Never one to shirk the opportunity for an apocalyptic headline, the BBC’s climate correspondent Matt McGrath has written up a story about how:
A deadly heatwave in West Africa and the Sahel was “impossible” without human-induced climate change, scientists say.
Temperatures soared above 48°C in Mali last month with one hospital linking hundreds of deaths to the extreme heat.
Researchers say human activities like burning fossil fuels made temperatures up to 1.4°C hotter than normal.
But the very next line goes on:
A separate study on drought in Southern Africa said El Niño was to blame, rather than climate change.
So the headline could have read: Southern African drought “impossible” without El Niño. But it didn’t. The story continues:
A number of countries in the Sahel region and across West Africa were hit by a strong heatwave that struck at the end of March and lasted into early April.
The heat was most strongly felt in the southern regions of Mali and Burkina Faso.
In Bamako, the capital of Mali, the Gabriel Toure Hospital said it recorded 102 deaths in the first days of April.
Around half the people who died were over 60 years of age, and the hospital said that heat played a role in many of these casualties.
Researchers believe that global climate change had a key role in this five-day heatwave.
A new analysis from scientists involved with the World Weather Attribution group suggests the high day time and night time temperatures would not have been possible without the world’s long term use of coal, oil and gas as well as other activities such as deforestation.
A sceptic might ask whether improved medical treatment has resulted in there being more people alive in their 60s and thus being subjected in advanced age to the heat that Africa is well known for, but that isn’t covered.
“For some, a heatwave being 1.4° or 1.5°C hotter because of climate change might not sound like a big increase,” said Kiswendsida Guigma, a climate scientist at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre in Burkina Faso. “But this additional heat would have been the difference between life and death for many people.”
A difference of 1.4-1.5°C would certainly make a difference to elderly people in the northern hemisphere surviving winter but that goes unmentioned.
To be fair to McGrath, despite the headline, the second half of the story provides some balance:
While the fingerprints of humanity are on this event, it’s not the same for the serious drought that has hit countries in southern Africa early this year.
Low rainfall saw crop failures in several countries leading to an estimated 20 million people facing hunger. Water shortages in Zambia and Zimbabwe saw outbreaks of cholera with states of disaster declared in both countries as well as in neighbouring Malawi.
Researchers looked at temperature and rainfall data to determine the causes of the drought.
They found that climate change did not have a significant influence on low rainfall during the December-February period across the region.
Instead, they believe that the El Niño weather phenomenon was to blame.
This upwelling of warm water in the Pacific is linked to impacts on weather in many locations.
Climate change or El Niño then? Whatever lights your fire, so to speak, it seems.
You can read the story in full and decide for yourself.
Stop Press: A Daily Sceptic reader has pointed out that the period in question (late March and early April) coincides with Ramadan. The two countries named are both Muslim-majority countries. Since many Muslims fast water as well as food, it seems unsurprising that when the month-long Ramadan fast coincides with the annual hot season, old people die at a greater rate for heat-related causes.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Covid Jab Killed Their Daughter – latest leaflet to print at home and deliver to neighbours or forward to politicians, your new MP, your local vicar, online media and friends online.
Start a local campaign. We have over 200 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
All politicians are corrupt, but some are more corrupt than others!
I kind of wish people would stop going on about this stuff. It’s just a distraction from how damaging the policies are.
We know their policies are damaging but we will wait a long time until they can be chucked out on that basis- and by that time it will be too late.
The more it can be demonstrated how much sleaze is going on (especially Rayner’s dirty weekend away courtesy of wealthy backers) the shakier their foundations become.
I have to disagree. I want people to reject the woke socialism of the Uniparty (all of them except Reform), not carry on as part of the Punch and Judy show that politics has become. My aspirations for a future government are for it to do less of almost everything and do the bare essentials with more vigour. I’m afraid a lot of people just want the government/state to make everything wonderful.
Presumably bribery and corruptions laws don’t apply to politicians? LoL
KJ Keen ( Posie Parker ) speaking about her latest ‘Attack of the Killer Tomato ( Soup )’ by an unhinged woman-hating bloke. I am of the opinion that a large number of incels have rebranded themselves as trans activists. Misogyny comes in various forms. Where’s Yvette Cooper and her ”extreme misogyny = terrorism” when you need her? Amazing how many men are triggered by women exercising their right to free speech, isn’t it? Look no further than the recent example of Hatun Tash at Speaker’s Corner I shared. There’s never Muslim women there, jeering and intimidating Christians and Jews who are speaking, only ever men. So there’s your two ”harmful ideologies” demonstrating ”extreme misogyny” on the regular, Mrs Cooper. What you going to do about it, other than employ two-tier policing/justice?
”She said: ‘It just feels from an operational level that our safety is not taken very seriously. The threat of the trans activists is not taken very seriously.’
Ms Keen believes the trans activism is ‘rife in the universities’, adding: ‘I think it’s very frightening how much power this cult seems to yield.’
She welcomed police quickly charging Lindsay but fears that he may be given a light sentencing – as she hit out at the heavy jail terms handed out to rioters who made despicable comments online.
Ms Keen continued: ‘I’m just very aware, over the last few months in this country people have been whipped into court, probably been given terrible legal advice and they’ve been told that if they plead guilty everything’s going to be fine and dandy, and then they’re going to prison for 15 months for a Facebook post that might be a shameful, despicable thing to say.
‘But I’m thinking… if he gets less than 15 months inside for what I consider an act of terrorism, which under the stipulation of what terrorism is, which is an act with a political aim, and the aim here is to stop women speaking, I would really hope that he gets longer inside than a pensioner saying something off colour online, or even vile, online.
A spokesman for South Yorkshire Police said: ‘A 34-year-old man has been charged with two counts of assault by beating following an incident in Sheffield city centre earlier today (21 September).”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13878953/moment-women-rights-campaigner-kellie-jay-keen-doused-soup-rally-sheffield.html
And it’s going to get even better for them.
What most people don’t realise is that anyone of school age today is going to be spoilt for choice when it comes to finding jobs.
As the population ages, the workforce is going to shrink and there aren’t going to be enough people to fill the necessary jobs. The few people who are left of working age will be able to command big wages as employers fight over them.
“As the population ages, the workforce is going to shrink and there aren’t going to be enough (properly trained) people to fill the necessary jobs”
Setting your own questions in exams and passing them on lower grades will eventually show them up in the coming years, an easy pass in life = quality in the work force will plummet!
That’s if you think school exams prepare you well for adult work.
That’s also if you think that it’s the current generation of kids who are the ones proposing setting their own exams. But the last time I checked, it was not the idea of children, but of (some of) the people in charge of the education system. i.e. current grown ups who presumably at some point did quite well in school exams and went through the education system some 20 or 30 years ago.
In my experience people rise to the challenges they face when they are presented with them. Those who want to learn to do a job will, despite their prior education (or miseducation).
Labour’s freebies are neither shameless or stupid.
They are the deliberate actions of militant communists who have seized power with a massive Parliamentary majority for the next 5 years.
If you’ve followed the Obama/Biden/Harris playbook since 2020, as they are, you can see what’s coming next.
Time to stop bleating, start mobilising against them.
There are more of us than them.
“Far-Right life coach taking Brazil by storm after rival smashes chair over his head in TV debate”
So this is how the left defines “love not hate”? So long as you love what we love?
“Lab grown meat could contribute to the health of the nation.”
Lab grown meat = ultra-processed food = metabolic disease = early death
Just like the lab engineered MRNA vaccines/
“‘Lab grown meat could contribute to the health of the nation’”
The health of Bill Gates bank balance, more like.
“No Brainer with Angela Rayner.” Absolutely superb. Top class.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/mystery-of-andrew-bridgens-vanishing-votes/
Have a read of this article and conclude that our elections are 100% fair and free from manipulation.
As someone who has been involved in every election since 2019 I am confident in asserting that they are not. Elections are rigged although perhaps not as blatantly as the case for poor Andrew Bridgen.