Fresh from a summer season in Mystic Meg’s fairground tent, the weather attribution queen Friederike Otto has returned to Imperial College to bring news that 50,391 heat-related deaths occurred in 854 European cities in June, July and August, while 32,619 fatalities were attributed to human-caused climate change.
Such precision! A feature of all good clairvoyants, and a skill we might conclude is honed in the company of more commercially-minded soothsayers. Who needs doctors to tell us if we are dead and provide a certificated cause when Madame Otto is consulting in front of her computer crystal ball. Of course, the precise figures are not based on actual fatality data but are modelled estimates using population numbers and previous historical stats on temperature and summer mortality. In fact, data on historical mortality and temperature were only sought from 232 cities but, details, details! when a computer model can fill in any gaps.
The almost instant pseudoscience paper was written by, among others, several activists associated with Imperial including Otto and is titled ‘Heat-related urban mortality attributable to human-induced climate change in Europe in summer 2026’. As might be expected from a college with a world-class reputation for worrying everyone witless with computer modelled junk, its tone is highly political. At one point the authors claim that the world is “nearly” 1.5°C warmer without giving a checkable timeline, while “around” 1.4°C is attributable to human activity, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. There is not a scintilla of convincing scientific proof to back up this latter claim. In the opening abstract, the authors state that their results highlight the threat from human-caused warming “and the need for rapid emissions reductions”.
In other words, the need for the Marxist-inspired Net Zero fantasy. While this evil, little understood project was all the rage a few years ago, these days it comes with a much wider understanding that a world without hydrocarbons is a world facing starvation and mass death, along with societal and economic collapse. Don’t be poor in this brave new world.
In simple terms, this is where all the precise Imperial figures came from. First a statistical relationship was established between temperature and mortality using the historical data in 232 cities which were then applied to 622 other locations. Then climate models were used to estimate how much humans have warmed each city. Finally, a mortality model was run to compare the super-heated human-caused summer to a hypothetical season without anthropogenic change. From this came the declaration that humans caused over 60% of the supposed heat-related deaths seen in the 2026 European summer.
Towards the end, palms were crossed with silver and a group of Extinction Rebellion ‘witches’ repeatedly incanted abracadabra waving their magic sticks in the air. No, sorry I made that last bit up. But science it most certainly is not, at least according to Popperian principles that hold it must all be testable and open to falsification.
Until the figures can be proved – death certificate checks would be a good start – the Imperial work has no more validity than a guess. If it did not have a Net Zero political promotion attached it would remain in deserved ‘what iffery’ academic obscurity.
Needless to say, the Guardian was particularly impressed with Friederike’s fanciful figures, noting in a headline: ‘Heat killed “staggering” 50,000 people in Europe’s cities this summer, scientists warn.’ Climate Comedy Cuts then informed that “morgues and funeral homes filled with bodies from June to August as the heat added by planet-baking pollution cut short an extra 32,000 lives [32,619, I think you’ll find] in urban areas”. Hot days were said to have pushed vulnerable bodies in urban areas into overdrive and warm nights prevented them from recovering.
How do humans live happily on Earth in temperatures that range from minus-40°C to plus-40°C? It’s a complete mystery. Although perhaps happily is not entirely accurate since nine times more people die from the cold than the heat, although this statistic also applies in warmer climes.
Of course, the recent hot European summer has played into the hands of activists who use the ‘look out of the window’ trope to explain complex atmospheric science. Computer models are always to hand to back up attribution agitprop. In fact, the hot European summer had many natural weather explanations. The jet stream kept high pressure over Europe, while the blocked lows hit Greenland leading to a colder summer and a slightly positive net mass balance of the ice sheet. Heard about that in the climate catastrophising mainstream media? Of course not. But at least we get a break from the clots holding their hands above their heads and wailing that our grandchildren will all drown.
When a simple meteorological explanation is to hand, individual weather events, however extreme, tell us little about any long-term change in the climate, let alone one supposedly altered by humans. Rigorous analysis of observations by scientists without an obvious political agenda are the key to understanding a changing climate since highly useful evidence is provided in the past record. Computer models that attempt to measure an unmeasurable, chaotic atmosphere tell us nothing since they are challenged by natural variation. Stating that almost all warming in the modern era is caused by humans is absurd since it is unprovable and takes scant account of natural climate influences.
Weather attribution computer models were first designed to create useful press headlines and to stick it to oil and gas companies in the law courts. Whatever use they have in the political arena, they cannot make plausible estimates to the nearest one person about how many people died in a hot summer due to a claimed anthropogenic weather change. Even Mystic Meg would struggle with that one.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X. His new best-selling book is IMPLAUSIBLE: How scientists, activist politicians and journalists invented a climate crisis, weaponised junk computer model findings and claimed a fake consensus to promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy – out now and available on Amazon where it has a five-star rating and is currently No. 1 in Amazon paperbacks Global Warming and Ecology and Amazon downloads Environmental Issues. Only £3.99 for the download and £8.99 for the paperback.
