If you are reading this then you must be one of the few to have survived this afternoon’s pleasant sunshine. I congratulate you on your survival skills but must warn you that there will be much more pleasant weather to come. By all means put another shrimp on the barbie, but may your God be with you. Meanwhile, the fact that you are still there gives me the chance to correct a major error in my previous assessment of the UKHSA’s heat-health alert system.

You see, the problem is that when I confidently pronounced that the UKHSA were introducing a heat alert system without considering the greater importance of a cold alert system, I had fallen for another of the BBC’s scams. The basis for my mistake was the BBC’s description of the UKHSA’s alert levels. Specifically they reported that:

Yellow alerts will be issued during periods of hot weather that are only likely to affect those who are particularly vulnerable, for example, the elderly or those with existing health conditions.

Fortunately for the readers of Cliscep we have the ever-inquisitive Jit, who drew my attention to the UKHSA’s Adverse Weather Health Plan.

Now I love plans, me. So as soon as I learnt of this plan’s existence I was all over it. In particular, I was keen to see how the alert levels were defined in that plan. Here is what the UKHSA actually said regarding yellow alerts:

Yellow (response): These alerts cover a range of situations. Yellow alerts may be issued during periods of heat/cold which would be unlikely to impact most people, but could impact those who are particularly vulnerable.

Yes folks, it turns out that the UKHSA has every intention of covering cold extremes, but the BBC in its verifying wisdom thought better than to point this out. Naughty BBC! How many times have I told you that facts have to be a reflection of reality?

I feel quite ashamed to have fallen for this crude deception but it just goes to show that even the most cynical amongst us can, from time to time, let their guard down. You could witness my blushes if it were not for the fact that, in a momentary loss of concentration, I stepped outside just after lunch and was immediately struck down with a sunburn that is already peeling and pustulating, transforming my face into pizza margherita.

But whilst I’m on the subject of the UKHSA’s plan, there is one important detail that I picked up on that may have a bearing upon all our futures. Tucked away in section 5.4.8.1 they say this:

A quality management system (QMS) for the AWHP is currently being initiated and will be developed in accordance with the BS EN ISO 9001:2015.

Now call me a nit-picker, but I would have thought it would have been better to have developed a QMS before the plan had been written. That way a quality assurance check might have noticed that, despite espousing the principle of evidence-based decision making, the primary goal of the proposed alert system, i.e. to ‘Prevent the increase in years of life lost due to adverse weather events’ is actually counter-evidential. Just to remind you what the Office of National Statistics says:

Over a 20-year period the estimated change in deaths associated with warm or cold temperature was a net decrease of 555,094, an average of 27,755 deaths per year.

Furthermore, any half-decent review would have picked up the fact that the plan does not specify how the health impact alerts are related to environmental conditions in a quantifiable manner. As a consequence, there seems no independent way in which the appropriateness of the issuing of alerts may be verified. You can’t expect to implement a quality assurance regime if the metrics for quality have not been objectively defined. This is how the likes of you and I become puzzled when alerts are escalated from yellow to amber with no obvious basis for the escalation. Also, if they want to make a subsequent claim for cost-effectiveness, they will need a good argument for professing a number of lives saved. I can’t even begin to think how they might do that.

But I quibble. Lack of accountability, and having a primary goal of addressing a problem that does not exist, are just details. I say keep on alerting us UKHSA. I understand that tonight will be warm and humid and I may have to turn my electric blanket off. Pray for me and stay strong. Together we can get through this.

39 Comments

  1. John, can we really get through this? According to the ever-reliable BBC:

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-65866894

    …temperatures hit 30.4°C in Northolt, west London, and Wisley, Surrey – making Saturday the hottest day of the year so far.

    He added that it is the earliest date in the year the UK has hit 30°C for a decade…

    I’m shocked. Another temperature “record” at another location where there is an RAF base (Northolt) and the earliest date it’s been this warm for a whole decade (meaning that this happened a decade ago (and no doubt quite a few times before that too). I’m planning to spend the weekend in hiding, and I think after your awful experience today, you should give serious thought to a similar plan.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. “Twice as Many People Are Dying from Winter Cold Than Summer Heat – Yet Government is Impoverishing Pensioners to Subsidise Renewables”

    https://dailysceptic.org/2023/06/10/twice-as-many-people-are-dying-from-winter-cold-than-summer-heat-yet-government-is-impoverishing-pensioners-to-subsidise-renewables/

    …Deaths from cold among the elderly used to grab people’s attention. The late MP David Amess was so appalled to hear of the death in a cold house of one of his Southend constituents that he campaigned for and secured the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act in 2000. Fuel poverty declined from 5.1 million households to 1.2 million households between 1996 and 2004, partly as a consequence. As to where it is in 2023, the estimate from National Energy Action is 7.5 million households.

