On Wednesday we were told by various media outlets that the 36 degrees recorded in some parts of the UK was a new record.
That’s strange. The Met Office’s own website shows a high of 38.5 degrees in 2003. It’s still nothing like the summer of 1976 when the temperature from 23 June to 7th July was always over 32 degrees somewhere in the UK – now that was a hot summer.
This week is not the first time rails have buckled from heat, nor the first time we have hit 36 degrees. I seem to remember it used to be thought very hot if we hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, which is more than 36 Celsius.
July 3, 2015
Quite right Mr. Redwood. The BBC website had a front page story yesterday in which the headline was “Hottest since 2006”. When you clicked on the link, the first line of the story then added the word “July”…which isn’t quite the same.
July 3, 2015
@Horatio McSherry; Headlines being what they are they never give the full unabridged story, I’m sure that many other media outlets use the same ‘click-bait’ to entice readers, even more so the more commercial they are.
July 4, 2015
So the hottest July day on record isn’t a record breaker? How does that work?
Wednesday’s temperature broke a record, so what’s the problem with reporting it as a record breakler? Unless John Redwood is desperately trying to deny anything that hints at climate change.
July 3, 2015
Read the news properly, please. 36.7C was the hottest ever in Heathrow. The hottest ever anywhere in the UK was 38.5C in Faversham, Kent. in 2003.
And 100F is 37.7C. 😉
July 3, 2015
The microclimate and local climate of Heathrow is never something that the global warming fanatics mention either. Lots of tarmac, built up area and so on. Not representative at all.
July 4, 2015
Not to mention all the jet exhaust!
July 3, 2015
Have the Met Office fallen prey to back-adjusting the temperature record like so many of the other custodians of temperature data?
Reported in the Daily Telegraph on 10th August 2003.
July 3, 2015
It would not suit the global warming agenda if the media reported accurately, JR. Why do railway lines buckle in England anyway ? Hotter areas of the world apparently do not have the same problem.
July 3, 2015
@Excalibur; “Hotter areas of the world apparently do not have the same problem.
But they do, what is more they also suffer from rails fracturing when they have unusually cold temperatures.
July 3, 2015
It happens in Britain, to mockery from exasperated commuters. But it also happens in other countries with seemingly less troubled train services. A new high speed service from Paris in 2001 was slowed by the risk of buckled rails. In the US that year, there were 44 accidents as a consequence of buckled rails. Compression stresses are thought to have caused a train crash earlier this year near Sydney, Australia, in which nine died.
The rails are heat stressed on laying for a normal range of temperature. We could stress the rails to a greater degree but as soon as winter came we’d have cracks all over the rails as it pulled itself apart.
Our mainly moderate climate makes it uneconomic to plan too much for extremes.
July 3, 2015
Good points but how unhelpful, though, to the global warmists who seem to have the lazy MSM as their willing and gullible propaganda merchants.
July 3, 2015
Indeed. Nearly all children, even the brighter ones, now come out of schools having swallowed the AGW catastrophe (huge exaggeration of) religion whole. This despite the fact that non have actually lived through any warming at all (unless they are over 18). Temperature over the last hundred years have been remarkably stable.
Indoctrination by the BBC, school teachers, government, the EU, many of our Universities and through rather juvenile examinations.
July 3, 2015
The media do not read facts and figures, they want headlines whether true or false.
The BBC do not recognise recorded temperatures prior to 1880. It would be inconvenient for their global warming/climate change theory. They are happy to ignore historical facts.
The Met Office are a little more circumspect as they hold all the records, in particular the CET.
July 3, 2015
C over a hundred equals F minus 32 divided by a hundred and eighty
July 3, 2015
F = 9/5C+32
zorro
July 3, 2015
My late father showed me a nicely symmetrical version that was a variation of the usual formula:
C=(F+40) * 5/9 – 40
F=(C+40) * 9/5 – 40
July 4, 2015
Dear Zorro–Of course, but harder to remember than the other whose obviousness doesn’t need remembering once the graph (straight line) understood
July 3, 2015
One hot day and the BBC has all the global warming fear-mongers declaring the end of the world is nigh.
Strange when we have days that don’t support the GW religion, we are told we are ignorant for we don’t understand the difference between weather a climate.
The BBC happily forgets the difference between weather a climate when its in their interest to do so.
July 3, 2015
The Environment Agency is warning of water shortages. They say it has been a bad year for water.We must all be sure, they say, to turn off that dripping tap.
