Winter Is Coming

Winter is coming

As the madness of “Net Zero” accelerates, time has already run out for many of our most vulnerable citizens.

RICHARD LYON

NOT LONG AGO, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (ONS) asked an interesting question: how has climate change affected the number of people who die from temperature related effects in the UK?1

Their analysis opened with helpful speculation on scientific topics outside their area of competence: “Climate change is a substantial threat to human health in the UK…Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and severe storms – accepted to be linked to climate change – have increased globally in recent years. The Met Office found that the period 1991 to 2020 was 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, while the 10 warmest years recorded occurred since 2002…Mental health is a growing concern linked to climate change”.

Of course, the IPCC have found no such linkage2, the majority of Met Office weather stations from which the “10 warmest years” claim originate are discovered to produce “junk” and “super junk” data under international quality classification criteria,3 and the mental health crisis is the consequence of institutions like the ONS peddling scientifically illiterate climate misinformation.

However, the results were horrifying—for climate catastrophists.

We found relatively little increase in deaths caused by warmer weather and a reduction in deaths caused by cold winters, leading to a net decrease in deaths

Over the period 2001-2020, which was about 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990, 555,094 fewer people died from temperature affects.

“ONS!”, said the catastrophists, channelling Michael Caine in The Italian Job, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”. Errors were declared, and a safer report was published—irrelevant to the task of examining whether climate change is a good or a bad thing in the UK—comparing deaths, not changes in deaths, between warm and cold days. It produced the same conclusion.

But for anyone familiar with climate academic literature, the result—that small changes in cold produces large changes in deaths from cold—is not surprising. In one of the largest studies to date on deaths attributable to heat or cold, a large team of collaborators from around the world examined more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012.4

The results are what you would expect as we emerge from the recent mini Ice Age. Overall, cold kills around 17 times more people worldwide than does heat. Perhaps more unexpectedly, one in 15 deaths from all causes were attributable to cold. Only one death in 250 was attributable to heat.

Moreover, a large increase in temperature didn’t produce a large increase in deaths. Conversely, by far the largest number of temperature related deaths came from moderate cold, and even a modest further reduction in temperature caused a large increase in deaths.

This makes sense. While direct deaths from hypothermia are rare in the UK, cold temperatures pose significant indirect health risks, particularly for vulnerable populations. Cold weather exacerbates existing health conditions and increases the likelihood of accidents.

The relationship between the death of our most vulnerable citizens and modest temperature decreases is starkly revealed by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, who have tabulated the number of deaths from cold in recent winters, together with the average temperature in that winter.5

They show that an average winter temperature of 4 degrees Centigrade marks the edge of the death zone for our vulnerable citizens in the UK. 2,439 died in cold damp homes in the relatively mild (5.3 degC) winter of 2019/2020. In the cold (3.5 degC) winter of 2020/21, 14,502 died. And that’s just from the direct effects. ONS estimated the total number of “winter excess deaths” in the winter of 2015-16 to be 24,300. This number has also declined strongly with the modest increase in average temperature over the century, with half as many dying today as did in the 1950s.6

HERE IN THE UK, we are spending trillions of pounds on the reckless and futile attempt to replace our affordable, abundant, and above all reliable energy system with an unaffordable, rationed system driven occasionally by breezes and sunbeams.

If 100% successful in its aim of eliminating UK carbon emissions, the UK will produce an avoided increase in earth’s temperature in 100 years of less than 0.01 degrees centigrade.7

The cost of that reduction, measured in hundreds of trillions of pounds per tenth of a degree, remains unquantifiable. That stems from the government’s failure to produce a detailed scope definition, implementation plan, or comprehensive cost schedule for “Net Zero”. Moreover, critical technologies required by it, such as long-term energy storage solutions, are not yet developed or available.8

They are imposing unimaginable debt on us and our children to try and prevent natural climate variation that is producing thousands fewer temperature related deaths—here in the UK, and world wide.

The energy policy associated with it has brought to the brink of grid failure and blackout9. In a sub 4 degree winter, even one blackout will be catastrophic for tens of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens. One lasting for several days would be a national emergency, requiring the mobilisation of the armed forces to move them into community halls with space heaters until power could be restored.

Net Zero is killing our country. We can not tolerate it. If you agree, please share this news letter with your friends and family, and make sure your MP knows your views. Together, we can stop it. But time is running out and, for many this winter, it already has.

 

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