Essay by Eric Worrall
Britain usually suffers a little under 10,000 – 60,000 excess winter deaths every year . But we should apparently be worrying about the 2,800 excess summer deaths.
Climate crisis poses ‘growing threat’ to health in UK, says expert
Exclusive: Prof Dame Jenny Harries warns of dangers to food security, flooding and insect-borne diseases
Hannah Devlin Science correspondent @hannahdevSun 23 Oct 2022 22.00 AEDT
The climate crisis poses a “significant and growing threat” to health in the UK, the country’s most senior public health expert has warned.
Speaking to the Guardian, Prof Dame Jenny Harries, the chief executive of the UK Health Security Agency, said there was a common misconception that a warmer climate would bring net health benefits due to milder winters. But the climate emergency would bring far wider-reaching health impacts, she said, with food security, flooding and mosquito-borne diseases posing threats.
“The heatwave this summer really brought home to people the direct impact,” said Harries. “But it’s the breadth of the impact. It’s not just the heat.”
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“Colleagues from Pakistan … are suffering from the impacts of flooding. They are dealing with stagnant water, higher risks of sewage overflowing into publicly accessible water spaces,” she said. “We are seeing in some of the things that could be happening in the UK.”
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This summer, the UK experienced record temperatures of 40.3C and six separate heatwave periods associated with more than 2,800 excess deaths. “If several aeroplanes all exploded and we’d lost that many people it would be front-page news in health protection terms,” Harries said.
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“We have much to learn from countries that currently have warmer temperatures,” she said. “If we’re going to be a hot country soon we need to be thinking the same way.”
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The warm weather = mosquito borne disease claim is complete nonsense. Malaria was a major killer in Shakespeare’s England, in the middle of the Little Ice Age, but most people are not aware of this. The reason is our ancestors didn’t call it Malaria, they called it Ague.
Mosquito borne diseases are controlled by draining swamps and killing mosquitoes, not by controlling CO2 emissions. Pakistan’s post flooding mosquito problems could be cured overnight with a few thousand tons of paraffin and DDT.
As for the claim Britain is becoming a hot country, I put this claim in the same category as all those wild “end of snow” predictions.
