For most people, a few days of 25°C sunshine on the Cornish Riviera would make for a balmy and pleasant holiday. Last year, the Met Office classified three days of this as a “heatwave”, claiming the move was necessary since such “extreme events” were more likely because of climate change. Now comes news of further tinkering, with some eastern counties in England being given a heatwave threshold of 28°C.
Faithfully reporting the Met Office news, the BBC noted that heatwaves were linked to historical climate data. “The U.K. has been experiencing rising average temperatures in recent years as a result of global warming.” Actual Met Office figures suggest otherwise.
Allowing for a margin of error, U.K. temperatures have barely moved for over a decade. In fact according to Met Office statistics, the average temperature across the 2010s at 9.17°C was lower than the 2000s recording of 9.31°C. According to accurate satellite data, global warming started to run out of steam two decades ago, and temperatures haven’t budged for over eight years.
The heatwave classification is a new invention from the Met Office. Introduced last year, it was noted that a scientific study into the 2018 summer heatwave found it was 30 times more likely to have occurred than before the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the “provisional” study was based on climate models which compared today’s climate “with those of the natural climate we would have had without human-induced emissions”. Since scientists cannot quantify the effect of human-caused carbon dioxide on atmospheric temperatures, this exercise is actually a guess. Meanwhile, the Met Office projections of future U.K. climate change “suggest” that the summer temperatures during the 2018 heatwave could be “normal” by 2050. Presumably, the Met Office suggestions were not based on the decade-wide fall in temperature during the 2010s.
Last year’s classifications were based on 1981-2010 data and this has now been moved to 1991-2020. It is not clear why the Met Office used data last year up to 2010, when 2020 data were available at the time. The cynical might observe, however, that the Met Office delayed ditching warming figures from the 1980s and adding the flatlining trend from the 2010s. Even with the jump in warming from the 1990s, the current level is only about 0.2°C above the 30 year average. If the 1990s were removed, the increase over 20 years would be minimal and within any margin of heating error. In effect, the Net Zero agenda is being followed, despite warming disappearing from both the local and global temperature records.
Meanwhile, the BBC quoted Dr. Mark McCarthy, head of the Met Office National Climate Information Centre, who noted that temperatures had risen by more than 1°C in some English locations. Areas of Scotland and Northern Ireland are said to have seen temperatures rise by closer to 0.7°C.
In fact, you have to go back to the 1960s to justify this statement for Scotland. The country has seen little warming for over a decade. Scots must be wondering where all this heat they’re told about is. Last month, the Chairwoman of the Climate Change Committee Julia King, Baroness Brown of Cambridge, told the BBC that the average temperature in Scotland over 30 years “has risen by over 0.5°C”. The figure is nearer 0.4°C, but it was clearly cherry picked since most of the rise occurred in the last century.
Let’s see how the 0.7°C stands up against the actual average temperature in Northern Ireland.
Even less well than Scotland it would seem. The average temperature in Northern Ireland has barely moved for two decades.
Again, the sceptical might suggest that the new heatwave classifications are an opportunity to link common summer weather to climate change, via the ever biddable mainstream media. For proper ‘Phew! What a scorcher’ heatwaves, the Met Office has an “Extreme Heat Warning” system in place. According to the Met Office, extreme heat warnings highlight the potential impacts of extreme heat in order to protect lives and property. Heatwave warnings, by contrast, are designed to provide the media and public “with consistent and reliable messaging”.
Few messengers come more reliable than the BBC. Announcing the latest Met Office heatwave changes, it added that human-produced CO2 was a key driver of global warming. “Left unchecked, humans will experience catastrophic warming, with worsening droughts, greater sea level rise and mass extinction of species,” it stated/modelled/thought/made-up.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor
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What rubbish. It’s sweltering out there. Blimey, have even thought about getting me swimming gear out and going for a dip. Live by the over-heated seaside. Global cooling, oops, heating is real.
Now comes news of further tinkering, with some eastern counties in England being given a heatwave threshold of 28°C.
In most of Australia, 28 is considered a “lovely day”, even by people of British stock. Nothing under 35 really counts as “hot” (except in Tasmania), and in the seriously hot city of Perth (capital of Western Australia), whinging about the heat is considered pathetic unless it’s over 40.
We are, on the other hand, positively pitiful about what is considered a “freezing cold” day. In Perth, people look stricken if anything under 19 is forecast.
Perhaps it’s all relative?
If you live by the seaside you don’t have to go for a dip. With the fast rising sea levels thing the dip is coming to you.
That’s why we’re the British Isles. We’ll soon be a collection of small land areas. If we’re lucky Nicola Sturgeon will be separated from us by water.
She’ll still blame the English you know.
I find that realistic depiction offensive!!
