The once prestigious Lancet medical journal has made the astounding claim the year 2023 saw “the highest global temperatures in over 100,000 years,” even though temperature data collection only began in the 19th century.
According to NASA, three of the world’s most complete temperature tracking records, maintained by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Climatic Data Center, and the U.K. Meteorological Office’s Hadley Centre, began in 1880.
Although sporadic attempts to measure temperature were made, “there are too few data before 1880 for scientists to estimate average temperatures for the entire planet,” NASA notes.
Moreover, because proxy records from things like tree rings, pollen counts, and ice cores differ fundamentally from direct measurements, “scientists typically do not include them on the same charts as the instrumental record,’” NASA adds.
Despite this inconvenient historical record, the Lancet insists in its latest issue that in 2023, “the world saw the highest global temperatures in over 100 000 years, and heat records were broken in all continents through 2022.”
This was not the Lancet’s only extravagant, unscientific claim.
People’s health “is at the mercy of fossil fuels,” the Lancet states, and “climate change is increasingly impacting the health and survival of people worldwide.”
Projections show “these risks could worsen steeply with further inaction,” the journal adds.
The Lancet declares that in 2020, “heat-related deaths of people older than 65 years increased by 85% compared with 1990–2000.”
What the journal fails to note is that nearly ten times as many people die each year from the cold than from heat.
Ironically, it was the Lancet itself that published a 2021 study stating that 5,083,173 deaths were associated with “non-optimal temperatures per year,” but then went on to explain that the vast majority of these were “cold-related” rather than “heat-related.”
A supporter stands on the side of the road whilst others are blocking the A12 Motorway, the main road leading to The Hague, during a climate activist protest on September 20, 2023 in The Hague, Netherlands. (Michel Porro/Getty Images)
According to the Lancet, people around the world are 9.4 times more likely to die from the cold than from the heat.
It added that over the past 20 years, the death rate from heat has slightly increased due to global warming (+0.21 percent), but that the death rate from the cold decreased by more than twice as much (-0.51 percent) during the same period.
An unbiased reader could reasonably infer that, if anything, global warming has actually lowered the overall death rate from “non-optimal temperatures.”
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