Essay by Eric Worrall
A hilariously incoherent TDS laden communique from the Mayor of London.
This burning summer is the proof: the voices of climate denial aren’t just delusional, they’re deadly
Sadiq Khan
Sat 8 Aug 2026 18.00 AESTLook at our blazing forests and parched cities. Green policies aren’t a ‘luxury’, and we can’t burn more oil and gas. People need the truth
…
With Tuesday marking Britain’s 34th day of temperatures exceeding 30C (86F) this year, the UK has also found itself reckoning with ferocious heat. Wildfires have forced evacuations in Suffolk and the Cairngorms. In London – where parks have become burnt, brittle and brown – hundreds of grass fires have put our firefighters under pressure like never before. In July, the weather station at Kew Gardens recorded its first ever month without rain since it started operating in 1871. As rivers run dry and reservoirs run low, farmers are warning of food shortages amid the deepening drought. With thousands of deaths already estimated to be linked to the extreme heat we saw in May and June alone, it’s likely this figure will climb higher still.
…
Looking back now, it feels like the fierce fight over Ulez marked the beginning of something else: a new age of extreme climate scepticism. In the years since, the horrifying reality of the climate crisis has come into sharp relief – and yet somehow the clamouring voices of denial and delay have grown louder than ever. Having dismissed climate change as a “con job”, Donald Trump has sought to sabotage global climate action, withdrawing the United States from the Paris agreement for the second time, cutting support for clean energy, and boosting oil and gas production. In the UK, where cross-party consensus on the climate crisis has collapsed, his ideas have been echoed by opposition politicians and rightwing populists who veer wildly between denialism and fatalism. As some claim the climate crisis is a hoax, others insist it’s too late to act.
Both arguments are bogus. The climate crisis is getting worse, but in London we’ve shown that – with courage and creativity – we can prepare ourselves for its impacts. We’ve planted more than 640,000 trees across the capital, shading our streets from the summer sun. We’ve embraced rewilding while creating and improving more than 2,000 football pitches’ worth of green space, providing natural drainage to prevent flooding. And just last month, we set out a plan to clean up our rivers and create safe swimming sites where Londoners can cool down in the heat. We have more zero-emission buses than any city in Europe and about a third of our country’s electric charging points.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/08/burning-summer-climate-denial-green-policies-sadiq-khan
Lets see if I’ve got this right:
Mayor Khan is claiming the drought is now so severe, Britain is on the brink of food shortages, and all the parks are either on fire or dried to a crisp, but the Mayor’s plan to address this crisis is to plant hundreds of thousands of trees and create more green spaces, and use the ULEZ programme to drive up costs from people who are already at risk of food insecurity.
Mayor Khan, wouldn’t that be brown spaces, given this severe drought? Or is your plan to divert more water from farmers who are already running short, so your trees and green spaces survive?
Doesn’t the climate crisis drought you allege is killing everything green mean your green space and tree planting initiatives were all a colossal waste of resources?
What is your plan to help poor people in London survive the food shortages you claim are imminent?
Are people in your mayoral office really this incompetent, or did you write this article yourself? Or was the entire article generated by an AI?
I can’t help thinking London would right now be in a better place if some of that green cash had been spent improving London’s food and water security.
But there is something the mayor could do right now to bring immediate relief to people’s suffering: suspend or cancel London’s punitive ULEZ congestion charging scheme, so commuters from outer suburbs have more cash to pay bills and buy food.
In the UK, most “wildfires” are the result of arson…so it’s a bit rich for comments from a firebrand like Khan…
And ‘instant’ BBQs.
Australia caught about 200 arsonists during the last great wildfire epidemic.
Considering that only a minority of Arsonists get caught we can guess how authentic those AGW wildfire were.
In Argentina they caught many arsonists last year – most of them not Argentinians but from a specific country.
The reason it was a bit underreported was a change in laws that enabled to privatize land after – Wildfires.
A similar thing happened in Greece several years ago.
As the tech has improved(drones) catching the Arsonists in France and Spain is getting more difficult
and the Shock&Awe social engineering will become easier and easier.
A neighbour of ours is a fireman, 2 weeks ago, they were fighting a deliberately set fire on Holyhead Mountain, Anglesey.
Just as they got it under control, they saw another three being set by a few young scrotes on motorbikes; the brigade used their drone to follow one little bastard home, only to be told by the police they were not allowed to pursue them !!!
So… NO ONE WILL BE PROSECUTED !!!
Scrotes? New word for me and self-explaining…love it. UK and US English language-shared but ever so different.
A worthless, obnoxious person, also known as a gobshite or toerag
I love it-like I said about a shared language…no wonder foreigners have a hard time learning English-ours and yours. I did look up the latest new words you sent; I didn’t want to wear out my welcome asking and learning new slang…again, I love it!
The previous set of large wildfires produced some very interesting satellite video.
Real time video of Canada with no clouds over it, and more than 2 dozen fires breaking out within 15 minutes of each other stretching from the eastern slopes of the Rockies all the way across to The Maritimes.
I’ve never heard of any arson busts for any of them, but there is no way with that weather and that timing that they weren’t a coordinated deliberate set of acts of arson.
I wouldn’t put it past him to have had his people set the fires. It’s happened here in the US. Always by leftist weenies
Khan is a stranger to the truth
Brilliant idea of planting trees, once the tide turns on this eco lunacy all these ecotards only would have to look for a piece of rope…sarc
Knot zero.
Sweet.
And the new trees only add fuel to the fires.
It is essentially a faith based policy. Virtue signaling as prayer , but faith based.
My council has planted loads of new trees, all dead now. They never water them.
They got some grant or other for some trees on top of the normal budget. Two trucks and six men to plant a 15ft beautiful scots pine on a triangle of grass at a road junction this winter. Dead already.
Doesn’t matter what the weather does, semi-mature trees grown in a pot need thorough maintenance for several years until the roots get down.
They might as well have stood on the corner ripping up a suitcase of £50 notes.
The fields need to be ditched for good harvests.
The roads need ditches to be stable and hard.
The foundations of houses need to be drained of water to keep the foundations dry and stable.
Trees can’t be planted on land that has been drained of water.
Unless they have the basic level of intelligence to WATER the trees. All that various “runoff” can be collected. Oops. Again, requires basic level of intelligence, lack of which has already been clearly and repeatedly shown to be lacking.
It was manmade global warming that did it.
Manmade Globall Warminining. 😉
Wish I could upvote this several times!
Ripping up 50 Pound Notes would be a cheaper strategy.
Clearly, his elevator doesn’t go all the way up. He’s babbling total nonsense.
He really is from Tooting.
So am I… But I am not a Pakistani import.
Do you like goats?
Only as an edible delicacy.
He is a practicing muslim in a non-muslim country, the term you are looking for is “taqiyya” and it is applied to all dealings with infidels. ALL DEALINGS WITH INFIDELS. Let that sink in, thoroughly, then look at what is going on in Europe, Canada and America..
34 days of 86(f) temperatures??? here that would be really nice, since mid July it has hit 100(f)+ most every day. What we typically call summer in these parts. Did get a little break from the drought last evening–about a 10, or 12 inch rain. That is if you were to draw a 10, or 12 inch circle on the ground chances are good that one rain drop would have hit it.
I find that nothing is global, at the same time, other than stupidity and a few other maladies.
Wasn’t Trudeau going to plant a billion trees a year to save the planet. Great clouds of Canuck trees are making it hard to breathe. Fauci masks are back in fashion.
Yep.
And somebody innocently asked the Trudeau outfit –
“where are you going to put them?”
(Canada being a major area of the Taiga, the world’s largest land biome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiga )
In North America, it covers most of inland Canada, Alaska, and parts of the northern contiguous United States
Fun factoid I just looked up. The particle size range of the Canadian wildfire smoke we just endured here in Chicagoland was 0.2-0.3 microns. (Presumably bigger stuff fell out faster in Canada. So a ‘Fauci mask’ would be as useless for the wildfire smoke here as it was for Covid19—for the same reason that a chain link fence cannot stop mosquitoes.
