Thread by @ElonBachman

1\ Having covered itself in shame by reporting fake hydroxychloroquine data, the venerable Lancet has now branched out into junk climate science

They claim a 54% increase in heat deaths among those over 65 over the past 20 years

h/t @MarqueSalamanca

indianexpress.com/article/lifest…

2\ This is a striking claim, because deaths from weather of all kinds are down 90%+ over the last century

GWP per capita has doubled in the last 20 years. Fossil fuels moved billions out of poverty, and hundreds of millions into air-conditioned homes

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

3\ How can The Lancet find an increase in deaths where others find a decrease?

Here is one researcher cautioning about unreliable data:

4\ Indeed, it appears The Lancet employed a "newly created" metric that simply assumes that if weather is hotter, more old people are dying

As with COVID-19, they built a model, put their own assumptions into it, and then used the model results as "proof" of those assumptions:

5\ Their model is based, in part, on *another* model, in which the authors caution "data are very sparse in very high temperature range"

Nowhere do we see actual death data

It's "models of models"

6\ Using a sketchy model from Tokyo as the basis for global estimates is sketchy enough

But I saved the biggest joke for the end

These muppets didn't adjust for population!

7\ Between 2000 and 2019, the world's population aged 65+ increased from 420M to 698M, an increase of 66%

So, deaths in a made up model increased 54%, while the relevant population increased 66%

In other words, deaths from heat are not increasing

They are decreasing

8\8 Most of what makes it into the popular press about climate is this sort of junk

If you thought academia's dishonesty about COVID-19 was bad, climate is much worse

They've had decades of practice and a lot more funding

Be skeptical

cc @Coyoteblog @ewinsberg

Footnote: I should be kinder to The Lancet

It is probably hard to maintain editorial integrity when unscrupulous people are getting free access to journal publications with awful sites like Sci-Hub:

lovescihub.wordpress.com

This is embarassing: in my tweet about them not adjusting for population, I copied the wrong metric (one that does adjust for population)

Here's what I should have pasted:

https://twitter.com/MarqueSalamanca/status/1334587099899637764?s=19