Archives par mot-clé : Heat Deaths

better to know...?, climate-debate

Madame Otto and Her Computer Crystal Balls

by C. Morrison, Not 3, 2026

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.

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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.

better to know...?

Climate Change Saves More Lives Than You’d Think

by Bjorn Lomborg, Sept16, 2021 in WSJ

Global warming does cause more heat deaths, but the editors’ statistic is deceptive. They say global heat deaths have gone up by 54% among old people in the past 20 years, but they fail to mention that the number of old people has risen by almost as much. Demographics drove most of the rise, not climate change.

They also leave out that climate change has saved more lives from temperature-related deaths than it has taken. Heat deaths make up about 1% of global fatalities a year—almost 600,000 deaths—but cold kills eight times as many people, totaling 4.5 million deaths annually. As temperatures have risen since 2000, heat deaths have increased 0.21%, while cold deaths have dropped 0.51%. Today about 116,000 more people die from heat each year, but 283,000 fewer die from cold. Global warming now prevents more than 166,000 temperature-related fatalities annually.

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