Do you remember the glorious summer of 1976 when we could hardly believe our luck as the sun shone in the sky for day after day? This was back when few of us went abroad on holidays and sunny weather was something that happened in Spain, not here. Well, for that summer, we enjoyed a Mediterraneum climate and we loved it. Yes, there was a drought, the grass turned yellow, and we had to cut back on our water use, but we still loved it.
The peak temperature that year was 32.5 °C (90 degrees Fahrenheit), recorded at Boora, Co. Offaly on Tuesday, June 29. It was the hottest day of the 20th century.
In those days, the hot weather was reported cheerfully. If you go online, you can find a report from 1976 by RTÉ’s Colm Connolly starting with him on a bike, him at Dublin Zoo watching an elephant being hosed down, and finishing with him rubbing suntan lotion onto a bikinied woman’s back on the beach. In between, we see shots of women at their stalls on Moore Street, and farmers in the field. The whole thing is upbeat.
Reports
Fast forward and now, when we have hot weather, the reporting is mostly doom-laden and apocalyptic. It is full of health warnings and seems designed to frighten us. We’re not allowed simply to enjoy it, and it’s as though the assumption is that we won’t use common sense and therefore we need to be told to drink enough water and put on proper sun protection.
In fact, the weather we had in Ireland last week is exactly what lots of Irish go abroad to experience. When we travel to some sunspot abroad, we aren’t given health warnings as we board the flight. Yes, there are some people who will get sunburnt and might even get sunstroke (I got a mild case one year myself), but we are treated as adults and trusted to use our own good judgement.
What was noticeable in the weather reports last week was the disconnect between the doom-laden nature of the reporting, and the cheerfulness of the people being interviewed. They were loving it.
What is happening is being correctly linked to climate change. Extreme hot spells are on the increase”
Of course, the weather here wasn’t nearly as hot as in certain parts of the Continent, or even the south of England. When the temperature goes above the mid-thirties and even into the forties, that is no joke. 40 degrees Celsius is 104 degrees Fahrenheit. When you add in high humidity to that, then health warnings are warranted. The hottest I’ve ever experienced is 42 degrees. You have to be careful to avoid sunstroke.
What is happening is being correctly linked to climate change. Extreme hot spells are on the increase. It might be wise in the future to avoid parts of Europe, and even England, during the summer months unless you love very hot weather.
But how bad, exactly, is it going to get? Well, climate scientist Dr Peter Thorne thinks very bad. He told The Irish Independent last week: “Quite frankly, if you are not petrified at this point you are not paying attention.”
He said: “We are smashing all kinds of records. And the indelible fingerprints of climate change are all over it. This is as good as it is going to get. It will get worse and rapidly worse until we stop emitting greenhouse gases.
“We are facing into weather whiplash, where we go from one extreme to another – flood to drought, storm to heatwave. And this will become increasingly difficult for us to live with and adapt to.”
He thinks conditions in the future could become “unsurvivable”. In other words, the threat is existential.
Alarm
Thorne is a scientist, so who am I to argue against him? But people like Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have access to the best scientists, and while they believe climate change is a big problem, they do not regard it as a threat to our very existence.
Gates once did think this, but more recently, having looked at the doomsday scenario, he said: “Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
By the end of the century, average global temperatures would rise by 4 degrees Celsius or more”
In a recent report published by the think tank he runs, Tony Blair also took issue with the doomsday view. He warned against the “alarmist” tone of the debate on climate, which he says is “riven with irrationality”. Last week, we saw a lot of this.
In fact, even the UN has pulled back from its most alarmist scenarios. Do you remember during the Covid pandemic how we are told about every scenario from best case to worst case and everything in between, projecting how many of us might die from the disease? Well, scientists also produce many different climate-change scenarios from best case to worst case. The worst-case one produced by the UN was called RCP 8.5. It projected that by the end of the century, average global temperatures would rise by 4 degrees Celsius or more.
Action
Recently the UN withdrew this scenario. It no longer believes it is plausible. Big temperature increases might still happen, and it won’t be pleasant, but we are not all doomed, and even RCP 8.5 never predicted such an eventuality.
Incidentally, official bodies in Ireland like the Climate Change Advisory Council were still using the RCP 8.5 scenario only a few months ago. This dents their credibility. For years, many scientists have been doubting the plausibility of the UN’s worst-case scenario.
So, what is to be done? Certainly, we need to do our best to reduce our carbon emissions, but not in a way that is unaffordable or inflicts unacceptable economic costs on ordinary people. Tony Blair in that recent report explicitly warned against this.
Secondly, we need to adapt. We need to build better flood defences, for example, and it is quite likely that in the future more of us will have air conditioning units, or at least fans, in our bedrooms at night, which has been the case for a long time in countries like Australia or the United States.
To summarise: Yes, we will have more heatwaves in the future, and they will be more intense, and we will have more flooding. But no, we are not doomed. We will adapt, and we will survive. And in the meantime, can weather reports not be quite so apocalyptic when we get a hot spell?