    The fact is that Government and media have succumbed to a bad case of climate emergency tunnel vision, which means their limited attention is focused on ‘soaring’ temperatures, heatwaves and the weather map being coloured red after the news. Of course, there is an impact from the war in Ukraine but elderly people will die again this coming winter not just because of the chronic failure to secure the U.K.’s energy supply by successive Governments. It is also caused by the vast transfer of wealth from struggling pensioners to asset owners in the renewable sector. Energy bills are unnecessarily high in no small part due to the innumerable subsidies that go to, among others, wind turbine providers being awarded constraint payments for switching them off in high winds…

    Liked by 1 person

  3. I love the sub-heading (second line) to this Guardian piece:

    “Risk of hot summer in UK is more than twice normal figure, forecasters warn
    There are no signs yet that last year’s 40C will be breached again, but meteorologists predict such peaks could become the norm”

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jun/10/risk-record-heatwave-uk-twice-normal-forecasters-40c-meteorologists

    Translation: just because it’s not happening doesn’t mean that it won’t happen.

    For its part, Britain will experience weather patterns that will become increasingly grim, a point stressed by a study published last week by an international team led by Bath University researchers. It predicts that peak summer temperatures of 41C and weekly averages of 28C will be normal in large parts of southern England towards the end of the century. These figures compare with maximum peaks of 31C and averages of 20C that occurred in the 1970s.

    Their records from the 1970s seem to have omitted 1975 (33.9C at RAF Gloucester in 1975, but records set at RAF bases only count now, not then) and 1976 (35.9C).

    Liked by 1 person

  4. Shouldn’t the title of this article be: ‘The Winter’s Gonna Get You Too’?
    I suffered an amberish few minutes of feeling excessively hot in the sunshine today. Just a couple of minutes mind you, compared to months of being bloody frozen. It was so cold in our north facing kitchen, we had to move the fridge freezer out for a few months.

    Liked by 3 people

  5. Took a look at the Sunday Times temperatures across the world this morning. Oh those poor, poor b#ggers, they must suffer so from so much amber and red.

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  6. What is going on with weather forecasting by the BBC ? They are changing things daily within the “accurate 3 day forecast” i.e. tomorrow is now suddenly thunder storms but had been the best day of the week . I had booked a fishing trip based on yesterday’s nice day forecast for Thursday but lightning is a major no go for carbon rods. The MET forecast is still for a reasonable day, which do I believe ??? 2 grandsons will be very disappointed if we can’t go !!

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  7. James S,

    I regularly moan about the BBC 14 day weather forecast. After years of being disappointed by it, I should have learned by now, yet when planning a holiday or activity, I still check it. Twice a year I go hill-walking in Scotland with friends, the dates being fixed well in advance. It’s always the same. Two weeks out, emails start flying around, suggesting hills to climb, based on the weather forecast. As we get closer to the event, the forecast keeps changing, and so do our plans. The forecast changes day by day. It’s completely unreliable, and a waste of time.

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  8. Don’t blame the BBC. Forecasts are made by others, who are not even British. BTW rain forecasts in my part of East Anglia have not been bad recently.

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  9. Anecdotally, if you just assume tomorrow’s weather will be much the same as today, you will be right more often than the forecasters!

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  10. Mikehig,

    That is very true and I have been following that rule of thumb for a long time now. It isn’t weather that they can’t get right, it’s changes to the weather.

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  11. Mike this is related to the old wive’s tail that the longer fine weather persists the more likely it is that the following day will also be fine.

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  12. Is there a way to get the old wives to run UNEP, with the graph of deaths from extreme events from 1920 in hand?

    Nothing needing doing for a loooong while then. A handy few trillions of savings a year.

    Yeah, the old wives it is for me.

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  13. It’s becoming ridiculous now:

    “UK weather: Heat-health alert will be followed by thunderstorms”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-66132649

    Heavy showers and thunderstorms are due to hit parts of the UK over the weekend, according to the Met Office, after a heat-health alert was issued.

    The alert, due to last until Sunday, covers six English regions and warns of increased health risks – with temperatures set to hit 30C (86F)….

    …A brief but potent burst of heat and humidity will see temperatures at their highest on Friday in East Anglia and south-east England, with 28-30C possible, according to BBC Weather’s Matt Taylor.

    On Saturday, northern Scotland and eastern England will experience temperatures into the upper 20s. And the night will be particularly muggy for many.

    But that will be short-lived, the forecaster added, with thunderstorms on Saturday expected to break out widely across the UK. For some, these could be severe with intense rainfall, hail and gusty winds….

