Essay by Eric Worrall
After 30 years of failure to move the needle, nobody believes the government will do anything about emissions.
A war of the truth’: Europe’s heatwaves are failing to spur support for climate action
Voters may feel hotter summers are ‘too much’ but they appear to tolerate roll-back of policies to stop global heating
Ajit Niranjan and Elsie McDowell Sat 5 Jul 2025 01.44 AEST
It’s just too much, isn’t it?” says Julie, a retiree in Stanford-le-Hope, Essex, about the 42C (107.6F) heat that her brother had seen scorch Spain last week. The former local government worker has felt summers get hotter over her lifetime and says she “couldn’t stand” such high heat herself.
But like many who experienced Europe’s first heatwave of the summer, Julie does not sound overly alarmed. She worries about climate breakdown for young people, but is not concerned about herself. She thinks more climate action would be nice, but does not know what can be done about it. She does not have much faith in the government.
“It’s like everything else,” she says. “I think it’s all too little, too late.”
As heatwaves engulfed large swathes of Europe and North America last week – the latest in a stream of deadly extremes made worse by fossil fuel pollution – green groups are frustrated that increasingly violent weather has not spurred the urgent support for climate action they had expected.
…
“The issue is really that there are so many other concerns now,” said Hodgson, citing the organisation’s data tracking the top issues that people face each week. “Three years ago you’d have the cost of living first, then the National Health Service, and then immigration and climate – those two would compete for third place. Now, when we do those polls, climate is near the bottom of the list.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/04/europe-heatwaves-failing-support-climate-action
The article also references a hilarious poll in which apparently half of Nigel Farage’s Reform party said they wanted a heatwave. And why not – Britain is having a glorious beach weather Summer thanks to the heatwave.
My hypothesis of the self limiting nature of climate policy, where green policies are tolerated only until they start to cause serious economic and social problems, is clearly being played out in today’s Britain. But it is a mixed blessing that climate has dropped to the bottom of the list.
I don’t think the fall of climate change as a priority means climate concern has fallen, the stinky green BBC still has a stranglehold over way too much real-estate in British people’s heads.
A more likely explanation for the apparent drop in climate concern is life in Britain has become so horrible for ordinary people, they have had no choice but to prioritise short term survival over their climate concerns.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“European heatwave” Do you mean summer?
Yes, the “Climate Catastrophe” has gotten so bad that these heatwaves happen every single year now!
Not a normal summer:
Yea, like I said, summer. Get over.
Summer temperature in Europe is normally controlled by the high pressure zone over the Azores. But if the High pressure zone is replaced as we have seen over the last few years by a cold low pressure system in front of the Portuguese coast it will push hot Sahara air into Europe.
Which is good. Stop destroying all the electric generation capacity across Europe and the miracles of Air Conditioning and Refrigeration will help people enjoy a beautiful summer.
Yes, you have a low pressure system in the Atlantic pushing air into Europe, in combination with a high pressure system over Africa and the Sahara pushing hot air into Europe.
It’s not a CO2 crisis, it’s just weather.
https://earth.nullschool.net/#2025/07/09/1000Z/wind/isobaric/500hPa/orthographic=-20.97,25.97,430
Exactly!
And speaking of the American heatwave, it was reported that the northeast United States had several high temperature records broken a few weeks ago. Records that were set back in the 1880’s. Which is just another example showing that the current temperatures are not exceptional. It was just as warm in the recent past and it is today. There was less CO2 in the air in the 1880’s, yet it was just as hot then as it is now with more CO2 in the air. It appears that the amount of CO2 in the air has made no difference in the temperatures. It gets hot regardless of how much CO2 is in the air. CO2 is not a demonstrable factor.
I have spent the majority of my life outdoors, I actually remember summers in the 1970s and they were hot. Especially sitting on an International Harvester tractor or Massey Ferguson combine in the middle of a corn or soybean field. Much less picking vegetables and watermelons and cantaloupes by hand. Two weeks ago I spent 3 days cutting, raking and baling hay and timothy. Guess what? It was hot.
