Burning of fossil fuels caused 1,500 deaths in recent European heat wave, study estimates
AP By SETH BORENSTEIN
July 09, 2025 at 12:07 am EDT
WASHINGTON — (AP) — Human-caused climate change is responsible for killing about 1,500 people in last week's European heat wave, a first-of-its-kind rapid study found… Of the 1,500 deaths attributed to climate change, the study found more than 1,100 were people 75 or older.
Climate change made a heat wave hotter
“It’s summer, so it’s sometimes hot," study lead author Ben Clarke of Imperial College said in a Tuesday news conference. ”The influence of climate change has pushed it up by several degrees and what that does is it brings certain groups of people more into dangerous territory and that’s what’s important. That’s what we really want to highlight here. For some people it’s still warm fine weather but for now a huge sector of the population it's more dangerous."
Researchers looked at June 23 to July 2 in London; Paris; Frankfurt, Germany; Budapest, Hungary; Zagreb, Croatia; Athens, Greece; Barcelona, Spain; Madrid; Lisbon, Portugal; Rome; Milan and Sassari, Italy. They found that except in Lisbon, the extra warmth from greenhouse gases added 2 to 4 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) to what would have been a more natural heat wave. London got the most at nearly 4 degrees (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). Climate change only added about a degree to Lisbon's peak temperature, the study calculated, mostly because of the Atlantic Ocean's moderating effect, Otto said.
That extra climate-change-caused heat added the most extra deaths in Milan, Barcelona and Paris and the least in Sassari, Frankfort and Lisbon, the study found. The 1,500 figure is the middle of the range of overall climate-related death estimates that go from about 1,250 to around 1,700.
More here
https://www.wsbtv.com/news/world/burning-fossil-fuels/TF3ANREAKRGGXKRZB4HQNJ7KHM/
The earth is on course to hit 2°C temperature rise around 2035 A landmark peer-reviewed paper, “The Future of the Human Niche,” published by Tim Lenton and colleagues, makes it clear: at 2°C of warming, around 1 billion people will no longer be able to live where they currently do. That’s 25% of the Earth’s surface becoming uninhabitable. One billion refugees — in just a few years.
Refugees are an incredible destabilizing force. These people would not be coming for a better life but rather to survive.