    It’s basically summer weather. Here in Cumbria we’re seeing highs of 23C for a couple of days, and that’s it. It’s actually very pleasant (we went for a very nice walk in upper Borrowdale yesterday evening, where the River Derwent is flowing, contrary to the impression given by the skilful picture used in the Guardian a while ago), and I’d like it to continue. Unfortunately it won’t. By tomorrow the high is forecast to be 20C, then we’re looking at days of showers and highs between 16-19C, peaking at 19C in a couple of weeks’ time.

    The hype is off the scale, trying to make us feel that we’re enduring unusual heat. Well, where I live it’s actually the opposite – after a couple of very warm weeks in June, the summer is looking decidedly disappointing.

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  14. It’s going to get worse Mark. The powers that be have a small window of opportunity during the summer months to promote a ‘heat crisis’ by appealing directly to people’s experience of warm weather, which is basically, at present, very normal British summer weather, which must be quite frustrating. UK residents are being drilled, conditioned, brainwashed to accept that the weather is dangerous, a threat, a risk, not an opportunity; moreover a product determined not primarily by nature, but by man-made global warming. When colder weather comes, they’ll do exactly the same thing of course, but the opportunity for engaging emotionally and physically with the British public will naturally be reduced because a shivering populace is obviously less likely to be receptive to warnings of imminent Thermageddon.

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  15. We’re not the only ones who are being brainwashed by our government and media into being fearful of normal British summer weather. The Germans are doing exactly the same thing. It’s almost like this is an internationally coordinated fear-based psyop. When did that last happen I wonder . . . . . ?

    “Since the virus-pest-turned-heatwave-pest Karl Lauterbach announced his campaign against summer temperatures, German media will not let a single warm day pass without hyperventilation about the grave danger posed by hot weather. It’s highly interesting, how even the most idiotic and hare-brained political initiatives can so efficiently coordinate press coverage. If you’re a journalist with insight into precisely how this happens, I’d like to hear from you; please write to me at containment (at) tutanota (dot) com.

    Whatever the mechanics, it’s becoming extremely obnoxious. Every time temperatures approach 30C, the newspapers fill with prewritten generic pieces urging everybody to shelter in place from the heretofore unnoticed menace of summer.”

    https://www.eugyppius.com/p/the-new-public-health-campaign-against

    Liked by 1 person

  17. BBC laying it on thick with Euro temperatures and GW/MMCC. I mentioned in a previous comment of living in Spain with 40c + in the 90’s (Stew Green the same) , my wife encountered the same in Greece . I’ ve just spent the last hour checking various places in Spain and everything looks normal for a hotish summer. Inland from Jaen to Cordoba highs of 40+/- 3c falling to 28c at night, Madrid could only make high of 38c. Coastal regions 30’s falling to 25c at night. If you have a good look at Italy high’s , it is late afternoon / early evening once the sun has baked the place. France looks pretty normal with the odd high patch. One thing I did notice was the number of airports being used as weather stations seems to be more and more ?

    Liked by 1 person

  18. The only way the summer’s gonna get me here in Cumbria is if I’m forced to put the log burner on sooner than usual. Top temperature is forecast to be 16C today, and only 15C on Tuesday, while the highest temperature here in the 14 day forecast to 29th July is 18C.

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  19. Oh no Mark, not you as well with your climate denying anecdotes! It is well known that the only reason why we are not frying with the rest of Europe is because of a blocking pattern, and these are becoming more common with climate change:

    https://www.climatesignals.org/climate-signals/atmospheric-blocking-increase

    Except, that they are not:

    https://www.carbonbrief.org/jet-stream-is-climate-change-causing-more-blocking-weather-events/

    Liked by 1 person

  20. We took the grandkids to Bute/Rothesay last year last week July, this year we are taking them to Arran. On the 14 day forecast the temps will be 8 to 10c lower than last year, I will be praying to the sun god for everyday till we get there. Is there anything I can sacrifice or burn to bring out the sun even just for 2 or 3 days? Ah the memories of Spain in June.

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  21. James S,

    You will just have to pack warm clothes, I am afraid.

    By the way, Arran gets my vote ahead of Bute and Rothesay (visited the latter for the first time last month).

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  22. It’s been autumnal here for the last few days – periods of heavy rain and high winds and really quite cool. I blame the climate crisis because the climate crisis is being blamed for the heatwave in Greece and Italy and it’s all part and parcel of the same weather system driven by the position of the jet stream. I’m sitting in front of the log burner right now – well, the dog is, I get relegated to a position further away!

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  23. Ahh yes, Scottish summer — Three months of bad weather and then it’s winter again.

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  24. It’s going to be 15C and tipping it down tomorrow. But that’s just here. I expect that the Met office will be telling us at the end of the month that July 2023 was the 5th warmest on record and wetter than average, which is ‘what we expect due to climate change’!
    Still, a fittingly miserable day to mark the 20th anniversary of the murder of Dr David Kelly.

