I start with an apology. I am becoming somewhat repetitive. In my defence, that’s because I seek to expose Guardian misinformation whenever I spot it. If I’m repetitive, the Guardian is a broken record, with the same old tropes being endlessly re-cycled.

The latest Guardian article to set me off is a piece largely about Australian politics, and headed “Despite what a thinktank bleats to the Coalition, heat deaths are in fact ‘a thing’”)

It actually makes a reasonable point, but then it goes and spoils it all by saying something stupid. The article is aimed at criticising a report by the Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) (apparently a shameful “free market think tank”) which this week made a presentation to Australian MPs in Canberra. The criticism contained in the Guardian article is aimed at a slide in the presentation, which we are told was headed “Heat deaths aren’t a thing”.

So far so reasonable. I think we can all agree that people die as a result of extreme heat and we can all agree that as the planet warms (assuming it continues to do so) then in all probability, more people than before will die from extreme heat. Heat deaths are indeed “a thing”.

However, that’s as good as it gets. Next up, we’re told:

The CIS displayed charts showing estimates of temperature-related deaths for Sydney and Melbourne and claimed the risk of dying from cold was apparently greater than the risk from extreme heat.

That’s because it is. The article seeks to ridicule this point by claiming that heat deaths will increase as temperatures increase. Almost certainly true, but equally true is the fact that cold deaths will decrease in that scenario. An attempt to assess that in terms of net effect might have been useful, but it wasn’t forthcoming. Instead we are simply treated to a quote from a spokesperson for the Australian Climate Service, which produced the report referred to in the CIS presentation, to this effect:

This analysis shows increases to heat-related mortality are likely at all these locations at a global warming level of 3C.

I would have liked more clarity and less ambiguity. Is that quote telling us that in Australia, with 3C global warming, deaths from extreme temperatures will increase overall (i.e. that increased deaths from heat will exceed reduced deaths from cold)? Or is it simply making the self-evident point that in that scenario, deaths related to extreme heat will increase? I suspect it’s the former – fair enough – but 3C global warming? What about at 1C of warming? What about at 2C?

However, the section of the article that triggered my ire commenced with a sub-heading (“Does more heat just mean fewer cold deaths?”) and then tried to dispute that obvious truism. The opening paragraph to this section (especially its opening words) really annoyed me:

Some climate science deniers like to claim that global heating will simply reduce the number of deaths from cold around the planet. The CIS was also drawing the attention of the Coalition MPs in the room to cold deaths.

Climate science deniers? Are people who insist on the sanctity of facts now to be ridiculed as climate science deniers? Are the people at the Guardian, who torture statistics, the good guys, rather than deniers? The gall of labelling as “climate science deniers” people who point out the truth that currently many more people die from cold than from heat, all over the planet, and that warming will for the foreseeable future reduce deaths from extreme temperatures, is difficult to take when followed by this:

Estimates vary on this question but previous studies have suggested there are more excess deaths associated with cold than there are with heat.

Well, that’s one way of putting it. Probably the leading and most important study of deaths from extreme temperatures is “Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study” which was published in the Lancet a little over four years ago. The Guardian did its best at the time to misrepresent the significance of the study, and I discussed its legerdemain here. The study’s key finding were:

Globally, 5 083 173 deaths were associated with non-optimal temperatures per year, accounting for 9·43% of all deaths. 8·52% were cold-related and 0·91% were heat-related). There were 74 temperature-related excess deaths per 100 000 residents . The mortality burden varied geographically. Of all excess deaths, 2 617 322 (51·49%) occurred in Asia. Eastern Europe had the highest heat-related excess death rate and Sub-Saharan Africa had the highest cold-related excess death rate. From 2000–03 to 2016–19, the global cold-related excess death ratio changed by −0·51 percentage points and the global heat-related excess death ratio increased by 0·21 percentage points, leading to a net reduction in the overall ratio. The largest decline in overall excess death ratio occurred in South-eastern Asia, whereas excess death ratio fluctuated in Southern Asia and Europe.

A major study finding that deaths globally from extreme cold exceed deaths from extreme heat, by a ratio of close to 9:1 really ought to be linked to, and it does considerably more than “suggest… there are more excess deaths associated with cold than there are with heat.”

In addition, that study also found:

The average daily mean temperature of the studied grids rose by 0·26°C per decade between 2000 and 2019, consistent with the large decrease in the cold-related excess death ratio and the moderate increase in the heat-related excess death ratio. Taken together, however, the global excess death ratio declined.

