The heatwave green hysteria is out of control
By Paul Homewood
Brendan O’Neill:
The unhinged eco-dread over the heatwave exposes how millenarian environmentalism has become.
If you find yourself wondering over the next few days why it is so swelteringly hot, I have an answer for you. It’s because of rich people. It’s because of those wealthy elites with all their gas-guzzling vehicles and reckless holidaymaking. It’s their fault you’re sweating on the Tube.
This infantile claim really is being made, and by supposedly serious politicians. Labour’s Richard Burgon, over on his Instagram account, is wringing his no doubt sweaty hands over the filthy rich folk who apparently landed us in this weather apocalypse.
‘As we face 40C temperatures and the first ever Red Extreme Heat Warning, remember this climate crisis is driven by the wealthy’, he cries. His stern words are accompanied, naturally, by that Met Office map showing half of Britain coloured dark red – the hellish hue that has been chosen to illustrate how dire our predicament has allegedly become.
Is anyone else tiring of all this green hysteria over the heatwave? There is something medieval about it. There is something creepily pre-modern in the idea that sinful mankind has brought heat and fire and floods upon himself with his wicked, hubristic behaviour. What next – plagues of locusts as a punishment for our failure to recycle?
The unhinged eco-dread over the heatwave exposes how millenarian environmentalism has become. Climate-change activism is less and less about coming up with practical solutions to the problem of pollution and more about demonising mankind as a plague on a planet, a pox on Mother Earth. These people really do view hot weather as an indictment of humanity, and a forewarning of the imminent heat death of our world that we’ve brought about with all our evil pollution and consumption.
They’re all at it. Caroline Lucas says, ‘The climate emergency is right here, right now’. One observer describes Europe as a ‘continent on fire’ – which just isn’t true, is it? – and says the hot weather is proof of ‘the ravages of climate change’. The words ‘heatwave hell’ are appearing everywhere, and many in the opinion-forming set know exactly who’s responsible for this hell: me and you and everyone else who has dared to live modern, technological lives.
This isn’t the first time a weather event has been depicted as a hell of man’s own making. When the latest IPCC report was published last year, hell talk was widespread. ‘If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth’, said an Oxford prof. And of course we brought all this fiery punishment upon ourselves just as surely as Sodom and Gomorrah invited God’s divine retribution by being so perverted. We are ‘guilty as hell’, the Guardian’s environment editor cried, sounding for all the world like one of those crackpot millenarian preachers you’d see on street corners in the old days.
To my mind, there could be no better proof that climate-change activism has become an End of Days cult than the fact that its chief ideologues are now even incapable of enjoying hot weather. They feel the sun’s rays on their faces and all they can think about is the Armageddon that the modern masses have created with their cheap flights and their 4X4s and their addiction to disposable fashion.
When you see everything as a sign, as further proof of your own apocalyptic belief system, you have a problem.
Let’s have some perspective. Propagandistic terms like ‘extreme weather’ and ‘Weather of Mass Destruction’ are meant to whip up fear in the populace every time there’s sunshine or floods. And yet, as Bjorn Lomborg points out, the number of people dying in climate-related disasters has plummeted spectacularly over the past hundred years.
In the 1920s, close to 500,000 people died every year in storms, floods, droughts and heatwaves. In 2020, just 14,000 people died as a result of such natural calamities. That means global annual deaths from climate disasters have fallen by 96 per cent. The modernity that eco-warriors so disdain has actually helped to protect humanity from the violent whims of Mother Nature.
Lomborg also points out that in most parts of the world, cold deaths ‘vastly outweigh’ heat deaths. So while the warming of the planet might increase heatwaves, it will reduce coldwaves. Which will be very good for human life. Are we allowed to look on the bright side anymore?
This isn’t the first time extreme weather events have been blamed on wicked human beings, whether it’s Richard Burgon’s wealthy elites or just people in general driving their diesel cars and taking two easyJet flights a year. No, in the Middle Ages, too, scapegoats were often sought whenever there was a scary climatic event.
As the German historian Wolfgang Behringer has documented, in the 14th and 15th centuries ‘unnatural climatic phenomena’ were often blamed on ‘a great conspiracy of witches’. During the Little Ice Age in particular, when crops failed in many parts of Europe, there was a frenzy of witch-hunting. Some in society ‘held the witches directly responsible for the high frequency of climatic anomalies’.
