The Tale Of Two Summers–2023 v 1976
By Paul Homewood
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66084543
It seems an age since we had that couple of weeks of nice sunny weather in June.
Of course, it generated all sorts of extravagant claims, and we were told it was evidence of climate change in action.
Since then the month has been brought up routinely whenever discussion of the “heatwave summer” has reared its head, ignoring the inconvenient fact that the British summer since has been distinctly cool.
As I pointed out at the time, it was a long way from being the hottest June on record here, with the longer running CET series showing that it was only the fifth warmest, with June 1846 being more than a degree hotter.
The warmth this year arose from the fact that the warm, sunny weather lasted pretty much from start to finish of the month. But at no stage did temperatures become exceptionally high:
CET daily max temperatures only reached 28.6C, which is not unusually high for June at all:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
But the most deceitful claim was that it had been “even hotter than 1976”, which the Met Office described as part of the well-known summer of 1976.
This statement was deliberately intended to fool the public into believing that June 2023 had been in some way exceptional.
It was of course no such thing.
As I explained at the time, any comparison with 1976 was meaningless, as the heatwave that year really only got going in the last week of the month, unlike this year:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
But when it did get going, it was far more intense and longer lasting than anything we have seen this summer. Now we have the July data, we can see fully that there is no comparison between 1976 and this summer.
During most summers we see a week or so of hot weather. This year it just happened to arrive in June.
There is nothing unusual or untoward about that fact. It is merely weather, and has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Is that plot actually correct ?
It seems odd that July 1976 looks only marginally warmer than July 2023 ?
1976 was 4c warmer. It’s probably the scaling on the graph that’s misleading. Look closely and much of the month was 5c or so warmer
Well as I have said elsewhere before, that in Scotland, we have had very cold NIGHTS: so much so that fruit has not survived past inflorescence. I too no longer play close attention to the detailed rubbish exuding from the Media. I have my own weather station now and can see for myself and argue with it! Yes , “so cold, or so hot ! Never ! ” Rainfall? hardly know what that was this summer, just an inconvenience of time and quantity. Been a dull COLD Summer overall – and now the night are coming in. Dunno about the Summer of 1976: SNOW on the A9 at beginning of June, SNOW in the Alps blocking roads, Seen / heard of it in later years. This year, past coupla days FROST on top of Cairngorm. Fresh snow on Italian ALps too. ( Silenced rained and we remained sleeping)
So is there a record for the COldest night time temps in the UK ( aka Scotland) – and then How DO You measure average daytime Temps for a Country ? As farmers we have accumulated daytime Temps for growing crops. ( Sssh… did you hear someone speak about it? Hussh now! )
I was walking in SW Scotland in June and it was beautifully warm and sunny. I think the Met Office has capitalised on this by claiming that the whole UK had a record since Scotland has a large land area. Paul’s comparison relates to CET, which only covers England. However people don’t experience the average UK weather – they experience the local weather which in Scotland was very pleasant, albeit with a few midges!
Meant just as a comment, BBC report relates to UK, Hmm CET ( Central ENGLAND Temps, then ?) – never took much notice before ( we are all still a part of the UK: and since from London the North refers to Manchester, and NOT Northumberland/Cumberland (CUMBRIA), where is Central England?
Funny though how in general terms, scots ( like me) will bring up these issues – what’s wrong with the Welsh & Irish? – are they not also a part of the UK./ British Isles ?
walking in SW Scotland – SHould have witnessed the shorter but COLDER nights in the North. Difference a 100 miles makes. Why don’t we have a Scottish version of CET ? Hot summer ? 1/2 day at 26C, other 1/2 day at 6C, = 16C …. not particularly hot then, just that the nights were so cold.
I, for one, am racked off with this constant hyperbole, constructed by tweaking data, by so called trustworthy sources – the fact is, they are not trustworthy,mits all part of the blobs big ramp up to declare a climate emergency, then they can order you to buy battery cars & heat pumps and have wind & solar farms in your back garden, all in the good cause of putting the climate in order – it’s just infantile, grubby, self serving bilge and I will never capitulate to the false science religion
There hasn’t been any summer anywhere near as warm and as prolonged as 1976. Yet we didn’t get all the “climate” hysterics in 1976
You are correct, I remember it well, I was 21yo! I also remember the winter of 1962,63, when I was 7yo. I remember building snowmen with my (now grown up) children. My 3 children were born in May, June and July, so I have fond memories of those, plus photos and videos.
However I cannot recall drab, dreary days stuck in the house. I can also say that I have not noticed any more extreme weather events affecting me personally. However with satellite technology there are obviously going to be more definitive reports of extreme weather, not because they are more frequent, but because they can be reported, from the vast increase in measurements that are available. Chalk and cheese summarises this perfectly!
