As the madness of “Net Zero” accelerates, time has already run out for many of UK’s most vulnerable citizens
The UK’s reckless and futile “Net Zero” policy is not only going to cost taxpayers trillions of pounds to implement an unreliable energy supply but it is also going to cost lives.
“In a sub-4-degree winter, even one blackout will be catastrophic for tens of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens. One lasting for several days would be a national emergency, requiring the mobilisation of the armed forces to move them into community halls with space heaters until power could be restored,” Richard Lyon writes.
Net Zero is killing our country.
Winter is coming
By Richard Lyon, 23 November 2024
Not long ago, the UK’s Office for National Statistics (“ONS”) asked an interesting question: how has climate change affected the number of people who die from temperature-related effects in the UK?1
Their analysis opened with helpful speculation on scientific topics outside their area of competence: “Climate change is a substantial threat to human health in the UK…Heatwaves, wildfires, droughts, floods and severe storms – accepted to be linked to climate change – have increased globally in recent years. The Met Office found that the period 1991 to 2020 was 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990 average, while the 10 warmest years recorded occurred since 2002…Mental health is a growing concern linked to climate change.”
Of course, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) have found no such link between human activities and the supposed climate threats they list2, the majority of Met Office weather stations from which the “10 warmest years” claim originate are discovered to produce “junk” and “super junk” data under international quality classification criteria3, and the mental health crisis is the consequence of institutions like the ONS peddling scientifically illiterate climate misinformation.
The results were horrifying – for climate catastrophists.
We found relatively little increase in deaths caused by warmer weather and a reduction in deaths caused by cold winters, leading to a net decrease in deaths.
Over the period 2001-2020, which was about 0.9 degrees Celsius warmer than the 1961 to 1990, 555,094 fewer people died from temperature effects.
“ONS!”, said the catastrophists, channelling Michael Caine in The Italian Job, “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!” Errors were declared and a safer report was published – irrelevant to the task of examining whether climate change is a good or a bad thing in the UK – comparing deaths, not changes in deaths, between warm and cold days. It produced the same conclusion.
But for anyone familiar with climate academic literature, the result – that small changes in cold produce large changes in deaths from cold – is not surprising. In one of the largest studies to date on deaths attributable to heat or cold, a large team of collaborators from around the world examined more than 74 million deaths in 13 countries between 1985 and 2012.4
The results are what you would expect as we emerge from the recent mini Ice Age. Overall, cold kills around 17 times more people worldwide than does heat. Perhaps more unexpectedly, one in 15 deaths from all causes were attributable to cold. Only one death in 250 was attributable to heat.
Moreover, even a large increase in temperature didn’t produce a significant increase in deaths. Conversely, by far the largest number of temperature-related deaths came from moderate cold, and even a modest further reduction in temperature caused a large increase in deaths.
This makes sense. While direct deaths from hypothermia are rare in the UK, cold temperatures pose significant indirect health risks, particularly for vulnerable populations. Cold weather exacerbates existing health conditions and increases the likelihood of accidents.
The relationship between the death of our most vulnerable citizens and modest temperature decreases is starkly revealed by the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, which has tabulated the number of deaths from cold in recent winters, together with the average temperature in that winter.5
They show that an average winter temperature of 4 degrees Centigrade marks the edge of the death zone for our vulnerable citizens in the UK. 2,439 died in cold damp homes in the relatively mild (5.3 oC) winter of 2019/2020. In the cold (3.5oC) winter of 2020/21, 14,502 died. And that’s just from the direct effects. ONS estimated the total number of “winter excess deaths” in the winter of 2015-16 to be 24,300. This number has also declined strongly with the modest increase in average temperature over the century, with half as many dying today as did in the 1950s.6
Here in the UK, we are spending trillions of pounds on the reckless and futile attempt to replace our affordable, abundant and above all reliable energy system with an unaffordable, rationed, blackout-prone system driven occasionally by breezes and sunbeams.
If 100% successful in its aim of eliminating UK carbon emissions, the UK will produce an avoided increase in Earth’s temperature in 100 years of less than 0.01 degrees centigrade.7
The cost of that reduction, measured in hundreds of trillions of pounds per tenth of a degree, remains unquantifiable. That stems from the government’s failure to produce a detailed scope definition, implementation plan or comprehensive cost schedule for “Net Zero.” Moreover, critical technologies required by it, such as long-term energy storage solutions, are not yet developed or available.8
They are imposing unimaginable debt on us and our children to try and prevent natural climate variation that is producing thousands fewer temperature-related deaths – here in the UK, and worldwide.
The energy policy associated with it has brought us to the brink of grid failure and blackout9. In a sub-4-degree winter, even one blackout will be catastrophic for tens of thousands of our most vulnerable citizens. One lasting for several days would be a national emergency, requiring the mobilisation of the armed forces to move them into community halls with space heaters until power could be restored.
Net Zero is killing our country. We cannot tolerate it. If you agree, please share this newsletter with your friends and family, and make sure your Member of Parliament knows your views. Together, we can stop it. But time is running out and, for many this winter, it already has.
References
- 1 Office For National Statistics (2022) Climate-related mortality and hospital admissions, England and Wales: 2001 to 2020 – Office for National Statistics.
- 2 IPCC (2021) ‘Chapter 12: Climate Change Information for Regional Impact and for Risk Assessment’, Table 12.12 p.1856 in IPCC Sixth Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press.
- 3 ‘Poorly Sited Stations Undermine Met Office’s UK Temperature Claims’ (2024) NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT, 27 May. (Accessed: 20 November 2024).
- 4 Gasparrini A, Guo Y, Hashizume M, Lavigne E, Zanobetti A, Schwartz J, Tobias A, Tong S, Rocklöv J, Forsberg B, Leone M, De Sario M, Bell ML, Guo Y, Wu C, Kan H, Yi S, de Sousa M, Stagliorio Z, Hilario P, Saldiva N, Honda Y, Kim H, Armstrong B (2015) Mortality risk attributable to high and low ambient temperature: a multicountry observational study, The Lancet, Vol 386 July 25, 2015
- 5 End Fuel Poverty Coalition (2024) ‘4,950 excess winter deaths caused by cold homes last winter’,17 January. (Accessed: 20 November 2024).
- 6 Goklany IM (2009) Deaths and death rates from extreme weather events, 1900 – 2008. J Am Phys Surg 14(4):102–109
- 7 MAGICC: The climate system in a nutshell.
- 8 Lyon, R. (2024) ‘UK renewables’ trillion pound energy storage problem’, The State of Britain by Richard Lyon, 7 September.
- 9 Andrew Orlowski on Twitter, 8 October 2024
About the Author
Richard Lyon is a former senior oil and gas operations manager with 35 years of international experience, with academic qualifications in electrical engineering and power systems, petroleum engineering and energy economics.
