This is it - climate change is really beginning to bite

[Wowwee1234]

We know the climate is changing and it is us. This particular heat wave feels like the next step up after a winter of devastating storms.

YABU - It's just too hot
YANBU - This is the taste of things to come.

Storms and floods don't kill many in the UK.

Unless you look back to 1953 before things like the Thames Flood Barrier.

Floods do cause a lot of economic damage. Which is why investing 20 billion in flood defences is probably much better value than investing 20 billion in carbon capture.

I don't want to let this one pass because it's misinformation, albeit the kind of misinformation people want to accept because it makes them feel better about what's going on.

Arguing this way about the the average climate not having changed since the '40s involves bad-faith cherry-picking of which dates to compare. To get a sense of the magnitude of temperature changes over time, scroll carefully down the amazingly good XKCD cartoon linked to below.

It shows that in 20000 BCE (the last ice age) temperatures were 4.3C lower on average than the average ones between 1961 and 1990. There was a period around 5000 BCE when temperatures approached the current levels (following a long steady slow rise). For most of human history, the temperature has been stable around the 1961-1990 level. There was a warm period in Europe around 1000 years ago, but that was a local variation and global averages were unaffected.

There was a drop after that of perhaps half a degree until the Industrial Revolution. At that point the hockey-stick curve starts, and the global average has now risen close to 1.5C since that time. It is abrupt and unprecedented in its speed. No amount of trying to explain it away as just natural climate variation Is possible unless you want to completely ignore universally acknowledged scientific facts.

xkcd.com/1732/

@GasPanic

"The warmer winters on average will reduce excess deaths in the UK in winter more than any short duration extreme events will increase them."

Again - that's not the outcome that current projections are pointing to. There will be a small reduction in cold weather related deaths from generally milder winters, but this will be outpaced by a huge increase in heat related deaths.

Floods in the last 20 years have killed a few hundred people directly, but from experience this isn’t the true number of deaths caused by flooding.

When people are evacuated from care homes or their home etc… their medication regime is disrupted and there is a big peak in fatalities in the two weeks after a flood because of it!

There are also the suicides to consider

There is some interesting research

https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/publications/floods-and-cause-specific-mortality-in-the-uk-a-nested-case-control-study/

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(17)30062-1/fulltext

https://www.farmingmonthly.co.uk/news/8641-increased-suicide-risk-amongst-farmers-flooding-aftermath/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/flooding-and-health-advice-for-frontline-responders/flooding-and-health-an-overview

Well I would much rather die from the heat than the cold 😂 and we won't need to waste so much of our hard earned money trying to keep warm.

Funny you should say that, I was curious the other week as to whether it was possible to get around the Caribbean without flying. For the larger islands forget it, but between the Lesser Antilles there are companies who offer berths on tall ships (old fashioned sailing ships). I did some sailing around the south coast of England when I was a teenager and loved it. A German friend did a transatlantic crossing when she was a teenager. A bit out of budget but I also saw sailings from Iceland to Greenland - Iceland is accessible by ferry from Denmark.

Anything is better than a cruise liner of course, those floating hotels are dreadful for the planet.

Climate change means warmer summers, rising sea levels will mean the coast is closer.
Win win

Forgot to add that there are also cargo boats that will take paying passengers.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mortality-insights-from-gad-april-2023/mortality-insights-from-gad-april-2023

"Between 2001 and 2020, the ONS estimates there was a net decrease in deaths associated with warm or cold temperature of around half a million."

It's not remotely comparable to the amount of deaths caused by flooding.

It's funny how in the article it's very difficult to compare the net benefits caused by an increase in temperatures in winter against the net negatives caused by an increase in temperatures in summer, almost as if they don't want to let people know the real numbers. They kind of loosely skirt around the issue to try and avoid directly saying that rising temperatures in winter are a significant benefit.
It's this sort of nonsense that gives the government a bad name on the issue IMO.

Of course correlation is not causation. Decreases in deaths in winter may be due to better housing, better diet, more government schemes etc. COVID has had a massive impact recently. But there seems to me there is little doubt increasing temperatures (no matter what the cause) helps reduce excess deaths in winter and is far more impactful than the increase during summers due to current warm temperatures or any impact due to flooding.

Are you always such an obstinate arse?

Extreme heat kills
Extreme cold kills
Extreme winds kill
Extreme rain kills
Extreme drought kills
Extreme weather kills

Extreme weather is happening far more often than it ever has in recorded history.

I take your point. It’s not so much now that concerns me, it’s not too hot for a start it’s a nice temp. It’s more the AMOC collapse I’d rather avoid.

Timing on this is vague, a few articles said this year others not for a while, if at all.

Again, you are not looking at the facts related to climate change, you are comparing winter cold weather (which can be mitigated for with insulation and heating) and ignoring this part of the report you quoted a link to:

The ONS and UKHSA research identified that during these 5 ‘heat-periods’, around 56,000 deaths occurred in England and Wales. This represents more than 3,200 excess deaths above the 5-year average for the equivalent days.

See below for the scale of the future problems associated with hot weather alone, ignoring other issues such as wildfires, drought, crop failures and infrastructure failures caused by extreme heat!

The annual number of heat-related deaths in England and Wales is set to rise up to fiftyfold over the next 50 years because of climate change, finds new research by UCL and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine.

The researchers found that even under the most optimistic scenario, associated with 1.6 degrees of warming over preindustrial levels by the end of the century and with high levels of adaptation, the annual number of heat-related deaths will increase up to sixfold. Today’s baseline of 634 annual heat-related deaths will rise to 3,007 per year in the 2050s, 4,004 in the 2060s and up to 4,592 in the 2070s. The worst-case scenario, with 4.3 degrees of warming over the same period and minimal adaptation, would see up to a more than fifty-fold increase in heat-related deaths to 10,317 in the 2050s, 19,478 in the 2060s, and 34,027 in the 2070s.

For comparison, the record-setting hot summer of 2022 saw 2,985 excess heat deaths, indicating a potential “new normal” by as early as the 2050s. For the low emissions scenario this would mean an additional 21 to 32 significantly hotter than average days per year, and an additional 64 to 73 such hot days under the high emission scenario.

https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/news/heat-related-deaths-in-england-and-wales-projected-to-increase-fiftyfold-over-50-years-402227#:~:text=Deaths%20will%20still%20increase%20sixfold%20under%20the%20best%2Dcase%20scenario.&text=The%20annual%20number%20of%20heat,School%20of%20Hygiene%20%26%20Tropical%20Medicine.

YANBU - this is a classic case of stable door v horse! 🐎

If there is any claim I am "not looking at the facts" in that report, it's because they aren't actually providing any.

They are just nebulously skirting round the issue and not actually providing clear data for comparison. It's just a list of hard to compare snippets of information. Why ?

And I clearly made a statement that correlation does not equal causation. That goes for hot weather as well as cold weather too. No cherry picking from me.

I'm not that interested in predictions. My guess is that a great many who predict have an agenda and wouldn't predict something that would potentially affect the concensus or their funding.

Averages don't matter when considering deaths, extremes do.

Remember that the Gulf Stream moderates our weather, if it moves then we'll see a more extreme temperatures.

In reference to another ott comment 🙄

I can’t recall it ever being as hot as it was yesterday or the day before. It was crazy. Were the storms really that bad though? I live in a rural area and we didn’t seem to have as many trees down as usual or much flooding.

Ok. No more experts.

Forget cancer care.
Forget criminal pathologists.
Forget economics.
Forget aviation, shipping, trains.
Forget all medications, pharmacists, GPs.
and so on

But you don't mean that do you. You mean, ignore the experts you don't agree with. Can't have it both ways.

Well we were told by that nice Mr. Gove to ignore experts when it came to deciding on future prosperity, so it would be uppity to ignore our betters.

Pig headed ignorance will see us through. After all, it never did our ancestors any harm.

Of course I care, but you live in the UK - it's really not that hot!!!!

Seriously, some of you need to get a grip. People who are so vulnerable that they are liable to die from cold or heat really should have someone checking on them to make sure they are okay. A few hot days a year is not going to kill someone if they take sensible precautions.

It's hot for the UK, and the types of buildings they have here, even if it's not that hot for the Med. If people are beginning to buy aircon units it's a sign that it's getting too hot for here.

Not everyone has someone who can check up on them, and it's not easy to suddenly acquire friends and family. Some elderly people just outlive all their friends and family. But they might have many good years left, and they deserve to enjoy them!

I remember the summer of 2003. 70,000 people died in Europe because of heatwaves: Heat and health

The 70,000 didn't die because they were British whingers - but because it was too hot.

"Seriously, some of you need to get a grip. People who are so vulnerable that they are liable to die from cold or heat really should have someone checking on them to make sure they are okay. A few hot days a year is not going to kill someone if they take sensible precautions".

My 21 year old son has leukaemia and bipolar one, and is on chemotherapy, antipsychotics and antidepressants. People on these medications are highly at risk from overheating. He blacked out the other day from the heat - ended up in urgent care with a cut head, and had no memory of falling or losing consciousness. Please stop telling people to 'get a grip' because they've pointed out that very high temperatures are dangerous for vulnerable people. Very hot temperatures KILL - hence the excess death rate following a heat wave.

The posters pooh-poohing net zero as an expensive fantasy should wake up. Look at how much the cost of living has gone up since the invasion of Ukraine. The invasion was partly down to Russia gambling that Europe wouldn't retaliate for fear of an energy crisis - and also because Russia was trying to shore up its energy influence as a fossil fuel power.

It's the current situation which is the expensive fantasy. Decarbonising will make us better off and less vulnerable to outrageously bad behaviour by unfriendly powers. The quicker the better!

I have no family myself, and fully expect to go through my old age alone. However I will no doubt cope, as my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents did, by taking sensible precautions. Should someone who is so vulnerable that they could die from heat or cold even be living alone? Being old in itself is not enough to die from a few hot days, unless of course they drink nothing. My DF lived the last few years of his life in an extremely hot apartment, he did all the things required to cool it down and got on with life - with a heart condition and asthma (and required no input from me).

Brits don't seem to be good at adapting, rather they prefer to moan and expect "someone else" to fix everything for them. If you are getting more hot weather then everyone needs to learn how to deal with it.

Some people here have air con, some don't. For a few hot days a year it is possible to cope without it. I rather suspect the heatwaves in Europe were a bit hotter than in the UK.

I am sorry to hear about your son. However, people do have those conditions in other parts of the world. As I just said, people in the UK need to learn to adapt to the weather and act accordingly.

Ranting and raving about a few hot days (which is all it is) is going to change nothing.