Imagine the migrant crisis when those in the Southern hemisphere start escaping North because of heat. We’ll have to send all the deniers South to keep the planet on its axis!
I remember the summer of 1976 all too well… I was a 1st year student nurse working at Copthorne hospital in Shrewsbury, the wards of which were a series of wooden huts branching off a central corridor whose only idea of cooling boiled down to some strategically placed fans around each ward. It was bad enough for us young, fit and healthy nurses but those poor patients suffered horrendously!
Given all of that, however, I would gladly go back to that summer because, as you so rightly pointed out, it was an exception not the rule. I also recall the summer of 1987 (primarily because my dad died the previous December) which turned out to be another exception because it rained virtually every day of that summer, but nobody ever harks back to that one…
So much THIS, Bear. Multiple fans in every room, going through bottles of water like we are in the Sahara, cats commuting between cool patches in the garden and tiles in the sunroom. I can't imagine how awful ir must be travelling on the Underground right now.
I wasn't here in 1976, but I have been living in the UK half my life. I remember wearing a coat in April, and giving up trying to grow tomatoes because it was just too cold. Just said to the husband - the first moron that says climate change is a hoax get a smack in the mouth (not that I woud ever hit anybody, you understand. Just fed up with the general stupidity out there.).
While scrolling through this article I was keeping one eye on the BBC lunchtime news and they ran a feature on exactly this subject! Lots of footage of summer '76 followed by meteorologists carefully explaining how it's so much WORSE now. It was the lack of rain that made '76 so unbearable. I remember our shock driving home down the M4 after spending July in Canada, the fields were beige dust. No greenery anywhere.
Spent 15 years commuting on the Northern Lines, unbearable in summer, particularly in the days where you could still smoke in some carriages 🙄. Feel your pain.
We had the worst electrical storm in local memory in our West Country home town on Saturday night. Over 800 lightening strikes in an hour, several buildings including our local hospital and airport were hit, biblical torrents of rain with flash floods and emergency services overwhelmed. We lost electricity briefly and internet for 24 hours.Your point about risk to infrastucture is such an important message.
It sure makes Scotland look more attractive weather wise. It's always been a beautiful place but now has the added attraction of not being a frying pan.
Coming from a similar place weather wise, this line made me chuckle "I came to Britain expecting drizzle, cardigans, and seasonal affective disorder."
Even back home the heatwaves are starting earlier and in the past couple of years the voice notes from my mum about how hot it is (close to 40) start in May, sometimes even late April. And she still has June, July and August to get through.
Growing up we would feel the temperatures rise in mid June, with the odd heatwave hitting us somewhere between mid July and mid August. Now summer back home in Spain feels like living inside of an open-air furnace working at full capacity May to September.
And yet people also say we've always had hot summers. True, but temperatures rarely reached 40 so often and summer was a well-defined event that lasted 3 months, not half of the year.
I've lived almost two decades in London and I really missed not having a proper summer for about 13 of those as, with any luck, there'll be a week when we'll hit 26 and that'll be it until next year. Not any more.
Not sure what additional evidence we need to provide for climate change deniers to understand the impact this already has in crops and the humanitarian emergency that we may be dealing with soon if governments don't take this seriously. At a time like this, to read about even more data centres being opened (with the amount of water they consumed) should make everyone wonder who this benefits.
I live (now - see my other comment) in one of the driest parts of the country. Yet Anglian Water are building a pipeline to ferry water from near me to Norfolk where it's needed more - so they say - and I found out recently the local council has approved a bloody data centre for the same area the pipeline starts from!
I think most people still don't realise the impact the unregulated growth of AI can have and how some tech companies seem to be driving the political agenda.
I was doing my GCEs in 1976 and the remarkable thing for me was how hot it was in Northumberand - for months, every day and with no rain!! When I started working I had to catch the first bus 06.10 and it was Freeeeeeezing at that time of the morning but boiling by 08.00. Folks in the office thought I was mad having a duffel coat with me!!
There was a similar article on MSN. People didn't realise that the maps they published side by side were for 1976 (as was) and 1976 (if it had the climate change/global warming we have had since then).
I remember 1976, the parched grass, the heat, the fantastic crop of outdoor tomatoes…
But I‘ve also seen well founded and scholarly warnings from actual experts over the decades that followed, and the refusal by those in power to attempt to do anything about it.
It’s worse now, as the US, Israel and Russia merrily explode great tracts of other people‘s homelands, and people freeing from both war and famine are presented by the popular Press as less than human, scroungers.
Oh dear, Bear, what a world we are leaving for our children and their children.
I do remember 1976. I was 12. It wasn't like this. OK, I lived in a different part of the UK. A higher part, with cooler temps all round. But like you I loathe the heat, I always have and my memory of '76 isn't of feeling particularly hot. It's of it not raining and everything going brown. Which was weird, for then. Due to a local underground acquifer (apparently) my village also skipped the water bowsers my late husband (from a place roughly 3 miles away) got used to over the summer. But oppressive heat? Nah, I don't remember it that way.
The other key difference is the humidity. '76 was in the middle of a drought.
My sister came back from chaperoning a sports event in Portugal and the difference was like being wrapped in a hot, wet blanket and stepping into a sauna.
Imagine the migrant crisis when those in the Southern hemisphere start escaping North because of heat. We’ll have to send all the deniers South to keep the planet on its axis!
Can we do that now?
I remember the summer of 1976 all too well… I was a 1st year student nurse working at Copthorne hospital in Shrewsbury, the wards of which were a series of wooden huts branching off a central corridor whose only idea of cooling boiled down to some strategically placed fans around each ward. It was bad enough for us young, fit and healthy nurses but those poor patients suffered horrendously!
Given all of that, however, I would gladly go back to that summer because, as you so rightly pointed out, it was an exception not the rule. I also recall the summer of 1987 (primarily because my dad died the previous December) which turned out to be another exception because it rained virtually every day of that summer, but nobody ever harks back to that one…
So much THIS, Bear. Multiple fans in every room, going through bottles of water like we are in the Sahara, cats commuting between cool patches in the garden and tiles in the sunroom. I can't imagine how awful ir must be travelling on the Underground right now.
I wasn't here in 1976, but I have been living in the UK half my life. I remember wearing a coat in April, and giving up trying to grow tomatoes because it was just too cold. Just said to the husband - the first moron that says climate change is a hoax get a smack in the mouth (not that I woud ever hit anybody, you understand. Just fed up with the general stupidity out there.).
We are very “short-term” in our thinking as species it would seem.
While scrolling through this article I was keeping one eye on the BBC lunchtime news and they ran a feature on exactly this subject! Lots of footage of summer '76 followed by meteorologists carefully explaining how it's so much WORSE now. It was the lack of rain that made '76 so unbearable. I remember our shock driving home down the M4 after spending July in Canada, the fields were beige dust. No greenery anywhere.
Spent 15 years commuting on the Northern Lines, unbearable in summer, particularly in the days where you could still smoke in some carriages 🙄. Feel your pain.
We had the worst electrical storm in local memory in our West Country home town on Saturday night. Over 800 lightening strikes in an hour, several buildings including our local hospital and airport were hit, biblical torrents of rain with flash floods and emergency services overwhelmed. We lost electricity briefly and internet for 24 hours.Your point about risk to infrastucture is such an important message.
It sure makes Scotland look more attractive weather wise. It's always been a beautiful place but now has the added attraction of not being a frying pan.
Coming from a similar place weather wise, this line made me chuckle "I came to Britain expecting drizzle, cardigans, and seasonal affective disorder."
Even back home the heatwaves are starting earlier and in the past couple of years the voice notes from my mum about how hot it is (close to 40) start in May, sometimes even late April. And she still has June, July and August to get through.
Growing up we would feel the temperatures rise in mid June, with the odd heatwave hitting us somewhere between mid July and mid August. Now summer back home in Spain feels like living inside of an open-air furnace working at full capacity May to September.
And yet people also say we've always had hot summers. True, but temperatures rarely reached 40 so often and summer was a well-defined event that lasted 3 months, not half of the year.
I've lived almost two decades in London and I really missed not having a proper summer for about 13 of those as, with any luck, there'll be a week when we'll hit 26 and that'll be it until next year. Not any more.
Not sure what additional evidence we need to provide for climate change deniers to understand the impact this already has in crops and the humanitarian emergency that we may be dealing with soon if governments don't take this seriously. At a time like this, to read about even more data centres being opened (with the amount of water they consumed) should make everyone wonder who this benefits.
I live (now - see my other comment) in one of the driest parts of the country. Yet Anglian Water are building a pipeline to ferry water from near me to Norfolk where it's needed more - so they say - and I found out recently the local council has approved a bloody data centre for the same area the pipeline starts from!
I think most people still don't realise the impact the unregulated growth of AI can have and how some tech companies seem to be driving the political agenda.
I was doing my GCEs in 1976 and the remarkable thing for me was how hot it was in Northumberand - for months, every day and with no rain!! When I started working I had to catch the first bus 06.10 and it was Freeeeeeezing at that time of the morning but boiling by 08.00. Folks in the office thought I was mad having a duffel coat with me!!
I remember 1976. It was nothing like this. We need to listen to the scientists, not the Daily Wail, Torygraph or GBeebies.
This article backs you up Bear; a "1976" today would be far worse because of climate change have taken effect in the last 50 years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/articles/cg5pjlyjrq8o
There was a similar article on MSN. People didn't realise that the maps they published side by side were for 1976 (as was) and 1976 (if it had the climate change/global warming we have had since then).
I headed to bed at 2am, having been one of many voices fact-checking the mis-informed posts... (not that that actually works for the posters, but it just might inoculate other readers to their distorted sense of reality https://medium.com/@sagarkaul/cognitive-dissonance-and-disinformation-why-facts-dont-change-mind-578989b085dd).
Good work indeed.
There seem to be a lot of Reform/Restore posters on MSN news. That, or bots. The top comment had over a 100 upticks when I checked back in last night.
Which was a bad move. (Another 2am bedtime due to the new comments, mostly repeating the misinformation in the old ones!).
Also about 4,000 people died during that heatwave so it would be best not to repeat it more often than we have to!
I remember 1976, the parched grass, the heat, the fantastic crop of outdoor tomatoes…
But I‘ve also seen well founded and scholarly warnings from actual experts over the decades that followed, and the refusal by those in power to attempt to do anything about it.
It’s worse now, as the US, Israel and Russia merrily explode great tracts of other people‘s homelands, and people freeing from both war and famine are presented by the popular Press as less than human, scroungers.
Oh dear, Bear, what a world we are leaving for our children and their children.
I do remember 1976. I was 12. It wasn't like this. OK, I lived in a different part of the UK. A higher part, with cooler temps all round. But like you I loathe the heat, I always have and my memory of '76 isn't of feeling particularly hot. It's of it not raining and everything going brown. Which was weird, for then. Due to a local underground acquifer (apparently) my village also skipped the water bowsers my late husband (from a place roughly 3 miles away) got used to over the summer. But oppressive heat? Nah, I don't remember it that way.
Brilliantly foreboding
The other key difference is the humidity. '76 was in the middle of a drought.
My sister came back from chaperoning a sports event in Portugal and the difference was like being wrapped in a hot, wet blanket and stepping into a sauna.
I remember the summer of 1976. Water shortage, England getting thrashed by the Windies in the cricket and sadly the death of my father.