In The Guardian’s story “Most UK media reports on June heatwave failed to mention climate crisis,” the paper laments that nearly three-quarters of British media coverage of June’s heatwave failed to mention climate change, complaining that journalists missed an opportunity to educate the public about the “climate crisis.” It is a rare day when Climate Realism suggests a climate change article in The Guardian is worth reading but today is one of those days. The Guardian did misstep, however, by lamenting rather lauding the decline in news outlets taking the climate clickbait by providing straight, fact-based news coverage of the heat wave.
According to The Guardian, researchers examined nearly 2,500 newspaper stories covering the June heatwave and found that roughly 72 percent never mentioned climate change at all. Even more striking, fewer than one in 20 discussed Britain’s net zero policies in relation to the heatwave.
The Guardian clearly sees this as a failure, we see it as progress. For nearly two decades, virtually every hurricane, wildfire, flood, drought, heatwave, cold snap, heavy rainfall event, or unusual weather pattern has been reflexively linked to climate change by large portions of the media, including The Guardian. Climate Realism has posted nearly 200 rebuttals of The Guardian’s climate stories, and hundreds more calling out other media outlets for their bias, incompetence, and willful blindness with regards to climate change.
Heatwaves became one of the easiest vehicles for this “climate crisis” narrative. Every abnormally hot day or string of days was presented as evidence that climate change had arrived. Historical perspectives and data on long-term trends, when not dismissed were often ignored entirely, and natural variability became an afterthought, if not fully excluded. Lately, instant weather attribution studies grounded in climate model outputs have been reported as though they were direct observations and proof of the nonexistent “climate crisis.”
Many journalists simply stopped asking whether every weather event required a climate explanation. Perhaps that is beginning to change, as coverage of climate change has declined significantly, as discussed in a recent Climate Change Weekly post. The coverage of Britain’s recent heatwave, much to The Guardian’s dismay, is consistent with this trend.
The Guardian quotes climate scientists lamenting that the public is not being told often enough that greenhouse gas emissions made recent heatwaves hotter. The article also leans heavily on the now-familiar World Weather Attribution group claiming such events would have been impossible without human influence.
None of that is new. What is new is that editors across much of the British press apparently decided their readers did not need every heatwave story to be wrapped in climate guilt messaging.
After years of hearing that every weather event is driven by climate change, readers may simply be tuning out. Editors are in the business of understanding audiences, and if most newspapers chose to report the weather without automatically inserting a climate angle, perhaps they have concluded that readers want accurate and fair weather reporting, as opposed to not another climate change harangue.
Even The Guardian’s own data hint at this shift. The publication proudly notes that it led the field by inserting climate references into roughly half of its heatwave stories, while newspapers such as The Sun, the Daily Mail, the Daily Mirror, and the Daily Express did so only occasionally.
The Guardian interprets that as a journalistic failure. It’s not, it represents a return to fact- based journalism as opposed to editorializing disguised and news reporting.
Let’s hope the recent shift represents editors rediscovering an old-fashioned reporting principle: stick with the verifiable facts, in this case that sometimes a heatwave is simply a heatwave.
Ironically, The Guardian’s complaint may be the strongest evidence yet that the media’s long-running “climate change is in everything” campaign is beginning to lose its grip. If so, that’s welcome news.
Now if only The Guardian would follow the example of the other newspapers it criticizes in this story.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
Perhaps Guardian subscribers could be taxed at an appropriate rate to assist in acceleration of the transition.
Peak Oil! Peak Energy! Peak Subscriptions!
Guardian readers are too busy transitioning themselves
The real crisis is that the lovely warm sunny weather we had has now gone back to the usual cloudy cool conditions one normally expects of the English summer. I, for one, want more.
The hysteria at the Guardian is no doubt fuelled in part by the fact that up until now nobody knows which way crash and Burnham would go on climate. Well, wonder no more. Miliband has been exiled to fly around the world as Foreign Secretary to enlist other nations to follow our noble – if hugely self-defeating – net zero cause.
And now… add the steroids…
Miatta Fahnbulleh is now the Energy Secretary…
2022: Report by her think tank the New Economics Foundation: “Scrap the existing price cap system and replace it with a new system of ‘free basic energy’,” a “rising block tariff” where “every household would be entitled to a free amount of energy consumption, but would pay a higher marginal cost for energy use above the free amount.” A proposal getting pushed hard now…
2023: Drive down energy bills by retrofitting millions of homes, flooding the energy market with cheaper renewables produced and sold by publicly owned co-operative and introducing free basic energy.
2023: “A tougher windfall tax on energy giants, who are making excessive profits off the back of people’s suffering. And a wealth tax for those who can afford to pay more.” – Guido Fawkes
The question is: Is Burnham on board with madness like that? We still haven’t been told.
Hmm, seems so that the new british government makes the current spanish one truly look good….
North Korea makes this lot look utterly incompetent. And equally, if not more, authoritarian.
