The problem of the climate debate (such as it is) is that climate change is a theory of everything. It’s only at its surface, rather than at its core, about the role of CO2 in the atmosphere. When one tries to nail down some climate matter with some counterpart, the conversation explodes into countless tangents. That might mean that frustratingly little progress is possible in debate, but what is revealed by such an encompassing yet incoherent ideology, advanced by slippery chancers and zealots alike, is a great deal more information about what’s going on in society – especially at its top – than what is going on in the sky. Climate change isn’t really about the climate. And climate journalism is neither.
In the Times last week, the paper’s columnist Hugo Rifkind claims to have been writing about climate change for 20 years. He claims, furthermore, that whereas he has, for the same duration, been routinely assailed by climate sceptics (like “weird bluebottles we now get coming in from our garden whenever we cook fish”) those sceptics are now absent. Charming. “Where are all those climate sceptics now?”, he asks, suggesting that the 35-degree temperatures might have finally debunked their hypotheses and sent them packing. One of the things that climate change as a messy theory of everything forces us to confront is the quality of journalism in 21st-century Britain.
One answer to Rifkind, then, might be the changing nature of the relationship between the newspaper and its audience.
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Exactly. It’s a cult.
Little is said about the role of increasing atmospheric co2 in the wildfires we have experienced recently. Increased CO2 results in the stoma on plant leaves through which the plant transpires the necessary CO2 for growth becoming smaller and remaining closed for longer resulting in lower water losses. This results in vegetation that is less dried out and hence less combustible. Just saying.
If anyone still watches Question Time (not I) it would be great to have Ben on the panel. Not that the BBC would invite him of course.
“like “weird bluebottles we now get coming in from our garden whenever we cook fish”)”…
Well, if you cook up a stink then you should expect that!
The Times published my letter of rebuttal to Rifkind so all is not lost. But if I didn’t buy the paper there would have been no letter from me…
It is vital to understand that “climate” is a religion. Facts are irrelevant to believers, all that is required is belief. High priests of the religion such as Ed, preach hellfire and flood from their pulpits to put fear into the hearts of their congregation and thereby ensure obedience and adherence just the same as e.g. our established church did in days gone by before people realised it was all bo**ocks.
The hottest summer for 50 years.
1976 was the hottest summer for 55 years.
After the floods of – 2014 was it? – warm, extremely wet summers was what we should expect in the future.
So if next summer is exceptionally cold, will that be the first sign of a coming new ice age they ‘always said’ could be a possibility?
And the UN now claims to ‘own the science’ and is seriously thinking about making ‘climate denialism’ a crime.
The climate ‘blob’ is taking us over a cliff despite what we might think about it being in retreat. Their crazy policies have momentum and it will soon be too late to stop them. The days of good old British muddling through, staying calm and carrying on, are long gone.
Occasionally I invite a climate change true believer I meet to estimate the percentage volume of CO2 in the atmosphere. The usual answer is about 25%. When I tell the real percentage – approx. 0.4%, they indignantly express their disbelief or smugly change the subject.
0.04%.
MODERATOR HERE
Well spotted and corrected, thank you
deserves many if not hundreds of upticks!
“Climate” is not a tangible phenomenon unlike weather – a collection of atmospheric phenomena – with which it is conflated.
Since it is not tangible it cannot be observed*, therefore not measured and recorded, therefore it cannot be compared to see if it has changed or is changing.
*There are those who claim they can see it – just look out the window, they tell us, if we don’t believe climate change.
And this is why actual observable phenomena like temperature, rainfall, sunshine are called upon to represent what cannot be seen or measured. Adde. To this are climate-proxies measured in wildfires, Arctic Ice, Polar bears, drought, etc.
Climate is the term given to an average of meteorological data from thousands, tens of thousands, millions of years. Any long term trend in change of the average is called climate change.
This cannot be observed in real time, nor is it predictable because the trends are not unidirectional.
And additionally, Global Average Surface Temperature is a nonsense measurement.
Climate is the average of measurable things such as temperature, rainfall etc. over a period of time e.g. 30 years. Therefore it’s possible to say that average UK temperatures over the last 30 years have been a bit higher than during the previous 30 years. Obviously agenda driven organisations such as the Met Office massively inflate the increase by using predominately junk weather stations at airports, in the middle of cities etc.
The fact that the climate has changed says nothing about the causes, however if scientists understand the different natural factors that affect regional or global climate e.g. solar cycles and oceanic cycles such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation and Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation they can make general predictions about climate over the next 30 years e.g. is it likely to get a bit warmer or cooler. It may even be possible to make regional predictions e.g. cooling could well cause summer rainfall in Africa to shift southwards bringing increased drought and the possibility of famine, as happened in the 1970’s-80’s to the Sahel.
I’m not sure 30 years is meaningful in the context of climate, but let’s assume the climate is warming a little. The cult automatically links this to man-made co2 emissions but I can find no scientific data which even suggest a causal link between the gas’ density and temperature.
“Where are all those climate sceptics now?”
Hugo obviously doesn’t read widely if he can even ask that question.
Has anyone told him:
a) 20 years ago it was Global Warming, not Climate Change
b) The IPCC recently admitted that its worst-case scenario stuff was ‘unsustainable’.
It would seem that the apple did not fall far from the tree in Hugo’s case. Still, if it’s paying the mortgage, who’s going to change?
Ben’s right here, but the essential thing about the likes of Rifkind, Tim Stanley, George Monbiot, and a host of others is that their vacuous outpourings on the subject of climate change are nothing but performative posturing.
Since none of them have any science background worthy of the name, nothing they say on the subject is of any value, unless confined to second order effects downstream of government policy. And in that regard, you can guarantee that those policies are shaped by the equally uninformed.
