The ECHR Climate Changed Heatwaves Human Rights Ruling IGNORED The Fact That The 1947 Swiss Heatwave Was More Intense Than 2003

So, here we are at last. Peak insanity in the climate change grift, where any Tom, Dick or Harry can now take their government to court to argue successfully that their ‘yuman’ rights have been violated because of a gloriously hot summer or even a few hot days in an otherwise unremarkable or abysmal summer caused by the failure of said government to ‘do its bit’ in addressing the putative ‘man-made climate crisis’. A group of female pensioners in Switzerland did just that and the ECHR has ruled in their favour.

I mean, you can’t make it up; life doesn’t imitate art anymore, it exceeds it - this ruling puts even the Hollywood satire ‘Idiocracy’ to shame.

Some old biddies living in Switzerland got miffed because they have health issues which means they were reluctant to go out and enjoy the nice hot weather in Switzerland which everybody else was enjoying so they decided to take the Swiss government to court for not doing enough to protect them from climate changed heatwaves!

No, seriously:

STRASBOURG, France, April 9 (Reuters) - Europe's top human rights court ruled on Tuesday that the Swiss government had violated the human rights of its citizens by failing to do enough to combat climate change, in a decision that will set a precedent for future climate lawsuits.

The European Court of Human Rights's ruling, in favour of the more than 2,000 Swiss women who brought the case, is expected to resonate in court decisions across Europe and beyond, and to embolden more communities to bring climate cases against governments.

But in a sign of the complexities of the growing wave of climate litigation, the court (ECtHR) rejected two other climate-related cases on procedural grounds. One of these was brought by a group of six Portuguese young people against 32 European governments and another by a former mayor of a low-lying French coastal town.

The Swiss women, known as KlimaSeniorinnen and aged over 64, said their government's climate inaction put them at risk of dying during heatwaves. They argued their age and gender made them particularly vulnerable to such climate change impacts.

Even the old biddies themselves couldn’t believe it:

One of KlimaSeniorinnen's leaders, Rosmarie Wydler-Wälti said she was struggling to grasp the full extent of the decision.

"We keep asking our lawyers, 'Is that right?'. And they tell us 'it's the most you could have had. The biggest victory possible'."

It’s true love, you rolled them over and now every eco-fanatical chancer everywhere is going to come crawling out from under a rock (when the heat subsides) to claim that their human rights are being trampled on because it’s too hot or too cold, too wet or too windy, or whatever.

The Settled Science of Climate Changed Heatwaves

Here’s the court application by these women: KlimaSeniorinnen v Switzerland (ECtHR) I want to look at Observations on the facts, admissibility and the merits by Klimaserioninnen, filed on 2nd Dec 2022. This is what it says:

The science is clear and an accepted fact: global temperatures are rising as a direct result of the increase in the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases (“GHGs”); there is a near-linear relationship between cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions and global warming. These increases cause more frequent and intense heatwaves, including in Switzerland, where annual temperatures have increased by around 2.1°C since measurements began. Swiss summer temperatures in 2003, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022 were the highest ever recorded. Increasing temperatures and heatwaves entail increased mortality and pose serious health risks, particularly to older women, as the Respondent accepts. Of all climate hazards, heat-related mortality in Europe, for people over 65, is by far the most significant cause of death. Swiss summer heatwaves resulted in: almost 1,000 more deaths in June and August 2003; approximately 800 more in June, July and August 2015; 185 more in August 2018; 521 more in June to August 2019; and in June to August 2022, 1,700 more people over 65 died than was statistically expected. From 1991 to 2018, of warm-season heat-related deaths in Switzerland, around 30% could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change.

Sure was a lot excess deaths of pensioners in summer 2022, which was nowhere near as persistently hot and dry as summer 2003, when only 1000 excess deaths were recorded. I wonder how many of those deaths were cardiovascular related? Also, from 1991 to 2018, just 30% of warm season heat-related deaths could be attributed to climate change, which means 70% couldn’t. So did these women single out the dangerous heatwaves which could be attributed to climate change and base their claim against the government only on those? Of course not; they just waffled on about some nebulous, unspecific statement in AR6 supposedly linking climate change to heatwaves:

Human-induced global warming leads to more frequent and more intense heatwaves. In its recent Sixth Assessment Report (“AR6”), the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) concluded that it is “virtually certain that hot extremes (including heatwaves) have become more frequent and more intense across most land regions (…), with high confidence that human-induced climate change is the main driver of these changes.” For Switzerland as part of West and Central Europe, there is high confidence that observed changes in hot extremes are caused by human influence.

In AR6 the IPCC “reaffirms with high confidence (…) that there is a near-linear relationship between cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the global warming they cause. Each 1,000 GtCO2 of cumulative CO2 emissions is assessed to likely cause a 0.27°C to 0.63°C increase in global surface temperature with a best estimate of 0.45°C.” Each additional tonne of CO2 emitted worsens climate impacts, including the severity and frequency of heatwaves. Thus, the IPCC states that “with every additional increment of global warming, changes in extremes continue to become larger. (…), every additional 0.5°C of global warming causes clearly discernible increases in the intensity and frequency of hot extremes, including heatwaves.”

The plaintiffs claim that Switzerland has been particularly badly hit by heatwaves recently:

Switzerland is particularly affected by climate change (§1). The summers of 2003, 2015, 2018, 2019 and 2022 are the five warmest summers recorded in Switzerland, with that of 2003 and 2022 the first and second hottest since records began.

All in the 21st century note. When did records begin? 150 years ago according to MeteoSwiss, but only for some stations:

The MeteoSwiss data archive dates back up to 150 years for some locations, allowing long-term comparisons to be made and trends to be derived.

