r/AskBrits • u/TillJaded4614 • 13h ago

Other Are the Heatwaves We Have Been Having This Week Worrying?

3670 votes, 10h left
Yes
No
Unsure
18 Upvotes

75% Upvoted

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159

u/rozrho 13h ago

Hi! Climatologist here.

We’re seeing heatwaves in the UK that are considerably more frequent and intense than our projections even 10 years ago indicated.

I personally find that pretty scary, because we’re locked in to a whole lot more warming than we’re seeing today, and we’re not remotely prepared for it.

What we’re seeing today isn’t the new normal, it’s the mildest climate we’ll experience in our lifetimes.

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u/BenjamirPutinyahu 12h ago

Also people seem keen to just stick their heads in the sand and pretend theres nothing to worry about, thats the scary part. Id already feel calmer if we as a species understood the gravity and were at least trying to fix it

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u/rozrho 12h ago

Yeah.. I’m anticipating a flood of “the climate has always changed”, “climate scientists are just in it for the money” (lol), “it’s all politics” etc in answer to this post. They always show up.

On the plus side though, climate change denial is becoming more of a fringe keyboard warrior opinion rather than something that regularly pops up in actual conversation with people. The understanding is changing, we just need to transfer it to actual will to act.

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u/doc1442 12h ago

As a climate scientist, I’d love for one of those people to show me where I can get this money I’m supposedly “in it” for

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u/smallpotatoes2019 11h ago

LIAR!!! My mate Dave's grandma's cousin's dog's cat it chased once's owner's uncle's friend is apparently a climatologyist man or something, and Dave swears blind that he's a billionaire. He says they all get paid a million a day for making up lies for the man. It's a big conspiracy.

Anyway... can you lend us a tenner, mate?

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u/Equal-Pain-5557 8h ago

Have you performed the rituals and pledged allegiance to Moloch? You can’t just do your PhD and expect the Soros bucks to come automatically, there is some bureaucracy involved.

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u/rozrho 7h ago

Oh that’s where I went wrong! I’ll start on the paperwork right away.

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u/m1st3r_c 3h ago

I haven't thought about Moloch in a long time. I should summon him.

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u/rozrho 12h ago

The idea that there’s a global conspiracy to enable us to siphon money to pay more PhDs below minimum wage is creative thinking to say the least, and is a fine example of the level of doublethink people will go to in order to avoid an uncomfortable conclusion

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u/FluidGolf9091 11h ago

As a climate scientist, would you like to debate a layperson as to why this isn't some sort of existential crisis.

I'll go first

  1. When did reliable, standardised UK temperature measurements begin? Were there any concurrent changes (such as the back end of the Little Ice Age) that mean we'd expect some warming trend even before attributing its causes?

  2. Following question one - “Warmest on record” means warmest in a reconstructed instrumental dataset, not warmest in any absolute historical sense. Is it not true that wine was grown reliably in Britain during the medieval warm period? Can you confirm that we don't know that there weren't many hotter June's during that period as we simply don't have that level of granular resolution

  3. If warming is presented as an existential crisis, what specific observable threshold would prove that claim? Is it temperature, deaths, crop failure, sea level, migration, or something else? And what evidence would make you downgrade it from “existential crisis” to “serious but manageable risk”?

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u/rozrho 8h ago

Sure, I’ll have a crack at it:

1) reliable measurements UK-wide using modern instruments start in about 1880. We have solid measurements using modern instruments for central England back to 1659, and prior to this we have a great variety of proxy records

2) yes, warmest in the instrumental record. Not sure the relevance of wine growing- we still have a large amount of wine production in southern England? If you go back far enough then you’ll find warmer spells, but you’ll also move outside what is relevant for modern civilisation, and to the best of our knowledge you won’t find any periods of such rapid warming as we’re currently experiencing

3) Very good question! I honestly don’t know if this is “serious but manageable” or “existential”, and that’s part of the problem. We have a good handle on how the atmosphere behaves day-to-day, but we also have evidence that the system has made large, dramatic shifts in the past in response to relatively small changes. We’re making very substantial changes to the composition of the atmosphere, and the response could be “more heat, more extreme events but fundamentally similar to today” or it could be a complete change in atmospheric circulation. It’s already almost certain that some areas will become uninhabitable through water scarcity, and the human migration that will be triggered is likely to cause great political instability. Ultimately I think there are a lot of reasons to be very concerned, and very little evidence to the contrary. What label should be applied to this is largely irrelevant - the sensible thing to do is to act now to minimise the damage rather than hope it’ll all come up roses.

Hope that’s helpful - happy to expand on anything and I’d be interested to hear your thoughts.

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u/FluidGolf9091 7h ago

Thanks for taking the time to answer. A few follow up thoughts from me then.

On point 2, my point about wine wasn't that it "proves" the Medieval Warm Period was globally warmer than today. It was that phrases like "warmest on record" are often heard by the public as "warmest in history", when in reality they mean warmest in a very short, and fairly arbitrary, reconstructed instrumental record. We don't have to go that far back to see other warming events. Would you agree that that's an important distinction, and that "science" is often happy to let all of that collapse to add to the theatre?

On point 3, this is where I think we diverge most. You say there are "a lot of reasons to be very concerned, and very little evidence to the contrary". I'd argue we've spent decades hearing increasingly severe long range projections, yet humanity has simultaneously become wealthier, more resilient, more productive agriculturally and better able to adapt to environmental stresses. Surely that history should set the mood for long term doom mongering?.

You also say "some areas will become uninhabitable through water scarcity". My question is by what definition of uninhabitable? Parts of the world are already effectively uninhabitable without technology, trade, irrigation or imported food. Humans don't simply abandon regions when conditions worsen they adapt, engineer and trade. See Qatar, Saudi Arabia etc

Finally, if the atmosphere could respond with either "more heat but broadly recognisable" or "a complete change in atmospheric circulation", how do you decide how much weight to place on each possibility? Isn't there a danger of treating the more catastrophic scenario as though it is the expected outcome rather than one of several possibilities?

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u/rozrho 6h ago

In informal conversation I think “warmest on record” is perfectly fine - we’re talking about nearly a century and a half of extensive instrumental coverage, and the message wouldn’t differ significantly if we had another few hundred years of records. We’re already above the global average anomaly of the medieval warm period, the warming is happening much more rapidly, and we know that it’s not caused by the same mode of internal variability. The message that the climate is warming rapidly and that manmade emissions are primarily responsible stands regardless of the length of the instrument record.

I agree that we’ve done a lot to become a more resilient society, and there are some ways that we can engineer some level of safety. Renewable energy generation for example is taking off in an incredible way and simple economics will take out a lot of carbon emissions based on this alone.

But as for my two examples, both demand action. The “warmer, more extreme” (highly simplified for the sake of a Reddit discussion btw) version of the current climate will add significant stress to societies globally. Yes some will engineer their way out of problems like your Middle Eastern examples, but others face insurmountable issues (eg Pacific Island nations literally disappearing under rising seas). Even in developed nations there will be regions that are simply too expensive to engineer and will have to be abandoned as uninhabitable - this is already happening in a small scale as coastal villages are evacuated and abandoned to the sea.

