By Paul Homewood
Yes, it’s the annual fraudulent Lancet report on climate change!
New diseases are spreading, the hayfever season is starting earlier and even the hours in which it is possible to practise sports are changing.
The common denominator behind all these and other changes to human health is climate change.
A new report in the Lancet has found that warming temperatures in Europe have far reaching impacts on health.
It tracks the links between climate change and health across the region, exploring 42 indicators.
As scorching summers hit the continent, heat-related deaths per 100,000 people have increased by 30.8 per cent from the period 2003-12 and 2013-22, according to the report.
Now 68 people per 100,000 are estimated to die of heat related issues, up from 50.8.
“Climate change is here, in Europe, and it kills,” the 2024 Europe Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change said.
From raging wildfires in Greece to near-record high river flows in major basins, including the Rhine and Danube, 2023 saw a record number of days with “extreme heat stress”, according to the World Health Organization.
It caused the number of adverse health impacts related to extreme weather and climate events to rise.
In 2022, which also saw extreme heat, upwards of 70,000 people in Europe were killed during the summer months.
The Lancet report found that Southern Europe tends to be more affected by heat-related illnesses, wildfires, food insecurity and drought.
It also said that Southern Europe is also “more vulnerable” to climatic suitability for various climate-sensitive pathogens and disease vectors.
Research has found that environmental changes, like rising temperatures, can amplify disease risk in a variety of ways.
Climate change can alter animal movements and habitats, bringing new species into contact and allowing them to swap pathogens.
Newly introduced species can bring new pathogens with them as they move north from warmer climates.
Regular physical activity could also be in jeopardy.
Risky hours for exercise have been expanding into hours beyond the hottest part of the day over time for both medium, such as cycling, football, and tennis, and strenuous, such as rugby or mountain biking, activities.
Comparing 2012–22 to 1990–2000, the mean annual risky hours per person for moderate intensity activities falling outside the hottest four hours of the day increased by 107 per cent in eastern Europe, 382 per cent in northern, 94 per cent in southern and 101 per cent in western.
The report highlighted that this could “result in reduced physical activity” and therefore increase the risk of “non-communicable diseases”.
It said that regular physical activity is a key component of a healthy sustainable lifestyle, but that exercising in hot weather poses a risk of heat-related illnesses, such as heat exhaustion or exertional heat stroke.
The Lancet’s “we are all going to die” message is rather undermined by their own study last year, which found that deaths from cold in Europe exceeded those from heat by a factor of ten:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(23)00023-2/fulltext
Even in Southern Europe, five times as many died from cold:
The Lancet must be getting truly desperate, even claiming that people will get less exercise because of hot weather. The opposite is the case in most countries, as it is cold weather which stops people getting out and about.
They also mention wildfire activity, even though it has been reducing in Europe in recent decades, not increasing.
And their claims that cyclones are driving a surge in malaria fly in the face of the fact that cyclones are not becoming either more frequent or intense:
In other words, it is the sort of fraudulent report we see every year from the Lancet.
The report is not about science, it is all about politics, as they themselves admit:
