Climate scientists and media correspondents have been getting excited by record temperatures once again. On May 26th, Kew Gardens and Heathrow reported 35.1°C, a new UK record for May, followed by a June record of 37.7°C (June 26th) at Lingwood, Norfolk. The media’s fear narrative, which is climate change reporting, has gone into overdrive with weather graphics turned to hot red; the contrived alarm reinforces the faith of true believers in the global warming message. With such zealous reporting over supposed connections to global warming, little attempt is made to consider and evaluate other possible factors. Climate change seems to have stolen scientific curiosity. Such climate fever was also seen in 2022, when Coningsby in Lincolnshire recorded a value of 40.3°C on July 19th 2022.
Other media reports have noted record global sea surface temperatures for the month of June, given the onset of a major El Niño episode. Carlo Buontempo, director of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service, commented that “With ocean temperatures at these levels and El Niño on the horizon, we are likely to see more temperature records fall in the coming months.” The UN Secretary General António Guterres stated with some alarm that “Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.” The Met Office has also reported that in 2026 England recorded the highest average mean temperature for June (at 17.1°C) in a record stretching back to 1884, while the UK as a whole was the second warmest (see also: Met Office – Marine Heatwave).
Following the record warm year of 2023, other likely causes for the record temperatures were discussed here, over and above the influence of the supposedly villainous greenhouse gases. Such factors include the growth of the urban environment, which also potentially impacts upon the accuracy of temperature readings where new buildings or roads encroach too close to the thermometer screen. The positive phase of the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation and volcanic eruptions can also play a significant part in global temperature changes. Recent improvements to the cleanliness of fuels used in the Far East, Europe and America, and in global shipping, have also led to a noticeable change to cloud cover in the Northeast Pacific and North Atlantic. These factors helped to warm the planet.
A paper in Nature Communications, published in the autumn of last year (November 5th 2025), found that over a 20-year period from 2003 to 2022 the reflectivity of clouds decreased by about 5.6% (2.8% ± 1.2% per decade). The scientific press at the time noted that cleaner air may have accelerated warming. Computer modelling suggests the majority influence for this change has been the reduction in the content of sulphur dioxide and other aerosol precursors in fossil fuels. So-called bunker fuels, used by global shipping, have also been restricted globally by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) from March 1st 2020, with the sulphur content reduced to 0.5% from 3.5%. This further reduces sulphur releases to the atmosphere.
Sulphur pollutants act as condensation nuclei for cloud droplets to form, so given more pollution, clouds will increase their liquid water content with more numerous but smaller droplets. Clouds modified in this way reflect more sunlight, thus having a cooling effect on the planet. Estimates suggest that this effect cooled the lower atmosphere by half a degree Celsius. This was the case for decades. The removal of the sulphur content from fossil fuels has therefore led to thinner cloud cover and an increase in solar radiation reaching the surface, which warms the ocean and land surfaces.
The authors of the 2025 paper forecast that the decrease in cloud reflectivity, and additional warming to the Earth’s systems, will continue for the next few decades without action to tackle the problem. They also noted that most climate models examined failed to model the scale of the reduction in cloud reflectivity, which implies that the climate sensitivity to greenhouse gases in the models is in error. They comment that “Further research is needed to assess whether near-term climate scenarios should be revised to account for the weak cloud reflectivity reductions in the Earth System Models.” At least some of the warming observed in recent years is due to lower cloud reflectivity, which follows from use of cleaner fuels – and so not all warming is due to the effect of greenhouse gases.
When we turn to consider the recent heatwave that affected Europe at the end of June, we see a marked temperature anomaly around the coast of Iberia, in Biscay and the Mediterranean Sea of three to five degrees Celsius (Figure 1). With cleaner air and thinner clouds, more solar radiation is able to warm the European seas and land, thus leading to record temperatures. And yet reporting on this in the popular press in recent weeks has been absent; it is all too easy for the press to encourage the popular imagination to follow the script of the climate industry without asking questions.
Andrew Sibley is a semi-retired chartered meteorologist with an MSc in Environmental Decision-Making and an MPhil in Theology.
“And yet reporting on this in the popular press in recent weeks has been absent;
it is all too easy for the press to encourage the popular imagination to follow the
script of the climate industry without asking questions.”
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________
The so called mainstream media never asks, and policy makers never find out that much of the climate change narrative just isn’t so.
The oceans aren’t going to drown coastal cities any time soon. Warm water really doesn’t bleach corals they’re only found in the tropics for God’s sake. Methane obviously isn’t more powerful than carbon dioxide. Alpine rivers will still flow if the glaciers disappear. It’s the seals not the bears that need the sea ice. They need the sea ice to have their pups in order to get away from the bears. Melt water doesn’t lubricate the bottom of Greenland glaciers causing them to slide uphill. Acceleration of sea level isn’t nearly 0.08 mm/yr² as claimed by satellite studies. Two thirds of tide gauges show zero or negative acceleration.
Yes, but to be fair coral is found in cold water as well as in the tropics.
Google AI says: True cold-water corals cannot undergo bleaching because they are naturally white or brightly colored and entirely lack symbiotic algae.
Google AI is not necessarily a source of true material. It has been corrupted on the current heat wave in europe and gives incorrect distorted answers which parrot the cult line.
Cold water corals grow below the ocean surface where light does not penetrate so of course there is no algae. They also grow very slowly and apparently can be thousands of years old per some studies.
Look up cold water coral it lives 300 to as much as 5000 ft down where no light penetrates, hence no algae. Google AI in effect lied and distorted reality.
Correction, 58% of tide gauges show zero or 0.01 mm/yr² acceleration.
How is it even possible possible to measure 0.08mm acceleration in sea level rise from satellites
when their error of margin is 3 mm?
And scientific curiosity?
You can either have curiosity or consensus – not both.
Ask Dr. R.Steve Nerem here’s his email: nerem@colorado.edu.
If you don’t know, why are you quoting it in the first place?
Your question doesn’t make any sense.
And neither do you
How is it even possible possible to measure 0.08mm acceleration in sea level rise from satellites
when their error of margin is 3 mm?
Make sense of that
Here’s what I wrote above:
“Acceleration of sea level isn’t nearly 0.08 mm/yr² as claimed by satellite studies.”
AS CLAIMED BY SATELLITE STUDIES not me. I merely reported what is being claimed. I went on to say what the tide gauges show, which is pretty close nothing.
Here is a study on the statistical process. Look up the buss words and decide if the result makes sense.https://www.seanoe.org/data/00472/58344/
One must always show an increase, even one of insignificant value.
I think it might be the increase in atmosphereric CO2 causing it.
Corals bleach due to the sun when water levels get too low, or corals are damaged by storms, there are many coral sand beaches because corals have always died and have come back.
“Corals bleach due to the sun when water levels get too low,”
Certainly the case on the Great Barrier Reef in 2015 bleaching event.
Has Climate Change Stolen Scientific Curiosity?
I would put it differently:
Has Climate Change Suppressed Independent Scientific Thought On Pain Of Heresy And Excommunication?
Right now, over the next twenty days or so as far as I am aware, a beady-eyed civil servant is busily concocting a response to an email on the now implausible RCP8.5. The IPCC effectively pulled the rug from under the UK MOs climate projections. Nobody has yet mentioned this very inconvenient fact in the political arena or the media circus. Why is that? (/sarc)
Society is rotting away and the scientists – particularly the health fascists and the climate alarmists – and the teachers are leading the charge.
Rot is easy to see.
On the business side for example, covid and a decision to go all in on EVs forced Hertz rental car into chapter 11 bankruptcy. Last night I picked up a Hertz “Gold” car and it has has over 140,000 miles on it. I’ve never seen a rental car with such high mileage.
Hertz was the premier rental car company back in the day.
The Hertz story is much more complicated. If believable, Wikipedia covers the issues.
“The company filed for bankruptcy on May 22, 2020, citing a sharp decline in revenue and future bookings caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. — As of July 1, 2021, the company is no longer in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. — In October 2021, Hertz announced it was investing in electric vehicles with the purchase of 100,000 Teslas, primarily Tesla Model 3 sedans.
And DDG Search Assist says: “Hertz reported its first profit in two years in Q3 2025, with net income of $184 million and revenue of $2.5 billion.”
How are these cars returned with the ‘tank’ full?
It would certainly be worthwhile knowing how many of these new peak temperature records have come from the newer fast response time electronic measuring systems rather than from conventional thermometers.
Met Office Claims Another Temperature Record – in an Overgrown Backyard
Daily Sceptic
It does not matter how accurate thermometers and sea level measurements are, once they manipulate the data, they get the results they were paid to get.
Story tip
Offshore wind to the illegal migrant rescue. How so, you ask? Well…
Charter of Vessels to Support Search , Rescue and Recovery activities
Aeolian Offshore Ltd has been awarded a £30.2M contract by Home Office. Awarded on 20 March 2026. – BidfinderUK
Aeolian Offshore Ltd (Company# 13885384) is an company registered with Companies House, Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy, United Kingdom.
What’s in the deal?
Contract documents show Border Force wants seven vessels total from Aeolian Offshore: five “Migrant Rescue Vessels” to rescue and transport migrants recovered from the Channel, and two “Recovery Vessels” to lift and seize the boats. They have to handle up to one hundred migrants per boat, provide basic medical facilities, separate migrant/crew toilets, and CCTV covering all deck areas…
There is also a media clause [Absolute secrecy or contract termination]
And in public…
UK Labour leader promises to ‘smash the gangs’ to tackle small boats crossings
“So, I say to the British people: if I am elected to serve this country … I will turn the page on Westminster’s ‘talk tough, do nothing’ culture. Not just on small boats. Not just on migration. On everything” – Reuters
Pure gaslighting.
Great post could not agree more. That declining SO2 emissions is the conclusion I reached last year. The problem with researchers, is that they sometimes call themselves scientist, without ever checking if observations match the narrative. The Ice Age scare of the 70’s had a legitimate reason, but when the warming accelerated in the late 70’s, the SO2 emissions did not stop.
Scientists are not meant to be ‘checking narrative compliance’.
Tell me about it, I am a Geophysicist, and in my line of work, there is experimentation, analysis of results and comparison of results to observations, or there is the unemployment line. How do I get a gig on a team that pays a lot, and nobody cares about observations.
results, observations
So, when they don’t match the narrative you spin it accordingly, or go on the dole? Isn’t that reasonably close to what I argued above?
Has Climate Change Suppressed Independent Scientific Thought On Pain Of Heresy And Excommunication?
People need paychecks, an in government funded research, you better stick to the narrative or you will not get a follow up grant, which leads to biased conclusions. I suspect the problem is that most people are unable to see the big picture, which precludes most from contributing to the truth, which forces them to read the summary of peer reviewed literature and either believe it or not.
Has Climate Change Suppressed Independent Scientific Thought On Pain Of Heresy And Excommunication?
People need paychecks
That’s where we are. And Academia [in the UK at least] is doubling down.
WHAT IS THE SCHOOL OF CLIMATE CHANGE?
We are an 8-week course bringing together researchers, experts, and activists from diverse fields to introduce our community to the issues of the climate crisis.
The climate crisis is an interdisciplinary issue that touches all aspects of our lives. Through bringing together the inspiring work being done in one place, we give participants hope that they can take meaningful action against the climate crisis.
https://oxfordclimatesociety.com/school-of-climate-change
Kool aid all round.
Personally, I would run a “real world” multiyear experiment controlling the sulfur content in jet and marine fuels.
And that is precisely what I did.
“How do I get a gig on a team that pays a lot, and nobody cares about observations.”
Climate Change advocacy !
No, the political left has.
We are indeed caught in a doom loop. Anthropogenic emissions cause warming, and cleaner air causes…warming. Sprawling cities cause warming and agricultural land causes warming. Then it will get so warm that they’ll start using A/C, then we’re finished!
I think one should be skeptical of all temperature measurements after the year 1998.