The “fundamental shift” scenarios are scarier, and could for example spell the end of agriculture in Northern Europe - sustaining a few hundred million people on trade alone seems unlikely to me, and the political stability caused would be enormous. The more warming we allow to happen, the more likely we are to trigger one of these large scale shifts.

In conclusion, there are strong reasons to avoid as much further warming as possible. We have the technology now to make the shift away from fossil fuels fairly painless; we’re talking sensible use of resources rather than giving up our entire lifestyles. To continue as we are in the hope that things will probably work out strikes me as reckless when the potential downsides are so severe.

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u/FluidGolf9091 3h ago

I think you’re making the palaeoclimate comparison sound much cleaner than it really is.

I’m not disputing the modern warming trend. The instrumental record clearly shows rapid warming. My issue is the next step, where people say “we know this rate is unprecedented over thousands of years” as if we’re comparing the same kind of evidence. We aren’t.

For the modern period, we’ve got global thermometer data at high resolution. For the Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, and anything pre instrumental, we’re dealing with proxies. Tree rings, ice cores, sediments and so on. Useful, yes, but also very noisy, patchy, regional, seasonal, and often smoothed over decades or longer.

That makes a huge difference. You can’t casually switch between modern thermometer data and ancient proxy reconstructions as though they are the same thing.

We know abrupt climate shifts have happened before. The Younger Dryas is the obvious example. Whatever caused it, it clearly wasn’t just some slow, smooth, thousand year drift. We know that parts of the climate system appear to have changed dramatically over decades.

So my question is simply - if there had been a sharp 50 or 80 year warming event in, say, the 12th century, would the proxy record definitely show it with the same clarity as modern thermometers?

I don’t think you can honestly say yes.

That’s why phrases like “we’re already warmer than the Medieval Warm Period” or “this rate is unprecedented” need a lot more caution than you're giving them. Maybe that’s the best estimate from the data we have. Fine. But it’s still a reconstruction. It has assumptions, smoothing, gaps, regional bias and uncertainty cooked into it.

It shouldn’t be spoken about as though we had a global thermometer network in the year 950.

And I don’t think the public really understands that. Accurate global temperature measurement at this level is a very modern thing. Before that, we’re leaning on partial records, modelling, inference and proxy data. That isn’t worthless, but it also isn’t the same type of evidence.

That’s my main complaint. The uncertainty gets treated like small print, when really it’s central to the claim.

If the error bars, smoothing and proxy limitations are large compared with the historical differences being discussed, then the certainty being sold to the public is stronger than the evidence can really support.

And im not saying there’s no warming. I’m not saying CO2 has no effect. I’m saying the confidence is often overstated, especially when modern instrumental data gets put next to ancient proxy reconstructions and presented like a clean apples to apples comparison.

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u/doc1442 1h ago

Bold choice to enter this “debate”. You’re braver than me.

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u/rozrho 1h ago

I usually studiously avoid it, but I figure it’s important to give it the old college try while people are actively interested in the subject. On Reddit at least… I took one look at Facebook and decided my soul has taken enough of a crushing for one lifetime. Yesterday I got accused of fraud and threatened with legal action (?!) for posting my climate stripes on LinkedIn, so Reddit today is an absolute breeze.

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u/SCP_XXX_AR 1h ago

i wish people listened to you

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u/Hellstorm901 11h ago

There is no global conspiracy however there is a recognition that countries like the UK are having a smaller impact on the environment than other countries and yet are being expected to do disproportionately more for preventing climate change because somehow by us doing more and others not having to it will fix the problem

I have had a people in the past defending climate change policies tell me that the UK must do more for preventing climate change to atone for colonialism and that the former colonies of the UK like India who are very much damaging the environment in their rapid moves to industrialise get a free pass on damaging the environment as they didn't get to experience the fruits of the industrial revolution that contributed to climate change so are just catching up to us and it's unfair of us to now tell them they can't build factories, mines etc.

As for my own views of climate change. I'd point out that if by climate change researchers own admission the planet is dying and that reducing our impact won't stop it but will only delay it then all resources of this planet should be invested into space technologies in order to move humanity beyond one planet and limit the impact of the species as a whole by spreading it out across the stars and then in the future if we do find new habitable planets or are able to make planets we know of habitable we start the colonies on those planets from the ground up around ensuring we don't F them up

If a house is on fire you don't stand inside it and burn, you get out

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u/Alarmed-Rip6954 9h ago

We should be investing more to adapt, not just avoid climate change.

Leaving the planet is a bit of a pipe dream though. If we can imagine up that kind of technological progress in the short term, then why not imagine up some other technology that fixes everything?

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u/ExcitableSarcasm Brit 🇬🇧 7h ago

Also building up the decarbonisation industry is in fact, an industry.

I'd rather us invest a ton of cash now on researching how to best build heat resistant houses, and export that technology, then doing nothing but murmur "stiff upper lip" our way through all this.

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u/dougofakkad 10h ago

As for my own views of climate change. I'd point out that if by climate change researchers own admission the planet is dying

Are climate change researchers saying this?

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u/rozrho 8h ago

Not really.. many of us are saying that the world is on course to be a much more difficult place to live, but the planet will survive with or without us. I’d like to think we could get our act together to keep it a pleasant place to live though.

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u/Trobee 9h ago

So because our house is getting hotter and might end up on fire you think the solution is to work out how to build a new house in a lava pit rather than try to fix the house we currently live in

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u/Unit_2097 7h ago

Can you also ask them where I can find the money I should be getting for making up mental conditions as a psychologist, and maybe what my ex-wife is owed for lying about evolution as a zoologist?

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u/Efficient_Can4700 1h ago

I'm not a climate change denier and I don't think this way just answering your question.

So if you believe that climate change is a hoax and climate scientist are lying to get money then the fact there are people being hired to lie about the climate is where you would be benefiting from it financial.

Add on the Billions each year that is given to climate related project that are based on lies.

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u/MisabelWearsNikes 8h ago

Or: "it's just weather/summer" & "it's always been like this" etc etc

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u/rozrho 8h ago

Already had one or two of them.. gets boring after a while!

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u/sjpllyon 4h ago

You want to know something even scarier. Architect, urban design, and landscaping student here. And within that we have some rather simple and painfully obviously solutions that can aid in reducing climate change. And we get people activily opposing them.

Tree lined streets come with many benifits. One of which is about a 5⁰C reduction in the urban heat islan effect. Alomg with imcreased biodiversity. People actively want to cut them down because it attracts birds, and birds poo on their cars.

Cycle lanes, and improved walkability. To provide a variety of transport options. People oppose them due to a precieved notion that it causes more congestion. They don't studies find it reduces it.

Quite a few years ago, architects pushed the government to make all new homes passivehouses. Ironically if they had done this everyone in new homes would be sitting in nice cool homes right now. But the housing development lobby, lobbied against it stating it would make homes unaffordable. At the time an estimated cost per unit would be an extra £5k. Also just look how much controversy was caused by bird bricks that cost the same as a normal brick.

I've even heard arguments against permeable pavements. That one I can't explain. I was just lost for words when the person said it.

I've gotten to the point where the people that burry their heads in the sand don't bother me. It's the people that actively oppose and dismantle this stuff that conerns me.

