Mainstream media repeats debunked climate change claims pushed by The Lancet

Several mainstream media outlets recently covered a report published by The Lancet claiming that climate change is causing premature death, illness and hunger around the world. According to the report, the situation will only get worse unless governments take action to put an end to climate change.

The Washington Post was one of the many news outlets to cover the report, which is full of claims that Environment & Climate News Managing Editor H. Sterling Burnett says are “directly refuted by hard data.”

Among the claims listed are that the disease outbreaks, food shortages and deadly disasters that were somehow put in motion by climate change would “dwarf the toll of the coronavirus.”

The Washington Post reported: “Rising temperatures have led to higher rates of heat illness, causing farmworkers to collapse in fields and elderly people to die in their apartments. Insects carrying tropical diseases have multiplied and spread toward the poles. … Droughts intensify, crops fail, hunger stalks millions of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

Interestingly, studies that were published in The Lancet itself in the past directly refute many of these claims. For example, research published this July in the journal concluded that cold temperatures are contributing to many more deaths than warmer temperatures each year, while deaths linked to extreme temperatures – both hot and cold – are on the decline overall.

In that study, a group of 68 scientists from 33 countries concluded that as the earth continues its modest warming, the number of deaths caused by non-optimum temperatures has been dropping by tens of thousands of people per year.

The study, entitled “Global, regional, and national burden of mortality associated with non-optimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: A three-stage modeling study,” confirmed previously published research that has shown time and time again that heat is not the biggest temperature-related killer; it is actually cold temperatures that are doing the most damage, but climate change alarmists consistently ignore this fact because it does not suit their narrative. Studies published in the Southern Medical Journal and research carried out by the BBC and the U.S. Department of Interior have all found that more people are dying from cold temperatures then heat.

Meanwhile, The Lancet published the results of a study in 2015 where researchers found that cold weather killed 1700% more people than hot or warm weather after examining health data from 384 locations across 13 countries linked to more than 74 million deaths. Studies have also shown that global warming is actually having the effect of reducing the incidence of cardiovascular disease.

Carbon dioxide helps plants grow

When it comes to crop production and hunger, meanwhile, data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has shown that crop production has risen in most regions while malnutrition and hunger have dropped as the planet has warmed modestly, due largely to the rise in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The available rainfall and photosynthetic efficiency have both increased thanks to atmospheric carbon dioxide, which leads to better growing conditions. Some of the places that have seen increases in crop production include Africa, Latin America, North America, the Middle East and Asia.

Once again, the mainstream media is doing its best to support the climate change narrative, most likely to push certain policies, legislation and agendas, even as studies have shown repeatedly that any warming that has been seen so far is actually helping the planet in some ways rather than harming it. Carbon dioxide makes our planet greener by helping plants grow, and no amount of press spin can change that basic biological fact.

Sources for this article include:

WattsUpWithThat.com

Heartland.org