I’ve met someone who was at school with her, and thought he might have snogged her.
Surely you mean she might have snogged her? Superinjunctions notwithstanding
You beat me to that response!!!!
It’s obviously all that hot air from Alec Fish causing global warming
So fast we have not noticed. So fast that our old pier is still there after over a hundred years. So fast that we have better beaches than we had twenty years ago. So fast that our coastline has hardly changed since the old town was formed. Scary stuff. God help us all.
Ballderdash, time to grow up lad !
Are you frightened?
I think he may have been joking
They’ll not give up on warming until we’re in the middle of an Ice-age or depopulated!
The temperature in Scotland in the 1690s is estimated to be 2C cooler than today. About a quarter of Scotland’s population died. Then England saw the fastest warming on record until 1730. Most famines can be linked to colder periods. I don’t know of a single bad effect from warmer periods. Ensure the warmth while you can (if you can afford the higher fuel costs caused by the climate nutters and their insane policies)
There’s a lot of this going on. The WHO changed the definition of a pandemic just before you know what came along. Then they changed the definition of a vaccine just before you know what came along. And now they change the definition of a heatwave. Anyone would think that there’s an underlying agenda.
The WHO also changed the definition of herd immunity to exclude immunity acquired by natural infection.
The hustle that is ‘global climate change’, if there are any concerns, in reality, the UK is the least of them.
What a load of bollocks. Has the entire world outside these pages gone stark staring insane? A woman isn’t a woman, a man is a woman, non-existent temperature rises are going to kill us all, a Pandemic needs the definition to be changed to be a Pandemic. Disney decides that minorities are under-represented (hint to Disney: they are a minority) so childrens films are going to be inundated with Trans and told that being white and having two parents of the opposite sex makes you abnormal.
“Mommy, why are you a girl? I want a Hermaphrodite Mommy like my friend, who is not a friend because that excludes They who have no friends, at my all-inclusive school which we can’t call a school any more because it excludes They who do not go to a not a school”.
Where does this shite end?
“Has the entire world outside these pages gone stark staring insane?”
Yes.
No, most of the world has not gone mad. It’s just a (very small but influential) part of it.
Got it in one.
It’s about time people got punched in the mask.
They can cover their ugly mugs if they want but don’t ask me> total idiots
If history is any guide, these things tend to be self correcting.
I think you’ve inadvertently hit the nail on the head. I’ve noticed over the past couple of years that the main developments that us sceptics have balked at have been those that employ the clever use of language manipulation as illusory justification for new measures. In all the areas of current controversy, i.e. Woke revolution, Climate hysteria and Covid derangement, we have seen ushered in some new definition for a long-understood term of reference.
We’ve seen language-manipulators alter out of all recognition the definition of a woman (and perhaps also a man), there’s been the naming and shaming of a whole new class of dissenters weirdly labelled “climate deniers”, the definition of “herd immunity” has been altered (or at least they did for a while until enough people noticed at which point they changed it back again), a whole new concept of dying “with” a disease rather than “of” it has been forcibly rammed into our common parlance.
Anthropologists have long recognized that language affects the way we think and relate to the world; and the way we think, in turn, moulds our behaviour.
And what is the primary purpose of SPI-B within SAGE throughout all this? To manipulate our BEHAVIOUR. It all fits together!
How bad is it?
The parents seem to be encouraging and empowering both of the girls to follow their lesbian feelings and celebrate being part of the gay community – except that they don’t have any lesbian feelings. Or any heterosexual feelings. They’re two girls aged 7 and 8 who love hanging out with each other and affectionately hug and kiss.
Just Stop Oil, or I’ll zip tie myself to a post!!
“I was hoping that Vlad would turn the supply off just for a couple of weeks long enough to give these idiots a rude awakening and show them there is no unicorn fart alternative.
When they can’t get the avocado for their toast, have rolling blackouts etc they might get the message.”
“Why is it that the most vehement and ignorant protesters seem to be posh, young, white, women? They have an arrogance about them and a condescending manner of speaking. Is it about racism, which they have never experienced, but feel the need to expound upon because the black folks, in their opinion, are just too inarticulate to do it for themselves?”
“It’s the Joanna Lumley or Emma Thompson syndrome.”
“I feel sorry for them.
After all it must have taken ages for this fellow to walk to the ground from his mud hut in the forest where he lives off berries and leaves.
Plus imagine how difficult it must be to organise a protest by carrier pigeon.
Set aside any questions about how he found out there is oil.
Or a football match.
Or money to gain entrance.”