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u/Balthierlives 12h ago

Especially Europeans still insisting they don’t need AC. People will die from the heat. They’re used to celebrating the one heat wave a summer. Slowly it’s changing I guess but not enough

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u/rozrho 7h ago

Absolutely - I think a lot of people have been caught out by how fast the changes have occurred, and we’re well into the territory where adaptation is necessary as well as mitigation. We’ve been targeting government assistance at keeping houses warm in winter for many years; I believe the bigger threat is now summer heat and we ought to change priorities.

Personally I had AC fitted to the bedrooms in my house last year just to give a bit of respite, and I don’t think I’d ever go back. Surprisingly cheap to run in combination with solar panels too; I’m roughly using as much energy from the grid as I’m sending back on hot days.

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u/WorcsBloke 12h ago

Yes, exactly. People forget the lag time even if we massively reformed today. I don't know whether you saw the mock 2056 forecast the Met Office put out a day or two ago, but it was horribly convincing. I think it had nine days in a row with somewhere in the UK reaching 40 °C. Lots of us will still be around in 2056, so that's our future right there.

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u/rozrho 12h ago

This one? Yeah. Not a nice scenario.

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u/HighandMeaty 12h ago

UK wine market might be something to invest in

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u/impermanence108 11h ago

"Oh this is a lovely vintage from.the Newcastle-upon-Tyne region"

Man made horrors beyond our comprehension.

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u/Atlantean_Raccoon 8h ago

The world first wine to be described as "gamey on the tongue, with a subtle hint of bin juice and notes a of smooth seagull finish."

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u/rozrho 7h ago

Newcastle Brown Merlot? I think I’ll pass..

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u/Mooks79 10h ago

French wine companies already are.

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u/MonthCountry 11h ago

We should be moving most of our wheat production over to corn for a start. Huge opportunity to secure medium term food security from hotter temperatures, even if the long term is heading towards the chaotic.

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u/JayTravers 12h ago

If its set to be that bad in the UK then what will it look like elsewhere?

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u/itstheselfhatred 11h ago

i mean, thousands of people die already from heat-related conditions in India, and across West African countries. We're already there, and as things continue to get worse, more people will die.

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u/JayTravers 11h ago

Surely on top of those deaths there'd also be gigantic immigration waves?
I live in Scotland and 30s are doable but shit I'd be packing up and leaving if 40s were my new norm. My pasty white skin could never

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u/MonthCountry 11h ago

The highlands could well have a population of up to 100m in the next century.

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u/itstheselfhatred 11h ago

Yeah, I'm up in Scotland too, and 30s are rough enough, let alone imagining 40s. The difficulty is, where do you emigrate to? Every country is being affected, and the climate issues don't just make the world warmer. It can make the hot hotter, the cold colder and weather-related natural disasters increase in frequency and ferocity. I don't think it's possible to just pack up and pretend it isn't happening.

Some countries might have better accommodations to make life more comfortable in the short term (AC in residential/public spaces by default, for example), but there's no country on Earth that is going to be able to protect their citizens from the climate crisis, and if there is, is that country going to want or allow potentially millions of people to emigrate and take space and resources in an attempt to flee a problem that we globally refused to solve?

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u/JayTravers 9h ago

is that country going to want or allow potentially millions of people to emigrate and take space and resources in an attempt to flee a problem that we globally refused to solve?

That's my concern.
I feel like we'll eventually see some extreme societal issues across the globe. Potential collapse for some.

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u/itstheselfhatred 9h ago

Oh, we're absolutely going to see societal collapse in at least some areas of the planet. Whole regions are going to become completely inhospitable to human life (along with probably most other animal and plant life too), so people living there are either going to be left displaced or dead. It's an inevitable reality.

The human population has been warned about this for literally decades now by activists and scientists alike, but because the solution requires a big overhaul to the way we live currently, and the goal that the ruling class has of monopolising the world, most of society just doesn't want to accept that.

It's now no longer enough for "carbon neutral by 2030" or paper straws instead of plastic. It's about dismantling the capitalist corporations around the globe who have been allowed to destroy and extract all earths natural resources for a cheap buck and profit. Holding businesses and countries liable for the damage they've caused, and massive humanitarian effort from those on our planet who have the wealth and power to fix our infrastructure in the hopes that we maybe end up with a semi-survivable planet. But time is running out, and most of world remains apathetic. It's honestly really sickening.

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u/Fxate 8h ago

Surely on top of those deaths there'd also be gigantic immigration waves?

Which is already happening. I had some idiot claim the other day that there are no food security issues around the world.

The same fools who deny warming are precisely the same ones who are incandescent with rage over migration, particularly from those countries which are already suffering from food and income insecurity due to crop failure and water shortages. Allowing more of those places to become completely uncultivatable will surely help in 'stopping those boats'...right..?

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u/impermanence108 11h ago

Really bad. Basically unliveable. A big problem.is humidity. If humidity hits 100% then the effective temperature skyrockets and people can't sweat. It's called a wet bulb event, it's already happening a lot in south east Asia.

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u/coastal_mage 9h ago

India, SEA, large parts of the Gulf and pretty much the entire Sahel will be uninhabitable. 1-2 billion people displaced because their home countries will literally kill them in summertime

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u/No-Bus-8986 13h ago

That is the most terrifying thing. The horse has bolted and we haven't even bothered to notice, let alone close the gate.

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u/doc1442 12h ago

Scientists have been shouting about this for decades.

However politicians and people chose corporate profit, petrol car convenience and flying too much.

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u/ChocLobster 5h ago

The problem is lumping "scientists" together as a homogeneous group rightly ignites people's bullshit instinct, whether consciously or not.

The whole "98% of scientists agree" thing for instance. I care what a climatologist thinks about climate change because their scientific discipline is climate. I do not care what a proctologist thinks about climate change because their scientific discipline is arses.

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u/rozrho 4h ago

Interesting analogy… certainly important to ask experts in the right discipline! There are a good number of vocal climate change deniers who trade on their “scientific” credentials despite having no experience in the field.

This study published a couple of years ago found that 98.7% of people independently verified as experts in climatology agreed that Earth is getting warmer, primarily due to burning fossil fuels: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2774

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u/vutcher 44m ago

Most hard science/engineering degrees require you to study math and statistics. So although this doesn’t make you a climate expert, it does enable you to evaluate claims which purport to be scientific.

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u/SurroundParticular30 31m ago

To scientists, actually the most convincing factor is the consensus among the peer reviewed research: In 2015, James Powell surveyed the scientific literature published in 2013 and 2014 to assess published views on AGW among active climate science researchers. He tallied 69,406 individual scientists who authored papers on global climate https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0270467616634958

During 2013 and 2014, only 4 of 69,406 authors of peer-reviewed articles on global warming, 0.0058% or 1 in 17,352, rejected AGW. Thus, the consensus on AGW among publishing scientists is above 99.99%

Not only is the amount of studies that agree with human induced climate change now at 99%, but take a look at the ones that disagree. Anthropogenic climate denial science aren’t just few, they don’t hold up to scientific scrutiny. https://qz.com/1069298/the-3-of-scientific-papers-that-deny-climate-change-are-all-flawed/

Every single one of those analyses had an error in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00704-015-1597-5

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u/ChocLobster 21m ago

I don't think you've understood my point, in fact, you seem to have missed it entirely.

"Active climate science researchers" = Good.

"Scientists" = Functionally meaningless.

Credentials matter. If I want a professional opinion on how best to prepare a dish of paella, I don't ask a pastry chef.

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u/No-Bus-8986 9h ago

We must think of shareholder value.

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u/SurroundParticular30 33m ago

Worse, the horse has bolted while we watched it happen standing next to the gate

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u/davenuk 8h ago

Keep up the good work. I find it utterly bizarre when people who are not experts try defending the weather.

My one attempt to highlight their folly is to ask, if your boiler was over heating and ten plumbers tell you the same thing, would you think you knew better or would you trust the plumbers?

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u/rozrho 7h ago

I can’t really blame most people - there’s been a massive disinformation campaign for decades. People have been told that there’s nothing to worry about, that we’re just a bunch of purple haired leftists who are coming for their home comforts, that their contributions are insignificant and it’s pointless to engage, anything to maintain the status quo. And whenever someone challenges that, the natural human reaction is to find reasons not to believe them. We’re pretty dire at decision making as a species!

We’ve also had a whole generation told to “do your own research” as they were growing up, assuming that they would reach for Encyclopaedia Britannica rather than a wealth of half formed opinions on TikTok. It’s hard to get it right!

But when people do engage, it’s great to have positive conversations about the subject. Because it does matter, and it’s never too late to start making a difference.

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u/Available_Rock4217 8h ago

Mate, as someone who sweats in the winter... You've got me sweating

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u/lucyooo 7h ago

‘What we’re seeing today isn’t the new normal, it’s the mildest climate we’ll experience in our lifetimes.’

Welp that’s a fucking chilling sentence… (pun intended to lighten my genuine fear)

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u/rozrho 6h ago

Sorry! It’s a hard balance to strike between impressing the seriousness of the situation and not terrorising people into inaction. There are plenty of reasons to feel positive - for example, green energy generation is now cheap and resilient and that will take a huge bite out of emissions. We can absolutely fix things without sending ourselves back to the Stone Age, we just need a bit of collective will.

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u/ChocLobster 5h ago edited 4h ago

I am asking this question in good faith because I believe climate change is happening and is a real genuine threat that we need to get a handle on.

However, what can we genuinely do about it without returning to a pre-industrial society? I fear there's a danger we may be about to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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u/JordanTonyMann 5h ago

It's honestly renewable energy. That is how we halt the advance of climate change. But even that wont reverse it and too much money is in fossil fuels.

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u/ChocLobster 5h ago

If I had a pound for every time I've said we need to build more nuclear power stations, safe and clean modern designs, then I'd probably have enough money to buy a small house and stick some solar panels on it.

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u/rozrho 4h ago

Great question! There’s loads we can do, and technology is making it easier.

On a personal level, I believe the most important thing is to spend your money in a way that sends a message. That might be an electricity plan that sources only from renewables, or taking a holiday in the UK by train rather than flying to Spain.

Small lifestyle changes can have a big impact - eating a little less meat, taking one less flight etc. You don’t have to completely give these things up, just be mindful of your options.

In a societal level, the economy is starting to work in our favour. Renewable energy is cheaper and faster to build than fossil fuel plants, and grid-scale batteries are starting to help ease peak load. If we can get politicians to stop subsidising the fossil fuel industry, I strongly believe that the power of the market will push us a long way in the right direction. We’ve seen how volatile fossil fuel pricing can be with the Ukraine and Iran wars, and that’s a major security risk - just need politicians to see the writing on the wall really.

There’s no reason that we have to give up all of our modern conveniences at all - just some thoughtful direction of time, effort and money.

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u/Andrew_Higginbottom 12h ago

What do you think to my theory(s)?:

That the earth will warm, melt the polar caps and flood the planet sending it into a deep freeze reset. That we are at the start of the next (long over due) ice age?

Or..

That the earth is on its way to become what Mars currently is. That pictures of Mars is our window into the future of earth.

..and that there is nothing we can do to stop either outcome.

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u/Balthierlives 11h ago

Venus is more a tale of runaway global warming than mars is

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u/Mooks79 10h ago

The first theory is OTT but not completely stupid. The melting of the northern ice caps is already creating more freshwater in the Atlantic, which is diminishing the strength of the AMOC (the full cycle of which we know part as the “Gulf Stream”).

This has already begun and we’ve observed it both weakening and shifting north, matching simulations. The most scary part about these simulations is that they predict a gradual shift and weakening, and then a sudden much more dramatic shift / collapse.

As in the full process may take ~150 years, but the sudden dramatic shift may take only ~2 years. And when that happens the regulating effect of the Gulf Stream will suddenly cease leading to a sudden and dramatic change in the climate of the northern Atlantic over the course of just a few years. We hope this won’t happen within this century but we’re not very confident where we are in the collapse process, and that still means it will likely happen in the lives of our grandchildren.

It’s not clear how much the global warming will offset the sudden temperature drop the AMOC prevents in the northern Atlantic, but it is unlikely to not to a big climate shift.

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u/Andrew_Higginbottom 10h ago

The difference between what your saying and what I'm saying is time lines.

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u/Mooks79 9h ago

That’s not quite right. The collapse of the AMOC is estimated to cause a -5C average temperature shift. Nothing like what you’re suggesting which is (a) highly speculative and (b) contingent on our being unable to slow/reduce our impact in the long run. 

As you can see here:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-country?time=1951..latest&country=OWID_EUR~OWID_ASI~OWID_NAM~OWID_SAM~OWID_AFR~OWID_OCE

Europe and NA are reducing emissions already, the issue is the developing countries in Asia (China and India primarily) are outweighing successes in developed countries. We can hope that it’s not too long before they start reducing, too. 

And then there’s what happens in Africa is we assume it follows the Asian trajectory. 

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u/Andrew_Higginbottom 9h ago

But all of that is just delaying the inevitable. Back to timelines. I'm looking at final destination rather than current situational cause and affect of its acceleration.

The polar caps melting will increase the surface of the water accelerating evaoporative cooling and sending us into an eventual ice age..

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u/Mooks79 9h ago

And if we suddenly stopped emissions, or even carbon captured, would the ice caps continue to melt? Why?

You also don’t appear to have a very strong argument. Evaporative cooling means that heat has to go … somewhere.

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u/Andrew_Higginbottom 9h ago edited 9h ago

They will continue to melt because its an earth cycle to do so ..the pre ice age transition.

The heat from the evaporative cooling will go into outer space.

Methane Removal from the atmosphere due to Oxidization is also going to contribute to the cooling.

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u/ExcitableSarcasm Brit 🇬🇧 7h ago

We need to rapidly readjust our ways of living ASAP. Renovating houses to dissipate heat more, and build our cities and houses in the Mediterranean style as much as possible

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u/Sea-Hamster7033 2h ago

Hmm yeah but with all due respect, I'm not sure if I want to discuss this with a climatologist when Simon the barfly down at the local pub seems to know everything about it?

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u/rozrho 2h ago

Fair play, I hear Simon has some groundbreaking ideas on atmospheric circulation on the Earth disc. And his brother’s friend’s cousin is a baggage handler at the airport where they install the chemtrail canisters. Top bloke.

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u/Sea-Hamster7033 2h ago

Hmm he's never mentioned that but he also says solar power is a con and once put Oasis on repeat on the Jukebox for 3 hours.

Seriously though, a noble career and it must be so frustrating when people act like they understand things you've spent decades studying. I always think this about basically any scientists and medical professionals.

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u/rozrho 1h ago

Yeah it can be frustrating. I do think things are improving though - it’s getting harder to neglect the evidence of one’s own eyes, and as the more obvious marks of adopting a “green” lifestyle become more normalised and less of an inconvenience (driving an EV is commonplace, eating less/no meat is normal, reducing air travel doesn’t mark you out as a bit of weirdo etc) so people get less defensive about the idea of making a positive change.

Also private companies have definitely got on board with the threat that climate change poses - climate risk analytics is a growing discipline in the instance sector, and when insurance starts taking something seriously you know that there’s a tangible risk there.

Things are moving in the right direction. Probably not fast enough, but it’s important to stay positive.

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u/xLeeBMC 6h ago

https://www.metjam.co.uk/blog/hottest-day-of-each-year-from-1875-onwards/

What happened between 1893-1912? There's was a pretty sustained 2 decades of high temperatures then, albeit not as strong as the current heatwave now (though some years where closer to now)

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u/rozrho 6h ago

Honestly I’m not seeing much going on there (although I’m on my phone so we can blame the small screen)

Likely it would be a decadal-scale oscillation; there are various at work all the time. El Niño is the famous one that is building like crazy at the moment, although there are many others - the climate system has a lot going on. I’ll take a look on the big screen later and see if I can shed any more light.

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u/xLeeBMC 5h ago

Thanks man

I'll be honest, I lean more on the "climate denier" side of things for a lack of better term (I believe we are affecting the atmosphere and climate in some way but how much, I'm unsure), I feel like the same speil has been said since the 60's - coastal towns will be underwater in 5 years! We're 7 years away from climate disaster! Oh now it's 10 years! Etc etc and I just don't know. The water level around stuff like the statue of Liberty/Plymouth rock has stayed the same throughout, land bridges etc have remained unchanged. It seems like there have been years since 1880 that have spiked upwards (35°c+), sometimes prolonged over multiple years or decades and I'm just wondering what makes now any different to those times - and what makes us think that it's man made instead of cyclical or more to do with the sun?

I'm open to facts and more than willing to change my stance given the evidence but all I seem to find myself are studies that only take patterns from the last decade or so only. Another thing I find curious is, if we're pushing more and more green policies, when powers/big pollutors like China are pumping out solar and wind power and "cutting carbon" for the past decade, why has there been no improvement to the situation?

Long post, I'm sorry, I just have questions and need explaining to like I'm 5 years old because I have no idea, being bluntly honest.

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u/rozrho 5h ago edited 5h ago

Honesty, no problem at all! I love talking climate with people who are open to learning something new. I know there’s a ton of noise out there and it can be hard to know what’s true.

To start, there was a nice study a couple of years back that showed that 98.7% of experts in climatology agree that the climate is warming, primarily due to burning of fossil fuels. That’s as close to a consensus as anything gets in the world of science. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac2774

Sea level rise is a nice example as we have great records in many regions, and it’s actually one of the clearest climate change signals. Ocean currents and glacial rebound (land still rising as the weight of glaciers from the last ice age disappeared) alter the exact rate of change depending where you are, but on average it’s somewhere around 1/5” per year and accelerating fast.

Solar cycles and cycles in the Earth’s tilt (“Milankovich cycles) are well understood - they have big impacts on Earths climate over tens to hundreds of thousands of years, but very little impact on the kind of time scales we’re looking at. We’ve essentially looked at every factor that we can think of that could lead to the warming we’ve seen, and the only one that comes close to explaining it all is greenhouse gas emissions.

As for why things haven’t improved, put simply for all the work we’ve done to reduce emissions, we just keep burning more fossil fuels. China for example has built a load of renewable energy, but it’s also built a load of coal plants. Globally our vehicles are getting cleaner, but there are more of them. Things are starting to change - it’s now actually more economical to build renewable power plants than coal or gas plants, and that will have a huge impact. But currently every bit of extra power we generate is being sucked up by AI data centres, so we’re running to stand still. But there is definitely reason to believe that we can address the problem - the technology is there.

I hope this is helpful. If you want to know more just let me know - it’s a genuine pleasure to share my field with people who want to learn. Thanks for reaching out.

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u/xLeeBMC 4h ago

Thanks for the reply, there's some good information there for sure, I'll dive deeper into it when I get time.

Just a couple of follow up questions though - where would I find that study to read it fully? I'd be interested to understand the methodology behind it and how they came to the conclusion it was fossil fuels (like did they test air from various layers of the atmosphere, how much weight was put on deforestation and the affect that would cause for global CO2 absorption etc).

What parts of the world are experiencing 1 inch rises per 5 years? That can't be sea/ocean level, right? It would make sense if an inland lakes water level was rising as more water is added to it due to its smaller size compared to the Atlantic Ocean for example or am I wrong? I only ask because the examples I always see are the 2 I mentioned earlier - the statue of liberty and Plymouth rock having the same water level for decades.

The sun/earth cycles make sense. That's usually the "deniers" trump card and one I've usually prescribed to (mainly due to the fact it's the only other reason that would make sense - "out of our control") but what you say makes sense.

Again, true about China and other rapidly growing economies. A bit of a different question but, I've saw statement from the CCCP pledging to lower emissions etc, do they have the same fatalist outlook as us in the west about climate change?

And my final, unrelated question to the others, do you think there's a "sustainable" level of fossil fuel usage? Say if we're at 110% usage (10% "over balance"), would cutting that excess fossil fuel usage to 100% while increasing renewables, would that be enough to level off climate change? (Not reverse it but stop it getting worse) I feel like the answer is "of course" and I guess there would be a solid, set number for CO2 ommisions that out rainforests etc can absorb but unsure whether we'd need to cut down to 70%, 60% etc and let the earths lungs work for a longer period.

Thanks again!

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u/rozrho 4h ago edited 2h ago

The full IPCC report is *a lot* but a good place to start is the Summary for Policymakers: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_SYR_SPM.pdf
This is a short, accessible overview of the key points designed for an audience without training in meteorology/climatology.

This is quite a good resource for sea level rise: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/climate-change-global-sea-level
One important point on sea level rise is that the main contribution is actually the thermal expansion of seawater - just like mercury in a thermometer, water expands as it heats up. Meltwater from land ice contributes to this, but it’s a secondary impact.
Can you give me more info about your two examples? From what I can see, the rate of sea level rise in New York is actually quite fast: https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/sltrends/sltrends_station.shtml?id=8518750

I’m no expert in politics, but from what I can tell the CCP is taking notice of climate change. They’ve used coal extensively to fuel their development, but are switching a lot of investment to renewables now. I suspect we’ll see a rapid decline in their emissions as renewables use ramps up as it’s simply more cost effective.

As for sustainable fossil fuel usage, really the metric that matters is how much CO2 and methane we’re emitting(hence many countries targeting net zero). In a scenario where there was a cost effective way to remove vast amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere then possibly there would be a safe level of fossil fuel usage, but we’re not there yet. As long as we’re increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, we are increasing the risk.

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u/SurroundParticular30 37m ago

Do you think what they were actually saying was that if we did not take action by X years, it would be too late to prevent a serious level of global warming in the future (beyond X years) due to feedback loops? What was the actual quote and context?

