News today is filled with “record heat” in France — whatever, it might be the hottest since thermometers started measuring, but it’s been hotter before. Even if it’s real, it’s only a technicality because we only started records recently. At most it can only be the hottest in 130 years or so, and we know it was just as hot in medieval times, hotter 7,000 years ago, hotter 130,000 years ago, and so on, hotter for most of life on Earth.

The record heat in France is a meaningless clickbait moment in climate history that preys upon the short term human psyche. Like some collective amnesia we forget that the French Revolution was but a moment ago in geologic history. So this is the worst heatwave in Europe since … 2003? 

But is it even a real minor record? We don’t know if French historic records were adjusted, cooled, subject to unaccounted site moves, or measured in super sensitive electronic thermometers that didn’t exist in 1896.  But we do know that when France’s top TV meteorologists wrote a skeptical book, he was sacked. If the data is being tampered with, what are the odds that any recognised French expert could […]

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June 29, 2019 at 11:01AM