We also find ourselves asking “Was your thesaurus consumed in the conflagration?” after reading “Temperatures to soar to 34C today” To be outdone, MSN’s (subsequently edited) headline was “Wimbledon fans warned as heatwave soars to 33C”. All soar all the time. Including this pathetic example: “Where temperatures are set to soar to 28°C – as another heatwave approaches”. Soar? To 28°C? We already knew you weren’t “climate scientists”. But did you not even study English?

Even more pathetic is “Temperatures to reach 25C today in UK ahead of third heatwave beginning tomorrow”. What’s newsworthy, let alone alert-worthy, about it being 25C? Again, we note for older or more American readers, that figure is 77F. You just cannot do a news story about it getting to that temperature in summer, let alone a scare story. But they did:

“Britain is set to swelter from tomorrow in the country's third heatwave within a month which could last for up to six days as temperatures soar to 33C.”

Soar to 33C. Barely over 90F. What if they just rose to it? What then?

Apparently it would ruin everything. At least inside the echo chamber, because Bloomberg runs a piece seriously trying to sow panic with “Wimbledon’s Sunny Weather Is a Warning”. So ideally this marquee tennis event should be rained out? Yup, since:

“Climate whiplash is wreaking all kinds of havoc, yet officials don’t seem interested in trying to stop it.”

No. It’s just a nice day in summer. Get over it. Really, because that screed even contains a chart “The Sun Came Out a Lot This Spring” showing “Total UK spring sunshine hours” since 1925 and it’s… pretty much a straight line. And the claim that “officials” aren’t worried about climate change is insolent nonsense. Do they not know Ed Miliband is the point man? What about Mark Carney here in Canada? Isn’t every government you can name, other than the American, totally in favour of Net Zero? Hasn’t the British government banned the sale of gasoline and diesel cars by 2030? Why yes, it has (and with five years to go has started pondering the trivial question of how). All because there was nice weather for tennis, and someone kept saying “soar”.

Yahoo! News passed on a piece from The Independent comparing Britain’s current heatwave to the “record-breaking summer of 1976” the gist of which was that this one is less severe than the one 50 years ago before there was climate change, and that the latter was “the hottest in over 350 years and the driest in 200.” How they knew what it was like in 1625 was not explained. But whereas some might conclude from the fact that it was hotter half a century ago, and apparently four centuries ago, that current conditions are not unprecedented, they slam-dunked with “UN Secretary-General António Guterres has said: ‘Extreme heat is no longer a rare event – it has become the new normal.’” (Predicted early July highs for London were in the low 20s when they quoted him.)

So what the heck’s the deal with “Yellow rain warning before 30C heatwave to hit next week”? Which admittedly is the URL name. The headline was just “Yellow weather warning for thunderstorms as 25mm of rain set to fall in two hours”. In Britain, where it never rains? And then for the truly unscary bit:

“Thunderstorms are set to batter parts of the UK on Sunday before a potential third heatwave later in the week, the Met Office said. The weather service said there is a mixed forecast for Sunday and Monday before temperatures are expected to climb back into the low 30Cs by the end of next week, raising the possibility of a third heatwave this summer.”

So there will be thunder then summer weather. No “battered”, no “heatwave”, just some stuff. Such as coolness:

“The rest of the country is also forecast to experience cooler air, cloud and showery spells for the rest of the weekend and early next week, before temperatures begin to rise again.”

Imagine trying to scare the people who went through the Blitz with some thunder, some rain, some cool weather then a warm spell. Idiocy soars.

P.S. Meanwhile in the real world, a Canadian airline sends us a promotion: “Sunny days are ahead/ Warm up to this sale on flights to our new sun destinations: Cancun, Puerto Vallarta, Nassau, Grand Cayman, and Liberia, Costa Rica!” So let’s get this straight: it’s the hottest part of the year in Canada. Temperatures are soaring to scorching levels, the rivers are drying up and the bees and the people are dying so we should emit vast clouds of carbon to go somewhere even hotter? At least “On your nonstop flight from Ottawa, you’ll enjoy free beer”.