Like pretty much everything else in what we used to call the broadsheet media, their comments are directed towards a very narrow class of people from near identical backgrounds, university-educated IYI and variously described as the elite or the North London dinner party set, i.e. towards the only people whose opinions they think matter. People just like them, in fact.
One thing’s for sure, is that they will continue to keep actual science as far away as possible, because it’s the one thing that exposes their ignorance and that they can’t bat away or just dissemble on.
Very true – it’s purely performative, it’s the high status opinion and absolutely comparable to mediaeval kings and bishops being energetically, conspicuously and frequently violently, christian.
Is there a need for experience of science when the ‘science’ behind the climate change cult is so meagre as to be irrelevant?
I live in North East Scotland, and we haven’t had any heatwaves, just a nice warm summer.
My family back home in NW England did get some uncomfortable heat.
So tell me, if it is GLOBAL warming, why such a difference a few hundred miles away?
How can CO2 emissions around the world possible cause a heatwave in England but NOT in Scotland?
Weather fronts anyone?
El Niño? (A strong one was predicted for this summer)
And of course the jet stream.
Weather fronts anyone?
Indeed, finding weather charts showing the positions of anticyclones, isobars and frontal systems is becoming much harder. We learned about how to read weather maps and about the air masses affecting UK weather in school geography – important information that now seems to have been dropped from the curriculum.
From what I can tell, the present prolonged period of warm, dry weather across the UK and Western Europe has been the result of a persistent pressure system dominated by a stubborn anticyclone over the Atlantic, causing a flow of warm air to come from almost due south. Such an anticyclone can be described as a “heat dome” in that downwelling air heats up as it descends, but encounters no moisture to attract.
Finding an explanatory chart for the beginning of the present spell isn’t easy, but there are some here:
https://www.severe-weather.eu/global-weather/heat-dome-europe-excessive-historic-heatwave-june-july-summer-2026-mk/
(If you can find the present charts – even the Met Office produces them twice daily, you’ll see how little the pressure systems have moved).
Essentially, the explanations given on the linked site would be very good, but for the over-exaggeration (almost worthy of the famous Marty Feldman weatherman sketch) that appears necessary to any commentary… Read more »
Great article!
Should be compulsory reading for those who think gas boilers and petrol cars cause heatwaves.
Sites like Metcheck and Tropical Tidbits still show charts with isobars on them but not weather fronts, Metcheck also has forecast charts for the position and strength of the Jet Stream. I wonder how many younger people would have a clue what these charts are telling them e.g. do they know which way winds move around areas of high and lower pressure or that if the isobars are close together it’s going to be windy? I’m a bit of a weather geek so look at synoptic charts most days and can make a reasonable guess at what the weather will be like for the next few days based on today’s pressure chart and a bit of basic knowledge such as areas of low pressure in the mid-latitudes tend to move roughly west to east, areas of high pressure are often slow moving and can block areas of low pressure etc. I bet hardly anyone under the age of 35 now has this knowledge, it would be far more useful to people if this was still taught in schools rather all the indoctrination about climate change.
Yes, give me a good isobar over the fact-free pretty symbols and pictures!
Excellent post.
Like you say, it could only ever be caused by CO2 and all other weather and climate phenomena are conveniently erased.
“NW England did get some uncomfortable heat.”
Of the sort that many folk go to the Med for, every year. I suppose they enjoy the comfort of an air-con bar after lobstering all day on the beach.
His next article will call for more politeness in politics.
I await The Times’ next enormous travel supplement, dripping with promotions of long haul flights to the Maldives (sic) with interest.
Spot on. The subjects of this article can probably tick off most of the desirable destinations: https://www.theguardian.com/business/2026/aug/17/massive-attack-paris-paloma-musicians-burnham-rosebank-north-sea-drilling?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
That’s the bit that always gets me when I dip into the Grauniad website (usually for an online cryptic, but I do enjoy a quick look around to see who’s wetting the bed about what at the moment – and I always get a chuckle from the ‘please support our fearless investigative journalism’ shtick, too.)
On the one hand, we’re all doomed. On the other, have you read about these world-cruises, and travelling through China – and here’s an article penned by that wasp-chewing woman who likes things in Tuscany.
Ah yes, any excuse to play the Littlejohn Toynbee b*tchslap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSLUtfubOis
Significant – and self-satirising – that he should write: “It’s not so long, though since columns insisting climate change was bunkum were a mainstay of British journalism, with writers, on the back of no scientific expertise at all, saying stuff like ‘the greenhouse effect probably doesn’t exist’”. A quick trawl through his Wikipedia page suggests a complete absence of post-school scientific education or study. How many of the media’s true believers even took a science subject at A-level, I wonder?
No qualifications required for uninformed zealotry.
Very entertaining skewering of that smug tw@t.
Thank you Ben!
Smugho?
Deserves upticks! 😀👍🏻
I heard that too, on Times Radio, and he was talking to some numbskull woman from IPSOS, as I recall. I hoped there’d be some backlash comments from listeners (but he didn’t read any out) because one thing I have noticed is that comments in The Times digital edition have become much more antagonistic to the climate agenda than they were, say, a year ago which seemed to me like a slow but welcome turnaround. The trouble is that the heatwave has fanned the flames, if you’ll pardon the pun, and people are ignorantly conflating them with climate change.
Today – urgent warnings for thunderstorms.
Oh, that’s Climate Change(tm) as well.
It is becoming more and more apparent that the Emperor has no clothes, his chief courtiers have no clothes, and the palace staff have no clothes. Their patronage depends on agreement.
Meanwhile the rustic mechanicals look up and all they see is bare asses.