Climate change: long hot summers
By Richard North - September 4, 2025
It’s a while since I wrote anything on global boiling. Like the BBC, I regard the science as settled, only I take the diametrically opposing view that the claims made for anthropogenic warming are without foundation.
Over the years, if anything, my views have hardened to the extent that it hardly seems worth making the case against the claims any more. They have largely been staked out: there are those who believe that mankind is destined for a fiery death and they are never going to change their minds; on the other hand, there are those – like me – who are equally firm in opposing that views.
But, after the Met Office hyperventilating about this year being the hottest summer evah, it is worth popping back to have another look at the subject.
From a personal perspective, living in the frozen north, this summer hasn’t actually been anything special. Much is being made of the four heatwaves in a single season, but the temperatures here were not particularly extreme, and remarkably short-lived.
Even the Met Office admits that there hasn’t been extreme heat. It notes that, although the summer has been consistently warm, the highest temperature recorded to date for 2025 was 35.8ºC in Faversham, Kent, on 1 July, well short of the UK’s all-time high of 40.3ºC, set in July 2022.
The choice of Faversham for the record, however, is instructive. The official Met Office weather station is located on the fringes of Faversham at a place called Brogdale Collections close to Brogdale Farm.
The site itself is home since 1952 of the National Fruit Collection, but since 1990 after the privatisation of the collection it has been developed into a thriving heritage centre, with its own miniature railway and 23 businesses, including a café, a brewery and other organisations, making it a popular tourist site with regular tours and events.
Google maps show large areas of paving (pictured), multiple commercial buildings (many of them quite new), a large car park and a network of access roads. Immediately to the west is a small housing estate and just over the boundary to the north is the M2 Motorway, completed and opened in 1965.
In its own way, therefore, the site is a classic example of urban encroachment in miniature, combined with the urban heat effect, where man-made surfaces and buildings give rise to higher temperatures than experienced in undeveloped places.
Looking at the temperature records, for the years 1961 to 1990, the average maximum temperature for August recorded at the station was 21.18ºC while the minimum was 11.82ºC. For the years of 1991-2020, though, the August average maximum climbed to 23.10ºC and, significantly, the average minimum rose to 13.07ºC. These effects are seen right through the year, winters as well as summers.
The minimum temperature averages are important as it is recognised that annual-mean daily minimum temperatures are more affected by urbanisation than the maximums.
And that has been the overall story behind the “record” hot summer. What has driven the average up has been the higher minimum temperatures recorded and, with the dry spring leading to lower moisture levels, cooling effect has been minimised, so producing the apparent record.
With official weather stations often poorly sited there is good evidence that the Met Office records are exaggerating climatic effects, undermining their assertions of global warming.
We are, of course, “reassured” that climate scientists adjust their results to take account of urban heat effect, but – with a myriad of other adjustments – the records used are often so far from the originals as to be wholly artificial.
Their problem is that urban heat effect is so prevalent that, if temperature data were excluded from stations in affected areas, there would scarce be any records to work with. And if only the results from the very few unchanged rural stations were accepted, in all probability negligible temperature change trends would be seen.
However, while such issues are being constantly debated, as I indicated above, minds are rarely changed. Yet, just for once, some of the contrary arguments are finding favour in high places, signalling a change in emphasis where the climate fanatics are not getting their own way.
An example of this is the recent production of a report for the US Department of Energy establishing “A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the US Climate”.
The 151 pages tell the story in full, but the executive summary makes the case. It accepts that anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) and other greenhouse gas emissions are increasing the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere through a complex and variable carbon cycle.
But it notes that elevated concentrations of CO2 directly enhance plant growth, globally contributing to “greening” the planet and increasing agricultural productivity. They also make the oceans less alkaline (lower the pH), which is possibly detrimental to coral reefs, although the recent rebound of the Great Barrier Reef suggests otherwise.
It accepts that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas, exerting a warming influence on climate and weather and acknowledges that climate change projections require scenarios of future emissions.
However, it asserts, there is evidence that scenarios widely-used in the impacts literature have overstated observed and likely future emission trends. The world’s several dozen global climate models offer little guidance on how much the climate responds to elevated CO2, with the average surface warming under a doubling of the CO2 concentration ranging from 1.8°C to 5.7°C.
By contrast, data-driven methods yield a lower and narrower range while global climate models generally run “hot” in their description of the climate of the past few decades − too much warming at the surface and too much amplification of warming in the lower- and midtroposphere.
The combination of overly sensitive models and implausible extreme scenarios for future emissions, it says, yields exaggerated projections of future warming. Most extreme weather events in the US do not show long-term trends. Claims of increased frequency or intensity of hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and droughts are not supported by U.S. historical data.
Additionally, forest management practices are often overlooked in assessing changes in wildfire activity. Global sea level has risen approximately 8 inches since 1900, but there are significant regional variations driven primarily by local land subsidence; US tide gauge measurements in aggregate show no obvious acceleration in sea level rise beyond the historical average rate.
Attribution of climate change or extreme weather events to human CO2 emissions is challenged by natural climate variability, data limitations, and inherent model deficiencies. Moreover, solar activity’s contribution to the late 20th century warming might be underestimated.
Even at its worst though, both models and experience suggest that CO2-induced warming might be less damaging economically than commonly believed, and excessively aggressive mitigation policies could prove more detrimental than beneficial.
Social “Cost of Carbon” estimates, which attempt to quantify the economic damage of CO2 emissions, are highly sensitive to their underlying assumptions and so provide limited independent information. And for the grand slam, US policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.
The implications of these findings, and that they are lodged with the US Department of Energy, are profound. The US – under Trump – is calling a halt to the scam, and can only prosper from so doing.
The UK, on the other hand, is saddled with the Guardian model of climate, which has given the “hottest summer evah”, and the highest energy prices in the world, with ministers lying about the cause.
As the narrative gradually unravels, though, it begins to look as if relief is on the horizon. If not, we can look forward to some long, hot summers, and climate change won’t be the cause.
