DRAMA: a series, says my dictionary, of absorbing, exciting, tense or tragic events. Such as these:
‘I would like people to panic,’ said the EU’s Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, as he unveiled a new equation showing that the world is ‘deep in a climate emergency’.
‘The ocean is hotter than ever: what happens next? The global ocean hit a new record temperature of 21.1C in early April,’ said an article in the world-leading academic journal Nature, ‘0.1C higher than the last record in March 2016.’
Bit of a let-down there, only one tenth higher? But the drama continues.
It seems to be science itself that gets over-excited about our climate. This is what Phys.org, ‘an online science, research and technology news aggregator’, wrote: ‘Oceans are growing hotter, triggering global weather disasters. Heat searing enough to knock out mobile phones. Wildfire smoke that turns the skies an apocalyptic orange. Flash floods submerging towns.’
That mention of mobile phones was intended to get us really worried. Then we have the claims that are based on no data whatsoever, but broadcast anyway. PBS (USA) said there were reports that daily temperatures hit a 100,000-year high. ‘Scientists concluded a few years ago that Earth had entered a new climate state not seen in more than 100,000 years.’
Do we really know that much detail about the Earth’s climate? An Indian website claimed that ‘July has been exceptionally hot, with scientists predicting it will be the hottest month ever recorded globally and likely the warmest in human civilisation’s history’. How long has civilisation been recording daily temperatures? Answer: 143 years.
There’s more from these nameless scientists. The FT, for instance: ‘Climate change is driving ever more extreme weather events, scientists say, [causing] fatal flooding in the US, India and Japan . . . the intensity and timing of monsoons are becoming more erratic due to climate change.’
There is worse to come, far worse. Worse science, I mean. We even have the UN secretary general warning us that that ‘the era of global warming has ended and the era of global boiling has arrived’.
The media couldn’t resist that tasty morsel and it went round the world within hours via the Guardian, Independent, Sky, Al Jazeera, CNBC, Le Monde, FT, VOA, YouTube, inews, Daily Mail, ABC Australia, India Today, ITVX, Metro, Arab News, Morning Star, The Hindu, etc.
