Planning for future climate scenarios

Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“Our habit of jetting off to sun holidays won’t end well. Just ask Icarus”, Opinion & Analysis, July 29th) quotes Irish mammies on the harmlessness of rain, but the maternal admonition, “You’ll catch your death of cold” is just as true.

While high temperatures cause tens of thousands of deaths in Europe every year, hundreds of thousands are killed by cold.

A Europe-wide study of two million deaths in 30 countries, recently published in the Lancet, showed 10 times as many deaths caused by cold as by heat.

Planning for future climate scenarios related to non-optimal temperatures must take account of excess mortality at both ends of the thermometer. – Yours, etc,