Is RECORD Heatwave Sign Of Climate Catastrophe?!

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Uh, you might have noticed from the sweat dripping down my forehead, we're yet to master air conditioning here at Navara Towers, but it's rather hot.

[00:00:09]Yesterday saw a new record for temperatures in Britain for this time of year with the Mercury in Q Gardens Richmond hitting 34.8° C. That's a whole 2° higher than the previous record set 82 years ago. But of course, this is 2026 and everyone has gone mad. Uh, so the fact that the previous record was in the 1940s was naturally taken by some to be evidence that actually climate change isn't real.

[00:00:35]So wait, the weather was the exact same temperature as 82 years ago, but I thought every summer was quote the hottest ever because of climate change.

[00:00:46]Well, no, because 34.8° is 2 degrees warmer than 32.8, which is the previous number. It's a new record. The number's gone up. That's the point. 34 is higher than 32. Uh that account was far from alone in making such a astute observation though.

[00:01:02]This is from do Dr. Zoe Hark and PhD.

[00:01:05]Although I I wonder what the PhD is in.

[00:01:08]We all know of course Jillian McKith famous nutritionist. Dr. Jillian McKith.

[00:01:13]Today was the hottest Mayday in the UK since 1944. So if today's temperature is due to global warming, what was the deal in 1944? Again, just to be clear, it's 2° warmer than it was then. This is yesterday. Of course, today might even be higher still. Um, I want to be clear about this. Hot weather existed before man-made climate change. Freak weather events, floods, drought, all of that existed before the high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere led to a rise in temperatures. Okay? You can read about it in the Bible. Nobody's saying it started with the industrial age.

[00:01:48]Nobody's saying that. What has changed though is that these events are becoming more common and the planet is generally getting warmer. We know this by looking at average temperatures and wider measures. We look at trends. For instance, uh there are the 10 hottest days on record in Britain, all of which were in England. As you can see, nine of the 10 hottest days on record are since 1990.

[00:02:12]Six of the 10 are since 2000. And three of the five warmest days on record are all since 2020. You've got a date there from 100 years ago. But that's besides the point.

[00:02:25]The majority of the data shows what's happening. It's getting warmer. Last year, meanwhile, was the warmest and sunniest on record. That was true for the whole of the UK, but also England with the average temperature for the latter across the whole year, across the whole of 2025 reaching almost 11 degrees. So, not just warmer summers, but more clement winters, less cold winters, less snow. Uh, that means the three warmest years since 1884 are 2022, 2023, and 2025.

[00:02:59]The three warmest years on record, 2022, 2023, 23, 2025. Do you spot a pattern there? I can't quite put my finger on it. Uh, but that wasn't enough for the goat of conspiracy theories, the greatest of all time, David Ike. Uh, here he is responding to Zach Palansky.

[00:03:19]What's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yes, got it. Bollocks.

[00:03:25]Uh, climate change. It's all bollocks.

[00:03:28]However, David Ike saying climate change isn't real. That's not news. What caught my eye was this reply.

[00:03:38]In Australia, the temps reach 45 degrees plus and we're just fine.

[00:03:43]So, we're starting to go beyond climate change denial. And of course, we have to because it is getting warmer. It's 35° in the spring. And people are just saying, actually, what's the problem if Britain suddenly has a climate like Australia? A reminder, 18% of Australia is literally desert. 70% of the country is arid or semi-arid. It can't be it can't be lived on basically by humans.

[00:04:06]You only get large- scale human settlement on the coasts. If Britain had anything like the heat of Australia, which thank goodness isn't happening anytime soon, its existing bios would collapse.

[00:04:19]But these people know this, right?

[00:04:22]Surely they know this. And how could we talk about a British heatwave without mentioning 1976? It was hot back then, didn't you know? So, climate change can't be real. Take this tweet as evidence of that argument.

[00:04:36]This is from No Farmers, No Food. The 1976 UK heat wave was one of the most intense prolonged periods of high temperatures in British history, lasting from the 23rd of June to 27th of August, 1976. But no one blamed cow farts, and the weather map certainly didn't look like a volcano had erupted over Britain.

[00:04:54]Interesting. Now let's see the whole planet comparing 1976 and 2022.

[00:05:01]Ah that makes sense. So 1976 yes Britain was indeed very very hot statistically much warmer than you would expect it to be and much of the planet is less so.

[00:05:13]It's blue. Fast forward to June 2022. It looks it looks quite different. There's lots of orange. H what's changed? I can't quite put my finger on it. Uh, it just goes to show that one data point in one country in one year doesn't tell you the whole story of the reality of climate change. Paul, why are people still so insistent that two consecutive days of 35° C in spring isn't a big deal? I mean, there's two things, right?

[00:05:44]I mean, first of all, I think the phrase climate denial is interesting because, you know, we treat it the way it's treated in social, you know, social sciences. Climate denial just means denying that the climate is changing.

[00:05:54]But I think it's obviously a deeper fundamental psychological response to like the enormity of climate change which if you actually start reading about it is genuinely quite terrifying quite scary that we are we really are on the cusp of like a pretty fundamental changes in our ability to function as a society you know and and that is scary if somebody isn't presenting you with a plan and there's no public discussion about a plan about how we going to deal with that. So in the absence of sort of political leaders actually establishing that yeah it's looking it's looking looking pretty bad but this is the way that we can moderate this is the way we can move forward in in that vacuum people respond with denial because it's too terrifying to to acknowledge it otherwise. I think that's interesting to me as well is that I was reading the study that came out last year. There was an academic study that happened in the states which was assessing across the world the US. There were all the different countries in in Africa and in in in Asia as well. It's a pretty you know substantive study and what they were looking at is how many people were concerned about climate change and how many people thought other people were concerned about climate change and actually the figures are pretty astonishing that actually at the top level almost everybody in those countries like 90 you get places like Denmark 90% of people care about climate change in China or something like 99% of people care about climate change. Even in the US where it was pretty low, it's still sort of in the 80s. But every single person who responded thought that less people cared about climate change than other people. And that's is the effect of those sort of posts, right? Is to create the sense that actually what is quite an outlier opinion is more commonly held and that actually if you express an opinion that is with climate science, you're going to get like some sort of bollocking. But it is mad. It is crazy because we are and it is crazy to me that we in a situation where I feel like our entire political discourse is utterly unable to factor in the changes that are five or 10 years in the future in terms of the effect on food prices, the effect on food security in the UK is going to be really profound and we having a discussion in this maker bi-election you know about bond markets which is effectively an incredibly short- termist way of understanding the economic cycle when we should be talking about what what is a politician to do in 5 or 10 years to stop the fact, you know, to mitigate the fact that some food prices only go up 40%.

[00:08:17]>> In 2035, you know, I was just actually out in Essics this weekend speaking to a bunch of farmers and they were saying to me, this is scary for us at this point in time. This is actually one of the most difficult crop years we've had. If we don't get rain in the next two one or two weeks, half of our crop doesn't grow. Right? One of the effects of climate change in the UK is that it's going to make the UK wetter a winter which makes our soil water logged which also means which so weird when you watch that that person you posted from some social media and it's a tractor and his his username was no farmer. I don't think that's real.

[00:08:44]>> Right.

[00:08:45]>> I I can't I can't believe that's real.

[00:08:47]Every single farmer I've spoken to I don't speak to lots of farmers but I speak to a fair few >> or people that work in food production.

[00:08:52]Every single one says it's getting warmer. They might you know they might have a range of views about what to do about it but nobody says climate change isn't real. I mean Christ, we're growing pino and war in the new forest.

[00:09:03]>> And farmers aren't served by being in denial. You know, farmers bread and butter is what they can grow, what they can't grow, what's going to be successful. It's not helpful to them to ignore the things that are happening in front of them. So, actually, >> you're not going to get that as as a widespread view. What you are going to get is people saying, you know, how are we going to mitigate this? How are we going to deal with this? And currently I think we've we've lost that political momentum about discussing well we are sort of edging towards 1.5° C. How do we mitigate that? How do we how do we actually give people a degree of like hope and a sense of moving towards some sort of action? How do we you know help people as they struggle through this?

[00:09:39]Cuz in the absence of that this is what you're going to get. You're going to get denial >> and fatalism right and apathy.

[00:09:45]>> Yeah. There's a strange illision. So, you know, you do meet farmers who say climate change is real, but people shouldn't eat less meat. I mean, it's a tiny part of the problem. Or there was a story a few years ago, right? Ireland needs to produce fewer cows to meet its CO2 targets and farmers are going do. I actually agree with I agree with that, right? I agree with that. That is not that is not the problem. The problem with climate change is about our energy systems fundamentally. You know, production of concrete and cement is about 9% of CO2 emissions. Glass and steel, you know, is the same. Aviation is just 3%. the focus on personal travel and what we eat is a eating is a lot but also it's also really hard to change right um decarbonizing things like transport decarbonizing steel concrete these these are huge things which we're making good progress on just not nearly quickly enough and I think I think what you're saying about the scale of the problem worrying people I think is is really true and I think it's why you slip from one to the other which is oh well no climate change isn't real. And then you give the details and you say, "Well, no, because of atmospheric concentrations of CO2. You know, the planet's about 1.3° warmer than 1,800 blah blah blah." Okay. Well, you know what? It's not so bad. We get a bit more nice weather here in Britain.

[00:10:58]Here's the thing with climate change.

[00:11:00]It's kind of a coin toss between, do we get southern European temperatures like this or do we lose the Gulf Stream? You know, does this country get tous 25° C?

[00:11:09]Uh the FT did a great article about this, by the way. It's possible. There are really clever people saying it's quite possible, not probable, but possible. I would like to minimize the risk of that. Personally, imagine your great-grandchildren, not even your great grandchildren, your grandchildren in 100 years living in Britain and the climate is like northern Finland. They might be quite pissed off with you if you didn't do anything to stop it happening. Um, Paul, what can people do? Because apparently, you know, like you say, most people do care about this stuff. People like Zack Palansky make the political weather. Labour won some votes. They came first. They didn't ignore the issue. Politicians at least have to make some concessions. Farage's video where he announced he was going to run was of course in the great English countryside.

[00:11:54]He was in Kent with his dogs. He knows what he's doing. So there is wide acknowledgement about these things mattering to people.

[00:12:01]Where is the green movement failing? We can talk about the nasty right and the climate deniers. Where is the green movement failing? That's like the milliondoll question, right? And I'm not sure that I have the straightforward simplest answer to that. Uh I mean it seems to me that actually generally speaking almost all political actors have seeded this grant. So you use the Labour Party as a good example. One piece of of one of my favorite pieces of of Labour Party law over the last uh two or three years is the day that Rachel Reeves announced that they were not going to do the 28 billion pound a year Green New Deal was the same day it was announced by the I think it was the UN Meteorological Society that the Earth had just gone through it 365 hottest days ever recorded. Right. And in that moment it was about achieving a short-term political goal. They didn't think it would play well. They said, you know, they done some polling with some voters. They didn't, you know, they worried about Tory attack line. So, they gave it up and effectively they tied their hands for the majority of this government where the amount of work they actually do on climate change considering the scale of it is is pretty minimal compared to what it needs to be.

[00:13:11]I mean it seems to me that there is a space I mean younger people in particular if you look at the polling are terrified of climate change and are waiting for somebody to mobilize. The thing that was interesting about that that that academic study I was telling you about is what it showed us is that there's actually the possibility there's a real latent possibility for a global climate movement, but you have to actually find a way to communicate to people that other people want to do it as well. And that if we exert concerted joint political power, we can actually change something like that, which is something that capitalism almost always tells us we can't do and always makes us feel like we're more alienated. always makes us feel like we are more more diffuse people are more selfish people than you know human nature can't be relied upon to act cooperatively. So I mean part of it messaging part of it just we just need some socialism I think. Yeah, I think that's true. And I think, you know, people talk about watermelons. They're greens on the outside, they're socialists on the inside. And of course, that's nonsense on the one hand, but equally, I think ecological commitments, which are real, lead to at least quasocialist conclusions. Right? I think when you've got to think in a way about being a good ancestor, about you know, planting the trees so that your grandchildren can sit in their shade, you have to think about something bigger than yourself. And of course, that's completely at odds with the worldview that we've been inculcated with.

[00:14:33]really since industrial revolution but particularly since the that revolution the 1970s we've actually got some breaking news on this the temperature reached a shocking 35.1° C in London today in Q Gardens again so you've had the hottest May day the temperature the hottest on record two days in a row so before this week the hottest day in May on record was 32.8° Monday 34.8° 8° today, 35.1° C. Now, I know the Daily Mail and Good Morning Britain and Talk TV are all going to say, "Well, it's just the summer. Suck it up. Enjoy it while it lasts." It's not the summer. It's the spring. The summer doesn't start until June the 21st for another 3 weeks. We've had the record temperature for May broken two days in a row. Thanks for joining me tonight.

[00:15:28]>> Thanks for having me. It was very fun.

[00:15:30]It >> was very fun, albeit very hot. We have got the air con here. Like I said, it's rather noisy. If you want to be that little bit quieter in the future, you want to do hit the support button in the description below. Thank you everyone for tuning in tonight. Uh come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Navara Media. Good night.