Sound familiar? I definitely hear echoes of that old, regressive belief that sinister people are responsible for weird weather in today’s attempt to pin heatwaves on the rich or on coal-mining or on motorists. Environmentalism has rehabilitated in pseudo-scientific form the age-old instinct to find the witch or the sinner who is to blame for society’s misfortunes.
Everyone needs to calm down. We’re safer from weather than we have ever been. It’s sunny. Go outside. Sit in the shade. Have an ice-cream.
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-heatwave-green-hysteria-is-out-of-control
Comments are closed.
Beware, Mr. Brendan O’Neill, there a quite a few eco crazies out there who would have you burnt at the stake for uttering such extreme heresies and no, I ain’t kidding.
Unfortunately, I agree – it’s quite scary!
No. That would be a fire and add to the heat. You’ll have to find some other way to incinerate the poor man without using fossil fuels. At any rate, aren’t the Germans going to need all those wood chips to stop freezing to death in a few months. Waste not, freeze not.
I look on from the other side of the world and am gob smacked at the snow flakes who can’t enjoy a bit of warm, even hot, weather. Hot doesn’t start till you get to 40+C. It’s not as if warm or hot weather has ever been in oversupply in the UK.
There are a lot of the English in AUS. They like the heat and sun, not the cold. They do just fine in hot Wx.
No comment required as to the failure if the BBC to provide unbiased coverage of the health effects of extreme heat and cold. Getting warmer a bit will save a lot of lives, cold kills over 50 times more people than warm. Nota word from BBC news about ambulance shortages and jammed hospitals then, when its much worse. So agenda led they don’t know there is another side to their deceitful story. A disgrace to journalism.
Far too much common sense there. I hope Brendan O’Neill manages to keep his job. Meanwhile, the professor apparently in charge of the Met Office says that thousands are going to die in the UK. It seems we will be unable to cope with a two day blip giving us a taste of what Australia and quite a few other places on this planet deal with every year – sometimes all year. It also ignores the fact that probably 95% of Brits save up to take holidays in places with temperatures like this. Don’t tell me – “THEY” are going to ban the rest of us from taking holidays abroad next.
Brendan is quite safe, I assure you. The day the Spectator and Spiked online give in to wokery really will be the end of days!
My sentiments exactly, I even subscribe to the Speccie from South Africa.
Spiked gets its income from donations, which would all but vanish if Brendan were fired.
No, not banned, but a friend of an MP’s wife will thank him for allowing his insurance company to raise holiday insurance rates for hot destinations.
Please name the ridiculous Met Office professor, he needs exposing and replacing.
“If we do not halt our emissions soon, our future climate could well become some kind of hell on Earth.”
If we halt our emissions no CO2 will be taken out of the atmosphere and we will be left with the extreme weather we now have. If we halt our emissions the fuels required for transportation will be less and less available and at higher costs. That will be real Hell on Earth.
I would also like to point out that the NOAA Observatory on Mauna Loa, Hawaii, which is the recognised official measure of atmospheric CO2, demonstrated no difference in the rate at which CO2 was rising during the Covid 19, worldwide lockdown.
No flights, roads deserted, factories closed worldwide for months!
This is a unique and only chance to prove that mankind has little, if any effect on the amount of CO2 entering the atmosphere.
Simplistically, even if man’s emission do directly cause the year on year increase, the covid shutdowns were too small to make an obvious difference. It would have been a small fraction of a ppm.
Roy Spencer has done some good analysis.
Mr GN. The simple question I would put to the alarmist is, what period of emissions was responsible for the heatwave? And, how do you define that as a change in climate, as opposed to weather?
If annual changes in CO2 are plotted against anthropogenic emissions, they are not in lockstep. Likewise with annual changes in temperature.
The BBC is totally unbalanced. When did they report the long queues of ambulances and excessive deaths due to cold events. These are 50 TIMES MORE THAN FROM HEAT EXTREMES. A little bit of warming would reduce deaths from temperature extremes. It was 2deg warmer 3,000 years ago. We did OK then.
And 2000 years ago and 1000 years ago. It has never been hotter the humanities graduates with their trust funds shriek. A couple of small problems with that claim. Firstly, figs were grown around Colchester in Essex during the Roman Warm period and grapes in Yorkshire during the Medieval Warm period, neither of which are possible today. maybe someone forgot to tell that to the Romans and Medieval monks?