Good we have so many fracking firms complete with equipment awaiting diversionary headlines to ply their trade. They can drill us well holes, just in case.
Migrants, for humanitarian considerations, should be advised on entry to the UK, to bring a bottle. It’ll be some party.
July 3, 2015
You state the “Environment Agency is warning of water shortages”, have you a date and source to back up this assertion?
I looked the Environment Agency web site today and found no such warnings. https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/environment-agency
If anything they appear to be busy on flood mitigation schemes.
July 3, 2015
Possibly time to put all those wind farms into reverse gear and enjoy a cooling breeze.
July 3, 2015
Yes the weather has been nice. One of the many benefits of global warming.
July 3, 2015
Lucky enough to get a pair of Wimbledon Center Court tickets for Wednesday, hot but not too bad out of the sun 🙂
And on an entirely different topic….
I reckon the Greek government is lining up to default and write off (i.e. just not pay back) all of their dept regardless of the referendum result on Sunday.
No vote – Is two fingers to the EU “chuck us out if you dare”…
Yes vote – We will agree to what you want today, but don’t ever expect any of your loans back…
July 3, 2015
The Greek government wants more of its debts to be forgiven. About €100 billion it owed to private investors was cancelled in 2012, but now it wants the “official” creditors to forgive a large part of the debts owed to them. Or if the debts cannot be forgiven outright at least repayment could be deferred to some point in the distant future. And the IMF now agrees that this needs to happen if Greece is to have any chance of recovery:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11713944/Greece-needs-another-50bn-to-prevent-bankruptcy-and-will-not-survive-without-massive-debt-relief-admits-IMF.html
My prediction is that the Greek people and their government will capitulate in the face of the overwhelming might of Germany, with its eurozone allies taking great care that they are clearly seen to be on the winning side, while a short-sighted and self-interested British government quietly cheers from the sidelines as the last traces of troublesome Greek resistance are crushed.
July 3, 2015
Interesting to read the letter from Congress apparently reprimanding Christine Lagarde and the IMF treatment of Greece. I suspect her days may be numbered:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/270323472/Congressional-Letter-to-Lagarde-070215-1
July 5, 2015
Thanks for that, at least some members of the US Congress can see sense on this even though it seems the President cannot.
July 3, 2015
… Oh John, don’t let facts get in the way of a good story !
As we all know, nothing must contradict the (German) Green Agenda.
July 3, 2015
I am not surprised we are fed such disinformation. The Green Blob is in full-on propaganda mode in the lead up to the forthcoming Paris COP(?) meeting in the Autumn when we will be told, again, that the world is going to fry because of man made CO2 emissions. On closer inspection these claims ususally turn out to be based on extreme assumptions, including the effect of forcing on global temperatures.which has no sound scientific basis. The reality is that global temperatures have remained more or less flat for the past 18 years or so. What we are experiencing is extreme alarmism, not extreme temperatures.
July 3, 2015
Indeed the real disaster is the damage the green religion is doing with their bonkers subsidised “renewable” and bio-fuel agenda. This when the money could be used to do things that actually would do some good rather than harm.
July 3, 2015
The record in one town/village whatever is not the same as in a place 100 miles away. Again the record in say Wokingham will not be the same as say Dover. The UK record temperature will be elsewhere.
Hence the media can go in “What a scorcha” mode if it is an otherwise quiet news day.
July 3, 2015
Well it has been a consistent 36C where I am but at least I can get in the pool to cool down.
On a lighter side I have at last found a good use for all those windmills that Spain has covered the hilltops with. There I was at about 1500 meters agl near Avila at the entrance to a wide east west valley with a line of windmills on the hills to the north and south. Those to the south faced south, those to the north faced north. Sign of two converging air masses meeting in the centre of the valley and then flowing vertically. I shot of eastwards at 110 Km/Hr climbing at 5.0 meters a second. Whoopee for windmills, they have their uses at last.
July 3, 2015
I hadn’t noticed? Well, its a one off and its gone PDQ. However, over the last few years I have collected a fair few electronic thermometers of the wifi variety. What I did notice yesterday pm was that the temperature had dropped some 10 deg C. Thats despite loads of clouds hanging about during the day.
So the planet can/does dump excess very quickly…feedback works big time in my view.
July 3, 2015
The global warmists/ climate change people seem to forget 1976 and a lot of other hot Summers of years gone by.
Perhaps it was a freak result !