This saddo who held up the football for 8 minutes with his pathetic stunt, was actually funded by the owner of a shitty little football team called Forest Green Rovers. The hippy owner of FGR was approached by a group of unwashed tree huggers who were out to cause chaos for their love of the planet. Hippy gave them £10k to start up their shit stirring and was laughing as he read what they had done on live tv. They all need to be shot.”
“Is that a plastic cable tie around his/her/their neck?
I wonder if he/she/they know what they are made from.”
“I wonder if they considered what would happen if someone like me ran onto the pitch and pulled like Billy-O on the free end of the cable tie.”
Would have been even funnier if they had left him there and carried on with the game
Comment of the Week Award
Some people will do anything to get a seat near the action.
Shots in anyone? 50,000 from the crowd queue up for a go ….
Thanks for providing a window into the Madstream Media, EF – I don’t look at any other “news” websites these days.
Stopped looking at anything BBC over three years ago. I get angry when I see the logo. The National Horror Service’s logo has the same effect. And HM Gov’s.
My understanding was they had raised the thresholds,thus potentially limiting new heatwave qualifications?
With rising sea levels, you’d of thought the super rich wouldn’t build their houses on sea shores as they’re putting their lives at risk from the storms and flooding that’ll occur. Unless they know something we don’t know.
Also why is the Maldives building several airports when all the islands will be under water soon as they should be under water now from the predictions back in the 00″s.
The annual mean temperature tells us nothing about heatwaves. Most of the warming has been in the winters, which were much colder in the 19th century, so presenting an annual mean is obfuscatory.
1947 was one of the coldest winters on record. It’s certainly true the climate has changed but that is why we are alive and able to type on these pages. Do these numpties not realise that climate change happens in cycles and alters every single day and has done for billions of years?
Anyone else remember when 24 hour licencing was brought in by Labour because “by 2010 it will be too hot to go out in the day. We will all be eating al fresco at 10:30 at night”?
I quite frankly couldn’t care less how many heatwaves are ‘defined’.
What I do care about is idiotic politicians thinking they actually have to DO something based on those ‘definitions’.
My jaundiced view on a lot of things is as follows:
I’m sure you understand the nominal concern for heatwaves is not about the effect of sun and heat on the natives. It is another hook on which to pin “extreme” weather events that are normal, which in turn emphasizes our headlong run towards climate Armageddon etc etc.
All manipulation to endorse the narrative.
Summer 1976 – peaking 35C or more in some parts of Britain and lasting from mid June to the end of August with 15 consecutive days at 32C or more – many parts of the south went 45 days without any rainfall at all and water was being rationed – I remember my mum and myself queuing at a standpipe for water.
Now that was a heatwave.
What a wonderful summer and year that was; some great 70’s music too and my first real ‘big love’.
What a summer!! I was only 6 and I remember falling off my skateboard and grazing one side of my face. Two weeks later I went out and fell off the thing again and grazed the other side.
And 1975 was pretty good as well. Not as hot but still a sunny dry summer. Happy days.
Actually we could do with some heating up generally, like the medieval warm period (would it be an Elizabethan warm period for us?) It would save on those ever increasing power bills.
I can remember that as well. As you mentioned water supply problems, the other term that could be redefined might be “drought”. Wouldn’t be surprised if some water companies have a pop at changing the official definition. It depends on things like reservoir levels, average rainfall and so on.
In Ireland we had a heat warning last week at 17 ‘C. Really.
That’s not all you had.
I know. Ridiculous and farcical, isn’t it?
More sinister than farcical. What on earth were they doing in Ukraine? Is that an African’s first instinct, a cold eastern province near Russia?
It can’t end well.
Not a bit of it.
It is double virtue signalling.
They are both black and Ukrainian (sort of) so you get to tick two boxes and polish a double halo at the one time.
(I know how mean that sounds – but it has to be said – I feel sorry for the Ukrainian people who are nothing other than pawns in this game and it is all designed to get people used to refugees flooding into countries – same way as we had to get used to masks and testing to bring in vaxx passports – because this isn’t the last lot of refugees to be created, this is only the start of it. And it is all manipilation.)
These people can change the definitions of things and the meanings of words all they like. It doesn’t change the actuality.
I’m sure in Australia a heatwave is three days above 35 degrees. It would be pointless having the threshold at 25 as that would make the entire summer a heatwave.
Is this The Daily Mash or The Daily Sceptic? You could nae make this stuff up!
We need rid of these promoters of the climate change myth and their replacement with free thinking real people.
The conversation about anthropogenic climate change has been degraded by egregious data frauds, of which Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ fraud and the retrofalsification of 1930s warm period and medieval warm period historic temperature data, are perhaps the best known. It’s not possible to have a sensible scientific conversation about anthropogenic climate change when one of the positions is predicated on fraud. For brilliant forensic analysis of historic climate data, please see videos by Tony Heller.