A rhetoric question?
I’m pretty sure that you know 100% that absolutely nothing will change.
Burnham is just a new Mask for the eternal unileader who has been around using names like
Johnson,Sunak,Starmer etc,
and he’d have never be allowed to get into this position if he’d have an agenda on his own.
His typically biased deep state statement about something very controversial like Ukraine is all you need to know.
So prepare yourself for more building back better by big brother Burnham (why does his name sound like a place where English children get raped?
But I hope he pays his Ukrainian male escorts better than Keir so they don’t burn down his property)
He may throw a bone or 2 in the beginning or slow down the deindustrialization before the election – but that’s about it.
And criticizing the black quota chick will get you instantly into prison.
“Scrap the existing price cap system and replace it with a new system of ‘free basic energy’”
Wonderful idea! Why not make everything free! And abolish labor altogther. Then we could get everthing free! And no one would have to work either (unless they wanted to)!! Then everyone would be equally “rich”!!! /s
Going into serious mode: This same basic scheme, call it what you will, socialism, marxism, fascism, communism, whatever, always founders on the simple truisms:
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch.
Those who can gain nothing by working hard hardly work.
Once THE goose is killed you get no more golden eggs.
etc.
Then, if you’re pushing this scheme, when people get to seeing through the smoke you’re blowing you have to start killing them.
We can hope.
“So shines a good deed in a weary world.”
— Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder)
No good deed goes unpunished (So Shines a Good Deed in a Naughty World)
Poem by Franklin P. Adams (1881-1960)
🙂
Further “some” hope from the people on the streets. Since this summer the nights tend to cool down significantly more than the previous years the number of those suddenly remembering the “good old days” is growing. Now all we just need now is a nice summer rain here im Spain and the memory will go ballistic.
Herdentrieb par exellelance, this time in “our” favour…
Either the downtrodden Brits are tired of being lectured or AI is starting to inform about weather patterns from the Sahara, cooling effects on Greenland melt season, and other cycles and regional shifts. Maybe at this rate there will be a breakout of knowledge in the general population on the length of AMO warming and cooling cycles.
The Marxist now have control of the UK and the AGW narrative isn’t needed anymore. Look for more, not less, chaos that will eventually lead to harsh penalties for thinking freely. Ooops, already there.
Watch the BBC for reports, pictures, videos of pitchforks and torches.
Probably no torches. That’s for when it’s dark, and the children are clubbing or raving. Part of the reason they’re so crabby during daylight hours and have to march against… whatever the latest in vogue rage is.
The Guardian is one of the worst left wing propaganda outlets on Earth. They were banning empirical facts about climate 20 years ago and will never give up the fraud.
Guardian hacktivist training video
You’re a smeeee heeee!
I take this as more evidence that three things are converging into a new public ‘reality’—even in the UK.
4. The Italian leadership merry go round is now obvious.
BIG HEADLINE: The people are losing interest in a slow and painful death caused by austerity and economic decline.
No wonder! Most people would rather do something else with their lives than commit suicide. Especially when the “suicide” in question looks more like a long deterioration against a backdrop of a Godot-like Apocalypse (we wait for it, we wait for it, but it never comes).
Did this identical post 6 days ago not get enough responses?
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/07/15/lol-the-guardian-is-upset-that-nobody-wants-climate-in-their-weather-anymore/
Does The Guardian make a profit?
I can answer that one. The Guardian does not make a profit. It loses value every year and may now believe making something called profit, to be alien to its core values. Those core values being spreading false narratives particularly about weather events and economic sustainability of modern society.
If the state supported and tax payer forced support of the BBC did not keep giving the Guardian financial oxygen it would fold due to lack of circulation.
The BBC buys the most copies…
No idea.
I could google it.
But then again so can you – and it’s your question.
The Grauniad is loss-making.
From Press Gazette: returned to revenue growth in the year to March 2025 as it increased turnover by 6.7% year on year to £275m, according to unaudited figures seen by Press Gazette.
Staff have been told that cash losses for the year to 31 March 2025 fell to less than £25m (compared with £37m in the previous financial year).
In the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s, Paris had about 2 to 3 days over 30C.
In the 90s, 00s, and 10s, about 6 to 7 days over 30C.
Now in the 2020s, Paris has about 9 to 10 days over 30.
Heatwaves ain’t what they used to be, that’s for sure.
From Grok regarding you post:
• 1950–1959: ~63 days (average ~6.3/year)
(Notable: 1952 and 1959 had 10–11 days; several years near zero.)
• 1960–1969: ~43 days (average ~4.3/year)
(Quiet decade overall; only 1961 and 1964 exceeded 10 days.)
• 1970–1979: ~70 days (average ~7/year)
(1976 stood out with 28 days.)
• 1980–1989: ~59 days (average ~5.9/year)
(Relatively low; 1990 spills into next decade with 19.)
