From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Scientists should make an effort when they try to defend their positions, rather than simply trotting out tired alarmist talking points.

Trump says climate change doesn’t endanger public health – evidence shows it does, from extreme heat to mosquito-borne illnesses

Published: February 13, 2026, 6.11am AEDT
Jonathan Levy Professor and Chair, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University
Howard Frumkin Professor Emeritus of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, University of Washington
Jonathan Patz Professor of Environmental Medicine, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Vijay Limaye Adjunct Associate Professor of Population Health Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison

As physicians, epidemiologists and environmental health scientists, we’ve seen growing evidence of the connections between climate change and harm to people’s health. 

Extreme heat

Heat deaths have been rising globally, up 23% from the 1990s to the 2010s, when the average year saw more than half a million heat-related deaths. Here in the U.S., the 2021 Pacific Northwest heat dome killed hundreds of people. 

Extreme weather

Warmer air holds more moisture, so climate change brings increasing rainfall and storm intensity and worsening flooding, as many U.S. communities have experienced in recent years. Warmer ocean water also fuels more powerful hurricanes.

Climate change also worsens droughts, disrupting food supplies and causing respiratory illness from dust. Rising temperatures and aridity dry out forests and grasslands, making them a setup for wildfires.

Air pollution

Wildfires, along with other climate effects, are worsening air quality around the country.

Infectious diseases

Because they are cold-blooded organisms, insects are directly influenced by temperature. So, with rising temperatures, mosquito biting rates rise as well. Warming also accelerates the development of disease agents that mosquitoes transmit. 

…Read more: https://theconversation.com/trump-says-climate-change-doesnt-endanger-public-health-evidence-shows-it-does-from-extreme-heat-to-mosquito-borne-illnesses-275619

Extreme heat

The argument global warming is worsening health outcomes by causing more heat deaths in Summer ignores that far more people die in winter. Even in hot countries like India, cold deaths outweigh heat deaths. If global warming reduces the severity of winter, any rise in heat deaths in Summer will be more than offset by a reduction in cold deaths in winter.

New Study: Total Number of Attributable Deaths Due to Cold In Pune, India, Nearly 7 Times Higher Than Heat Deaths

Extreme weather

It’s a pity they didn’t include a meteorologist in their group. The prediction global warming will increase hurricane intensity still isn’t supported by the evidence.

STEVE MILLOY: The Hurricane Season That Still Isn’t

There have been studies pointing out the thermodynamic absurdity of unconstrained predictions of more severe weather, but sadly mostly ignored by alarmists. There is also significant disagreement between models as to what will happen, which suggests scientists don’t know what will happen.

Air pollution

Faster growth rates caused by CO2 fertilisation and more benign weather do have the potential to increase smoke hazards. But this could be counterbalanced by proper forestry management, a practice which has been severely lacking in recent decades.

Green Fury: California Fires Caused by Environmentalists, Not Climate Change

Infectious Diseases

I can’t believe epidemiologists are still waving this tired claim.

Mosquitoes do not need warm weather to cause severe disease outbreaks, what they need is a failure to control mosquitoes. Diseases like Malaria used to be the scourge of Northern Europe and Russia. Anyone who has visited Northern countries in the Spring would be well aware that potentially disease carrying biting insects have no problem thriving in cold climates.

Claim: Global Warming is Spreading Malaria and Dengue to Europe

The reason we don’t associate Malaria with cold climates is our ancestors did not use the word “Malaria”. The old English word for Malaria was “Ague”. The famous playwright William Shakespeare, who himself may have died from Malaria in 1616, referenced “Ague” at least 16 times in his plays. It was a big deal back then – a known killer of the young and infirm, a terrible illness which arose when mild Spring weather warmed and melted the Malarial ponds where mosquitoes bred. All this happened during the Little Ice Age.

Historians are going to look back on the climate crisis and wonder how we ever believed that today’s mild warming was any kind of threat to our civilisation. Our descendants will think of such warnings the same way we think of the scientists who promoted The Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894, the prediction that by 1944 the streets of the City of London would be buried under 9ft of horse manure.

In my opinion the 1894 horse manure prediction and today’s climate doomsday predictions share a common factor – scientists who didn’t make enough effort to question the flaws in their own reasoning.

Just as there is evidence today’s climate doomsday predictions are wrong, there was plenty of evidence by 1894 that horses would shortly be replaced by motor vehicles.

By the time of the horse manure prediction, the first automobile companies had already been selling vehicles for over a decade. Carl Benz, who founded Mercedes Benz, started producing and selling automobiles in 1885.