Excess Death & Cold Waves (Part 1)

Climate alarmists like to talk about heat-related death, so let’s have a quick look at cold-related death

In my previous 6 part series on excess death and heat waves we discovered that heat-related death is a thing (even for England) but not a big thing. Neither is the rate increasing over time as alarmists would have us believe, with the vulnerable folk of the land suffering pretty much on and off as they always have done. The summer of 2022 was indeed a time of elevated excess death likely due to heat but no more so than 1995. If land surface temperatures continue to climb then heat-related deaths may well increase but that is a pretty big ‘if’, with some climatologists predicting a cold future.

More certain than heat-related death is cold-related death, and any medic working in A&E will relate stories of hypothermia, frostbite, trench foot and chilblains each winter along with the usual run of broken limbs, bruises and lacerations from falls and road traffic accidents. Heart attack risk is also elevated during the winter months even for those who don’t shovel snow; then there’s the risk of a depressed immune response.

I’m pretty sure we all realise the death toll peaks enormously during the winter months, so the issue of hot vs. cold excess death is pretty much a no-brainer. What we don’t often get to see these days is somebody analysing deaths due to cold with the same vigour they analyse deaths due to heat, so today I’m going to kick off a two part series that does just this using the same techniques I used to investigate that rather misleading BBC headline. Grab the coffee pot, grab a plate of biscuits and tuck in…

Cold Wave Periods Over Time

The Central England Temperature Record (HADCET) mean daily temperature series is where we should start, and I’m going count all days during each winter period when this fell to zero degrees and below. The following chart feels rather regal and is splendidly historic in nature marking key periods in history when cold spells savaged the European peoples bringing famine, crop failure, death, disease, bankruptcy and political unrest: