2-3 People Died in Spain, Media Claims 'Heat Deaths'--What Does 'the Science™' Have to Say?

Guess what: 'heat death attribution' is now a thing, which is about as science-ey as 'Covid science™', which is, of course, accompanied by reams of media gaslighting

Editorial prelim: Substack says this posting is ‘too long for email’. Act accordingly.

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A fortnight ago, I reported on ‘the heat wave™’ in the Mediterranean threatening tourists and locals alike; apart from of course ‘excessive heat’, tourists and locals are further threatened by Covid-24/7, hence legacy media was ‘reporting™’ on this, too:

Covid is Baaaaaaack, Holidays Edition

In my ‘bottom lines’, I wrote, of course, tongue-in-cheek, the following line:

For those who are going to the Mediterranean this summer, please chose if you’re going to die from heat (sic) or Covid.

So, today, I’m proudly bringing you an update on the death from heat or Covid conundrum.

As always, translations and emphases mine, as are the bottom lines. Enjoy, if you will. Sigh.

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Act I: Heat Kills

As ‘reported™’ by Austrian tabloid Heute on 3 Aug. 2024, the ‘horrendous heat’ currently afflicting Mallorca, Spain, ‘killed two people in one day’:

A merciless sweltering heat is burning across southern Europe and two people have died in Mallorca. According to the WHO [of course], heat-related deaths are on the rise.

Palma 37 degrees, Porreres 38 degrees, Llucmajor 40 degrees: the temperatures on the Spanish holiday island of Mallorca are currently almost unbearable—locals and tourists have been battling the sweltering heat for weeks [keep the temps in mind]. As several local media outlets are now reporting, two people have died in the capital Palma as a result of the extreme weather.

As the Spanish media outlet Ultima Hora reports, the heatwave claimed the lives of two people within just a few hours on Thursday [1 Aug.]. Another death could also be related to the temperatures. The death of the man is currently being investigated, according to Mallorca Zeitung [I tried finding these pieces that Heute doesn’t provide links to, but I failed].

Man Called For Help—Then He Died

The first death is said to have occurred on Thursday morning at the ‘Club Náutico’ yacht club in the municipality of Palma (Mallorca). According to Ultima Hora, a 60-year-old man dialled the emergency number in the morning while he was on a boat because he felt unwell—too late. When the ambulance and officers from the national police arrived, the man was already dead. The forensic medical examination is said to have revealed that he died due to the immense heat.

The second tragic incident occurred in the early hours of Thursday evening. At around 6pm, a 61-year-old man was found dead in his car in the S'Escorxador neighbourhood. He is also said to have suddenly felt unwell and therefore called his family in Sa Pobla. A short time later, he stopped answering his mobile phone. At the scene of the discovery, a forensic doctor found that the victim's body was over 40 degrees Celsius.

Heat-Related Deaths +30%

The third death was a 20-year-old gardener who died on Monday while working in the Son Vida neighbourhood of Palma. According to the Mallorca newspaper, a colleague saw the young man sit down on the ground and suddenly topple backwards. When the colleague spoke to him, the 20-year-old is said to have stopped responding. Resuscitation attempts with a defibrillator on site failed.

May they rest in peace.

Act II: Checking in w/Spanish News

As I mentioned above, I’m unsure about the sources, hence I looked around elsewhere. After a few more minutes, I found the original reporting by Ultima Hora, dated 2 Aug. 2024.

The heatwave in Mallorca claimed two fatalities on Thursday. Two men, aged 60 and 61, died in Palma as a result of the high temperatures. The deaths are unrelated to each other…

According to sources with knowledge of both cases, the first incident took place in the morning at the Club Náutico de Cala Gamba. A 60-year-old man began to feel unwell when he was inside a boat and called 112 [Europe’s 911]. When the ambulance and National Police officers arrived, the man had already died. Everything suggests, pending confirmation of the autopsy, that the reason for the death is related to the high temperatures [oh, look, we don’t really know yet].

The second tragic episode took place hours later, at around 18.00, in the area of s'Escorxador. A 61-year-old man who was in a car suddenly felt unwell and phoned his relatives in Pobla and told them what was happening to him. Shortly afterwards he did not answer his mobile phone. A forensic scientist went to the scene and found that the victim’s body was over 40 degrees Celsius [what was the time elapsed between time of death and the ‘forensic scientists’ arriving? I mean, if it’s a heat wave, how long would a body heat up in a car?].

According to AEMET statistics, July was a hot month in the Balearic Islands, with an average temperature of 25.7 ºC, and there were two heat waves. Specifically between the 18th and 20th and the 28th and 31st. During the second wave, 41 degrees Celsius were reached in Binissalem. Likewise, the Palma Portopí station recorded that all the nights of that month were tropical [i.e., temperatures in excess of 20 degrees during the night].

WHO

Some 176,000 people die each year in Europe due to the effects of extreme heat, according to a statement released on Thursday by the World Health Organisation's (WHO) Europe division. As the same organisation points out, the number of heat-related deaths ‘will skyrocket’ in the coming years due to climate change, which has been responsible for the increase in heat waves in Europe in recent decades.

Oh, look, yet another press release by the WHO without any links. I looked it up, the content is here. It’s not worth much of your time (if any):

‘In the European region, heat stress is the leading cause of climate-related death in the region’, according to Dr. Hans Kluge.

Thankfully, the WHO also has a few useful tips:

The WHO’s guidance on coping with heatwaves includes:

• Keeping out of the heat: Avoid going out and undertaking strenuous activities when the sun’s at its hottest. Stay in the shade and do not leave children or animals in parked vehicles. If necessary and possible, spend two to three hours in a cool place, such as a supermarket or cinema.

• Trying to keep your home cool: Use night air to cool down your home. Reduce the heat load inside your home or hotel room during the day by using blinds or shutters, opening them at night to ventilate your home.

• Keeping your body cool and hydrated: Use light and loose-fitting clothing and light bed linens, take cool showers or baths and drink water regularly while avoiding sugary, alcoholic or caffeinated drinks which will leave you dehydrated.

• Taking care of yourself and others: Check on family, friends and neighbours, especially the elderly, especially if they are on their own.

Now we know. How wonderful.

Act III: Is this All Spanish Media is Reporting?

Of course the answer is: nope.

Here’s a bit more information from the Diario de Mallorca (source).

As regards the death of the first man (near the yacht club), this is what it says:

When the death was reported, the seventh examining magistrate’s court of Palma, which was on duty on Thursday, sent the coroner to examine the victim. This doctor also observed symptoms compatible with heat stroke.

A bit further down, this is what’s written about the second dead man:

The court coroner examined the body and also concluded that it showed symptoms compatible with possible heat stroke.

Less than conclusive evidence, eh? Remember how Austrian legacy media spun this one?

Finally, as regards that young gardener, here’s what Diario de Mallorca reports:

The 20-year-old who died on Monday while doing gardening work in Son Vida may also have died for the same reason. The death occurred at around half past five on Monday. When the victim was working, he collapsed and sat down on the ground, his head fell backwards. His colleague realised what had happened and began to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation manoeuvres, while the emergency services arrived. When the ambulance arrived with the doctors, they continued with advanced resuscitation manoeuvres, but he was unresponsive and death was confirmed. National Police officers were present. The result of the first autopsy was inconclusive and only spoke of sudden death. For this reason, a new autopsy will be carried out so that the forensic report can determine with greater accuracy whether the reason for his death is compatible with heat stroke.

On the other hand, in July in Spain, the Spanish health service recorded 771 deaths due to causes attributable to high temperatures. Of these, four died in the Balearic Islands. The last week of the month was the worst of all, with 337 deaths recorded in this period alone.

Now we know a bit more, eh?

All three of these deaths are tragic, no doubt. What, though, is the clinical definition of a heat stroke?

Thankfully, ICD-10 (2024) has the answers about ‘Heatstroke and sunstroke’:

Clinical Information

• A condition caused by the failure of body to dissipate heat in an excessively hot environment or during physical exertion in a hot environment. Contrast to heat exhaustion, the body temperature in heat stroke patient is dangerously high with red, hot skin accompanied by delusions; convulsions; or coma. It can be a life-threatening emergency and is most common in infants and the elderly.

• Heat stroke caused by exposure to the sun. It is characterized by dangerously high body temperature; red, hot skin; delusions; convulsions; or coma. It can be a life-threatening emergency and is most common in infants and the elderly.

Now we also know that. Until and unless authorities disclose the coroners’ reports, though, we cannot know ‘for sure’ if ‘heat stroke’ as defined as by the ICD-10 (2024) is the culprit.

Lest you accuse me of downplaying these tragic losses, I’m not. I’m trying to make a point about legacy media bias in terms of the ‘climate catastrophe™’.

Speaking of which, how does anyone—or the WHO, for that matter—attribute any single fatality to ‘heat stress’? I’m glad you asked, and to learn ‘more’ about this burning question, we can, as always, turn to ‘the Science™’ for answers.

Intermission: How Does ‘the Science™’ Attribute Mortality to Climate Change?

Courtesy of Vicedo-Cabrera and colleagues, specifically their paper ‘The burden of heat-related mortality attributable to recent human-induced climate change’, which appeared in Nature Climate Change 11, 492–500 (2021), this is what is meant. From the abstract:

Climate change affects human health; however, there have been no large-scale, systematic efforts to quantify the heat-related human health impacts that have already occurred due to climate change. Here, we use empirical data from 732 locations in 43 countries to estimate the mortality burdens associated with the additional heat exposure that has resulted from recent human-induced warming, during the period 1991–2018. Across all study countries, we find that 37.0% (range 20.5–76.3%) of warm-season heat-related deaths can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change and that increased mortality is evident on every continent. Burdens varied geographically but were of the order of dozens to hundreds of deaths per year in many locations. Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change.

From the paper itself, there is much to learn (excl. references, they’re all in the above-linked original):

Our analysis proceeded in two steps. In the first step, we applied cutting-edge [watch for academese BS bingo on this one] time-series regression techniques to observed temperature and mortality data from all 732 locations (Table 1 and Supplementary Tables 1 and 2) to estimate location-specific exposure-response functions [oh, we looked at what humans did under the conditions of climate change, as opposed to what ‘the climate™’ does to humans]. These functions characterize the complex relationship between daily mean temperature and mortality from all causes (or non-external causes) by simultaneously accounting for the nonlinear and delayed dependencies typically found in this type of assessment [sounds like as good a question as any, esp. in light of the above-linked stories of ‘heat deaths’ from Spain, which legacy media called ‘sudden deaths’ at first]. The functions were estimated using an extension of the widely applied two-stage design that uses a mixed model approach to properly account for the hierarchical structure of the data (Methods) [if it sounds like BS ghibberish, that’s because it is; it took the authors but a few lines from their bold reference to a ‘cutting-edge’ to ‘the widely applied…mixed model approach’]. As described in detail in the Methods, a first-stage model estimates associations for each location, which are then pooled in a meta-analysis (the second stage). The observed temperature and mortality data were collected through the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network, the largest weather and health data consortium to date (https://mccstudy.lshtm.ac.uk)…data used in the present study consisted of counts of daily mortality from all causes or non-external causes only (International Classification of Diseases, ICD-9: 0-799; ICD-10: A00-R99) and daily mean temperature (°C). The analysis was limited to the warm season, defined as the four warmest consecutive months in each location [well, we don’t even get the same months for each location], to focus on heat-related mortality only (see Supplementary Table 2 for selected months in each location). The analysis included 29,936,896 deaths across all 732 locations from 43 countries in overlapping periods between 1991 and 2015 (Table 1). The study countries vary widely in terms of local climate, ranging from average warm-season temperatures of ~15 °C in countries of North and Central Europe and Canada to much hotter weather >25 °C in South Asia, the Middle East and parts of Central and South America.

In the second step, we used the estimated exposure-response functions to compute the heat-related mortality burden between 1991 and 2018 for each location under two scenarios: a factual scenario consisting of simulations of historical climate (all climate forcings) and a counterfactual scenario where climate simulations are driven by natural forcings only, thus approximating the climate that would have occurred in a world without human-induced or anthropogenic climate change.

As much as I’m tempted to get into the ‘methods’ section, I suppose two crucial aspects are apparent already: Vicedo-Cabrera et al. focussed on a third of the year ‘only’, albeit not on the same four months per year and location, which also varies across time and space. Heck, it’s even unclear if thy used the same four months per location consistently.

As an aside, I checked their supplementary materials, specifically Tables 1 and 2, and it is as shoddy as one would expect. Here’s some stuff from Table 2:

In some countries (e.g., Argentina), they didn’t use the same four-month period consistently, other countries—esp. rich, developed (sic) ones are way over-represented: there’s 46 lines per page, just cf. the 210 entries from the US (1991-2006—why not since then?) with one entry for Uruguay (2012-16) or the 70 entries from the UK (1991-2016) to the single entries for Puertorico (sic, 2009-16), four entries from the Philippines (2006-2010), Costa Rica (2000-17), or Kuwait (2000-16). Apart from South Africa (46 entries, 1997-2013), no other African country was included, however, there are 47 entries from Japan (1991-2015) and 39 entries from South Korea (1997-2016), as opposed to 14 (!!!) entries (only) from China (which also vary considerably and whose time ranges from 1996-2002, 2004-06, or 2004-08). By contrast, there 26 entries from Canada (1991-2015).

I’m certain that there are ways and means to ‘smoothen’ all these idiosyncrasies statistically, but the more one does so, the less granular and accurate any model becomes (just look at ‘daily global mean temperatures’). That said, a few choice quotes from Robert L. Wilby’s Climate Change in Practice (Cambridge, 2017), are in order to properly contextualise these data.

Speaking of the alleged ‘hiatus’ in global warming observed from the late 1990s onwards, Wilby writes the following (references omitted):

The scientific community is divided about how to handle these conflicting messages. Lewandowsky et al.(2016) assert that the issue has been a major distraction because the climate is known to fluctuate between decades. In any event, rising concentrations of carbon dioxide would not be expected to produce steady rates of global warming because of the changing efficiency of carbon sinks [I do get that point, however, why are media, politicos, and the Science™ drumming home precisely this message of CO2 being the devil itself, let alone the ‘logic’ of something growing steadily much like clockwork (CO2 concentrations) not triggering ‘steady rates of global warming’]. Moreover, the period 2000–2015 is simply too short to be representative of longer-term trends [remember, this notion only applies to arguments that are critical; if you use observations in support of ‘anthropogenic climate change that kills people, than it’s a-o.k.]. Rajaratnam et al. (2015:ii) simply state [and this is how you do it: you ‘simply state’] that there is “no hiatus in the increase in the global mean temperature, no statistically significant difference in trends, no stalling of the global mean temperature, and no change in year-to-year temperature increases.” Cahill et al. (2015) add that there is no evidence of any detectable change in the warming trend since the 1970s [which was when ‘the Science™’ warned of an impending ice age, let’s not forget that]. All three studies conclude that the terms ‘pause’ and ‘hiatus’ are not statistically consistent with the observed GMST record.

This is the map provided by the author (Wilby) showing where temperature measurement stations in the ‘Global Climate Observing System (GCOS)’ are located as of 1 March 2014:

And this begs the obvious question: why the lopsided, if not structurally biased, choice of temperature stations? Let’s not forget, either, that NOAA closed/moved around 600 weather stations in the early 2010s (i.e., roughly half of all such US-based stations), according to legacy media reporting in 2013. This is not even mentioned as a confounder in the heat death attribution paper.

Speaking of Vicedo-Cabrera et al.’s paper, to which we return now, Table 1 furthermore contains some valuable potential additional confounders, such as missing data that also ranges widely from data point to data point (e.g., 2.15% of mortality data for Guatemala; 7.05% of mortality data for Greece), China’s data is missing 7-8% of both temperature and mortality data; South African data lacked specifics on 12.27% of both indicators.

Moreover, weather data is apparently also defined and measured differently from country to country, e.g., Mexico collects data on ‘mean daily temperature (in ˚C) and relative humidity (%) [that] were computed as the 24- hour average based on hourly measurements’, while South Africa does it in the following way:

Mean daily temperature (in ˚C) was computed as the average between daily minimum and maximum collected.

There’s, of course, ‘more’ such idiosyncrasies to be found, but I suppose you get the picture.

It’s a bag of neat, if transparent, tricks, which certainly fooled the reviewers (I suppose, but given the corruption of ‘the science™’, they may also feel that way).

That said, here’s what Hannah Ritchie wrote about Vicedo-Cabrera et al.’s paper over at OWID:

The share of “warm season” deaths caused by heat is broken down by those that would have occurred with pre-climate-change temperatures and the additional share from human-induced climate change.

On average, the researchers attributed just over one-third of heat-related deaths across all countries to climate change. Note that this is not a third of all temperature-related deaths, just the ones related to warm temperatures in the warm season…

Researchers estimate that climate change is responsible for around 0.6% of all “warm-season” deaths across these countries; that is, 0.6% of deaths from all causes across the summer months.

Given the lopsided, if not biased data input, Vicedo-Cabrera et al.’s paper isn’t nothing, but it’s certainly over-rated (by the WHO and the UN).

Moreover, here’s what Ms. Ritchie also wrote:

Warming temperatures don’t just increase the risk of heat-related deaths. They also reduce the risk of cold-related ones. The total impact of climate change is the sum of these two opposing forces. To date, the reduction in cold-related deaths has slightly outpaced the rise of heat-related ones.

A widely-cited study by Qi Zhao and colleagues, looking at the distribution and change in temperature-related deaths from 2000 to 2019, found that heat-related deaths had increased over these decades [I haven’t looked at this paper]. This is despite the evidence that societies have become less susceptible to extreme heat. That suggests temperatures have been warming faster in some regions than our ability to adapt [I’m unsure I follow the logic here: ‘societies have become less susceptible to extreme heat’ and ‘heat-related deaths had increased’ might be a function of ‘other’ factors, such as ageing].

However, the number of cold-related deaths had fallen even further. In total, annual temperature-related deaths had fallen by around 650,000 per year.

This drop can’t entirely be attributed to climate change, as socioeconomic, health, and other factors have also changed. It’s also important not to overstate the certainty in these estimates. Still, as the authors conclude, it’s possible that climate change reduced global temperature-related deaths in recent decades.

We’ll stop here for the time being with the discussion of these issues and return to the paper at-hand and the argument about heat deaths the authors make.

Act III: A ‘Smoothed’ Model of Future Scenarios

At the heart of the problem with legacy media spin about ‘heat deaths’ is summarised like this:

Our findings demonstrate that a substantial proportion of total and heat-related deaths during our study period can be attributed to human-induced climate change, which is in line with the small number of existing attribution studies on this topic, mainly from Europe. Unlike those studies, however, the wide and heterogeneous geographical scope of our dataset allowed us to assess spatial patterns in the estimated impacts and to identify areas that have already been disproportionately affected. Impacts were evident in all of our study countries, which included locations on every inhabited continent (Fig. 4 and Extended Data Figs. 4 and 5). As locations differ in size, Fig. 5 displays the heat-related deaths attributable to human-induced climate change as a mortality rate, indicating a relatively heavy population-level burden in southern and eastern Europe, where rates in several countries are >6 per 100,000 population over the 1991–2018 period compared to the study average of 2.2 per 100,000.

I won’t reproduce the chart the paper shows, because it’s a 1:1 reflection of the sample. I suppose that if they looked elsewhere, too, they’d write the same.

Moreover, as Ms. Ritchie writing in OWID held, this is neither as clear-cut nor straightforward as might seem: not only would these ‘heat-attributable deaths’ be related to the other eight months of any given year; there’s also the confounder of heat vs. cold-related death attributions as well as the methodological considerations.

None of these made it into legacy media reporting, nor into the UN/WHO press release. Call me surprised. Not.

Bottom Lines

What does this all mean?

Well, for starters, it’s further evidence of the corruption of science, which is, and has to a large extent already, morphed into a de facto cult. Labelled, ‘the Science™’, it’s more a religion (in the sense of Karl Popper and Thomas S. Kuhn) than an open-ended, evidence-based endeavour. This won’t end well.

In terms of media BS and official gaslighting, this isn’t anything new. What’s qualitatively different about it, however, are two facts:

1. Legacy media reporting is now cut-and-paste of stuff that appeared elsewhere, although the editorial (the spin, i.e., ‘heat kills’) and/or laziness biases (by which I mean the non-checking of sources and what they say) are so apparent that they beg the question: are there enough people who, ever so gullibly, (still) believe that kind of BS. I think: way, way too many for anything to change (although, as it happens, most legacy media outlets throughout the West are so heavily subsidised that they would close down immediately after any gov’t pulls that kind of financial life-support).

2. Speaking of politics, well, ‘Covid-the-WHO-declared, so-called Pandemic™’ has moved politicking to a new level: evidence, norms, procedures, the separation of powers, and judicial oversight are no longer required. All that passes for ‘politics™’ in our day and age requires but a press briefing, press release, and some fancy props. We note, in passing, that ‘international’ organisations, such as the UN and the WHO, are as compromised and guilty of these shenanigans as your dyed-in-the-wool local politician. It begs the over-arching question of representative government and rule by the consent of the governed, and we haven’t even talked about ‘AI’.

So, what can we infer from these shenanigans for the likes of you and me?

Trust has been lost (thrown away), and it’s questionable if ‘politicians™’ and ‘scientists™’ are able to regain them anytime soon, if ever.

Be wary of anyone bearing ‘gifts’ (which, in German, also means ‘poison’, by the way), esp. if they’re ‘from the government to help’ or a friendly ‘scientist™’ to ‘splain this or that. Do your own research, and discuss it with neighbours, friends, and family.

If you have kids, talk with them, not to them, because if your children attend school or college, most academics will gaslight them with BS like the one above (and then some: ‘feminist glaciology’, critical race theory, or postcolonial theory are equally dangerous contenders), and it is incumbent on anyone who bears responsibility for others to help them to identify the difference between ice cream and BS.

As regards Palma de Mallorca, Spain, you might also find the below ‘climate’ information (courtesy of Wikipedia, of all places), of interest here:

Palma has a Hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen: Csa) with an average annual temperature of 18.2 °C (65 °F). During the coldest month, January, the average high temperature is 15.4 °C (60 °F), while the average low is 8.3 °C (47 °F). In the warmest month, August, the average high temperature is 29.8 °C (86 °F), while the low is 22.5 °C (73 °F). Autumn is the wettest season, with occasional heavy rainfall and storms. The average sunshine hours are around 2800 per year. There is a significant maritime influence, so the city has mild winters and hot but not extreme summers. The surrounding continental landmasses can warm up the offshore sea surface temperatures and as a result, the small confines of Mallorca are still able to build up and sustain heat despite being on an island. There is vast seasonal lag, especially in late summer courtesy of the seawater peaking in temperatures long after the summer solstice. Extreme temperatures are rare for the influence of the sea. Freezes are extremely rare, as the port of Mallorca has only registered once a low temperature below freezing (−0.1 °C (32 °F) in February 2012), as well as Mallorca, has never gone above 38 °C (100 °F) in any summer month since temperature records began in 1978. The average temperature of the sea in Mallorca is 19.5 °C (67 °F) and the beach weather normally lasts about 6–7 months, from late April to early November.

Couple of things to note: if we’d take any average over any period of time, it’s less extreme; why legacy media et al. are now playing up one ‘extreme weather event’ to paper over the long-running (sic) averages, well, that’s anyone’s guess.

This summer isn’t exception in Mallorca, and, with specific reference to the penultimate line, why take, e.g., 4 months (more or less arbitrarily chosen) when ‘beach weather normally lasts about 6-7 months’ (i.e., 50-75% longer) is, well, anyone’s guess, too.

It’s of course sad to read about the passing of these elderly gentlemen, but since both ‘died suddenly’ and media reports about them don’t mention any of the clinical definitions of ‘heat stroke’ (as per the ICD-10), I think ‘other causes’ might be in play, esp. with that young man who died while gardening in the late afternoon. In summer in Spain.

Go figure.

For further reading, please see the below-linked essay from autumn 2023.

'Climate Change' as 'Paradigm Shift'