Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day

Two headlines: "New cold war in Europe as Russia turns off gas supplies" and "London colder than Antarctica". Brrrr! Time to pay attention to Bjørn Lomborg. The Danish author and environmentalist is a figure of hate among the extreme warming crowd, but that's because he's rational. In this topical excerpt from his book, Cool It, Lomborg illustrates how one climate-related killer is ignored, while another is front-page news.

"The heat wave in Europe in early August 2003 was a catastrophe of heartbreaking proportions. With more than 3,500 dead in Paris alone, France suffered nearly 15,000 fatalities from the heat wave. Another 7,000 died in Germany, 8,000 in Spain and Italy, and 2,000 in the United Kingdom.

While 35,000 dead is a terrifyingly large number, all deaths should in principle be treated with equal concern. Yet this is not happening. When 2,000 people died from heat in the United Kingdom, it produced a public outcry that is still heard. However, the BBC recently ran a very quiet story telling us that deaths caused by cold weather in England and Wales for the past years have hovered around 25,000 each winter, casually adding that the winters of 1998-2000 saw about 47,000 cold deaths each year. The story then goes on to discuss how the government should make the cost of winter fuel economically bearable and how the majority of deaths are caused by strokes and heart attacks.

For Europe as a whole, about 200,000 people die from excess heat each year. However, about 1.5 million Europeans die annually from excess cold. That is more than seven times the total number of heat deaths. Just in the past decade, Europe has lost about 15 million people to the cold, more than 400 times the iconic heat deaths from 2003. That we so easily neglect these deaths and so easily embrace those caused by global warming tells us of a breakdown in our sense of proportion."

But it's more than just a breakdown in our sense of proportion. It suggests that the zeal of the climate change cult is fanatically utopian and that its heart is cold. Colder than Antarctica.