So here’s a scary statistic from Canada’s capital. “After 10 consecutive June days with minimum temperature ≥14°C in #Ottawa, the minimum temperature was only 12.8°C today. We made it to 6th place, only 9 days behind the record.” And can you spot the hidden terror in a run of hot summer nights? Right. The notion that “only 9” is a tiny number in a month that only contains 30… and that 10 days is almost the same as 19 days. Math am hard, and a major reason for climate alarmism is that too many commentators didn’t get along with it in their youth and have not reconciled since.

We could also point out, by way of detecting trends in temperature or a lack thereof, that this statistic comes from the careful tabulator at Ottawa Weather Records, who always includes helpful tables of the various arcane records and semi-records he unearths. And this one shows that 5^th place, an 11-day run, came in 1949. Scared yet? Well then, how about a two-way tie for 3^rd at 12 days between pre-warming 1983 and practically pre-industrial 1876? Yes, the year Rutherford B. Hayes won a rigged U.S. Presidential election in which, for some reason, climate change was not an issue.

Moving right along, 2^nd place is a solo, a 16-day (or night) stretch in um 1894. The year Canada’s first Roman Catholic prime minister, also the first provincial premier to become PM, died into his lunch at Windsor Castle with Queen Victoria, if you’re keeping track (John Sparrow David Thompson.) They may have been discussing the weather when this unfortunate incident occurred. But not climate change.

Finally, the actual record, at 19 days, came in 1998. (And if you really care, behind 2024 is a six-way tie at 9 days involving a stretch of years from 2023 all the way back to 1893.) Not that 14C is very hot anyway. (Again, for our American friends, it would be 57F, which many of you might find a blessed relief on a summer night.)