Freezing out the facts

The deaths are a sad reminder that cold weather, not warm weather, is the main killer of people, especially the elderly. Last year England had 25,300 elderly die due to cold weather, that was up on the previous year when 23,740 died from the cold. A spokesman for the National Pensioners Conventions says: “Since 1997, we have lost over 260,000 pensioners during the winter months because of cold-related illnesses...” I remember in 2003 that a particularly unusual heat wave hit France while many physicians were on their annual holiday. That summer France saw 14,802 people die from the heat. That got reported in the US. Now we read that cold has killed over a quarter of a million elderly people in just the UK alone in the last decade. The French heat wave from 2003 has not yet been repeated so those 14,802 deaths were in one year only. The UK sees that number of deaths EVERY year from cold plust around another 10,000 more. Did you see that reported in the US media? This is a far more tragic set of statistics but one the media in the US doesn’t find “sexy”. It doesn’t have that “global warming” angle to it that the media loves so much....