By Cliff Reece
Bjørn Lomborg is a Danish climate scientist, author, and the President of the think tank Copenhagen Consensus Center. He is the former director of the Danish government’s Environmental Assessment Institute in Copenhagen.
His views on the issue of heat vs cold in relation to deaths caused by slightly warmer global temperatures are encapsulated in the image above.
He is one of a growing number of experts who strongly oppose the propaganda and outright lies promulgated by ignorant climate activists, most of whom are motivated by financial greed – as in the case of the renewables industry – or to gain political advantage, as with the Labor-left, Greens and Teals.
Both groups of charlatans feed off fear – and the global media helps feed that fear!
Excessive heat can be very dangerous to human health. It can lead to potentially fatal conditions such as heat exhaustion, which is exhibited by an acute loss of water and salt through profuse sweating.
It can also cause heatstroke, which occurs when the body’s temperature rises so rapidly and by so much that the cooling system stops working altogether, resulting in decreased sweating.
Between 2000 and 2019, annual deaths from heat exposure increased globally. The 20-year period coincided with the Earth warming by about 0.5 degree Celsius (0.9 degrees Fahrenheit).
Most fatalities occur among the elderly, as they tend not to cope as well with the disequilibrium brought on by heat. In other words, it’s harder for their bodies to regulate temperature when exposed to intense heat.
However, according to a 2021 study published in The Lancet Planetary Health, cold is far more deadly. For every death linked to heat, nine are connected to cold.
Other studies vary in their outcomes depending on their data source, definitions and the assumptions that are made, but the vast majority clearly show that cold is far worse than heat.
Excessive cold can exacerbate pre-existing medical conditions such as cardiovascular and respiratory diseases.
For example, death rates from myocardial infarction increase as temperatures drop.
This appears to reflect the way cold can affect blood circulation. People exposed to extremely cold conditions can also suffer from direct effects such as frostbite and potentially deadly hypothermia.
Interestingly, during the 2000-2019 period examined in the study, while heat-related deaths rose, deaths from cold exposure fell.And they decreased by a larger amount than the increase in heat-related fatalities.
Overall, researchers estimated that approximately 650,000 fewer people worldwide died from temperature exposure during the 2000-2019 period than in the previous two decades.
As the planet continues to warm, the number of heat exposure deaths will likely increase and fatalities due to cold decrease. However, the rate of decrease in deaths owing to cold is faster than the rate of increase in deaths due to heat.
This research underlines the fact that global warming is not something to be feared.
Moreover, it can be effectively managed by ensuring access to cheap energy, allowing people to use air-conditioning during heatwaves – something that is becoming increasingly impossible for a lot of people due to ever-increasing power bills.
It also highlights how ridiculous is the notion that we have to reach Net Zero by 2050.
What exactly will that achieve given that Australia only produces just over 1% of global CO₂ emissions – the incorrectly supposed cause of global warming?
Vijay Jayarajis a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition in the USA.
His view is that the Net Zero facade “has collapsed massively, undeniably, irreversibly because no policy survives violations of the laws of physics and market demand.”
“Despite trillions spent on ‘renewables’, their contribution to energy production has barely budged in two decades.
“In 2023, fossil fuels still accounted for over 80% of global primary energy use.
“Globally, energy-intensive industries are thriving. China, the world’s largest coal consumer, approved 106 gigawatts of new coal power in 2024 alone!
“The thud you hear is the sound of the decarbonization fantasy crashing to Earth. The sigh is one of relief as commonsense returns to the public square.
“There is no post-carbon future on the horizon, only a post-illusion present. And fossil fuels remain the lifeblood of progress”, he said.
Meanwhile, the Albanese government – driven by our Minister for Climate Change & Energy, Chris ‘Blackouts’ Bowen – is taking us down a hugely expensive path that will achieve precisely nothing.
All it will do is bring misery to many people, especially in regional areas, as the government’s insane policy of “making Australia a renewables superpower” grinds on and eventually collapses in a heap – leaving a huge clean-up and disposal bill that taxpayers will need to pay!
That’s already started with the ‘green hydrogen’ myth – a concept that sounds good in theory but is economically unviable due to its high cost.
The same will soon apply to wind power, as the true cost of installing, maintaining and replacing turbines and transmission systems becomes clearer.
Net Zero should be abandoned as it has been in many comparable countries – and the sooner, the better.
Thanks to Joshua Cohen at Forbes Magazine and Johannes Leak for his cartoon.