• 1990–1999: ~113 days (average ~11.3/year)
(Warming signal strengthens; 1995 had 22 days.)
• 2000–2009: ~118 days (average ~11.8/year)
(2003 and 2006 were hot with 23 and 25 days.)
• 2010–2019: ~138 days (average ~13.8/year)
(Consistent highs; 2018 had 24, 2015 had 21.) iied.org
• 2020: 21 days (standalone, as the query ends at 2020). extremeweatherwatch.com
So methinkist you made it up.
Why not look further back?
from The Observer, July 18, 1852:
“In 1132 the rivers and springs disappeared in Alsace. The Rhine was dried up. In 1152 the heat was so great that eggs were cooked in the sand. In 1160, at the battle of Bela, a great number of soldiers died from the heat.”
“In 1440 the heat was excessive. In 1538, 1539, 1540, 1541, the rivers were almost entirely dried up. In 1556 there was a great drought all over Europe. In 1615 and 1616, the heat was overwhelming in France, Italy, and the Netherlands. In 1646 there were fifty-eight consecutive days of excessive heat.”
“In 1718 it did not rain once from the month of April to the month of October. The crops were burnt up; the rivers were dried up, and the theatres were closed by decree of the Lieutenant of Police. The thermometer marked 36 degrees Rhéamur…” (36°Ré (or °Re or °r) is 113F. 113F is 45C. In 1718.)
“In 1818 the theatres remained closed for nearly a month, owing to the heat. The maximum heat was 35 degrees” (again it’s °Ré and the equivalent is 110F or 43C.)
h/t Tony Heller
The original article:
Would you like to inform us of the exposure of the thermometers that recorded these alleged high temperatures?
Bearing in mind that the stevenson screen was not invented until 1864 and indeed the mercury in glass wasn’t a thing until 1714.
After all it is important that we know this, as posters here regularly say when confronted with temperatures they do not wish to accept.
Or is it different when you do?
What did the 1930s look like?
The reason northern Europe doesn’t have AC is that they didn’t ever need it.
NB : The elements that “jumped out” at me on seeing your post were that you
1) started in the 1950s
2) used “10-year bins” rather than “rolling decadal averages”, and
3) set a threshold of 30°C.
It so happens that for historical reasons one of my “scratchpad / just to play with the numbers” spreadsheets contains the daily Tmax and Tmin numbers for the Parc Montsouris weather station in southern Paris, which has data all the way back to 1/1/1900.
I even already had a line which calculated how many days each year had a Tmax value over a (variable) threshold (!) …
Setting that threshold to “29.95” (data to 1 decimal place, let’s avoid rounding errors …), and adding a 10-year average line gave me the attached graph.
.
Notes
– 2026 has had 32 days over 30°C up to the 21st of July (the most recent day with Tmax above 30°C was the 16th).
– 1911 and 1947 were “naturally variable” years with “lots of” — 35 and 39 respectively — hot days.
– Both 1910 (the year before “very hot” 1911) and 1977 (the year after “hot, 23 days above 30°C”, 1976) had zero days above 30°C.
– Since the early 1970s Paris (Parc Montsouris) has indeed had a “noticeable” increase in the average number of days over 30°C. The precise split between (global) “anthropogenic forcings” and “natural cycles” that resulted in this particular (local) “climate change”, however, is unknown and unknowable.
.
PS : When you wrote “Paris has …”, which dataset were you using ?
Interesting that this ‘newpaper’ deemed it worthwhile to task a ‘journalist’ with looking into the number of stories on this subject!!!
Can’t say I noticed, but in the past, the usual suspects do reign it in a bit in the months running up to the next COP so that they can ramp up the alarm around the event more effectively.
Certainly the BBC news repeatedly interviewed its own weather presenters who gave it, the old climate is gone and we’re all burning in the new hell of our own making, spiel.
People are never happy.
East coast erosion is all climate change, rising seas and increasing storms, we’re always told, despite it being ever present for thousands of years.
Now they’re moaning about the places where new land is forming. Surprised that they didn’t manage to get climate change in there too.
https://www.dailymail.com/travel/article-15990081/british-seaside-town-disappearing-beach-southport.html
Why do they think all the coast should be unchanging, frozen in time. Why is any change a negative? It’s just nature.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but comparing heatwaves in France since 1900 (1911 – 41000 deaths, 1921 – ?, 1947 – ?, 1976 – 4500 deaths, 2003 – 15000 deaths and 2026 – 2000 deaths – to be confirmed) with the global temperatures it seems that there is no correlation between the two data series in terms of frequency and mortality.
This is quite a revelation by The Guardian and its ilk and indicates that the general public has become dismissive of the climate alarmist narrative. Could it be that people worldwide haven’t seen anything extraordinary in what have been just the normal annual weather fluctuations?
Maybe it was oversaturation from hourly warnings, alarms, emergencies, and false predictions that had something to do with it. Better ask the marketing consultants and climate psychologists what went wrong.