Err – you’re wrong. There are commercial vineyards in Yorkshire today and over 600 nationally. I grow figs in my garden here in Oxfordshire. They will die back in severe winters like 2010 but otherwise they ripen fine most years. Vineyards disappeared from England in the 17th century when we had prohibition. When prohibition ended they’d all been destroyed and we had lost the skills and it was too easy just to import. The perpetual english problem. Once we made aluminium and nuclear power stations – no more, we just import.
Also in the MWP.
I can’t find a reference but remember reading that French Wine Merchants complained that English wine was preferred to theirs and so they couldn’t make a decent living.
Indeed growing grapes in Yorkshire is entirely possible. There was an article about it in The Telegraph at the weekend.
My Brown Turkey fig crops a bit in cold summers and heavily in normal ones.
JF
I saw 1 second of Rowlatt in front of his deep red map and a claim that a 4C rise in global temperatures was on its way and swiftly turned to something less inclined to make me swear and risk damaging the TV.
The true figure in The Lancet study [ spanning 1985 – 2012 if I’m not mistaken ] brian is 20 times more cold related deaths than heat induced fatalities ..And that was the moderate cold category
Melted tarmac?
Nothing new here, it can happen during an English summer.
Buckled railway lines?
Ditto.
‘Extreme heat driven by the wealthy’, says Burgon (a more cerebrally-challenged MP it would be hard to find) – And I thought it was a to do with CO2.
Like some guy on Guido today claiming that, all of a sudden, CO2 is able to focus its effect on the UK. DOH
Where will the heat go tomorrow when it cools down? Is our CO2 going to move somewhere else? Boris at G7 said CO2 is like a tea cosy over the planet, we might be getting cold tea tomorrow.
No, not on the UK, but it miraculously manages to heat up the Sea of Marmara at twice the average global rate.
Or something else is causing the problem.
JF
See my post at TCW Defending Freedom 27 June.
He’s probably read the Report by the Cambridge Sustainability Commission on Scaling Behaviour Change which said
“If the richest 10% of society were to bring their emissions in line with the level the average European, and the remaining 90% of humanity made no adjustments to their lifestyles, then global emissions would drop by a third within a couple of years.”
and calculated per capita CO2 consumption emissions for global income groups in 2015 as
Top 1% of income earners c. 75%
Top 10% of income earners c. 23%
Middle 40% of income earners c 5%
Bottom 50% of income earners under 2%
No idea how rigorous their work was but it would perhaps be useful to remind the WEF of those figures now and again.
If Co2 was the problem . . . 9 periods of warming and Cooling during the Holocene over 10,000 years 5 Warming periods warmer than the one we are in . . . CO2 not a leading indicator in ANY of the previous 8 Warming Periods . . . Suddenly Now CO2 is the cause . . . I think NOT !
https://www.allaboutenergy.net/61-environment/climate-change-in-the-past/3200-co2-cradle-of-life-on-planet-earth?highlight=WyJqaW0iLCJsZSIsIm1haXN0cmUiLCJqaW0gbGUiLCJqaW0gbGUgbWFpc3RyZSIsImxlIG1haXN0cmUiXQ==
I haven’t seen the record temperature reported by the Met/BBC yet so i don’t know what it will be but I drove from Reading to Canterbury after lunch today and, yes, it was very hot. i can only go by what my car was telling me but all the way down the M4 it read 34-36 but as soon as I got on to the M25 near Heathrow it immediately jumped to 38/39. As I passed by the airport itself it touched 40C but when we came to a usual halt at the junction with the M3 it went to 42C. Not really surprising as everybody was stationary with their air-con on and there was no air movement. The jam cleared and by the A3 it was down to 38C again and gradually went down to 34/5 for the rest of the journey.
The temperature wouldn’t have been accurate but it showed what can happen at Heathrow. Be interesting to see what the Met comes up with.
Heathrow was not at the head of the pack today.
The high today was at Santon Downham in Suffolk 38.1deg. They seem disappointed but are hopeful 40deg will be reached tomorrow.
I think Santon Downham was mentioned on here recently as being very unreliable for accurate temperatures due to it being very sandy so they get higher highs and lower lows than surrounding temperature stations.
Hey check out this Guardian post of 11th July (I wonder who could have posted such erudite data!?!)