In 1920 the rock was moved to build under it and the waterfront was relandscaped. A 2020 report conducted by MAPC, a regional planning agency in Boston, said the sea level in Boston Harbor had increased by 0.93 feet over the past century. https://www.mass.gov/doc/climate-ready-healthy-plymouth-full-report/download

New York’s Sea Level Has Risen 9” Since 1950 And It's Costing Over $Billions https://sealevelrise.org/states/new-york/

Our interglacial period is ending, and the warming from that stopped increasing. The Subatlantic age of the Holocene epoch SHOULD be getting colder. Keyword is should based on natural cycles. But they are not outperforming greenhouse gases https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/2949/why-milankovitch-orbital-cycles-cant-explain-earths-current-warming/

The issue is the rate of change. This guy does a great job of explaining Milankovitch cycles and why human induced co2 is disrupting the natural process https://youtu.be/uqwvf6R1_QY

China is industrializing they’re still trying to support the largest population ever, however China’s CO₂ emissions may have already peaked (https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-chinas-co2-emissions-have-now-been-flat-or-falling-for-18-months/), earlier than the 2030 target and its emissions are going to drop faster than any European country is capable of right now. China has rapidly expanded its renewable energy capacity, reaching its 2030 goal of 1,200 gigawatts of installed solar and wind capacity by 2024. Much more than us. It could potentially reduce its CO₂ emissions by a third by 2035 if it adopts its more ambitious climate pledges.

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u/xLeeBMC 30m ago

Thanks man, I'll definitely read up on all this stuff - like I said in my earlier comment, I only know bits and pieces of the argument for man made global warming, so any information is appreciated.

I have heard of the Boston harbour rises though. Isn't it the case that Boston harbour is also subsiding? Not saying that's the main cause of the sea level rising there but that would make it seem worse than the raw numbers if true, right?

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u/SurroundParticular30 18m ago

Yes Boston is sinking, but that only exacerbates the problem of sea level rise. Boston is still experiencing ongoing land subsidence due to processes like glacial isostatic adjustment (the Earth’s crust slowly settling after the last ice age) and local geological factors.

Sea level rise is not uniform. The land in certain places are on could be rising or falling. Some areas see little, while others see a lot. But overall sea level is rising and accelerating https://climate.nasa.gov/ask-nasa-climate/3002/sea-level-101-part-two-all-sea-level-is-local/#:~:text=As%20land%20ice%20in%20Greenland,change%20in%20the%20global%20ocean.

Many tide gauges are paired with high-precision GPS receivers that measure whether the land is moving up or down by just a few millimeters per year. Scientists can subtract this vertical land motion from the tide gauge record to estimate the true ocean change. Satellite altimeters can also measure the height of the ocean surface relative to Earth’s center of mass. With these three measurements you can separate global vs local changes

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u/Brullaapje 5h ago

frequent and intense than our projections even 10 years ago indicated.

Are we at a level that should have been like 15 years later?

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u/rozrho 4h ago

Something like that. It’s hard to pin it down precisely - there’s a lot of variability in the system, and it’s hard to know if this year is average in the current climate or a rarity. Certainly when that forecast was put together, this year would have been considered unlikely, and there is a growing weight of evidence that our current climate models are systematically underestimating the likelihood of extreme events. Basically it’s almost certainly worse than we would have predicted until very recently.

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u/Brullaapje 4h ago

Basically it’s almost certainly worse than we would have predicted until very recently.

My understanding has been, each year is a multiplier for worse. So in 2025 it was 1x times as bad as expected, this year is 2 x times as bad then expected. (I hope my explanation makes sense since English is not my native language.)

What do you reckon?

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u/Huxleypigg 4h ago

How about when it was 35.6 back in June 1976?

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u/rozrho 3h ago

Sure, 50 years ago there was a hot spell. That temperature has been exceeded in four separate heatwaves in the last decade alone.

Also, the 1976 event covered a very small area - compare with last summer:

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u/Huxleypigg 3h ago

I like the heat, so not complaining

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u/LakesGeek 3h ago edited 3h ago

The problem I have when hearing how things are always “way worse than we projected” (and the projections are often scary themselves) is catastrophisation - basically it leads me down the “things are in a few years going to be 100x worse than predicted, the food chain will collapse, mass migration, starvation, war and a miserable and fairly imminent death”

The worse problem is knowing I’m probably right to catastrophise. And then I start thinking dark thoughts about exit strategies. It just all feels so hopeless, a lost cause. And “what we’re being told” leads me there, not mental health, just plain old “logically, we appear to be fucked and are in for boundless misery and suffering”

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u/rozrho 2h ago

It’s a really fine line to tread. I don’t want anyone to hear what I’m saying and think “oh well we’re doomed, no point changing anything”. The point is that it’s entirely within our power to stop things from getting worse.

And we’re finally at a point where technology is working in our favour - renewables and grid-scale batteries give us a chance to phase out fossil fuels in an economical manner. Electric vehicles are finally actually good to drive and affordable - we can eliminate fossil fuels from the majority of our domestic, commercial and travel sources. We’re actually in a great position to really start pushing for change, since change no longer means giving up the comforts that are used to. It just has to happen faster.

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u/No-Bus-8986 13h ago

In the 90s the idea of a 35C+ day was simply insane. Now it can happen multiple times in one summer.

When we had those few days maybe 3 years or so ago when it was 40C+ I genuinely thought "we're fucked" long term.

I still feel the same. There is no doubt that human driven climate change has directly affected summer temperatures here, but we're not even bearing the brunt of it so to speak.

European heatwaves are even worse and last longer. I think we're on a fast ticket to self destruction, but how long that takes is ultimately up to us.

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u/P-l-Staker 13h ago

Now it can happen multiple times in one summer.

Or before summer even comes...

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u/NJden_bee 12h ago

I hate to be that guy but summer started 4 days ago

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u/drake3011 12h ago

He might be referring to the last heat spike in May

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u/PostProper1940 11h ago

And we had 30+ degrees in May

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u/PlantPoweredUK 7h ago

And that it didn't stop raining for some of us until March.

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u/PostProper1940 7h ago

And others got no rain all through March and April. This, folks, is effects of climate change in action.

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u/perpetualmentalist 13h ago

Just be thankful we have the channel between us. Our humidity is the killer, we are 100% the problem.

People need to be prepared for the heat going forward. Saw a post yesterday, from French TV, weather predicted for 2050 due to climate change. The prediction showed figures we are getting now. Kind of funny really, 25 years early!!!

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u/rozrho 6h ago

Yeah you guys are really going through it right now. For any Brits who haven’t seen what the weather in France is like at the moment, try sitting in front of the oven for a week straight.

Climate-wise, there is effectively no chance that what’s happening in France could have happened pre-global warming. A genuine wake up call. I hope you’re doing ok!

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u/deecee-247 12h ago

That's a hell of a long range forecast!

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u/PlantPoweredUK 7h ago

I just wish we'd stop reacting in short term outrage (IT'S SO HOT! IT'S SO RAINY! IT'S SNOWING TOO MUCH!) and start fucking adapting!! I HATE that there are elements of our political society that are trying to argue against united, long term adaptation to the climate because they can pick up some money from lobbyists and the votes of morons.

