The recent brief heatwave in the U.K. and parts of Europe provides a textbook case of how the weather is being catastrophised to serve the interests of the command-and-control Net Zero agenda. The U.K. heatwave was exceptionally hot, but according to Professor Cliff Mass, this “extraordinary extreme event” is a sign that ”global warming played a very small role in this event”.
According to Mass, the golden rule of climate extremes is: “The more extreme a climate or weather record is, the greater the contribution of natural variability and the smaller the contribution of human-caused global warming.”
Mass is Professor of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Washington. He does not rule out the involvement of human-caused global warming, but is dismissive of much of the ludicrous scaremongering that dominates the media. “The truth and overwhelming evidence provide a different story: the recent European heatwave is mainly the result of natural processes, but was enhanced modestly by human-caused global warming,” he writes.
Of course the term “modestly” is being fiercely debated by many scientists. To date, there is no credible science paper that has conclusively linked single weather events to long-term changes in the climate. But, of course, this doesn’t stop the BBC’s green activist-in-residence Justin Rowlatt quoting the opinion from the Met Office that the recent extreme heat was made “ten times” more likely because of climate change. Far from questioning this statement, Rowlatt added: “We are being warned that it can pose a life-threatening risk to even normally healthy people and just look at the impact it is having in our hospitals, schools and transport systems.”
Rowlatt saw no need to provide a detailed meteorological explanation for the high temperatures. According to Professor Mass it was caused by a large ridge of high pressure, which produced warming by sinking and moving air northwards on its western flanks. Meanwhile, a trough of lower pressure on the southwest side in Europe enhanced the southerly flow, and acted as a supercharger for the warmth.
Ironically, notes Mass, such a pattern, as shown above, produces enhanced cooling to the east and west. Needless to say, this was rarely, if ever, mentioned in the relentless media concentration on the localised heat. But Mass is clear about the ridge: “There is no evidence that the ridge in question resulted from global warming.”
Similar climate agitprop was evident last year in North America when it was struck by a heatwave in the northeast. Again, talk of Thermogeddon ‘heat domes’ was common across the media. Now, says Mass, “a shocker”. Below is the same kind of chart for this heatwave.
“OMG! Very similar, including the low to the southwest,” notes Mass.
The U.S. meteorologist Anthony Watts is another person to bring some scientific sanity to discussion of the recent heatwave. “Each of these stories trying to link climate change to the heatwave does so without any proof whatsoever. They are nothing more than speculative fearmongering,” he said. Fearmongering he might have had in mind would include Piers Morgan who told TalkTV that we could be “heading for an apocalypse”, and BBC weatherman Ben Rich, who was of the opinion that “it feels like a tipping point”.
Publishing the BBC photo featured at the top of this article, he noted that TV stations were using colour “to make it seem like a crisis”. He also drew attention to the dramatic temperature differences across the UK and Europe as a “sure sign of this being a weather pattern, and not global scale climate change, aka global warming as the media would have you believe”. The same, he added, applied to last year’s northeast heatwave in the United States. Indeed, he went on to note that in recent decades, heatwaves in the US had been far less frequent and severe than they were in the 1930s.
Watts has researched and written extensively on the Urban Heat Island (UHI) effect for many years. In 2017 he wrote that the majority of weather measuring centres used by NOAA in the U.S. had been compromised by UHI. “The result is an inflated temperature that needs to be corrected,” he said. Estimates of the UHI effect in cities vary, but often reach a number of degrees centigrade. “If this were forensic science, such polluted and corrupted data would be tossed out as being unsuitable for the purpose of making a legal decision. Yet entire economies and national policies are being modified based on trends seen in the data, as well as the future projections. When science refuses to own up to bad data, it is no longer science”, he charged.
As the Daily Sceptic recently reported, about half of all land surface temperature measurements used to promote the fading global warming scare are now taken near or adjacent to airport runways. Adjustments are made to the raw data, but – some might say mysteriously – the recent temperatures are all continually adjusted upwards, and historic recordings moved downwards. As a result, the three main datasets run by NASA, the Met Office and the NOAA now show an obvious disconnect with accurate satellite and meteorological balloon recordings.
The atmospheric scientists Professors William Happer and Richard Lindzen didn’t pull any punches over the changes when they recently told the U.S. Government that over the last several decades, “NASA and NOAA have been fabricating temperature data to argue that raising CO2 levels have led to the hottest year on record”. The large adjustments meant they were “totally inconsistent” with other temperature data. What was claimed to be false and manipulated data, was said to be an “egregious violation of the scientific method”.
Watts concluded his recent thoughts on the U.K.’s heatwave by noting that it is well known that UHI can contribute to warmer temperatures. He noted that the population of the U.K. had increased by 11 million people since the hot summer of 1976, and it is not in the least bit surprising that UHI increased as infrastructure was built to support the rise. The BBC is said to have reported that the record recent high U.K. temperature was recorded at Coningsby in Lincolnshire [some reports said it was the village of Coningsby] but what it didn’t tell you was that the record was set at RAF Coningsby, “next to the heat absorbing sea of runway asphalt and tarmac”.
As the Daily Sceptic noted, in joint second place for the temperature record was Heathrow, one of the world’s busiest airports. Also in second place was Kew Gardens in London, which prompted numerous social media critics to inquire if there was a runway in the park. There is not, but the Met Office co-ordinates do place the measuring device about 150m from the Palm House. This is an ornate, tropical greenhouse with 16,000 panes of glass, measuring 62 feet high and 362 feet long. It does not seem the most obvious structure to have next to a temperature measurer.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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