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jul/11/weather-tracker-heatwave-europe-temperatures#comment-157521680
“I predict the UK temperature record will be broken at the weather station at Santon Downham. p.s. this is from a tip off from the clerk of the parish council.
http://santondownham.org”
And here is the NALOPKT article
Hi Mike, be careful when driving around Canterbury particularly Thornden Wood Road on the way to Herne Bay. Without any prior consultation it has been decided to rewild the area with bison apparently to combat climate change. What could possibly go wrong?!
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/canterbury/news/history-made-as-bison-released-into-kent-woodland-270348/
Wolves will come next.
‘You’re going to need a bigger barbie!’
Yes Ray. More bovine farts of course but at least they will be wild ones so that’ll be OK.
Here on the extreme south coast of Devon we had a maximum of 25.5C yesterday. The forecast had been for 32C
The UK news reports are talking about the hottest day ever in Wales. The Scottish news reported a record in Aboyne. Aboyne is not a new Scottish record, it’s just a record for that weather station. And there was a story about grassland fires in Kent, caused by some fireworks.
This all takes me back to the 1970’s when millions of people in the UK were enchanted by Yuri Geller. He sat on our TV screens, mysteriously bending and breaking spoons. After the shows, the telephone calls came rushing: tales of weird happenings like clocks unexpectedly stopping, and dogs jumping up and barking at nothing.
When Geller was broadcasting into millions of homes, something odd was bound to happen in at least a small number of them. Even something at 1-in-a-million chance would have quite easily happened to somebody watching Geller’s show, somewhere in the UK.
It’s a similar thing for these weather stations during an exceptionally warm spell. Let’s not forget that this is just a couple of days, but there is almost certainly going to be a temperature record being set somewhere. And given we are in the middle of July in (what turns out to be) quite a dry summer, there is bound to be uncontrolled woodland fires somewhere across Europe.
The fact that nobody has accurately made specific predictions of these events is a demonstration that there is nothing systematic happening. Not systematic enough to support specific predictions.
To say otherwise is letting superstition and mysticism cloud your thinking. It seems that every journalist on UK TV has fallen victim.
Climate Change the God, CCG, has replaced Zeus, Horus, and a long line of weather gods.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_god
In 2020, the Met Office produced a hypothetical weather forecast for 23 July 2050 based on UK climate projections predicting 40oC plus tempearatures
It would seem the UK has hit this 28 years ahead of time, with a low frequency, high magnitude weather event, easily explained by Meteorological Science. However Climate Science expected it 28 years later. Natural variability falsifying the models again.
Not quite as spectacular a fail as the models of Arctic ice, the lows reached in 2007 were not expected also until 2050.
It is way past the time for some proper science.
You’ve just reminded me Jordan. Wasn’t it as recently as last year the `Met was assuring us that we should prepare for wetter summers.That’s not turning out too well as a prediction so far.
I’m sure you are correct Mike.
Then again there was a period of drought in SE England from around 2010 to 2012, when parts of England were compared with a desert. It was a “new norm” according to Conservative minister Caroline Spelman, and there was talk about GM drought resistant were to be considered for food security. A system of aquifers around London were at historical low levels and there were forecasts that it would take decades to replenish them.
Two years’ of dry conditions is obviously a lot more alarming than 2 days’ of hot conditions, so perhaps we could have some additional sympathy for the scaremongering in circulation in 2012.
But there followed a deluge of rainfall which filled within a very short period. It didn’t take decades after all. Emergency averted.
Which just goes to show that the Met office must have a valid point about those wetter conditions you mentioned. Except when conditions are drier, when it will have an equal-but-opposite a valid point about drier conditions.
It’s all just a question of recent experience. And depressing the impressionable younger generation.
Mike, the Met office has told us to prepare for wetter and dryer and hotter and colder summers. See, the met office is always right!
I’ve fired off another BBC complaint about Justin Rowlatt and his very biased and selective reporting.
Not expecting anything other than the usual it’s what scientists say.
I’m now mulling over an appeal on one of two points, saaving the other for next time.
1. Get these scientists to come to a debate with a sceptic. Using data and why models are running hot and can’t hindcast.
2. Get Rowlatt himself to explain previous warming and cooling. Also why adjustments to historically justified and if he thinks UHI is given enough weight.