Photo: iStock.
Yes, it’s getting hotter — but no, we’re not doomed
Do you remember the glorious summer of 1976 when we could hardly believe our luck as the sun shone in the sky for day after day? This was back when few of us went abroad on holidays and sunny weather was something that happened in Spain, not here. Well, for that summer, we enjoyed a Mediterraneum climate and we loved it. Yes, there was a drought, the grass turned yellow, and we had to cut back on our water use, but we still loved it.
The peak temperature that year was 32.5 °C (90 degrees Fahrenheit), recorded at Boora, Co. Offaly on Tuesday, June 29. It was the hottest day of the 20th century.
In those days, the hot weather was reported cheerfully. If you go online, you can find a report from 1976 by RTÉ’s Colm Connolly starting with him on a bike, him at Dublin Zoo watching an elephant being hosed down, and finishing with him rubbing suntan lotion onto a bikinied woman’s back on the beach. In between, we see shots of women at their stalls on Moore Street, and farmers in the field. The whole thing is upbeat.
Reports
Fast forward and now, when we have hot weather, the reporting is mostly doom-laden and apocalyptic. It is full of health warnings and seems designed to frighten us. We’re not allowed simply to enjoy it, and it’s as though the assumption is that we won’t use common sense and therefore we need to be told to drink enough water and put on proper sun protection.
In fact, the weather we had in Ireland last week is exactly what lots of Irish go abroad to experience. When we travel to some sunspot abroad, we aren’t given health warnings as we board the flight. Yes, there are some people who will get sunburnt and might even get sunstroke (I got a mild case one year myself), but we are treated as adults and trusted to use our own good judgement.
What was noticeable in the weather reports last week was the disconnect between the doom-laden nature of the reporting, and the cheerfulness of the people being interviewed. They were loving it.
Of course, the weather here wasn’t nearly as hot as in certain parts of the Continent, or even the south of England. When the temperature goes above the mid-thirties and even into the forties, that is no joke. 40 degrees Celsius is 104 degrees Fahrenheit. When you add in high humidity to that, then health warnings are warranted. The hottest I’ve ever experienced is 42 degrees. You have to be careful to avoid sunstroke.
What is happening is being correctly linked to climate change. Extreme hot spells are on the increase. It might be wise in the future to avoid parts of Europe, and even England, during the summer months unless you love very hot weather.
But how bad, exactly, is it going to get? Well, climate scientist Dr Peter Thorne thinks very bad. He told The Irish Independent last week: “Quite frankly, if you are not petrified at this point you are not paying attention.”
He said: “We are smashing all kinds of records. And the indelible fingerprints of climate change are all over it. This is as good as it is going to get. It will get worse and rapidly worse until we stop emitting greenhouse gases.
“We are facing into weather whiplash, where we go from one extreme to another – flood to drought, storm to heatwave. And this will become increasingly difficult for us to live with and adapt to.”
He thinks conditions in the future could become “unsurvivable”. In other words, the threat is existential.
Alarm
Thorne is a scientist, so who am I to argue against him? But people like Microsoft founder, Bill Gates, and former British Prime Minister Tony Blair have access to the best scientists, and while they believe climate change is a big problem, they do not regard it as a threat to our very existence.
Gates once did think this, but more recently, having looked at the doomsday scenario, he said: “Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
In a recent report published by the think tank he runs, Tony Blair also took issue with the doomsday view. He warned against the “alarmist” tone of the debate on climate, which he says is “riven with irrationality”. Last week, we saw a lot of this.
In fact, even the UN has pulled back from its most alarmist scenarios. Do you remember during the Covid pandemic how we are told about every scenario from best case to worst case and everything in between, projecting how many of us might die from the disease? Well, scientists also produce many different climate-change scenarios from best case to worst case. The worst-case one produced by the UN was called RCP 8.5. It projected that by the end of the century, average global temperatures would rise by 4 degrees Celsius or more.
Action
Recently the UN withdrew this scenario. It no longer believes it is plausible. Big temperature increases might still happen, and it won’t be pleasant, but we are not all doomed, and even RCP 8.5 never predicted such an eventuality.
Incidentally, official bodies in Ireland like the Climate Change Advisory Council were still using the RCP 8.5 scenario only a few months ago. This dents their credibility. For years, many scientists have been doubting the plausibility of the UN’s worst-case scenario.
So, what is to be done? Certainly, we need to do our best to reduce our carbon emissions, but not in a way that is unaffordable or inflicts unacceptable economic costs on ordinary people. Tony Blair in that recent report explicitly warned against this.
Secondly, we need to adapt. We need to build better flood defences, for example, and it is quite likely that in the future more of us will have air conditioning units, or at least fans, in our bedrooms at night, which has been the case for a long time in countries like Australia or the United States.
To summarise: Yes, we will have more heatwaves in the future, and they will be more intense, and we will have more flooding. But no, we are not doomed. We will adapt, and we will survive. And in the meantime, can weather reports not be quite so apocalyptic when we get a hot spell?
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