We even had a Minister for Rain in ‘76 – was it Denis Howell?
Indeed it was, although actually appointed Minister for Drought in the final week of August 1976.
He was very effective: the heavens opened about a week after his appointment.
Huh, Confirms Heathen religion then! .. so what’s changed?
There was a lot of rain and he became Minister for Floods, truly a Man for All Seasons… He was also a football referee, which I don’t think had any impact on the weather.
Well, it isn’t just the UK. Here in Valencia it’s a warm 33 degrees but according to the local newspaper, it’s the hottest evah at 46 degrees. And guess where that measurement came from? Valencia airport.
And I see that a Times report claimed that Antartica is 40C warmer than it should be for the time or year??! That is per a letter in today’s Times. I don’t pay attention any more, so extreme are the claims pushed out. But where did that one come from too?
Japanese Showa site says Antarctic has been gently cooling for fifty years
I went out for the day today. Due to it being wet for most of the last 5 weeks all the windows were shut in my south facing conservatory. After the first clear sunny day I came home to find the *Six thermometer in there reading 52°C so I have notified both the Met Office and the BBC of my new UK record (I really have!) So….given their recent track record of reporting any old rubbish site do I now hold the UK record?
*Obviously a highly technical term I used just to impress (sarc off)
The CET for July 2023 was very close to the average. It was not exceptionally cool. It was just like the July’s of my boyhood. Rubbish.
Another genuine Climate Scientist challenging the climate alarmism:
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/overwhelming-consensus-climate-change-crisis-is-manufactured-says/
All who neglect the summer of 1976 and its impacts should read ‘The Great Drought of 1976’ by Evelyn Cox, published in 1978. It really does put present-day, mild and short-lived warm spells into perspective!
So far this summer there has been 4ins of snow on the Zugspitze in Germany. Not much global boiling going on there.
Climate change made the chance of surpassing the previous joint record at least twice as likely, said no scientists ever.
The old “We-can’t-blame-it-on-climate-change-so-we-are-going-to-blame-it-on-climate-change” trick.
‘climate extremes principal fellow’
Christ on a bike! Climate, BY DEFINITION, can’t have ‘extremes.’ Met Office chief meteorologist DOES NOT KNOW WHAT CLIMATE MEANS.
The head guy, the big boss, doesn’t know what he’s talking about !!!
‘”That’s significant in a warming climate and because of the consequential impacts on society,” he added.’
Well, yeah, people will enjoy life more.
‘The Met Office used a supercomputer to analyse the temperatures and identify the fingerprint of climate change on the weather.’
Kamala Harris working for the Met Office now?
‘”We found that the chance of observing a June beating the previous joint 1940/1976 record of 14.9°C has at least doubled since the 1940s,” explains Mr Davies.
“Alongside natural variability, the background warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to human-induced climate change has driven up the possibility of reaching record-high temperatures,” he added.’
This is from ADULTS.
Just about every sentence in this BBC report can be shredded. Middle school science fair junk. Except kids have an excuse.
Run a model with no skill that assumes climate change against a model with no skill that assumes no climate change and that can not be verified in any way and then claim the result proves climate change.
If I constructed a model that linked articles on the BBC about climate change to higher temperatures, and ran it, then ran that model but with no BBC articles, I’d prove higher temperatures were caused by the BBC.
But Phoenix, if you use a ‘supercomputer,’ it will give you a correct answer.
Adult scientists think the intelligence is in the hardware, not the software.
Watching them clutch at wafer-thin straws of supposed climate goings-on is some small amusing consolation for the damage their incessant propaganda is doing.
This is a full C&P from Juliet Samuels latest piece in the Times. This is normally paywalled but for some reason a link at Guido has opened it all on my phone, so here it is.
I think it deserves a new post on its own, as Juliet is effectively saying what this site and its readers have been saying for years!
Blind faith and bans won’t get us to net zero.
Before betting the economy on hitting the 2050 target, we need solutions to help with the transition to green energy.
Juliet Samuel (https://www.thetimes.co.uk/profile/juliet-samuel)
Wednesday August 09 2023, 9.00pm, The Times
Net zero, we are taught, is an area of policy that can afford no doubt. To doubt is to deny. To deny is to see the planet burn. For years, these nostrums have guided ministers. Anyone worried about the huge costs and practicalities of net-zero policy was best off staying quiet for fear of being labelled a denialist dinosaur. Either you were “for” the planet or against it. Those who were “for” could be forgiven any and every policy failure because it was in aid of Mother Earth.
