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.
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I had never heard of handball until seeing this article.
Me neither but I’m liking the players. A lot.
Brilliant news.
Ww need the IHF to dig their feet in and for the players to form a single, defiant block and give the IHF authorities a monumental sex and travel response.
This has the potential to be a real goody. A sporting war. Loads of publicity and lots of bad press for the poison pushers, statistics all over the place, tragic stories. Billy and Klaus flapping. Bourla nowhere to be seen. Fishy in his cave. Sage in a bunker somewhere. Michie on a fact- finding mission in Antartica and Raine AWOL.
Marvellous.
Come on you lot.
Oh I fervently hope so.
In my own circle of musicians we dodged a bullet when a minority of Karens on a management committee tried to make vaccination a requirement of performing a symphony concert. They failed to impose the requirement, but then the venue owners imposed their own restrictions which scuppered the concert at the last moment. It’s chaos. We can’t be sure that some unknown authoritarian Karen isn’t going to veto our next attempt. Legal action looks prohibitively expensive, presumably it would be ECHR Right of Assembly Case versus Article 13 lawfare.
That’s upsetting to hear.
All the best
Michie the Bichie in the snow ! Frostbite would be too kind ! Mind you her hatchet face would probably melt the thickest ice
Nice one Freddy
The person who runs the IHF needs to be named and publicly shamed for the petty tyrant that he is.
Not yet. We want a proper set to, something that even The Times cannot ignore.
Come on lads. Get in to them!
Being a personal fiefdom, The Times can ignore whatever it wants!
I’ve looked him up. His name is Hassan Moustafa.
He’s been the president of the federation since 2000. So he’s been running the sport for 22 years, being reelected 6 times, the last 3 unopposed.
I bet he runs it like a personal fiefdom. That’s how most of these international federations operate, accountable to no one but themselves.
The Sep Blatter of Handball then !
You beat me to it Freddy.
Since when does the International Handball Federation, a perfectly private organization, have the authority to prescribe mandatory medical procedures for people attending or playing handball matches?
NB: The obvious answer is It doesn’t.
Governments have signalled over the last three years that they are quite happy for private companies and NGOs to do as they like in this regard and essentially do their dirty promotion and enforcement work for them.
And these international sports federations are completely unaccountable to anyone but themselves. Not unlike the WHO or UN. They have these pseudo democratic processes that elevate a delegate from each country to a global council which then sets rules for the entire world. And because it’s “democratic” then everyone has to follow their rules.
The moment you open your eyes, it’s impossible not to see the world as just a series of cartels. The pharma cartel, the media cartel, the energy cartel, all the sports cartels, the tech cartels, the banking cartel… etc….
The thing is the IHF really doesn’t have this authority, no more than they can randomly arrest people on premises they happened to rent. It’s neither a sovereign government enforcing some laws on its own territory nor an organization created by sovereign governments which have chosen to delegate certain powers to it. The people behind this may have the chutzpah to try it nevertheless, on the grounds that bullying oftentimes works, but bullying is all they have to support their stance.
They can keep the players out of the tournament which belongs to them, unless there are laws explicitly prohibiting that sort of discrimination.
I don’t know what the laws in Sweden and Poland say in this regard.
Of course, the players can get together and decide to boycott. At this point, they’re insane if they don’t.
After Damar Hamlin, I find it hard to imagine there is any athlete of any note who is not concerned about the vaxxes and certainly don’t want any / any more at this point in time. It only stops when we make it stop.
I don’t think your theory that the IHF is a sovereign government which has automatic exterritoriality in any place it may rent somewhere and is thus not subject to the laws of the countries its operating in and authorized to make up its own laws as it sees fit and enforce them violently is correct. But please feel free to prove me wrong by coming up with something which shows that private associations of businesspeople do actually have these rights in Sweden and Poland.
Re private companies setting mandates…
The situation is really bad in Australia where it’s likely millions have been impacted by jab mandates set by state governments, businesses, sports clubs etc.
In regard to companies, I’m challenging the jab mandate set by Westpac Bank for its employees, a jab mandate which is still in place.
See my email to the Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Westpac Group: Westpac and Covid jab mandates – why were employees denied a voluntary decision on this medical intervention? 4 January 2023.
Well maybe, but where were they when people including children were being forced, coerced and gaslighted into being injected and generally vilified if they weren’t.
Most sports governing bodies are inept, corrupt because they are monopolies. Competition is the only thing that can keep them on their toes. There is little to prevent a group of professionals setting up a more democratic leaner and meaner organisation and ensure by a comprehensive constitution that the tendency to corruption and being captured by bad actors is democratically blocked. Two competing governing bodies in a region or country tend to keep each other a bit more efficient and honest. Perhaps Iceland should make a start.
Now the “Long march through the institutions’ is complete the march through sporting associations seems well underway as the England squad demonstrated in Quatar.