancer or whatever.
The difference between the southern US states and Northern Europe is that the southern states are consistent in their climate and have been for decades.
Northern Europe has a more variable climate, even over the summer. Thus property design and specifications are different, and I suspect the housing stock may be older than in the USA. Do you have double glazing or triple glazing? What about other insulation?
New Orleans is on the same latitude as Algeria, DC is on the same latitude as Lisbon, Portugal, the US/Canadian border is on the same latitude as Paris, thus comparing the Southern States with Northern Europe is comparing apples and oranges.
Are the older properties in places like New Orleans retrofitted with air conditioning?
The reason air conditioning is included in cars is because of their market place, which includes places where it is considered essential, and it’s easier and probably cheaper to include it for all than to offer it as an option.
Belgium, schools, hospitals, companies (partly) closed or reduced work, the economic cost is much higher than AC.
For decades we have mandatory over-isolation, houses facing south, large windows, or homes are build to retain warmth all to cut on heating in the winter, which have been mild. In summer these homes are boiling inside.
I managed to find one of the last mobile AC unites, only 6000BTU which is not enough to really cool the room. But I managed to keep the temperature inside 30°C while outside was 36°C. Usually in the summer it’s hotter inside this room than outside, so without that mobile AC it would be up 40°C. Best part of this mobile AC is lowering humidity. It just feels so much pleasant using AC.
I could show pictures of people going to great length trying to keep the heat out. Here in the street I see people taping paper, silver paper, isolation foil against their windows. Some try bedsheets or wooding planks. When I see this madness I can’t stop thinking of just installing real AC. EU is dying anyway because of these people, when you can just leave.
I hope Anthony can find someone to do a comparative study contrasting two cities – one with a sprawling city with plenty of green areas and another with densely packed properties and few green areas and trees – and how the UHI effect from the surrounding area differs considerably i.e. an empirical fact based article. This should show we need sensible and practical people not political activists in charge of municipalities and urban planning.
There was an article recently showing how the Central Park area of New York City was cooler than all the other surrounding districts.
Trees vs concrete & asphalt.
What is not mentioned here is that the obesity epidemic has made proportionally more persons vulnerable to heat waves, mainly due to poor circulation. Bad architecture designed for aesthetically questionable reasons as opposed to interior climate control. Vast amounts of glass absorbes great thermal flux in summer and sheds heat in winter, in an age where lots of natural light has long since ceased to be essential for work.
A dive into the fatalities shows the large majority were not due to heat stress. Too many were other causes, such as drownings.
In Aug of 2023 the avg hi temp Houston IAH was 101.6 F with 27 days at 100 F or higher and 4 days at 95, 96, 96. 99; while the avg low was 79.8 F. This was definitely an outlier month, however I don’t remember any news reports on excess deaths; this in a metro area with pop in excess of 5 million. The Normal Jul and Aug avg hi temp is about 95 F, with few temp above 99 F.
Almost a different subject, but a lot of buildings are poorly designed with over sized windows that collect a lot of heat in the summer. West facing is bad in summer. Home buyers are attracted to large windows it seems.
Large windows should be oriented and shaded so that they collect heat in winter but not in summer. Seldom done.
Traditional design integrates the need of humans for light along with the need for shade in summer in rooms facing between East through south to West. This is traditionally done by using gables that overhang sufficiently that when the sun is high in summer, the windowed room is shaded, whereas in winter, when the sun is lower, the warmth that helps the house remain pleasant comes from the sun flooding the windowed room.
There’s no one formula as the specific design changes with latitude, however I am sure in this day and age that advanced design software will allow professionals to have such designs tailored to the latitude of the property that they are designing.
A person making a claim that “greenhouse gases” cause “climate change” resulting in a particular disaster is like listening to a person claiming there are leprechauns in the forest. Ignore them like we do the crazy guy on the street corner.
I’d still like to hear some climate alarmist who’s so concerned about the deadly effects of extreme heat globally explain a few things. First, if it’s such a threat, why has the global population quadrupled during the last 125 years? Second, why has global life expectancy increased from 42 years to 73 during the same time? Third, why has the UN consistently reported increases in agricultural output during the last half-century, and fourth why has infant mortality been steadily dropping worldwide during the past century? Could it be that whatever heating is occurring isn’t that serious in the first place and/or that people have learned how to handle any extremes?
Fear porn sells, mate. Especially amongst leftie sheep. They want to believe in authority, because they prefer to trust people they look up to.
I gave up trusting ‘experts’ or ‘elders’ in my early 20s when their strictures had clear dangers to my physical, spiritual and financial health.
Knowing that most of those who are in charge in France, UK and at the EU Commission are energy Malthusians and knowing their contempt—or even their hatred—for human beings, I wonder if it’s a policy failure or on purpose.
In France, they have voted a law to “assist” people who want to dye. A French politician promoting this law argued that thanks to this law, fragile people suffering the heat wave could have been “helped”.
This is where we are now in France and in Europe, this is how they want to “solve” the heatwaves problem : by helping vulnerables to dye instead of installing AC to prevent their death.
Air conditioning is not common on the midwet coast, Seattle WA and Vancouver-Victoria BC.
Climate is moderate, temperature over +80F occassionally.
Perhaps becoming more common with affluence.
Some people are definitely at risk, perhaps more as population ages and health care keeps people alive longer and provides them with more aids. Mobility within residence is important to access water and refrigerator.
After the unusual temperatures of June 2021 potentially vulnerable people are being educated, contacted by friends and relatives, ad helped.
Yes, I agree that deliberate discouragement and worse against air conditioning is bad behaviour, nay rotten, ……
Interestingly, the two most important CO2 emitters (i.e., wars and volcanic eruptions) are hardly ever mentioned in the green dominated mainstream media. One begins to wonder whether that is nudging or just a lack of education.