Yet what a failure they have produced. The Climate Change Committee, the papal seat of net zero, says we are not going to meet our targets. Energy prices are unacceptably high. Investment is insufficient and the policy is strangling, rather than stimulating, economic growth. Signs that Rishi Sunak might adjust policy to take account of this failure have, naturally, seen him branded a danger to the planet. But we are overdue a reckoning. The main risk is that Sunak’s rethink will not go far enough.
The problem is that the government’s primary tool — the target — is insufficient and, on its own, downright damaging. Ministers appear to think that if they legislated the ends (all new cars electric by 2030, all electricity green by 2035 and net zero by 2050), the means would simply appear. But the energy system is not a dartboard. It is more akin to a patient undergoing a blood transfusion. If you wish to switch the blood supply from red to green, the responsible approach would be to secure a supply of compatible green blood before draining out the red. To perform the operation any other way, it should be obvious, risks severe damage to the patient. Yet the UK’s approach has been the opposite. We have set legal targets requiring a reduction in regular blood use and simply assumed that green alternatives will be available on the desired timescale. This is grossly irresponsible.
Pointing this out should not mark one down as a “climate denier”. Most British people trust scientists and most of the relevant scientists think greenhouse gas emissions are a serious problem. As a nation, we watch Sir David Attenborough and put out bird feeders and fret about icecaps and forests and the pernicious, all-permeating tide of plastics. Man-made climate change? Yes, most of us believe in it.
But no, that does not give self-appointed climate martyrs permission to visit unplanned, impractical policies upon us. Climate change belief should be tempered by scepticism of dramatic predictions of what’s coming, theories rolled out with great fanfare and based upon massive simplifications.
Politicians themselves engage in a sort of doublespeak. I recently saw the shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband appear on a Chatham House panel and claim, with great conviction, that “going green is not some expensive luxury — it’s the cheaper option”. A few minutes later, a fellow panellist declared that investing “a hundred billion” was not enough and “we need to move to trillions”. “I agree,”
exclaimed Miliband. “This is 200-dimensional chess.” In the 200th dimension, trillions come cheap.
Instead of fixating upon how many magic costless zeroes they can attach to pledge cards and placards, climate campaigners ought to engage with the practical problems of the energy transition. How is it possible, for example, that our government can outlaw new petrol cars while doing almost nothing to ensure a sufficient car-battery industry is available to replace them? How can our officials claim to be doing their jobs when they are implicitly relying solely on the principle that “China will provide”?
It is the same with the grid. Supposedly, all our electricity will come from “green” sources by 2035. This requires the construction of floating offshore wind farms on a scale never seen before. So where is the government’s plan to secure a fleet of service ships to lift 1,000-ton wind turbines in and out of the sea, to build and maintain them? How many orders is it placing at Singapore’s busy shipyards to construct these expensive vessels, and what discount might it gain by planning ahead? What incentives is it creating to clear the unbelievable backlog for connecting new infrastructure to the grid? What is the official assessment of new power-storage technologies, from batteries to liquid air, needed to make renewables reliable, and what is the backup plan if they don’t come through? How is any of this “cheap”?
t isn’t, and it isn’t going to happen as quickly or easily as our targets assume. It does not matter how many pensioners paint themselves purple and slow-walk in front of traffic. It is difficult to build a ship that can lift a huge turbine hub on and off a 300-metre tower when both are bobbing about in the ocean. That does not mean it is impossible. But it is a vast undertaking.
Rather than betting our economy on the chance that all of this quickly materialises, we should adopt a proactive but pragmatic approach. The surest way to get emissions down globally without crashing economies would be to replace coal generation with gas, ramp up nuclear power generation and move to new energy storage systems when they are ready. The government should stop taxing the North Sea to death, stop lobbying allies against gas development and accelerate the glacial pace of nuclear funding decisions.
Instead, policy is set by default: if in doubt, ban. The Climate Change Committee, which has no mandate to consider Britain’s security or prosperity, is a perfect example of unaccountable officialdom not bound to consider real-world consequences of its proposals, like the decimation of British industry in favour of coal-fired Chinese production. In one breath, it criticises “restrictive planning rules”; in the next, it recommends a complete ban on airport expansions. Yet by elevating net zero to the status of law while doing little to achieve it, the government has recklessly handed power to quangos, courts and campaigners.
What do we have to show for this extraordinary approach to the climate problem? Greenhouse gas emissions have been falling in the United States and Europe for decades yet global emissions are higher than ever. Among the biggest contributors to western decarbonisation have been economic stagnation and outsourcing to China.