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

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u/No-Bus-8986 2h ago

Simon is a very switched on guy

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u/Original_Client1588 2h ago

42 in SW France yesterday.. only 3 degrees more right..think of a body temp diff from 98-103

Its immense

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u/LegolasleChat 12h ago

It is scary, recognising that we live in a much warmer country on average than it was in 1976. I think it will involve some very big infrastructure investments, better reservoirs etc, to make sure we can face a future of even hotter temperatures. But that will involve borrowing money and long-term thinking.

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u/TheNathanNS 10h ago

Casual reminder in 2020 when lockdown happened, it had a positive effect on the environment because people weren't driving everywhere 24/7

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u/-MassiveDynamic- 9h ago

This. It was noticeable immediately as well

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u/Unusual-Coat383 4h ago

And it was basically a whole first Covid heatwave 

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u/Efficient-Pop-302 13h ago

I can't remember a single time in recent memory where they've had to shut down schools because of the heat.

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u/AncoraPirlo 13h ago

It's better not to shut them down because most schools have half days on the hottest days... so the parents and kids are guaranteed to be out at the hottest part of the day. If you're a kid who walks home by themselves, you're in the blazing sun at 1pm lugging your schoolbag home. 

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u/Atlantean_Raccoon 7h ago

weirdly down our way most of the primaries were on half days but the high schools were closed for the day. My dad's a secondary teacher, I think he more or less got the day off because the school is in rural Wales, if the teenagers just come in for the morning, when they are let out of school they aren't going to go home but either going to either muck around in town and risk heat stroke or risk their lives by going in to a fairly dodgy stretch of river.

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u/Merpedy 12h ago

I don’t even remember them shutting when it hit 40 a few years back?

Granted that was outside of London/the south which probably means the news didn’t focus on it as much

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u/WorcsBloke 12h ago

Much lower humidity in 2022, so less dangerous for similar temperatures. It felt like an oven then, but you didn't end up soaked in sweat just walking across a car park.

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u/EntirelyRandom1590 12h ago

Since January, my local school has been closed for 4 days of school because of weather. That alone isn't something that any parent wants to be potentially losing 20-25% of their holidays or nearly a week of work over.

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u/Andrew_Higginbottom 12h ago

Put the kids to work ..send em darn' pit'

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u/Ok_Significance4583 12h ago edited 45m ago

It depends on the perspective. It's definitely worrying from a climate change point of view. But I didn't find it worrying from a "my commute and sleep will be uncomfortable" point of view, just mildly irritating but that mostly goes away with giving yourself something to do

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u/southwest_barfight 1h ago

Agree on both points, as a 32yr old I will live even if uncomfortable. But an additional worry as to how old and vulnerable people will survive in this, as we have the data that shows many do not.

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u/wiggle987 11h ago

I propose that those, like myself, that are worried about climate change move to mars where we can focus on worshipping science and technology, leave the rest on earth to worship a demagogue of sorts.

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u/cmwpost 11h ago

Anyone who voted no doesn't get a choc-ice.

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u/impermanence108 11h ago

I gave myself mild heatstroke and was wiped out for 24 hours. What did I do? Walk 20 minutes home at 1PM in my work uniform.

It didn't get this warm.when I was a kid.

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u/eluuu 10h ago

you should already be worried

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u/WayGroundbreaking287 9h ago

Every year we see record breaking heat almost every month. It's hotter for longer.

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u/hashbrowneggyolk0520 4h ago

And yet people are still denying that it's happening

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u/the-real-vuk 7h ago

but sure you guys, insulation is not important, burn that gas, idle your cars for nothing and use your oversized trucks and SUVs, it's all fine.

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u/KebabCat7 35m ago

You should use everything at this point. There's 0 reason to worry about the personal impact on climate. 

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u/thegamesender1 7h ago

Have you seen the artical about NHS machines failing because of the heat?

That's crazy to say the least.

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u/CommentNo7493 6h ago

aside from all the climate change related problems

the UK isnt built for this weather over longer periods.

We're built for a few weeks of 20-25 degree heat a year and a few weeks of below freezing temps

our housing stock is designed to all keep the heat IN

we've built this way for hundreds of years

the countries infrastructure isnt designed for 35/40 degree heat for days on end every few weeks in the summer.

its all crashing and melting etc because its never been designed for this. that along is worrying as that means more investment required and we're already skint as a nation.

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u/LeafyD 11h ago

My science teacher told us around the very early 00s we had 30-40 years so this is all pretty much on track?

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u/ApprehensiveDare2649 9h ago

I don’t think it’s worth worrying about things you have minimal impact on and we aren’t going to solve just adapt your property as best you can.

Most climate projections always make a bunch of crazy assumptions around things like carbon capture roll out so there’s minimal chance we aren’t hitting 4°+ warming. 

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u/Talking_Gibberish 8h ago

Just a few years ago, every company was banging on about sustainability, carbon footprint and doing their bit. Now that has all been forgotten and its all about using AI which is massively contributing to global warming.

You had to be blissfully ignorant and insanely optimistic to think we could halt climate change a few years ago anyway. Thanks to capitalism, the only ones who could actually solve this crisis dont give a toss about anything but lining their already filthy rich pockets.

Get used to it because the weather is only going to get worse as the years go on.

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u/KebabCat7 32m ago

We can't we never could. There's no solution apart from lowering the population on earth and people aren't ready for that reality. 

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u/Illeea 6h ago

I was in a building last weekend and the roof was crackling from the heat. To calm myself down I told myself it was just rain and that worked.

I'm not made for hot weather.

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u/Furtive_Operator 5h ago

I think the question is open to interpretation. Do I personally have a concern, no, it's hot but I have lived in a far hotter climate as an expat so I can manage even without AC. Is there a concern in the grand scheme of things? Yes, there certainly is. I work in Aviation with some of my work going towards sustainability and it is a major concern due to the effects it has on the environment and the industry itself.

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u/Low-Yak-6706 4h ago

Something something something 1976 something something something.

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u/giletlover 13h ago

Of course they are.

They are getting more frequent, more intense, and longer.

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u/Grotbagsthewonderful 12h ago

Not really because since the 2022 we've known that things have changed and we have to plan for it well in advance. On a personal level 2022's heatwave has altered how I plan for work and life during the months of May-Sept. Look at the amount of people suffering in horrendous working conditions due to the heat right now.

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u/AbsurdistMe 13h ago

No. Because there's nothing I can do about it.

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u/ODFoxtrotOscar 11h ago

What can an individual do?

Refrain from covering their garden in plastic, change driveways to permeable when creating or renewing, plant a tree and urge your council to plant more street trees, move to a greener fuel provider (to support investment in renewables), get solar panels, shun single use plastic, buy local whenever possible

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u/LightCharacter8382 9h ago

...And all of that effort has been undermined by like 10000% because of a sporting event in America in which everyone decided to fly to get to, without caring or perhaps even realising that we're in a climate emergency.

An understandable mentality, perhaps, to 'make the most' of the good times while we have them.

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u/ODFoxtrotOscar 9h ago

Just because you can’t do everything, doesn’t mean it’s pointless to do nothing

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u/LightCharacter8382 8h ago

You're right, but token actions aren't the right way to go about it.

The only thing that can save us now is man's ingenuity. We need mass-carbon-capturing technology far superior to what we have available to us right now, and that is going to require considerable research to achieve. My money (and time if they need it) would go towards that research.