With the exception of the UAH satellite record.
The rest of it is all climate change activism.
You should be skeptical of all temperature measurements, unless you have access to the raw data, including the metadata.
Beyond that, be skeptical of claims that we can measure the temperature of the entire planet to a hundredth of a degree, using the records from a few hundred stations, each of which is rounded to the nearest degree.
What I believe is we can see the peaks and troughs of the cyclical climate movement by looking at the written, historical records, which all show the same thing: That it was just as warm in the past, wherever it was measured, as it is today, and the written record agrees as to when those highs and lows occurred.
We don’t need instruments accurate to a tenth of a degree, as long as the recording stations are using similar equipment. They all have the same error, and they all show the shape of the temperature profile.
None of them show a “hotter and hotter and hotter” temperature profile like the bogus Hockey Stick chart does.
So how do you get a Hockey Stick chart “hotter and hotter and hotter”temperature profile out of data (the written record) that has no such profile?
The written record refutes the Hockey Stick chart temperature profile. Unscrupulous people rewrote the record in their computers to create this climate crisis fire alarm.
No, they don’t.
These “global temperature” fabrications amuse me.
Basically no reliable measurements of the oceans until ARGO.
Land measurements sparse or non-existent on much of the land surface.
Even where the land data does exist, raw measurements are massively tampered with.
Combining 2m adjusted measurements from highly dubious urban and airport affected sites, with bucket measurements thrown over the side of moving ships.
And they come up with something that doesn’t remotely match the actual land data they do have.
Does anyone really call them “scientific” !!! They are just FANTASY !
Socialism in general actively discourages any questioning of government writ.
Essay title: “Has Climate Change Stolen Scientific Curiosity?”
Can I get an explanation of “scientific curiosity“? Scientists by definition are curious sorts, or so I thought. Politicians sell themselves and media folks sell advertising. Nothing new.
Betteridge’s law of headlines is an adage that states: “Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no.”
How many of the self-proclaimed “climate scientists” are scientists with degrees in climate?
Most (if not all) degreed scientists do not have the word scientist in their titles.
Chemist. Physicist. Biologist. You get the idea.
The ideal is that a scientist proposes an idea (conjecture/hypothesis) then works ardently to prove it (via experimentation or observation) wrong.
I had a “discussion” with a PhD physics professor a few years ago at an event where he lectured me on what was then global warming. The problem was his specialty was particle physics, not climate. So his argument from authority was hollow.
Going on about cleaner air and thinner clouds as a cause of the heat wave is simply a guess pushed by the cult. It would be more helpful to look up past heat waves and compare them. One might start with the heatwaves in 1473, 1540 and 1757 and than move towards the present. Not a single one of those heatwaves was caused by men sitting around a campfire telling tall tales to each other. I did notice the google AI has been corrupted by the cult stories on heat waves in europe so it was not of much use is finding out facts.
Google AI and all of the other variants operate on the preponderance of the evidence. AI is unable to make objective assessments. The Internet is the source of most of the stuff AI looks at and we have seen time and time again the same story repeated by media sources. Each counts as a separate input even if they all derive from the same source.
And, if it is on the Internet it is true.
How do we know?
It says so on the internet.
Peer review fails us.
The UN Secretary General António Guterres stated with some alarm that “Earth is being pushed beyond its limits.”
A bit like my patience after so many absurdly hyperbolic statements.
Every time I see the word “anomaly” I know that what follows will quite likely be nonsense as often as it will have a useful meaning.
In climate discussions none of us are entitled to assume that we know what is normal – so the word anomaly is loaded with untested assumptions.
Are there actually any climate scientists? I do not know any.
I do know many people who are scientists with special expertise in various aspects of the studies of the earth from Astronomers to Zoologists with some overlapping general scientific literacy.
I am still searching for a college or university that offers a degree in climate science.
There is no such field. Studying the complexities of earth’s energy systems requires scores of disciplines and to master them all would take more than a lifetime.
Too bad none of these folks ever bothered to study Maxwell’s Equations for electromagnetic fields and waves.