At Hull Bridge near Beverley there were hundreds of people sunbathing on the embankments as I made my way home from the gym this evening. Only idiot talking heads are fretting, everyone else is enjoying the fine weather.
Great Article Paul . . .
I live in Vancouver. Last year WE had the ‘Heat Wave’ 6 weeks above 30 degrees. Hit 40 a couple of times . . . Air conditioners full blast ALL DAY ! . . . This year . . . late summer . . . one day above 30. This morning I had to turn on the Heat . . . 14 degrees outside . . . Brrr. The Acadians of eastern Canada have a saying . . . The more things change . . . the more they stay the same !!
OH . . . PS . . . last year all the environmentalists were preaching that this trend would continue thanks to Human Caused Climate Change . . . Hmm . . . Go figure . . .
The BBC are calling it ‘unprecedented’. Not today’s high, which was not and which they got wrong.
What was ‘unprecedented’ was the fact that they were predicting 40 degrees for today, is their scaremongering line. The fact that it was wrong doesn’t matter.
It’s like predicting 6 feet of snow for tomorrow. Such a forecast would also be unprecedented. The fact that it would also be wrong doesn’t matter.
They demonstrably showed disappointment that no records were broken today followed but don’t worry it will be even hotter tomorrow so we will get a new record.
Some records were broken, eg Wales, but yes not reaching 40C was obviously ‘disappointing’. But the BBC just switched to the ‘point of maximum danger’ was always Tuesday; yes 40C for a few hours is obviously so much more dangerous than 38.7!
BBC Scotland reporters at the very top of their game …
“The top temperature in the port town [of Lerwick] was 14C. […] It was also less than half the heat that was recorded 250 miles away in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire where the afternoon temperature was 30.2C.”
Here’s the link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-scotland-62214200
Just for the record, the BBC has now edited its moronic text (without any comment to that effect). It now states:
“It was also much cooler than 250 miles away in Aboyne, Aberdeenshire where the afternoon temperature was 30.2C.”
I do so love it when there people demonstrate their utter ignorance of basic science, yet are so sure they are right about quite advanced stuff.
Have you tried the ’10°C is twice as warm as 5°C’ trick? When they nod wisely the follow-up is “how about 50°F and 40°F?”
“Collapse of stout party!” is the usual result!
Here, in South Shropshire, the maximum I recorded yesterday was 30C – 2 degrees below the maximum I recorded in 2004? and 5 below what the Met Office app predicted.
Saturday was the first day this year that I could umpire my cricket team without my thick, wooly jumper and winter thermals on – oh the joy of warmth. 🥶
Fully endorse the analogy with witch hunts, Absolutley spot on.
Hysteria and herds. Madness. It will take an “emperor’s new clothes” moment, probably promoted by The Sun, to cut through the nonsense.
Meanwhile, I;ll have another bottle of Kernow lager and pop a steak on the barbie, while the vegan eco-terrorists are in apoplepsy about a weather event they’ll probably forget about my 4×4.
Unfortunately, nothing seems likely to “cut through the nonsense,” in that cathartic, everyone coming to their senses, way.
For, as Charles MacKay wrote in 1841:
“[ Men] go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.”
And – he could have added – too scared of the Priest-led mobs to even hint at their apostacy.
Every few years, I reread that book “Extraordinary Popular Delusionas and the Madness of Crowds” and find it soothing. It reminds me that the mass is, if not exactly always wrong, always hopelessly chuckleheaded.
I used to say that the CAGW lot were in the “Rapture State.” Perhaps we should say that they are now in the “Rupturing Themselves With Excitement Stage.”
the eco-Satan can be seen around every corner and in every modern activity.
Get thee behind me!
Arseholes. Looks there wasn;t a record yesterday so they have had to fall back on it being a recrod ewarm minimum temperature! UHI anyone?
I now more convinced than ever that UHI is the big culprit. I went to download some Met Office station data recently and noticed the station list is now pretty small, there is a large number at airfields and many only go back to WW2 at the earliest. Interestingly Newton Rigg in the lakes only appears to have opened in 1959 which is odd because I have a spreadsheet with rainfall data for that station going back to 1895…
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/historic-station-data
I might add that reliable polling shows that only 9% of the people of the UK are opposed to the goal of zero emissions by 2050. The propaganda has been extraordinarily effective and that is just a fact. There is no way that the other 91% of people are ever going to look in the mirror and say, “Hello, you moron! Shouldn’t you do the world a favour and kill yourself?” Amour propre is simply too powerful a feature of humans.
