You could almost sense climate campaigners willing those thermometers in Sardinia to nudge into the unknown – a reading above 48.8°C would have marked a new European record and unleashed yet more forewarnings of climatic Armageddon.
But alas, they don’t appear to have got their way – at least not today. As of 6.30 p.m. the highest reported temperatures measured today were in the region of 45ºC, on Sardinia. There was a consolation prize in that the World Meteorological Organisation did finally verify the reading of 48.8ºC in Sicily made on 10 August 2021. Prior to that, the European record was established way back in 1977, which was beginning to look a little inconvenient for the narrative of an Earth which is ‘on fire’.
The all-time global record for temperature, however, remains that measured at Furnace Creek, Death Valley, California on 10 July 1913 (although, hardly surprisingly, there are campaigners lobbying the WMO to have this kicked out of the record books on the grounds that it might have been measured during a sandstorm, whyever that should make it invalid).
Nevertheless, there are many signs that the heat is getting to some people’s heads – those who report on climate for various news organisations. Here are a few of the symptoms that they are beginning to lose a sense of objectivity.
The weather maps that used to show where it is hot now don’t always use intense red to denote temperatures above 40ºC (that shade is so 2022). They have started deploying an intense, scary pink – or even white – instead. White heat, by the way (when all kinds of materials start to glow white) starts around 1800ºC, approximately 1755ºC higher than the temperature in Sardinia today.
Sky News’ Kirsty McCabe told viewers who were hoping to fly off to the Med for a holiday this week: ‘You won’t be able to have the traditional beach holiday, you want to be staying inside’. Actually, while inland temperatures reached up to 45ºC in a few areas, temperatures at the coast, as usual, were more moderate.Only in a small patch of Northern Majorca did they reach 40ºC.
The BBC has suggested Britain’s cool July might have something to do with global warming
The BBC has suggested Britain’s cool July might have something to do with global warming. This time last year we were in the grip of a Mediterranean-style heatwave, blamed on climate change. But this year’s below-average temperatures are also, apparently, a symptom of the same thing. In an online explainer entitled Where has the UK summer gone? the Beeb asserts that our chilly weather is all down to a blocking pattern in the air circulation over the North Atlantic, and that ‘some studies suggest climate change might make blocked patterns more common’. Note the word ‘might’.
So, there. Whether it is hot, cold or somewhere in between, it is all a sign of rapidly-accelerating climate change. Curious.
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