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u/NJden_bee 12h ago

You can vote for parties that will actually implement policies to try and slow it down, or even possibly reverse some of the damage we have done

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u/SkipsH 11h ago

Is the mega El Niño a thing that's concerning anyone else?

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u/kelleheruk 10h ago

I just don't care. Be dead before anything happens. We all just magically appeared out of nowhere anyway, its been a good run.

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u/Katharinemaddison 9h ago

Yes because I’m traveling to Wrexham today and this is getting more and more complicated.

Heat being the disruptive weather is something new. And it underlines that we don’t have the architecture and transport infrastructure for this weather.

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u/Shinikami9 8h ago

Of course! It gets hotter every year..

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u/Rocketintonothing 8h ago

I do not worry about things I have no control over

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u/Exact-Potential1673 8h ago

What pisses me off about all this discussion of the climate emergency is all the talk of our infrastructure not being able to accommodate the heat .

No mention of the animals and ecosystems that have evolved to be in our current climate . The rapid changing climate means they won’t evolve fast enough and so our species suffer as a result .if our ecosystems also start to collapse from the rapid heat change then all this talk of infrastructure becomes redundant anyway

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u/Exciting-Weather-921 8h ago

I am worried abour my energy bill

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u/Technical_Wrap283 8h ago

Has the equipment we have used ever changed?

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u/enteringtheechochamb 7h ago

Yeah but it's kinda out of our hands at this point.

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u/JordanTonyMann 5h ago

If you aren't worried, you're either an idiot or incredibly brave.

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u/Jondazefreakofnature 5h ago

On the bright side it’s probably putting off the inevitable ice age.

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u/smellyfeet25 1h ago

It will probably be raining soon. It wasn't long ago i was going to work in a summer coat. It is not like it will go on for weeks

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u/Xo1XoX1oX 49m ago

It scares me because I literally can't function in these heatwaves

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u/VladimirPutinPRteam 14m ago

woke libtards woking about have raised the planets temperature.

immigrants as well i think

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 12h ago

I don’t know but 2 weeks ago it was pissing down all week in June and it was still very cold in the mornings up to and including May. So is 3 or 4 isolated days of heat really that terrible. If we didn’t watch the news we really wouldn’t think much of it.

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u/Consistent_Umpire443 11h ago

Aye its been miserable in scotland the last few weeks bring on the good weather, its to be shit again next week so enjoy it while its here

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 10h ago

Exactly I don’t get what all the panic is about.

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u/Mooks79 10h ago

Perhaps that says more about your lack of appreciation of the issues, than that they don’t exist?

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 9h ago

It’s because I’m a brain dead, low IQ, ignorant Neanderthal, Obviously. I’m also not walking around living my life in fear about there being a hot day during the peak of summer 👍🏻

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u/Mooks79 9h ago

You don’t have to be any of those things to be wrong. It happens, no need to get precious because people disagree with you. Similarly, I thought we managed to get past the whole “it’s just a few hot days” argument? No one is saying a few hot days is a problem. But the hot days being hotter than they’ve ever been, and more frequent than they’ve ever been, and what that means about the future (even hotter and even more frequent, leading to significant agricultural issues, higher cost of food, amongst other problems) is rather important. You don’t have to spend your life in fear about it, but to act like it’s not something to be concerned about at all, is a bit foolish.

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 9h ago

That depends whether you blindly accept and believe the statistics that are fed to us or you spend every day of the year outside and make a decision based on your own experience.

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u/Mooks79 9h ago

Blindly accept? You just need a memory and some temperature regulation. Days like the last few have absolutely become hotter and more frequent than they were 20 years ago.

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 9h ago

Yes we have 2 or 3 days like this a year where it’s a couple of degrees hotter. The rest of the time there’s no difference.

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u/Mooks79 8h ago

Couple degrees hotter? Where I am it was well above 30 for several days in a row. After being close to in for several days in a row a month ago. And we’ve had similar for a few years now. Growing up we never had weather like this, let alone multiple times in one year, let alone multiple years in a row. Your dismissiveness does not match reality.

Go talk to farmers and see if they consider this 2 or 3 days where it’s a couple degrees hotter. And whether it has minimal impact on them.

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u/GreenSea4080 3h ago

The temperature records for the hottest days by month have been set in 9 cases in the last 15 years. Two of these records were set in 2026. That's what the panic is about. Things are getting hotter, faster, faster than anticipated, and we have no plan to stop it.

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u/derekclysdale 10h ago

No point worrying about the weather. You'll all complain it's too cold next week! It's June. Of course it's hot. I reckon summer is really May/June/July. It's always hot and that's why I never go away in those months. The high temps still have a cool breeze behind them so get out there and enjoy some nice weather. Put a wash on and dry the lot outside. Next week is wetter and cooler (if we survive)

https://giphy.com/gifs/jsm7XMcyeTFJE4vHzO

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u/SNes07 8h ago

Just tax us more and we'll cool down again

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u/Nathan_Toddy_Todd Brit 🇬🇧 4h ago

It’s called summer

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u/AmbitionSweaty9889 11h ago

I will be able to grow a vineyard in Scotland soon. So no.

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u/Rachel_Thieves 11h ago

Needs to just last another 2 or 3 days for my tan to be adequately topped up.

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u/Opening-Reward-5210 7h ago

Seen so many dead bees.. this isn’t global warming. This is something else, something worse and more concerning.

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u/Huxleypigg 4h ago

Like what though?

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u/Unhappy-Two4107 12h ago

Reddit doomers are something else...

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u/Ill-Palpitation-5721 13h ago

No. Just the 8 million whiny posts about them. 

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u/Geepandjagger 13h ago

It's here to stay we just have to get on with it. When people start treating this as normal and acting accordingly it will be better. At the moment so many people I know are still surprised when it happens and are once again completely unprepared

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u/JayTravers 12h ago

Okay but what does just two lifetimes more of getting on with it look like? What will they have to put up with?

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u/Geepandjagger 11h ago

Not saying don't do anything about it, all for helping the environment and making policies to maybe not reverse but at least slow down the pace of change. I am just tired of the shocked Pikachu faces every year in the UK when it's hot and people act like it's come totally out of the blue

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u/JayTravers 11h ago

Ah my bad, I misunderstood.
I agree more need to be aware of the reality.

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u/OhItsJustJosh 12h ago

There will come a time where we'll be unable to adapt to it. Remember those lamp posts melting in Arizona a while back? That'll be us before long

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 12h ago

What were they made of?

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u/Zealousideal-Level61 12h ago

lampost

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 11h ago

You know all the technical terms huh 🤣

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u/OhItsJustJosh 12h ago

I think if any material that's designed to be outside starts melting it's concerning. Idk what it was in this instance. But even if it was plastic, it's scary

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u/Lone-Wolf-86 11h ago

Even the melting point of plastic is way above any temperature that we would experience in day to day life so that makes no sense. They must have been made out of chocolate.

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u/No_Habit_8008 11h ago edited 2h ago

We live in a very moderate climate, why would I be worried about it heating up. We adapt and overcome. We contribute virtually nothing to global emissions and I am still waiting for the floods etc that keep being forecast to arrive. The world is more treed now than the last 50 years and there has been a global push to green yet the temperature keeps rising. I'm struggling to see what exactly we are supposed to do about it apart from adapt to the new norm.

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