Of course most of that 91% are not particularly fanatical, but that is small consolation. The Establishment needs only acqiescence.
ALL others Shall be declared ‘Deniers’ . . .
How the Environmentalists are taught to ‘thwart’ Deniers . . . .
https://scholar.google.ca/scholar?q=Climate+Change+Deniers+.+.&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart
Sick SH!T buddy . . . Science . . . Only Science rules My World . . .
Hi TS if you haven’t already looked at it, this is the go to website for station data (some good sites, some bad ones and some that should be plain illegal)
WOW.metoffice.gov.uk
Also over on Tallblokes blog the late Tom Channon did a great identification and assessment job of most stations.
Very useful link, thanks Ray.
Regarding the TChannon suface stations data on Tallbloke’s blog, I notice the link to the Coningsby (alleged record) site is now broken. Very odd because I am sure it was working a few days ago.
Media is claiming hottest place today was Santon Downham 38.1C
Not to say a hotter place won’t be manually reported late.
Remember this?
Seen any polar bears down your way?
22 Feb 2004.
A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver?fbclid=IwAR3Sp6k74894e8BE1-tx2kKrTikkvCGkCGhj8zmbmLz7TVv-4koL1oGdPMI
The UK record was not broken today but the highest temperature of 38.1 was recorded at – surprise surprise – Santon Downham. You really could not make it up.
Blobby Fibber out and about
He’s got a book coming out apparently
>>> “a href=https://www.amazon.co.uk/Saving-Planet-Without-Bullshit-Climate/dp/1838954627/”> Saving the Planet with the BS !
Off Topic but it was on the TV this evening that a court case has ruled that the government must produce a properly costed plan for Net Zero. Judgement delivered late this afternoon.
Have not seen any details reported yet, but surely this is important.
A case brought by various Green groups.
Yes but we should still welcome it. There will need to be great scrutiny over their costings because I bet they will try to vastly underestimate it.
Do you have any links for it because I couldn’t find anything.
The Wizard’s First Rule: “People are stupid.”
The news coverage has been amusing. ‘expert’ one after the other preaching told you so climate doom, every question to a mop loaded to an answer citing climate change. Kids brainwashed to be afraid.
Well, the children at my local, urban school are perfectly happy at being carried to and from school by car they are that scared!!!!
Meanwhile Melbourne has some of the coldest winter days on record as does Brisbane. Sorry Harry. The world is not on fire, certainly not here this morning.
” frenzy of witch-hunting ” has become a frenzy of SUV hunting. I think that’s improvement!
Only if you are a witch. If you are an SUV owner, not so much so.
Brendan O’Neill and Paul Homewood are an oasis of sanity in this crazy world. All power to them!
What is clearly, statistically, an extremely rare event appears to be almost universally being treated as absolute confirmation of human caused climate change
My wife was reminding me in graphic detail about our life in the summer of ’76, and the long dry period that ensued. Also, that eventually nature catches up with itself and the norms return as it did in September & October ’76 when it seemed to rain continuously. I think we blamed the guy who did the rain dance – what else could have caused it:-)
Then you get those moments when your realise one is getting old – like talking to our neighbour – well established gent with 2 grown up children – when he admitted he didn’t recall much of ’76 as he was only 5 years old. Doh.
Virtually all the vines grown commercially in the UK today are hybrid varieties grafted on to American root stock. Advancements that were not available to the Romans.
The grafts are to prevent attack by phyloxera. The French get sniffy about hybrids, but it’s the way to go. There’s a red cross between Vitis vinifera and Vitis amurensis, the latter a very early ripener which makes proper red English wine.
JF
I found this on you tube earlier.
BBC ‘In our time’ podcasts, (from 2012) the one about Ice Ages was most illuminating.
Already the doomsters are off to a bad start as weather-forecast.com only have 97 as today’s peak – no 102 anymore – from noon until 3pm. Also they have it as 93 by 10am where it is only just touching 90 at 10.30. After the peak it drops hourly to 95, 91, 84 and then just 81 at 7pm. I credit them for getting yesterday’s peak of 95 correct but it was of shorter duration.
So just to get a definitive answer I have hung a datalogger on my thermometer.