Vast majority of people are soft, as well as egregiously misinformed.
The current state of much of the public:
Q: Do you want to save the planet from dangerous Climate Change?
A: Oh yes!
Q: Are you willing to pay an extra $20/month on your electricity bill and an extra $20/month on your grocery bill?
A: Heck no, can’t we just tax the rich?
The current state of more informed people:
Statement from skeptics: Your proposed solutions are adding up to expected costs at least one or two orders of magnitude higher than the estimates you are giving the public.
Statement from alarmists in power: You skeptics need to be banned from all discussions in the public sphere on this topic!
No, the sky isn’t falling no matter how many times they say it is. People are tired of the ad nauseam reports about the effects of climate change. Everyone knows it’s weather, not climate, when the latest claim is made and there are receipts to back it up.
The problem is, repetition is how neural pathways are strengthened and that is how learning is accomplished. When it is not legitimate education, it is brainwashing.
Maybe the reason people aren’t concerned is that they know it is normal for it to be hot in summer.
Maybe the reason people aren’t concerned
I think there’s also only so much “It’s worse than we thought! Everyone’s gonna die!” people can take before tuning it out.
The Guardian: ‘green groups are frustrated’. “Increasingly violent extreme weather (heatwaves) has not spurred the urgent support for climate action they had expected.”
This is a good thing for several reasons.
The stupid thing is that it is a COLD low pressure system in front of the Portuguese coast pushing hot Sahara air into Europe. But they’ll never tell you that on the news. If CO2 was the reason of hot weather there would be no need for that African air.
One slight correction, their “solutions” don’t work at all. They, in fact, make every situation worse.
The propaganda about global warming has been going on for more than three decades. And it’s been unanimous from all established media.It’s unprecedented that such an unopposed wall of propaganda has been so ineffective in affecting the views of the general public.
The more we spent on fighting climate change, the higher the CO2 concentration went. We could have cured cancer, but instead we poured money down a green rat hole. This video proves CO2 driven climate change is a 100% pure hoax and the actual science proves it. https://app.screencast.com/nXfZcUyGR4QlR
The text to the upper right of the lead-in graph of the above article boldly invites: “Spot the impact . . .”
on the curve of exponentially-increasing atmospheric CO2 concentration versus time.
Well, putting myself in the mental frame of an AGW/CAGW alarmist (OUCH! That HURTS!!!) I would easily claim that the curve’s exponent would be, oh, twice or so as great as it is had mankind not spent the $trillions that it has to date “fighting climate change” and striving for “net zero”. There . . . prove me wrong.
/sarc
As to the topic: I speak with people that have internalized the idea of a global warming in the same way they accept that politicians are not always truthful. Or where I live, summers are hot and winters are cold. The manifestation of this is that these folks are in favor of green initiatives, such as, someone else owning and EV. Otherwise, So what?
From the CO2 Coalition web site:
“During each of the last four glacial advances, CO2 concentration fell below 190 ppm. At the end of the last glacial advance, it fell to 182 ppm, thought to be the lowest in the Earth’s history. Why is this alarming? Because below 150 ppm, most terrestrial plant life cannot exist.”
Perhaps we should look at the curve at the top of the post as an indicator of the renewed robustness of Earth’s systems. Insofar as terrestrial plant life is concerned, this is a great curve. When it gets to +1,000, life can make a collective sigh of relief. {and maybe I could get garden tomatoes to ripen}
“Perhaps we should look at the curve at the top of the post as an indicator of the renewed robustness of Earth’s systems.”
Yes! Make Earth Great Again! More CO2 please!
“The former local government worker has felt summers get hotter over her lifetime…”
When you get old, you don’t tolerate the heat so much- forgetting how you enjoyed it when young.
And ofcourse The former local government worker is living in an aircon environment so when the person goes outside it feels MUCH hotter.
And of course those memories are perfect.
/sarc
“fossil fuel pollution”
If that’s what it is- I hope that person never, ever uses any. After all, they don’t want to be accused of polluting the planet!
The green lobby and their mouthpieces in the media have lost trust because there full of scaremongering crap about the weather.
Currently BBC weather web page are claiming that during the weekend the UK will experience its third heatwave of the year. This is utter nonsense.
Much of the NW of the UK have not yet had one heatwave this summer. While even in the East of England where l live we have had only one heatwave so far. With maximum temperatures here in Scunthorpe only reaching heatwave temperatures on the 28th, 29th, and 30th of June.
As long as it is a wave the air comes from somewhere else. If it was hot because of CO2 it would be produced local.
And it would not be a wave. It would be a dome.
I have often observed that climate catastrophists are fundamentally history deniers.
As in – it’s all happened before.
This Guardian article is but another example of history denial, as in – more than 10 years ago the UN did a 7-million people worldwide survey of what most concerned people in their lives.
Climate rated LAST of the 16 topics that concerned people.
And obviously, still does!
It should be no surprise that people no longer reach for their wallets and demand everybody else do the same every time another CAGW clown hollers the sky is falling. These clowns have been preaching the same old tired sermon since the early nineties. Trillions of dollars have been wasted on their so called doomsday emergency. Yet CO2 emissions have not gone down, average global temperature has not gone down, the world hasn’t ended nor will it and yet these yokels think they deserve more of our money. To hell with them.
The ocean has not risen 20 meters.
Nor is it boiling.
Not only won’t governments do much about climate action but neither will consumers, who don’t relish making big lifestyle changes, often at higher costs, to try to reverse a natural phenomenon. In addition, governments have been finding that if they get too aggressive about the matter with new taxes, restrictions and mandates, they’ll find themselves voted out of office. And when those voters see that after 29 major COP conferences during the past three decades, global carbon emissions have risen 60% and fossil fuels still dominate world energy generation, they realize that no one else is taking the matter seriously either. So realistically the whole matter should be laid to rest.
Except in California.
In his persistent questioning of intellectuals, Thomas Sowell refers to those of one expertise that, by stealth, come to be sages, like village elders, commanding all of humanity’s knowledge. This article seems to bite back at the Guardian. The breadth of humanity asserting itself over those relatively few ‘anointed’ that strike one as almost pre-internet. They have got away with the forming/maintaining of an argument on surpassed data; who have a livid vocabulary lent to them by academia. Whose insistence has decayed in the preponderance of data and availability of diverse opinion available to the alert milieu. Unfortunately, with Quangos and place people, the decision makers are unaffected by the unsettled science and are making decisions in a time warp, while superciliously preening themselves as having an understanding (management errata fished from overviews). Although denigrated by the intellectuals the mass, in the end, has consummate neural power which. thanks to better communications, coalesces into important indicators. Whereas intellectuals are free to make stark conclusions, their own sort of dialectic, the end result is that thing which the hoi polloi relates to, real life, and can identifying impracticality when it sees. it.
From the article: “As heatwaves engulfed large swathes of Europe and North America last week”
As happens every year. Nothing to see here.
” – the latest in a stream of deadly extremes made worse by fossil fuel pollution”
Pure speculation. There is no evidence that oil, coal and natural gas are causing heat extremes.
Climate Alarmist writers and reporters are fact free. They are delusional about the Earth’s climate and CO2 and they spread their delusions near and far, day after day after day. And yet, the Public is not moved. This is what “Crying Wolf! too many times does to your credibility.
There is no CO2 crisis. Anyone who believes this is delusional since there is no evidence to back up this idea. If you think there is evidence, that also makes you delusional.
CO2 Crisis = Science Fraud all the way down.
“they appear to tolerate roll-back of policies to stop global heating”
“global heating”
ok, sure. Global heating.