From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The latest garbage from the Guardian:
The record-shattering temperatures that hit the western Mediterranean last week would have been “almost impossible” without the climate crisis, according to scientists.
The heatwave across Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria was made at least 100 times more likely by global heating, the researchers calculated. Before the climate crisis, such an extreme event would have been expected only once in a least 40,000 years, making it statistically impossible on human timescales.
The scientists said such heat early in the year was especially harmful to people, who were less prepared than in summer. Farmers were already suffering under a prolonged drought and the heatwave struck at an important time in the crop-growing season, particularly for wheat…..
The researchers used peer-reviewed methods to assess the influence of global heating on the 26-28 April heatwave, and the results are the fastest yet for such a study, produced in just a week. The heatwave brought temperatures never previously recorded in the four countries at that time of the year, ranging from 36.9C to 41.0C.
The team used weather data and climate models to compare the likelihood of the high temperatures in today’s warmer world with their likelihood before the climate crisis. They found that global heating had made the heatwave at least 100 times more likely, with temperatures up to 3.5C hotter than they would have been without global heating.
Heatwaves tend to be the deadliest type of extreme weather, the scientists said. Mortality data from the April heatwave is not yet available, but heatwaves in 2022 led to nearly 4,000 deaths in Spain and more than 1,000 deaths in Portugal.
According to the Guardian’s own report at the time, the new record for April set this year in Spain was only 0.2C higher than the previous record. So hardly a one in 40,000 year event then!
But what about some of the other claims?
Heatwave deaths last year, for instance, which were claimed to be 4000. The claim comes from a report by the WHO, which also states that heatwaves killed 3200 here in the UK last summer. As we know, there was no evidence for such a claim at all; excess deaths were running at a similar level all through last year regardless of season.
And for some reason the Guardian forgot to mention the recent Lancet study which showed how many more people die from cold than heat in Spain:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(14)62114-0/fulltext#seccestitle130
And what about those farmers, who are supposedly struggling because of climate change? We don’t have data for last year yet, but output of wheat hit a record high in 2021, and has been steadily increasing for decades:
https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#compare
Finally before the Guardian gets too apoplectic about a slightly warmer climate, they should remind their readers that Spain is only just recovering from the Little Ice Age, just as the rest of Europe is:
HH Lamb: Climate, History and the Modern World – pp235
Maybe the Guardian would like Spain to return to the climate which brought the devastating famines of 1904-06, as first floods and then record droughts nearly brought about revolution.
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