So, an incomplete record at best. But we do have fairly reliable data going back to 1947 and, unmentioned by our geriatric litigants, there was a particularly intense and prolonged summer heatwave that year in Switzerland (which you might have thought a fair proportion of them remembered first hand - but OTOH they would have been kids then and were probably out all day frolicking in the sun, like kids used to do before the ‘climate crisis’ made it just too dangerous).

I wrote about this 1947 heatwave in 2019 and it was in many respects even more severe than the 2003 heatwave. The difference is, in 1947, nobody was claiming that it was ‘climate change wot dunnit’ and they would not have been able to even if they tried, because global GHG emissions back then were tiny compared to what they are now. Indeed, back then it was atmospheric dynamics (weather) which was responsible for the heatwave. I quote:

In 2013, scientists from the Oeschger Centre for Climate Change Research and Institute of Geography, University of Bern, Switzerland analysed the heatwaves in Switzerland during 1947 using Meteo-Swiss weather records and the 20th Century Reanalysis (20CR) dataset based on NCEP. Here is what they found:

The heatwaves of 1947 can be compared with the events of 2003 in terms of intensity and duration.

The meteorological situation was characterized by a high-pressure bridge over Central Europe.

This report focuses on the heat period of 1947 in Switzerland. The summer of 1947 marked the culmination of a prolonged drought period that affected central Europe from around 1945 to the early 1950s.

The authors make it clear that it was atmospheric dynamics (circulation patterns/blocking high) which primarily caused the heatwave – just like in 2003, 2018 and now 2019.

The variability of air temperature in general and of extreme temperature events in particular is governed by atmospheric circulation. In particular, persistent high-pressure systems and associated circulation patterns may lead to positive anomalies of surface air temperature affecting a large area over prolonged time periods (Kysely and Huth, 2008). Heatwaves are often caused by quasi-stationary anticyclonic circulation anomalies or atmospheric blocking, which may be sustained or amplified by land-atmosphere feedbacks (IPCC, 2012). This is also the case for the region under study (Rüttimann et al., 2009).

I stress, there is very little evidence to suggest that any heatwave in central Europe and Switzerland, including those occurring during the 21st century, have been caused primarily by a modest rise in mean surface temperature since 1950. There is plenty of evidence to suppose that atmospheric circulation patterns (dynamics) have played the dominant role in the onset, frequency and severity of more recent Swiss heatwaves. The litigants and the judge ignore this scientific evidence apparently and claim that the settled science of climate changed heatwaves is beyond all doubt. But as I showed 5 years ago, the 1947 heatwave drives a coach and horses through this claim:

In the analysis of the maximum temperature from the 14 meteorological stations, 29 July was the hottest day during summer 1947. The mean maximum temperature from all lowland (<560 m a.s.l.) stations on this date was 36.1 °C; 26.4 °C were reached at 2502 m a.s.l. In Basel 38.7 °C were measured – the highest recorded temperature during the heat period of 1947 and the highest temperature ever observed in Switzerland until 2003 (note, however, that the Wild screen used at that time in Basel was sensitive to radiation errors, see Auchmann and Brönnimann, 2012).

The heat period of 1947 can be compared with the year 2003 in terms of maximum temperatures and duration of the heatwaves. For instance, the maximum temperature anomaly, computed as departures from the 1961-1990 average, of the year 1947 amounted to 5 °C. This is only 1 °C less than for the year 2003. Another aspect is that in Basel, the threshold of 30 °C was exceeded 49 times in 1947, more often than in 2003 (41 times). 

The period of consecutive days during which the maximum temperature exceeded the 90% quantile of the summer temperature was also longer in 1947 than in 2003. During the year 1947 the longest heatwave lasted 14 days from 22 July to 4 August, whereas in 2003 only twelve consecutive heat days were recorded at the beginning of August (Z’Graggen, 2006; Beniston, 2004).

The meteorological situation during the heatwave event in 1947 analysed with the 20CR dataset shows typical features of a heatwave. The stationary high pressure system over the study region – the Central-European High – during the episode from the 22 July to 4 August 1947 is conductive for a heatwave according to Kysely and Huth (2008).

The analysis of the heatwaves in 1947 indicates that the event is comparable to 21stcentury heat periods such as the summer 2003 and that 1947 was extraordinary.

Even if the heatwave 2003 exceeded the maximum temperatures measured in 1947, in terms of the length of a heatwave and the exceedance of the 30 °C temperature threshold, the heat period 1947 was more intense.

So it’s fairly clear that:

• 1947 was comparable to 2003 and both heatwaves were caused by very similar meteorological patterns.

• 1947 maximum average temperatures were just 1C less than 2003

• In terms of duration and number of days above 30C, 1947 was more intense

Given that summers in Europe have warmed significantly since 1950, it is perhaps not surprising that the daily average maximum temperature in 2003 exceeded that in 1947, but that’s the only real difference and by all other metrics, 1947 was more intense. Not forgetting also that urbanisation has increased since 1947 and land use has changed considerably, either of which may have contributed to generally higher temperatures. So, if you’re looking for the climate change signal in the heatwave of 2003, the increase in mean maximum temperature anomaly of 1C is it. Scary (not). Climate crisis (not).

That’s another thing. have these old biddies forgotten that Switzerland was very much more rural when they were born and increasing urbanisation has almost certainly resulted in higher temperatures in urban areas? Or do they all live in the Swiss Alps in wonderful pine lodges? Shouldn’t they be taking the property developers to court too?