Workshop respirator might help with smoke, started using one while cleaning rusty metal, lots of fine dust. The outside of the filter is dark brown with all the crud which didn’t make it into my lungs.
That didn’t stop people from wearing them when the Canadian smoke made it down to here in the mid-Atlantic region. But it made them feel better.
And BTW, two chain link fences are twice as effective, 2 x 0 = 0
How about the extensive fires in Washington State and Idaho? I guess their smoke is easier to breathe. The reality is that climate change doesn’t increase the number of lightning strikes and maybe when arsonists are caught they should be thrown into one of the fires they’ve started. It’s amazing how many of these jerks, after they’ve been caught, try to use mental illnesses as one of the excuses for their actions.
My long term preferred punishment for people lighting wildfires is to take them up in an aircraft and drop them into the heart of one with a grossly inadequate parachute.
The parachute is there merely to extend fall time so they get to scream in terror longer.
Really? I just read an article saying London’s trees are dying because of drought conditions. If Londoners are too stupid to water the trees they have what is planting more going to do other than produce more dead trees?
If you don’t regularly water a tree planted in spring (in Ontario) it will not survive the summer, as we can have weeks with little to no rain, which is why so many people have sketchy lawns by the end of July. This year we got just enough rain here (in Prince Edward County) that my lawn has not, as yet, browned, but last year about 20% died.
Far too many people no longer understand such basic, simple things. Even here in western PA newly planted trees and shrubs will shock out and die without a maintenance watering schedule first season. Planting trees in heavy urban areas absolutely requires a year round maintenance watering/feeding schedule. I figure the problem being pointed to in England is rooted in reduction of money spent on such “low level” things as maintaining landscaping.
The more I read about “the climate CRISIS”, the more I’m convinced that the Western world is suffering a RATIONALITY CRISIS
🙁
Sadistiq Khan hates Britain – and the British/English even more.
Sadiq Khan calls on Andy Burnham to commit to climate action as pressure grows over North Sea oil
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/aug/08/sadiq-khan-calls-on-andy-burnham-to-commit-to-climate-action-as-pressure-grows-over-north-sea-oil
They are clueless as transporting oil from further distances increase CO2 missions and costs. Opening North sea oil gives Britain free energy source and can even trade it to improve the economy. It reduces world demand and helps stop the energy crises where everything increases in price due to price increases in energy. It helps significantly with the cost of living and pushes it down.
The mayor of London has a bad case of TDS.
Total dickhead syndrome
Works.
And Islam
Add tokenism to all the other “isms” that trolls and Vienna Cafe debaters sling. Shallow debates like that you get exactly nowhere or dead like in Russia.
He blasts Trump, but he aims not one word of criticism at the governments of China, India, Russia, Indonesia, the OPEC countries, etc., even though they are not playing the silly net zero game.
European country delegations to China bow so low they can give you the thread count on the throne rug in front of the CCP dynasty leader.
Ah but they say they are playing their part. And in green leftard world, what you say is more important than what you do.
I don’t know where Khan and the other British climate alarmists are getting their numbers from, but according to Worldometer, the UK’s population currently stands at 70 million and has increased by some 380,000 so far this year, or a gain of 0.55%. So somehow Britons seem to be weathering the putative climate crisis amazingly well. Likewise the rest of the planet’s population which has risen from around 2 billion in 1900 to 8.3 billion today despite a steady increase in fossil fuel use. So maybe whatever climate change is supposedly occurring really hasn’t had much effect on the human race, and anyone who really wants to view really great losses of life should examine the death totals from the disastrous wars of the last century.
No, you haven’t got that right, Eric. Khan doesn’t state or even imply anywhere in that article that “Britain is on the brink of food shortages“.
No, mate. He doesn’t say that anywhere either.
Is Mayor Khan in the room with us right now, Eric…. ?
From the parts of Mayor Sadiq Khan’s article I quoted:
The food shortage quote :- “… As rivers run dry and reservoirs run low, farmers are warning of food shortages amid the deepening drought. …”
The burnt to a crisp quote :- “… In London – where parks have become burnt, brittle and brown – hundreds of grass fires have put our firefighters under pressure like never before. …”
Seriously try reading before you comment.
Come now, Eric. You are using the actual quotes instead of what you wish them to be like TFN? Travesty!
Britain is always on the brink of foot shortages. A three day dock strike and the country would be on the edge of starvation.
It simply doesn’t produce enough food to feed itself and hasn’t for well over 100 years.
“The climate crisis is getting worse, but in London we’ve shown that – with courage and creativity – we can prepare ourselves for its impacts. We’ve planted more than 640,000 trees across the capital, shading our streets from the summer sun.”
It is estimated they are 20 trillion trees on the planet and the mayor thinks 640,000 trees will make any difference to climate being just 0.0000032% of the total. It is like they think the UK’s 1% world CO2 contribution will make any difference. Nobody will notice anything different if these could be turned on or off like a switch.
“With Tuesday marking Britain’s 34th day of temperatures exceeding 30C (86F) this year, the UK has also found itself reckoning with ferocious heat. Wildfires have forced evacuations in Suffolk and the Cairngorms.”
These are very similar numbers to the year 1995 and 1976 so the climate shows heatwaves and droughts repeats itself and in a world with less clouds the SW radiation from the sun warms the planet more and increases sunshine hours leading to slightly higher temperatures then it did back in 1976 and 1995. The drought in 1976 was much worse over England with stand pipes having to be used in places.
Most of the heatwaves mentioned in the media for England are bogus because they use different definitions to what one was classified over 10 years ago and the areas mainly affected have only been South Eastern areas of England. Nowhere away from the SE areas has had more than one heatwave based on the older definition of 5 days in a row and 29c in the North Midlands/North England and 31c/32c in South. The 5 heatwaves mentioned in media are based on lower thresholds of only 25c in Northern England and 28c in Southern England and just 3 days in a row. These aren’t even 5c or more above the normal for the time of year. There has been hot weather at times especially in the SE England but these have been hugely exaggerated, but many areas have had little or no rain away from Scotland and far Northern England so it is very dry in these areas.
Is this a real comment?
Who estimates that there are “20 trillion trees” globally?
How would adding 640,000 trees to a city’s streets not reduce the light reaching the ground?
This site gets weirder by the day.
It was based on a satellite study estimating numbers, but even so if it is a bit too high there are trillions of trees and it is a miniscule number compared to the climate for the whole planet.
The 640,000 trees will have some influence reducing light on the ground, but it was mentioned about it influencing the climate not the local environment. It is still very dry in areas where there are lots of trees.
You are strange indeed.
When they dry up and die.
Per AIgoogle:
“Earth is home to an estimated 3.04 trillion trees, which breaks down to about 422 trees for every person alive today. This total comes from a landmark study published in the journal [Nature], which combined satellite data with ground-based tree counts from around the world.”
Noted it is published in Nature which in today’s world has a shady reputation.
Funny how an estimate that does not actually count anything can have a 2 decimal precision.
Leave, we won’t miss you
“The total land area of Earth is about 148.94 million square kilometers”
“An average mature American Elm provides a shade canopy with a spread of 40 to 70 feet. This creates a total ground shade area (or footprint) ranging roughly from 1,250 to 3,850 square feet, depending on the exact age, health, and specific elm variety/placement.”
IF the trees were like an average mature American Elm, THEN:
Convert 150 M sq mi to sqft… 4.2e15
Divide by 2.5e3
1.7e12 trees to shade all of earth’s land area
On quick research, I think MG’s estimate was low not high.
TFN’s doubt overestimates the size of trees or England
or underestimates the size of everything else.
“… ferocious heat …”!!!
Gotta get the ad clicks, eh?
The trees are pretty?
RE: “Mayor should… suspend or cancel London’s punitive ULEZ congestion charging scheme…”
Out of curiosity, I wondered whether I could drive my 2003 Camry around in London. Nope. It doesn’t qualify for the petrol standards, because, “ULEZ rules require petrol cars to meet Euro 4 standards, which generally applies only to vehicles first registered from January 2006 onward.”
My car delivers .02 grams / mile of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. ULEZ standards would allow me to vent .16, eight times more.
My Camry emits .94 g/m of CO. ULEZ would allow me to vent 1.6 g/m. nearly twice as much.
I emit .14 g/m of Nitrous Oxides; ULEZ allows .13 g/m.
So… apparently a 2003 Camry exceeds the nitrous oxide limitation by 1 / 100th gram, and driving on the streets of London would cost me 12 pounds 50 (don’t quite know how to write that figure) assuming their automated license-reading and identification networks could find me.
The whole thing is an absurdity.
One of the reasons I left Britain is at least once per year I faced an attempt at cultural enrichment from London’s immigrant community. When I was a 20 something hothead it was fun – free martial arts practice. But add a few decades to that and it was becoming clear London wasn’t a safe place to grow old in.
I was on the underground July 7th, and saw the smoke clouds not too far from where I was commuting in 2011. Britain has bigger problems than climate change.
2005?
Yep. I was on the Northern Line, though thankfully not on one of the trains which was attacked. I wanted to get off at Embankment , but they sealed all the doors even though there were people going upstairs. Then the train travelled very fast non-stop to Euston from memory before they let us out.
At one point we went through the smoke cloud from one of the trains which had been bombed. I realised at that time it was likely a terrorist attack.
I got out at Euston, managed to get a call through to my wife before the mobile network was shut down or failed, then almost hopped on one of the busses until I remembered (at the time) Al Qaida normally conduct multiple attacks, herd people with their first attack then plant a second bomb to catch people fleeing the first attack. Sure enough busses were also attacked that day.
Even more amazing is that my recent car, a Jeep SRT 6.4l is exempt from the ULEZ restrictions when I last looked(2025). It makes you wonder what criteria they are really looking at.
That’s hilarious.
I’m glad this crackpot Khan isn’t on our side.
Hello Mr. Khan.
34 days of temperatures in a year exceeding 86ºF has a name — it’s
called “summer”. It’s been around longer than you have. Without any
connection whatsoever to any gas in the atmosphere, it comes about once a
year because of the tilt of the Earth’s axis of rotation perpendicular to
the ecliptic by more than 0º — specifically 23º now. If that number were,
let’s say, 70º, boy, would you be sweating about now, no matter what the
concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere and therefore no matter how much
fossil fuels we burnt or not (or especially Great Britain burnt or not,
since it doesn’t substantially contribute to the CO2 load of our atmosphere
in any event), or no matter how much CO2 sequestration we invoked or not.
Lack of rain per se is not your problem. As global temperatures rise
(ever so slightly), which basically means, more than anything, ocean surface
temperatures rising, more evaporation from our oceans are inevitable, and
this means more global rain everywhere, barring local anomalies, since the
water vapor in our atmosphere does not appreciably leak into outer space.
And food shortages are not your problem. More CO2 in our atmosphere means
MUCH more agricultural production of food — for people and for every other
non-photosynthetic organism on the planet. And people dying from the heat
is not your problem. Increasing temperatures in the summertime also mean
the same in the winter, and far more people die, indirectly, of winter cold
than of summer warmth (especially if you would allow them private summer air
conditioning and not just public swimming holes). And flushing river
pollution into the oceans are not any solution, since it’s probably ocean
pollution which caused ocean temperatures to go up in the first place. And
your rewilding initiatives are not the solution to any problem either,
because, one, you don’t really believe in them in any case since you cut
down any natural growths you can find elsewhere that interfere with your
precious photovoltaic solar panels. And, two, the 640,000 extra, mortal
trees growing in London (without water?) will eventually have to be cut down
and their “carbon” recycled as CO2 in our atmosphere and so will be as
useless as your precious Paris Climate Agreement, which we in the United
States ARE basically following, whether we are a signatory or not, though
you can’t figure that out either.
And, finally, Donald Trump is not your problem, though he’s sure a
problem for everyone else. It’s true he asserted that you are a purveyor of
a “con job”, but he doesn’t happen to really believe that (it’s just another
childish spiteful outburst by the master con artist of all). And he
threatened to cut funding for all the solar and wind power projects of the
United States government, along with all the other global warming inanities
it is funding. But he never actually did anything of the kind, nor did he
defund any of the global warming propaganda campaigns peddled in United
States government-financed universities and elsewhere. Nor would he ever do
so. As he effectively stated, warming up to his Liberaloid handlers, if he
cut this funding, probably amounting to ½ trillion dollars per year, it
would cause great disruption to his deal-making abilities with the parasitic
global warming crowd, which he loves to negotiate with as a boost to his own
ego. And heaven forfend if Donald Trump’s fragile ego should ever be
derogated.
David Solan
Planting lots of trees in cities should have some effect on the UHI, and is probably a good idea, but it would do sweet fanny adams about anthropogenic global warming, because AGW isn’t happening.
The only effect humans are having on temperatures around the world is in cities.
“The only effect humans are having on temperatures around the world is in cities.”
And by bad site placement and maintenance, expanding airports and data “adjustment”
The elephant in the room based on estimated calculations by 162.25 W/m2 reaching the surface, reducing global low cloud levels by percentage.
5% 6.60 W/m2
4% 5.28 W/m2
3% 3.96 W/m2
2% 2.64 W/m2
1% 1.32 W/m2
For example a 5% decline in global low cloud levels leads to a warming of about 6.60 W/m2.
My estimate using previous cloud projects data, a reduction over 50 years since 1976 to 2026 of between 4% and 5% low level clouds on a global scale.
The is roughly a decline in global low cloud levels on average 1% per decade leading to a warming on average of between 1.06 W/m2 to 1.32 W/m2 per decade.
Sweet fanny adams? You UKers are killing me with your slang, another lookup,and I’m lovin’ it.
Pave paradise, put up a parking lot.
Point is, it is not UHI in absolute terms, although it is not unreasonable to include new roads and tarmac under a generic UHI umbrella.
And yes, humans do affect the various microclimates, but not enough to measure or worry about behind the minor annual UHI increases.
Leaving aside the one moment some of the claims, planting lots of trees is an excellent idea…
I agree London has some nice urban spaces.
But if you want to take a night walk through the woods, I recommend St James Park rather than say Hackney Marshes. I mean you will still be stopped by people with machine guns, but the difference is the people in St James Park are palace security.
I agree that planting lots of trees is an excellent idea, but with the provision that those newly planted trees are properly tended until they are well established.
A newly planted tree that dies for lack of care is not an excellent idea.
I note Amit Varma, from many years ago, explained Sadiq Khan’s focus:
Said Modiji, as he tried to squat:
“This is so much harder than I thought!
Let us use Photoshop;
I will seem so tip-top!
Looks matter; performance does not.”
And… trees emit chemicals such as biogenic volatile organic compounds and other materials (such as pollen) that can reduce air quality under certain conditions, particularly in urban areas. This is well-established in atmospheric chemistry and urban forestry research.
Isn’t London’s Mullah Khan obsessed with air-quality?
Some of those emissions contribute to cloud formation.
One has to wonder what the blame would be if CO2 had not been designated the criminal in all things.
One also has to ponder how much arable farm land has been lost to the green crusaders. Likewise how much woodland is now naked.
For a giggle I asked google for the ideal human earth population. It offered a selection of answers including one high outlier where we don’t need mass ‘eliminations’. Six out of seven options involved unexplained much-smaller-than-now numbers.
Shirley Jackson, The Lottery.
“unexplained”-> “carefully worded”
Two quotes inline (order reversed):
“We’ve planted … trees … to prevent flooding. ” “In London – where parks have become burnt, brittle and brown”