July 3, 2015
Recently the USA and Canada have had the coldest winters on record which fits in nicely with the cooldown period which we are due.
China is preparing for a reduction in global mean temperatures and no doubt this is why the lonnies have changed global warming to climate change.
No matter what happens with the weather we will be taxed to prevent climate change as it’s the next best thing to taxing the air that we breathe.
One point, we are not building any more water storage and we are shutting down our electricity supply. We still keep importing a million foreigners annually. How do we hope to cope.???
July 3, 2015
In Andy Murrays match the other day , the temp on court hit 41C . It depends where one is , off/ on shore breeze, city , country and all the rest of it and you know that tinker.
July 3, 2015
Your memory is beginning to let you down if you think the temperatures in the UK ever reached 100 F in your youth.
July 3, 2015
I sent Amber Rudd a piece “22 inconvenient truths” from a website called Watts up with that. I received a reply telling me that since this appeared on a blog it was not seen by experts. This is from a blog written by one of the most respected climatologists/ physicists in the World !!!
God help us when we have such ignorant people in charge of something so important. My energy bills are becoming un-affordable thanks to her.
July 3, 2015
This is from a blog written by one of the most respected climatologists/ physicists in the World !!!
Unlikely, because Anthony Watts is neither. For open-minded readers, a Google Power Search might be helpful.
July 4, 2015
Yes, a search might have told you the article was written by a Frenchman called Jean-Pierre Bardinet. Evidently your mind was not open to such a possibility.
Moreover, when you read the article it contains substantial scientific analysis with extensive cross references to published scientific investigations.
July 3, 2015
There has also been little mention of the colder than average start to summer from the BBC (and others) where we had one of the coldest May and Junes recorded for many years.
Heatwave warnings a plenty from all media, as if one or two hot days are unwelcome and dangerous.
Here in the Midlands the long awaited hottest day of the year was cloudy until 2.00 pm and after a few suuny hours we had rainfall.
Despite all the media frenzy on the reporting of temperatures there still has been less than one degree of rise in global temperatures since 1900.
And a puzzling pause from 2000 onwards.
July 3, 2015
Good afternoon
What I remember most from the hot summers of the 70’s was the Ladybirds. LOADS of them !
🙂
July 3, 2015
Why is it that right-wing, laissez-faire, neo-liberals, spawned in the Dickensian era; are also rampant climate change deniers? Please could someone explain, I can’t see the connection other than a universal hate of their fellow mankind 😉 😉 😉
July 3, 2015
Why is it that right-wing, laissez-faire, neo-liberals, […] are also rampant climate change deniers?
Because they know that tackling climate change requires governments to take the leading role; interference by the state does not sit well with their philosophy.
July 3, 2015
Because the real reason behind the global warming religion is an attempt to transfer money from industrialised nations to poorer nations and an attempt to develop a world Government via the UN
If you look at actual data compared to dire predictions made by alarmists you see them not coming true already
Revisit Al Gore’s film and see his predictions and see just how many have not happened.
Less than one degree rise since 1900 and no rises since 2000 yet CO2 still rising.
2000 being the time when warmists predicted rapidly increasing rises in global temperatures.
For me its not denial nor skepicism.
Its just that the data is not currently following the hypothesis.
July 3, 2015
Acorn,
I think you’re being a little bit harsh in that ‘hate’ assessment. It’s not that.
It’s more that certain scientific advances, and increases in understanding, cause those who have a certain very right wing world view more problems than the rest of us. I was going to say ‘normal people’ but then I thought I’d better not 🙂
It’s not dissimilar from finding out how the economy really works. They have big problems with that too.
July 4, 2015
Acorn
Well because its normally supported by people such as yourself who really believe that free marketers are Dickensian haters ( you really are deluded aren’t you) and anything that comes from that kind of thinking is normally questioned quite closely before being signed up to. Also I’m not sure why you think that right wingers are in any way collated with free markets. In my experience most right wingers are no more for free markets than left wingers or statist control freaks such as your good self.
sjb
May have a point as far as some right wingers are concerned.
Me I’m NOT a right winger, I am a free marketer , I know beyond doubt that any rise in long term Earth temperature is 1) Normal, 2) cyclical, 3) unlikely to be caused entirely by co2 emissions from man made artefacts. I distrust anything where politicians try to force something on us by first creating a scare story then when that fails making up the data. Of course I’m also old enough to remember all the other scare stories about CJD, AIDS, Herpes, Bird Flu, Ozone holes, Ice Ages that was the perceived scientific wisdom in the 70’s, peak oil, acid rain, year 2k etc etc etc. Predicting Armageddon is as old as, well as old as the bible . Its been one of the most overused control tactics for millennia. Free marketers believe in freedom.
Maybe Free marketers just have a more cynical grasp on reality rather than naively accepting academic theories. Maybe the reason free marketers are so successful is they see things differently to the mass of the brainwashed.
Peter Martin
Considering free marketers have a better understanding of how economies actually work by virtue of the fact most are quite successful in it , that is rather a silly statement too.
You guys can keep on hating, can keep on sneering and keep on peddling your theories, meanwhile I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank, I’ll be creating the jobs, paying the taxes and improving my little corner of the world.
July 7, 2015
Libby, are you sure about being a “free marketer”. I think you mean a “free marketeer”. Assuming you do actually “sell” things all over the world, as you said previously.
A “marketer” is a person whose duties include the identification of the goods and services desired by a set of consumers, as well as the marketing of those goods and services on behalf of a company. I have no idea what a “free marketer” is?
July 3, 2015
It may be pretty warm here but things are getting very much hotter in Athens – and in Berlin :
The IMF has published its report on Greece and confirmed that the country has no chance whatsoever of economic recovery without debt write offs totalling €80bn and additional loans of €50bn including €36bn from the Eurozone. At least 30% of the latter will have to come from Germany.
Merkel is now backed into a corner of her own making : Her own politicians and especially her voters will never accept the loss of this amount of money yet the alternative of Grexit will cost Germany much more – estimates put the figure at up to €82bn – and push the Eurozone further into crisis.
Ditto France, Netherlands, Finland and Austria.
By rights the IMF report should blow the campaign in Greece to vote Yes on Sunday right out of the water.
Mr Tsipras has immediately called for the debt write offs to be an essential part of any deal and for once he’s right : if there is no chance of recovery without another €50bn and 30% debt relief, as the IMF has suggested, then what is the point of accepting any deal that doesn’t include both ?
We can only hope that Greece votes No on Sunday.
If the people of Greece are brave enough to vote No, Juncker, Merkel, Hollande and Co will then have no way of kicking any kind of can down Athinas Street again.
July 4, 2015
There was a great graphic …….. pointing out that the ECB has transferred billions in debt from EU banks to EU tax payers.
I understand John doesn’t like links but ……… The original figures are in the NY times.
For example France has gone from 55 billion bank debt to 2 billion bank debt and 70 billion tax payer debt.
germany has gone from 32 billion bank debt to 12 billion bank debt and 90 billion tax payer debt.
Spain has gone from 2 billion bank debt to 1 billion bank debt and 42 billion tax payer debt.
The UK has gone from 11 billion bank debt to 1 billion bank debt and 3 billion tax payer debt.
July 3, 2015
So a devaluation of a foreign currency leads to a reduced bank guarantee on British deposits, exactly when the guarantee is most needed. Who thinks up this nonsense?
July 3, 2015
Indeed! My first thought was the “What a sorcher” headline was a reference to that treacherous outrage.
We were led to believe the FSCS was gilt-edged, representing the word and bond of HM Treasury. Where was the “health warning” that the compensation limit was variable downwards?
Many will have made dispositions that either cannot be changed or may be changed only with material loss prior to maturity to keep within the £85,000 limit (itself inadequate).
July 3, 2015
In Sweden and Denmark May and June have been variously described as the coldest on record / the coldest for 50 years / the coldest for over a century. I don’t suppose we can read much into it but it would be nice if the BBC would inform us that this is inconsistent with the models.
July 3, 2015
OMG I am so fed up with hearing about this record and that record when really it’s a load of old bull. As many of your contributors to this blog have noticed, we have not all experienced a heat wave. Here in SW Scotland we have not got above 23 degrees even on the day that the BBC said we would see 27 degrees. We had some sun in the morning and it got quite warm and then it clouded over and it was blooming cold. if it hadn’t been for a couple of warmer days at the end on June we would have had the coldest start to summer on record averaging only 9 degrees during the day time. We were still in jackets and hats and I have only sat in the garden a couple of times. We have had a cold northerly wind much of the time. Yes, I would imagine Heathrow would be hot!! Very sheltered inland places and cities will be hotter. Let’s get a grip. It is only the up and coming global warming crap (excuse for a good booze up and a nice holiday for some, all expenses paid) event in Paris that is making the BBC and some of the media go into a frenzy but it will keep the renewable energy companies going for a few years more raking in the vast sums of money they get and taking it abroad which is because most of them are foreign. Scottish Power is in fact Iberdrola and Spanish. Very nice as they and other developers buy their turbines. Most of the work force are foreign too. All this ‘climate change’ will continue whatever the weather throws at us and anything considers slightly out of the ordinary will be viewed as life threatening and global terminal. We are all doomed!!
