The weather is nice so we have to freak out about heatwaves now

We always have to be freaking out about something. The freaking out can never, ever stop. We must be freaking out all the time

Bavaria in early summer.

The weather right now is beautiful, which means that the meteorologists and the Health Ministers and the rest of the hysterical botherers are having a big sad. This is because they are climatists, and climatism makes of every nice summer day an opportunity to publish heatwave gloom and doom.

It’s not even particularly hot in Germany right now, but it is hot in Spain and it is hot in Great Britain, which is enough to cause the journaloids at Frankfurter Rundschau to lose their minds. They want everyone to know that “model calculations” are suddenly threatening us with temperatures in excess of 40 degrees next week:

Germany is increasingly becoming the focus of extreme heat. On Wednesday (18 June), temperatures around 40 degrees appeared for the first time this year in model calculations for the end of June and beginning of July. Although this is only an initial outlier in the long-term forecasts, such signals show that the situation is serious. It is still unclear whether and to what extent these values will actually be reached, but the development must be closely monitored. The trend is clearly upwards: temperatures in many places are already well above the long-term average. Combined with high humidity, this increases the risk of circulatory problems, heatstroke and even deaths.

To be clear: It is not actually 40 degrees (104 Fahrenheit) anywhere in Germany right now. “Outlier” predictions that we might see 40-degree temperatures by the end of the month, being outliers, are not likely to happen. Were they to happen, however, they might kill some people, which is very bad and very scary.

Naturally, these temperatures that are not happening and that are not likely to happen are the fault of climate change:

Extreme heat events such as these are increasing across Europe – in both frequency and intensity. The consequences for humans, animals and nature are drastic: dried-out soil, dying forests, increased water consumption, overheated cities. Nevertheless, there are still voices that downplay such developments. Statements such as “It’s always been like this” persist. The facts, however, tell a different story.

Heatwave discourse in Germany has become a locus of quiet insanity. A few weeks ago, our Health Ministry partnered with the German Olympic Sports Confederation to produce a truly delusional “heat protection plan” for recreational sport. This bizarre document urgently advised Germans to avoid alcoholic, sugary and caffeinated drinks at sporting events, and also to refrain from such ordinary activities as barbecuing – all “to better protect participants and spectators … from heat-related health risks.”

The new catalogue of measures will enable clubs and associations to prepare for heat waves. “Whether outdoor or indoor sports, every sport, every association and every club will be confronted with the effects of climate change in the future,” reads the heat protection plan. The 13-page document lists numerous recommendations. These include establishing criteria for stopping or interrupting games and competitions when temperatures are too high, providing shaded areas, buckets or watering cans with cool water, and free sunscreen and sunglasses for children.

It also recommends closing particularly exposed sports facilities during heat waves, excluding sick athletes from training or competition, and conducting “joint pulse checks” during training to prevent heat exhaustion. It is also suggested that summer breaks be extended and winter breaks shortened, and that competitions, tournaments and seasonal highlights be moved to cooler months or to the morning or evening hours.

This is completely unhinged and crazy.

An old factory in east Thüringen.

Warm weather is not a problem in Germany. Ours is actually a cool country, with a lot of cloudy days. Winters are long and dark, and they see by far the highest mortality. The death rate plunges over the warm summer months because good weather and warm temperatures reduce the stress on the old and the sick. Far from being dangerous and deadly, the summer is objectively the safest season of the year. To the extent that the German climate is warming, that is actually a good thing. It will extend the growing season and push more comfortable temperatures later into the autumn and earlier into the spring, further favouring our growing population of olds.

Now, it is not all cookies and matcha. Sometimes, we experience sudden summertime temperature spikes, which are associated with increased mortality. These are the dreaded heatwave deaths, and there are two points to note about them:

1) Almost none of these additional deaths have anything to do with hyperthermia itself. People are not dropping dead en masse from heatstroke or dehydration. Rather, heatwaves are associated with a general rise in all-cause mortality among older people.

2) It is not the absolute temperature, but its sudden spike, that is the problem. This would be why you get heatwave deaths in Germany when summer temperatures rise to 35 degrees, whereas in Sicily, the olds endure 35-degree temperatures just fine, because those temperatures are ordinary there.

To understand what an overblown and misrepresented issue heatwave deaths are in Europe, all you have to do is look at mortality charts. Here’s the over-65 cohort from Euromomo, with summer death spikes highlighted:

Heatwaves, by and large, are a total nothingburger. Occasionally, however, you have a year like 2022, with a remarkably hot summer that drives mortality substantially upwards. Even in that unusual year, which set various temperature records across the Federal Republic, the deaths a) followed a relatively muted winter mortality wave, and b) were still nothing compared to the routine winter mortality we see all the time.

And if you look at the younger cohorts, you find that there’s no discernible heatwave mortality at all, even in the hottest years:

Heatwaves only kill the old and the sick and there’s no reason on earth to banish barbecuing or beer drinking during the summer, to conduct “joint pulse checks” at athletic events, to move summer sporting seasons into the autumn or the spring, or to do anything else at all. This whole discussion is retarded. The dangers of not working out, of not socialising, of living in fear of the sun and of not leading a generally active life are vastly greater than the nothing risk of some nice weather.

Finally, there is a way to help vulnerable olds get through summertime temperature spikes. This solution is extremely obvious, well-tested and very bizarrely it is nowhere to be found in the voluminous advice produced by our Health Ministry. It is called climatisation. Places where climatisation is widespread, like the United States, don’t have much heatwave mortality. Rather than establishing official “cold rooms” for the elderly to shelter in and funding multi-million-dollar apps to provide heatwave “information,” the government could simply subsidise small single-room climatisation units for that subset of the old and the sick who live in poorly ventilated apartment blocs and the like.¹ Of course, they’re not going to do that, because this is not actually about reducing mortality. The summer has simply become another occasion to raise dark warnings about how we’ve finally broken the climate with all of our evil industry and how we’re surely all going to die now.

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None of these news stories about heatwaves or other allegedly carbon-induced catastrophes are really about climate. They are rather about weather, and the problem with weather is that it is chaotic and random.

Humans have a lot of trouble with chaotic and random things. They want to believe that stuff happens for a reason and that they themselves have something to do with that reason. In premodernity, a surprising amount of religious energy went into embedding weather events in broader narratives about the relationship between divine powers and their human minions. It was commonplace to read untimely frosts and droughts as the wages of impiety. We now live in a secular world, but we still have a deeply religious approach to many things, including the weather.

Climatism is one of a whole array of stunted, faintly malicious parareligions that our secular era has spawned. Its dogmas demand that every adverse weather event, from snowstorms to droughts, from heatwaves to floods, from hurricanes to earthquakes, be ascribed to the original sin of carbon emissions. The truth is that we have never been so secure against natural disasters and weather-related mortality as we are right now, and we owe our security to the highly concentrated energy that fossil fuels have provided us.

A medieval castle.

1. It must be emphasised, however, that if you take a broad enough perspective, you’ll generally find that there is no reducing mortality among the oldest and sickest cohorts. At best, you merely move it around. The mild influenza season of 2022 probably contributed to the large number of summer deaths that year. Fewer died in the winter, and so more had to die in the summer. Were Germany to seriously pursue climatisation as a solution to heatwave deaths, we would probably see that August mortality spike characteristic of heavily climatised regions. The interior dry, cold air in the hottest months appears to favour viruses, and so some of the olds whom climatisation protects end up dying of other causes anyway.