I bet this doesn’t happen often – where I am the wind veered last night and the temperature went from 20 to 27C between midnight and 2am!
The 42C doomsday forecast is looking quite fishy. The current Met Office Tmax forecasts for 3 sites in Cambridge differ a lot, 39C at NIAB, 40C at Botanic Gardens, and 41C at the City Airport. They must have a common forecast for Cambridge, then apply a station dependent offset. So I wonder where the headline 42C figure came from … presumably from the highest offsets, the worst sun traps across the country.
Here is a screenshot for NIAB, probably the most respectable station, as it is one of the historical sites whose data are available from the Met Office website:
MO is already claiming a new UK record, Charlwood over 39C.
Looks a bit odd, was a sudden jump from 37C, and other live sources are still registering about 37C.
Actually looks OK considering previous rise rate, other sources also reporting 39.1C now, unlikely to be the hottest.
The Met Office are acting with a total lack of integrity, jumping straight away on data from an amateur weather station (at Charlwood near Gatwick Airport) to claim a new record. The data is available from here:
https://weather.gladstonefamily.net/site/03769
Click on last 7 days to get hourly data, which is 102.4F (39.1 C) at 11.00.
Gatwick Airport is a GSOD station, and it can be used to verify (or not) the above, and there are several other nearby amateur stations, listed at the end of the link above.
A mere 98.6F at 10.50 at Gatwick Airport:
2022-07-19 10:50:00,1011.00,***98.6***,48.2,18,10,150,,,,,,
Yes it sticks out on the MO OBS map as several degrees warmer than surrounding readings, only Heathrow is nearly as hot.
The trouble is if it’s on the list, it’s potentially a legitimate record.
Like I’ve said before, records are pub talking points, not a scientifically rigorous measure of climate change.
Or maybe it’s not that much off.
It’s very hot, who knows!
https://www.netweather.tv/live-weather/daily-top-20/maxt
MO now claims 40.2C at Heathrow.
Quelle Surprise!
WTF Heathrow has to do with climate or long term trends in air temperature beats me. How can that result be compared to 50, 100 or 150 yrs ago at the same location?
But only 39 C (102.2 F) at nearby RAF Northolt:
2022-07-19 11:50:00,1010.00,***102.2***,48.2,16,10,160,,,,,,
Perhaps not many aircraft movements at Northolt today? Where’s Prince Charles when you need him? It’s his duty to support the climate crisis, surely?
I’d bet there’s some “journos” goal hanging around The Walkie Talkie armed with a carton of eggs from a nearby Tesco Metro convenience store to cook ?
None of the media mention the heatwave of July 1808, when the temperature in the London area hovered around 40degrees – before urbanisation, and with a population of only one million compared to today’s ten million. And, of course, no airports!
From Netweather:
Today’s Maximum Temperatures
40.2°c
40°c
40°c
39.5°c
39.2°c
39.2°c
39.1°c
39.1°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
39°c
To me that means that 39C should be the official figure, the higher values coming from sun traps.
How depressing. The press and greenies have gone bonkers.
Yesterday the Met Office said 43 but even with the daft idea of using Heathrow they barely got 40. Put a jet engine near a thermometer on a hot day and act surprised.
So our top scientists forecasts were nearly 3 degrees out only a day ahead, but they claim to tell us what it will be in 50 years.
Self impoverishment of this country through Net Zero looms – while only a few days ago China said Net Zero shouldn’t apply to developing nations like them that are trying to raise living standards – so that means about 7 billion out of 8 billion people on the planet are excused and aren’t even going to try. Which in a way means they are the lucky ones as things will improve for them whilst this country continues its self imposed decline.
Time for a stiff drink.
First ever Red extreme heat warning, didn’t they only start them last year?
Much of the Tuesday night (19-07-22) BBC News program was in a euphoric state as their predicted Climate Emergency had come true for a day or two. They also reported on Boris Johnson’s last cabinet meeting and the words of our great departing PM need to be remembered.
” …with record temperatures in this country, who can doubt that we were right to be the first major economy to go for net-zero. The right thing to do to protect our planet from global warming, and what we did at COP26 was very important for the world. Never forget the massive economy to transition, bringing millions and millions of clean technology driven jobs in the future for our country”
The camera panned to a giant table full of fawning politicians, all smiling and nodding with approval. God help us!