Well, the French were never very tough, and they were ‘caught out’, not by climate change, but by a freak heatwave. Just how many thousands of French people have died in the summers following 2003?

We also must remember that these frail, elderly people are kept alive artificially, anyway – hence the moaning and growing about the problem of an ageing population – and the numbers of most of them would have been well and truly up. Many of the poor souls would probably have been happy to have gone quickly, rather than linger on per favour of state medicine.

As a scare mongering exercise, this one should have little effect.

Heating and cooling costs have undoubtedly increased in aged-care centres, as claimed, but it is not all that long ago that there was no artificial cooling (as there was no artificial preserving of human vegetables). Old people, including my grandmother, lived and worked hard lives in the searing South Australian heat and dropped dead from natural causes without giving a thought to the weather. Aged-care centres are another burden resulting form scientific interference with nature. Just how long do we have to endure a life no longer worth living?

As usual, global warming (they are trying to get off the hook now by calling it ‘climate change’) propagandists go for the easy ‘proof’, the lowest common denominator. But, we are not all wimps, and we can adapt.

Global warming/climate change is by no means a done deal. We should ensure that we don’t allow ourselves to become as paranoid as these people who seem to enjoy dealing out doom and gloom are. Even if they are right, there is very little we can do about it anyway

A worthwhile article that raises one of the many issue of climate change although I think it overblows it some what. Yes we do need to care for the elderly etc in time of heat stress but plenty of water goes a long way but that's another issue. And yes oil supplies and prices will impact.

But when we get to here (the second last para)
"When the human body gets to 42C, it starts to cook. The heat causes the proteins in each cell to change irreversibly, like an egg white as it boils. Even before that, the brain shuts down because of a lack of blood coming from the overworked, overheated heart. Muscles stop working, the stomach cramps and the mind becomes delirious. Death is inevitable." It just gets silly.

Vast numbers of the world population live in areas where peak daily temps regularly exceed 44C. So far I've yet to see any information that the population of Iraq is 'cooking' and I've experienced 50C heat in west NSW for several days and came out unaffected (although others might disagre). Originally from Sydney I acclimatised in one summer. If the next generation have 30-70 years to do the same I think they'll cope okay. It's the lack of food that's the worry.

Peter,

I think what Kate means is that when a human's core temperature gets to about 42 degrees then things start going wrong. We have lots of ways of getting rid of heat, evaporation from sweat being just one of them. These coping strategies may be diminished in the elderly.

Children locked in cars with no venilation will suffer from heat-stress and death on a 30 degree day being one example that comes to mind (even though the temperature inside the car is 45-50 degrees).

This raises the bigger question of 'energy entitlement'. Most would accept that the very young and the aged should get care priority with food, shelter and medicine but they can be can outbid by those more able to pay. Depleting oil reserves may be directed towards jet fuel for recreational travel rather than heating oil for nursing homes. Most of the airconditioners that overload the electrical grid in heatwaves are owned by healthy people. Perhaps 'smart grids' will one day exercise remote control over appliances according to priority. Ultimately it will come down a question of how many people the Earth can support with a minimum standard of energy entitlement. I think that is a fraction of what we have now.

Heatwaves, droughts, floods and storms are not the only effects of climate change. Air pollution from the very greenhouse gases we are flooding the atmosphere with also will (or already do) effect persons with lung diseases and of course the elderly on the whole have diminished lung capacity.

Another problem is daily temperature range. This winter some places in Australia have already experienced unusual ranges in temperature from below zero to low twenties where for mid winter is unheard of.
If that were to extend to a greater range it would not be unimaginable for some people to be severely affected by that sort of range.

There is also the prospect of entering a period of climate instability unknown to us. How can we plan for the unknown? We are also staring down the barrel of an energy crisis that may prevent us using technology to guard against the effects of what we have created.

We have opted to keep going as we are and to put our hopes in an adaptation in a future we are not willing to consider may have begun.

If we had the common sense to plan we would have avoided the worst of climate change as we have known about global warming for over 25 years. We have known that Carbon dioxide could create the warming of the earth for over 100 years.

I don’t think anybody is seriously going to do anything about climate change. Instead we will wait for disaster and then clean up what we can and hope it magically goes away or find some excuse other than our activities.

As for the elderly. Obviously and sadly policy makers see them as canaries in the mine. Afterall by the time they are fragile they are not big spenders but rather costs. Sorry for the cynicism but what evidence of the way the elderly are treated is there to the contrary.

Mortality and the "harvesting" effect.

Part of the mortality observed during a heat wave, can be attributed to a so-called "harvesting" effect, a term for a short-term forward mortality displacement. It has been observed that for some heat waves, there is a compensatory decrease in overall mortality during the subsequent weeks after a heat wave. Such compensatory reduction in mortality suggests that heat affects especially those so ill that they "would have died in the short term anyway".

B- Can do better :)