We have been puzzled at the ongoing drumbeat of stories insisting that 2024 was the hottest year ever, July 2024 the hottest month and so on. And one reason why is that we kept hearing from people who were not personally having a notably hot summer, let alone the hottest ever. Even the “Met Office”, the UK’s official weather service which is all-in on man-made climate change just said “The UK has had its coolest summer since 2015, according to provisional Met Office statistics.” They even had the gall to X out a comment that “I don’t think it will surprise anyone that this summer has been cooler than average for the UK”. Why wouldn’t it, since we’ve been hearing nothing but warnings about record-breaking heat? Of course one must beware of anecdotal evidence, including how stairs were less steep in my youth and it was uphill to school both ways. But there does seem to be a pattern forming.

Another incident making us think the weather services are gaslighting us was waking up at the cottage one morning to be told by the Weather Network that it was 25C but “Feels like 32”. Bosh, it felt like 10C. We put on a sweater to eat outside because in fact it was cool and windy. What basis exists for claiming it feels 7C warmer than it actually is when in fact it felt colder, other than a conviction that, whatever happens outside the window, inside the computer it’s the “hottest year ever”^TM… again.

As for Ottawa, Canada’s capital, it had one hot week this summer. Nothing record-breaking, just the usual mid-summer warmth, never once in July or August reaching what used to be 90F and later became 32.2C. Oh, and by September 3, the overnight low was into single digits. And then it had had its coldest September 8 high in three-quarters of a century, since 1949.

According to the best satellite data series, that from the UAH, August 2024 was slightly warmer than July, continuing a surge that began, possibly coincidentally, right when the Hunga-Tonga eruption spewed vast amounts of natural potent GHG water vapour into the atmosphere. But they also note that, “unusually”, the Southern Hemisphere was contributing most of the high temperatures, suggesting that anecdotal claims of normal or cooler-than-normal summer in much of the northern hemisphere are plausible. But in any case, how does this pattern of hemispheric divergence fit conventional theory? Or does it not matter to alarmists?

They’re not giving up, of course. Scientific Alarmism warned on August 26 that “‘Corn Sweat’ and Climate Change Bring Sweltering Weather to the Midwest” and proceeded to explain that “‘corn sweat’ is pushing humidity sky-high” and insist that:

“Hot weather – along with extreme humidity levels that are usually associated more with the sultry U.S. Southeast – has enveloped much of the Midwest and will move into the mid-Atlantic states over the course of this week. The phenomenon will bring some of the summer’s hottest conditions and will potentially smash more records.”

Potentially. Wake us if it happens.

We await further provisional data from more places, and the less provisional kind although between computer interpolations and airport measuring stations the final product is often not what it seems even without ludicrous “feels like” commentary. But we continue to feel that these claims of “hottest ever” do not mean what they seem to mean. And that people who keep telling us we’re on fire shouldn’t turn around and say of course you’re chilly, who didn’t predict that one? Because it was them who didn’t, and whose whole position is that it can’t have happened.