Got that? As temperatures increased, there was a large decrease in the cold-related excess death ratio, and a moderate increase in the heat-related excess death ratio. The result was that the global excess death ratio declined as the planet warmed. Those are facts. We don’t know what will happen if the planet continues to warm. Granted, we can try to model possible outcomes, and granted also it may be that the beneficial effect of gentle warming to date, in reducing the global excess death ratio, may go into reverse if temperatures increase sufficiently. But we don’t know that. All that we do know is that it has been beneficial thus far.

I knew what was coming next, of course. And I was correct:

One journal study this year looked at the net effect of rising global temperatures on temperature-related death in more than 800 cities. Would a reduction in cold deaths statistically cancel out the increase in heat deaths?

The answer across most of Europe was: no. Global warming saw large net increases in deaths related to temperature.

The study in question can be found here. Inevitably, at the time, the Guardian sought to make hay with it in an article headed “Heat deaths in Europe may triple by end of the century, study finds”. Once the folks at the Guardian decided that study was a useful weapon in their climate alarmist armoury, it was inevitable that they would store it away and trot it out again when it suited them. There’s just one problem – the interpretation placed on it by the Guardian isn’t strictly true. I won’t run through the arguments in detail again, since I analysed it in depth at the time in The Temperature’s Rising. Briefly, the report’s findings were exaggerated by focusing on cities, and thus being distorted by the Urban Heat Island effect. Next, and probably most significantly, it found that demographic changes (most obviously an ageing population – interestingly, a population which successfully ages despite the supposed threat from higher temperatures) explained the projected increased mortality (at temperature increases of 3-4C) in large part. Finally, though, even allowing for those factors, the study’s findings don’t justify the claims placed on it by the Guardian. As I observed at the time:

…it seems to me that the best way of stripping out the distorting effect of an ageing population on the numbers is to see whether, under any of the hypotheses, more people are projected to die from heat than from cold in Europe by 2100. The answer to that question is a resounding “no”. Across Europe as a whole, the ratio between cold-related and heat-related deaths unsurprisingly drops with every increase in temperature, but the results stubbornly point to more cold-related deaths than heat-related ones under every scenario (6.7:1 if temperatures rise by 1.5C); 4.9:1 if temperatures rise by 2C; 2.6:1 of temperatures rise by 3C; and 1.4:1 if temperatures rise by 4C). Only in Malta are more people projected to die from heat than from cold with a 3C increase (and even then the ratio is just 0.9:1). With a 4C increase, a few extra countries fall into that category, namely Croatia, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Slovenia, Spain and Switzerland. Even with a 4C increase in temperatures, the numbers dying from cold are still projected massively to outstrip deaths from heat in many countries. For instance, in that scenario, the cold/heat deaths ratio would remain 4.7:1 in Estonia, Latvia and Finland (and 4.8:1 in Lithuania); it would be 7.4:1 in Ireland; 5.3:1 in Norway; 3.8:1 in Sweden and 4.9:1 in the UK. Stripping out demographic factors, it’s obvious that we have an improving position all the way to a 1:1 ratio.

Finally, I note that although the study refers to the effects of rising temperatures in Europe, a number of European countries appear to be excluded from the analysis, notably (but not exclusively) in eastern Europe. Admittedly, political issues might have been an issue in respect of some of them, but I suspect that the omission of such countries distorts the narrative towards that of heat becoming more of a problem than cold. The study never mentions, so far as I can see, Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Moldova, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Iceland or the Faroe Islands. In all of those countries, whether because of climate or poverty or both, I suspect that cold is more of a problem than heat, such that rising temperatures will benefit their mortality rates.

The conclusion I arrived at then still holds good now:

…the study provides us with a great deal of interesting information and food for thought. It has shortcomings, however, some of which its authors acknowledge and others of which they may not be aware. None of them are mentioned by the Guardian, with its fixation on the “climate crisis” narrative. My conclusion is that it remains legitimate for sceptics (who are not “deniers”, Guardian please note) to point to the beneficial effect of reducing numbers of cold-related deaths as temperatures rise. This narrative holds good in Europe specifically, and across the world more generally.

In short, the Guardian has yet again distorted the narrative. It ill behoves an organisation that routinely behaves in this way to refer to those of us who believe in a more rigorous analysis of data as “climate science deniers”. I apologise for being repetitive. However, unless and until the Guardian mends its ways, I fear this won’t be the last time I talk about this.