The boiling Lancet

This 27 th July, when Antonio Gutierrez, head of the United Nations,

solemnly announced the frightening alarm: “The world has now entered

the era of Global Boiling!”, sending shock waves of climate terror around

the globe, one would hope that he had based his very earnest statement

on reputable sources. But where does one find them? Who can be

trusted? There is no easy answer. Because, if he, is speaking from the

standpoint of, for example, The Lancet, the golden standard of scientific

publication, since 1837, he might have been seriously misled.

In April, The Lancet published this distorted* diagram

comparing victims of cold weather and those of heat, in European cities

over the last 20-year period. In their charts, blue is the colour of the

deaths from cold, and red is the colour used to denote deaths due to

heat. Heat victims appear very numerous. Unfortunately, this is a fake

impression originated by a distorted representation. The exact proportion

is shown on the correct version of the diagram on the right, which is not

to be seen in the Lancet publication. The Lancet has changed the scale

for the heat victims – on the premise that a heat victim values much

more than a cold victim. It seems that, in their estimation, one heat

victim is equal to five cold victims, probably because the world is

“boiling”, as Mr Gutierrez claims.

At first glance it would seem that, for example, in Italy, the country where I live, 

more people die of heat than of cold – but if one looks carefully at the figures, 

the opposite is true. Five times more die of cold.  But this truth was probably inconvenient

for the editorial office of the Lancet and its sponsor. It did not match with the idea of catastrophic

global warming, now renamed global boiling.

The fact is that much more people actually die of cold than heat. Yet, in

public, one has to say that heat kills, that apocalypse is approaching.

Otherwise, it won’t fit today’s global watchword. In front of this

dilemma at Lancet’s editorial office, perhaps in a panic in the face of the

scandalous reality that a warmer climate might actually save lives, they

resorted to the childish solution of distorting the scale on the Y-axis of

the diagram in order to make it better suit today’s public agenda. All this

under the motto: “If reality does not fit our ideas lets force it to comply. If

data does not confirm our assumption let us erase them. If a prominent

scientist says something contrary let us ignore, ridicule, and ostracise

the person. This recently happened to the current Nobel Prize winner in

physics, John Clauser, who dared putting in question the idea of a major

anthropogenic influence on climate change. His scheduled speech 

on climate models at a seminar of the IMF International monetary Fund 

has been abruptly canceled . The same happened to other numerous, 

prominent scientists who did not follow the official line on global warming.

The Lancet, the prestigious scientific magazine which pompously claims

publishing “The best science from the best scientists worldwide”, is not

new to this kind of derailment. How does one forget the famous Lancet

number of the 22 nd of May, 2021, when a published study destroyed the

use of Hydroxychloroquine in the early treatment of Covid. These were

the days in which health emergency and health terror were the main

driving force of public opinion and any doctor who stepped out of line –

trying to cure the patients rather than waiting and worshiping the

coming vaccine – would be stigmatised as a dangerous subversive. The

study later on turned out to be bogus and redacted by a dubious society

called Surgisphere led by a science fiction writer and a former escort. 

Lancet was, subsequently, obliged to retract this article.

To be honest, in the pandemic times, The Lancet was not alone in taking

ideological positions. The same happened to the magazine, Nature,

when it published a study at the beginning of the pandemic, which

categorically excluded any artificial, lab-leak origin of the coronavirus.

That was, at the time, the official line to be followed.

Without being a conspirationist one can only speculate on the driving

forces behind this divergence from the canonical principle of Galilean

science in favour of a seemingly ideology-based system of Science and

Medicine.  We are observing a kind of corruption of the scientific pillars

on which western society has been constructed in the last five hundred

years.

The patterns guiding public discourse on the climate emergency are

worryingly similar to those used during the pandemic, especially here in

Italy. In tune with Gutierrez, The Times, on the 14 th of July, titled “Rome

the Infernal city!” This has had a large echo in the Italian mainstream

press which was subsequently filled with images of apocalyptic flames

and doomsday scenarios, totally neglecting the fact that – while July has

been a hot month, June was actually two centigrade cooler then in

2022.  Because of this top-down public alarm a new kind of syndrome is

spreading around named: Eco-anxiety. Just a few days ago the Italian

actress, GIorgia Vasperna, while in a televised dialogue with the Italian

Minister for the Environment, Gilberto Picheto Fratin, suddenly broke

into tears telling the public that she was affected by a serious form of

eco-anxiety. She confessed that at 27 she gave up on the idea of giving

birth to a child.  Her heart-breaking admission was so contagious that

the Minister himself started to weep on stage. If the actress believes Mr

Gutierrez, who can really blame her? How can a young woman even

conceive of giving birth to a child in a boiling world?

Personally, I am in Rome now. July has passed and it is warm but not

more than it was in the past years – and if you wish to visit the Infernal

city, just keep cool, don’t follow the news, and “don’t go out in the midday sun….”