Yet the green lobby want to double down with “low-emission zones” to chase out cars, bans on gas, heat pump mandates, more burdensome rules on industry and so on. Sceptics of this programme do not hate the planet. They hate the
platitudes, empty promises and downright feckless years of policy that net zero has come to represent.
I’ve said many’s a time before as a result of involvement in HGV management: The Government , or moer precisely? the DVSA ( now ?) wants you to have a HUNGER for COMPLIANCE. such is the state of the / OUR Country. Did anyone vote for that or see that term in any political manifesto?
Quite why most people trust scientists is beyond me. They are simply normal humans and as such as prone to lying, fraud, deceit, ego, desire to be important, unwillingness to admit error as the rest of us. The scientific method was designed precisely because of this, and scientists have spent 200 years trying to get round the Method.
Cultural Marxists are just exploiting people’s trust in science. That they are destroying science is of no concern to them. Anything that will reduce your freedom is fair; the end justifies the means.
“Most British people trust scientists and most of the relevant scientists think greenhouse gas emissions are a serious problem.”
So eminent, time served scientists like Dick Lindzen and Will Happer and many, many more are “irrelevant”? A very large percentage of IPCC contributors are economists, social scientists, political scientists, policy wonks, behavioural psychologists, urban geographers, (look it up) and NGO’s.
“Scientists say” Some do but lots of others disagree vigorously.
The article, whilst welcome in challenging the measures, still swallows the Big Lie of CO2 cooking the planet.
In the Aug 9th Thursday edition of the Daily Telegraph, in the centre pages, one Allister Heath had a good article on ‘carbon budget five year plans’ and the baleful pressure and influence of the ccc, no scientists therein. It is, all predicated on the 2008 climate suicide pact made up by FoE agitator bryony worthington and under the aegis of the toothy one blood red communist – Ed milipeed. Read it and despair and unless this dreadful perfidy 2008 act is binned, the rush to shut down the country because green is ratchet to, guarantor of: immiseration and poverty.
On the temps and hottest since time began, you will often hear the bbc forecasters mention in winter that, London can be upwards of 3 degrees (C) warmer than the surrounding countryside, they do not let on about the same during the summer months, now why could that be I wonder?
“the ccc, no scientists therein”
Unfortunately, in amongst the vested interests of people like Deben, Heaton, (now left) and Baroness Brown and the fingers in lots of pies of the rest, they do have a couple of IPCC stalwarts to give pseudo credence. https://www.theccc.org.uk/about/
The ardent Piers Forster from Leeds University is currently acting Chairman and they have Corinne Le Quéré, former Tyndall Director and now Professor of Climate Change Science UEA. https://tyndall.ac.uk/people/corinne-le-quere/
George Soros is represented by a guy from the Institute for New Economic Thinking, set up with $50million from Soros in 2009. This body of global financiers has the first Chair of the CCC, Adair Turner, as a Senior Fellow. He got a job with Soros on leaving the CCC.
The CCC are of course committed to EDI:
“There is a need to increase diversity across the CCC, so that it is more reflective of the society we serve. The CCC is currently underrepresented in terms of people from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic backgrounds. It is also underrepresented in terms of LGBTQ+ and in terms of disability. Improving diversity benefits the CCC in providing a greater understanding of how our work and our policies are received, understood and perceived.”
Perhaps the BBC climate reporters should read some of the BBC’s own “Science” output.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66407099
The “SCience”is settled eh?
So we’ve got to ‘global boiling’, where do we go next after boiling? that’s my question. Flambé, roasting, steaming, microwaving, incinerating?
The idea was introduced by Hansen in 2015. These “new” phrases have often been used before but they like to recycle: https://www.climateconversation.org.nz/2015/07/yes-dr-hansen-says-our-oceans-will-boil/
“That means once the planet gets warmer and warmer then the oceans begin to evaporate, and water vapour is a very strong greenhouse gas, even more powerful than carbon dioxide, so you can get to a situation where it just… the oceans will begin to boil and the planet becomes so hot that the ocean ends up in the atmosphere and that happened to Venus. That’s why Venus no longer has carbon in its surface. It’s atmosphere is made up of… basically of carbon dioxide because it had a runaway greenhouse effect.”
I was 8 during the 1976 heatwave. I don’t think it was as intense heat wise here in Ireland as it was in the UK but it was certainly prolonged – I can remember returning home from our mobile home on the West Coast at the end of August and the entire countryside was brown and parched.
There has certainly never been a summer like it since – 1995 was close but not quite as prolonged.
BTW how long do you reckon it will be before the fires on Maui are blamed on global warming?