The media’s climate fearmongering doesn’t help anyone

In an era of sensationalism and clickbait headlines, the media’s portrayal of all hot weather as a sign of end times adopts an apocalyptic tone.

Each scorching summer is touted as further evidence of an impending climate catastrophe with little room for nuance or objective analysis. Lost in the hyperbole is the inconvenient truth that cold weather actually poses a far greater threat to human life than heat waves do.

In other words, no, we’re not all going to burn up this summer — and in fact, more of us might survive next winter.

Contrary to popular media efforts to make a bogeyman out of warmth, humans possess physiological protections and have made behavioral adaptations that enable them to withstand and even thrive in warm weather.

Our bodies are equipped with efficient cooling mechanisms, such as sweating, which help regulate body temperature and prevent overheating. Additionally, humans have the ability to seek shelter from the sun and to hydrate in order to mitigate the effects of heat. In warm climates, societies have developed cultural practices and infrastructure to cope with high temperatures, such as siestas, shaded outdoor spaces and cooling systems.

In contrast, cold weather presents a more insidious and often overlooked threat. When temperatures plummet, the human body faces numerous challenges in maintaining its core temperature. Prolonged exposure to cold weather can lead to hypothermia, frostbite and other health complications.

Hypothermia occurs when the body’s core temperature drops below 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Frostbite is where the skin and underlying tissues freeze. Heart attacks are more common in cold weather, because the heart has to work harder to pump blood.

The risks escalate in regions where infrastructure and societal adaptations to extreme cold are lacking. Inadequate heating systems, insufficient clothing, and limited access to warm shelters contribute to heightened vulnerability during cold spells.

Cold is a much bigger killer than heat all over the world — even in my home country of India, where summer temperatures routinely exceed 104 degrees Fahrenheit. According to scientific studies, extreme temperature accounts for 6.5 percent of all deaths in India. Of those deaths, 88 percent are caused by cold weather and only 12 percent by hot weather.

A group of researchers based on three continents published a peer-reviewed paper on temperatures in western India over a nine-year period. They found that the reality of bigger risk of death from cold is “at odds with warnings and mitigating measures authorities have been taking in anticipation of climate change.”

Despite the overwhelming evidence of cold weather’s greater dangers, these often go unnoticed. Selective media coverage tends to focus more on heat than cold, perpetuating a distorted understanding of climate-related risks and hindering public discourse on comprehensive strategies to mitigate the dangers of frigid weather.

In addition, the media ignore or distort historical long-term trends that show the warmth of our current climate, in spite of climate change, is neither unusual nor unprecedented. Data from the federal Global Change Research Program’s Climate Science Special Report show that heat spells cover fewer days per year and are less intense in the U.S. in the last 10 years than they were 90 years ago. No, we’re not burning up all of a sudden. There is hot weather, and it is nothing new.

To add just a bit more context to all the fearmongering in the media, Alaska’s Fort Yukon station registered a temperature of 100 degrees Fahrenheit on June 27, 1915. This year, the temperature on the same date was just 66 degrees. In 1936, eight U.S. states recorded temperatures over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, making that year’s July and August one of the hottest on record. And according to the NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, 44 of the 50 U.S. states set or last tied their record maximum temperatures before 2000, and 32 of them before 1950.

In his book “Apocalypse Never,” Michael Shellenberger writes, “The news media…deserves blame for having misrepresented climate change and other environmental problems as apocalyptic and for having failed to put them in their global, historical, and economic context.”

The media’s choice to misinform people about both historical data and the relative risks of heat and cold reveals a motive to promote climate fear.

Vijay Jayaraj is a research associate at the CO2 Coalition. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia.