Tuesday, 2 June 2026

More Summer Horror

 
Who needs the Met Office when you have newspapers? The Daily Mirror has published an article that claims we're about to experience a "blast", meaning a period of warm summer weather. The temperatures are illustrated differently on modern weather maps. The cheerful circular dots with numbers in have been replaced by coloured thermal contours that deepen with redness to indicate more heat. It looks as if Great Britain is bleeding and festering under the deadly sun. The forecast states that this new heatwave will manifest by late next week? How can they know that? British weather cannot be predicted that far into the future. Even the Met Office themselves have admitted that after about eight days, judging the conditions becomes mostly guesswork... unless it's being engineered of course. Source: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/heatwave-weather-forecast-met-office-37234011. Of course if the heatwave does appear the Mirror can say its prediction was accurate. Weather forecasts used to be fun and humourous, a uniquely British kind of media phenomenon. Now they are loaded with frightening imagery and portents of doom. The unspoken moral of the story is that we need tyrannical world government now to relieve us of this mortal danger.

4 comments:

Missing Trillions said...

Yes, it is depressing to see so many prominent people with no connection to meteorology, virtue signalling on this issue. Typically they say something like "of course, climate change is by far the most likely cause of human extinction" as if this is some kind of unchallengeable fact. Kerching! and they're guaranteed another booking or interview somewhere else for being so on-message.

All this against a background of voluntary low fertility so extreme that it is now the actual most likely cause of our extinction. Needless to say population collapse will automatically cut CO2 emissions so why trumpet that particular concern in any case, the real problem is negating the imagined one.

Anonymous said...

Is it a lack of understanding on your part regarding meteorology Ben? Firstly the whole 'doom' and 'scare' is nothing deliberate or nefarious with the colour contour gradients used on weather maps it's to help the colour blind (light and dark shades) and also the advances in technology allow overlays of clouds etc in real time instead the old fashioned icons. The various newspapers get their data, pictures etc directly from the Met office they don't have their own resident Michael fish... Predicting weather has also become much more accurate and it is perfectly feasible to determine the likely weather next week with a moderate degree of accuracy. Weather forecasting isn't 'fun and humorous' it's science. Maybe you are thinking of Astrology rather than meteorology.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Totally agree, MT.

Ben Emlyn-Jones said...

Not sure, Anon, except thunderstorms tend to be Pisces. As much as I want to help visually impaired people watch TV, aren't there better ways of doing so without turning the land into some kind of Dorien Gray portrait? What effect is it having on those with clear vision? I do use the Met Office directly for my forecast and they do start making "maybe" and "possible" statements after a few days. Remember the blunder Michael Fish made! Yet the Mirror presents this outcome in the language of certitude. The maybe's are included for legal reasons, but are skilfully buried in tabloidese.