July 3, 2015
I’d say it was commendable for a politician to have an interest in things other than politics! Meteorology is as good a thing to be interested in as anything.
I seem to remember seeing a photo of JR kitted out in white flannels. Was that for a HoC cricket match? That’s commendable too. I think we share a common interest there.
So can we expect posts on the coming Ashes series? I’ll have something to say about that I’m sure! 🙂
July 3, 2015
I’ve just been informed that the reference to the very warm weather does have some political significance after all! 🙂
Apparently it’s all to do with a leftish conspiracy to falsely convince the world that the emission of GH gases, mainly CO2, has the potential to cause dangerous warming of the Earth’s climate.
This was started at the turn of the 20th century by a Swedish Physicist known as Arrenhius who received a Nobel prize in 1903. He made various calculations of the extent to which a doubling of CO2 concentrations would increase global temperatures, which do not differ much from present estimates.
If he was a ‘closet red’, he did a particularly good job of keeping his views hidden. I can’t find any evidence in the literature for this.
July 4, 2015
The issue is not the scientific question of whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas which causes warming (other things being equal). That is clear. The issue is how much warming and what to do about it. The reason the left are so keen on global warming theory is the greater the scare, the more govts at the moment are reaching for statist, anti- capitalist solutions. Sceptics are quite right to point out that these solutions – huge subsidies for wind farms for example – have no hope of providing an alternative for fossil fuels. Bill Gates just made this point. Sceptics are also right to point out that the more alarmist predictions, both as to the amount of warming, and the incidence of extreme weather events, are not borne out by the evidence. In any other field of science that would lead to theoretical assumptions being changed.
July 4, 2015
Which simply shows you do not know how to use the Internet properly:
Svante Arrhenius, 1896, On the influence of carbonic acid in the air upon the temperature of the ground, Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Sr.5, vol.41, p.237-276.
July 4, 2015
petermartin2001
Hmm I have no idea on the politics of Arrenhuis and frankly I don’t really care as I don’t think AGW is a particularly leftist stance. However what is interesting is that if you actually read his work Arrenhuis was trying to understand ice ages and he wrote a paper on why increasing co2 was a massive BENEFIT to the earth making large parts of it more habitable than it would otherwise be, stabilising the tendency for rapid cooling and improving plant/crop yield.
July 4, 2015
Libertarian,
Yes it was quite possible for Arrhenius to claim a benefit. At the time Co2 levels had increased slightly to about 300ppmv from the pre-industrial level of 280ppmv.
As the Earth may have had a natural tendency to drop back into an ice age that slight increase could indeed be viewed as beneficial. We’ve since gone way beyond that to 400ppmv, and rising to something close to 560 ppmv ( a doubling of pre-industrial levels) on current projections by the end of this century.
Arrhenius was not of the opinion that would be a benefit!
July 5, 2015
I wonder what this academic would say about the current lack of global temperature rise since 1998 whilst CO2 volumes (measured in parts per million) have continued to gently rise?
How does that fit in with the theories?
July 4, 2015
Global cooling.
July 4, 2015
Javelin, agree, especially in SW Scotland! Blowing a gale here today, raining, cloudy and definitely not feeling like summer!
July 4, 2015
The hottest July day on record is, by definition, a record breaker. What’s the problem with reporting that it’s a record breaker?
There have been hotter days in Britain, but they were in August. Pretending that reporting the hottest July day was somehow forgetting the hottest ever day is disingenuous. Reporting the facts isn’t propaganda, misrepresenting them like this is.
July 5, 2015
My problem with it is that it is mainly designed to advertsise the forthcoming climate summit in Paris and that it is further propaganda rather than proper reporting of weather.
There is a fashion for labelling warm days in Summer as actually dangerous rather than rejoicing these pleasant days.
The aim is to condition us plebs that warm is dangerous when the opposite is the case.
When there are colder than average summer temperatures as this year has been prior to these recent days very little is said.