Never mind the facts, just worship the models

The current heatwaves have smashed records for stupidity, credulousness and ignorance

Temperature map from Dr Roy Spencer's site, embellished on Watts Up With That

It’s summer in the northern hemisphere. In Britain, it’s been hot. Very hot. It’s been very hot in western Europe too, and in parts of America.

Yesterday, in a handful of places in Britain, temperatures reached just over 40°C, the highest levels known to have been recorded. Similar record temperatures have been registered in parts of Europe such as France, Germany and Portugal.

The reason is a plume of hot air from north Africa and the Sahara, and an “Azores High” sub-tropical pressure system creeping further north than usual. 

But of course, it has been proclaimed the length and breadth of the media that these very high temperatures prove catastrophic man-made global warming is really happening. Cue hysteria, claims that the planet is burning and that we’re all going to fryyy.

The Guardian reported in its customary objective and balanced way: 

“We’re climate change refugees,” Théo Dayan, 26, told Le Monde after fleeing his home near the village of La Teste-de-Buch. Jean-Luc Gleyze, the head of the local fire service, said: “We’re not reaching out and touching global heating – it’s hitting us full in the face”.

In a recent New Scientist article  Dr Friederike Otto, senior lecturer in climate science at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the Environment at Imperial College London, wrote:

I think we can very confidently now say that every heatwave that is occurring today has been made more intense and more likely because of climate change…There is no doubt that climate change is really an absolute game-changer when it comes to heatwaves.

Oh dear. What we are seeing is global records being smashed for stupidity, credulousness and ignorance.