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  26. The BBC and the Guardian are endlessly pushing the extreme heat (and I acknowledge that it is pretty extreme) in various places enjoying (unlike us here in Cumbria) the northern hemisphere summer just now. A couple of BBC reports this morning unconsciously and no doubt accidentally undermine the hysterical narrative. First:

    “Tourists flock to Death Valley hoping to experience heat record”

    Death Valley, California, hit a US record of 134 degrees Fahrenheit (56.6C) in 1913. One hundred years later tourists are tracking to the desert to be there when a new record breaks….

    That contains an important acknowledgement that it was hotter 110 years ago (something that many alarmists attempted to undermine last time that record was under threat). It is also amusing to note that after all the claims about the terrible risk to life from the heat, tourists are flocking to be present if and when the record is broken. So they don’t seem to be bothered by the propaganda.

    Secondly, this (“breaking news” of great excitement at the BBC):

    “Temperatures expected to peak at 46C as Europe heatwave continues”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-66207430

    …There was little relief overnight across southern Europe and as the new day starts on Tuesday, temperatures are already widely in the mid to high 20s.

    Sardinia is expected to see the peak of the heat today in southern Europe with a high of 46C expected this afternoon….

    For days now the Guardian and the BBC have breathlessly been announcing the imminent breaking of the Europe heat record. Now it seems they’re going to fall short by around 3C. But it won’t stop the hype.

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  27. Where were the ‘we must spend billions to mitigate against deadly heatwaves’ in 1977 when it reached 48.0C in Greece in 1977? Oh yes, they were warning us all of an imminent Ice Age! Where were they in 1965 when the thermometer hit 48C in Sardinia? Probably still telling us how we need to adapt to killer winters like 1963 when the sea froze in Kent.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. over on “Open Mic” Mark posted this comment/link by Patrick Moore –
    “The journal “Lancet” published the chart on left with unequal Y-Axis to downplay fact that cold causes 10X more deaths than heat in Europe. Björn Lomborg corrected this with chart on right.
    This is disgraceful for a supposedly scientific journal.”

    not sure if this will work – https://cliscep.com/open-mic-15/#comment-143890

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  31. I have just finished watching ‘The Sixth Commandment” on the BBC. It was the BBC at its very best. Now for the BBC at its very worst:

    “False claims that heatwave is bogus spread online”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-66314338

    It’s a Marco Silva hit piece on Neil Oliver, who is quoted as saying:

    “Those supposedly terrifying temperatures that were being predicted, all starting with a four… 40 this and 40 that… were obtained using satellite images of ground temperatures,” he said. “That’s never been the temperature that’s used in weather reporting and forecasting. On the contrary, those figures are the air temperature, a couple of feet above the ground surface …the true temperatures, the air temperatures which actually happened, were in the 30s.”

    All of which is perfectly true with respect to the relevant prediction. He is, of course referring to the predictions made by ESA with regard to Sardinia. The prediction was of a ground temperature, but it was confusingly picked up as an air temperature prediction. Certainly, that’s how the BBC reported upon it at the time:

    “The heatwave is expected to continue well into next week, with 48C (118.4F) possible in Sardinia, according to Italian media. Such a temperature would, however, fall short of the European record high [air temperature] of 48.8C (119.8F) – which was recorded in Sicily in August 2021.”

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66212501

    So if the BBC is on record as having done exactly what Oliver accuses them of doing, what can possibly be their rebuttal?

    “Mr Oliver’s claim that the BBC was using ground temperatures is false, as several BBC weather presenters have pointed out. BBC Weather bases its temperature reporting and forecasting on air temperatures.”

    Of course, Oliver was referring to an ESA prediction, and it is a matter of record that it was a ground temperature prediction. The BBC rebuttal is referring to how the actual temperatures the BBC reports upon are measured, in which respect they and Oliver are in total agreement. So what the hell is Marco’s point?

    Finally, we have:

    “For his other claim, that ‘true temperatures’ were in the 30s, Mr Oliver didn’t specify exact locations, but on Monday 24 July several places across Europe recorded air temperatures over 40C.”

    Yes, but not in Sardinia, Marco. Not in Sardinia.

    Liked by 2 people

  32. Increasingly looking like August is not going to be much better than July.

    A southerly jet stream is going to bring cool, wet weather to the British Isles for much of this summer, particularly the south of the country. Oh dear, Not even RAF Typhoons will fix this.

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  35. On the way back from Spain, staying in Clermont Ferrand and after a trip up from Beziers on the A75 motorway. Highest point 1121m which is roughly 3680 ft so higher than most of the mountains in UK. We took the KIA self charging hybrid again and discovered a few more of it’s little quirks, going up the big hills if the battery goes too low the car loses a lot of power, you end up in the lorry lane in 3rd gear !!!! We tried using sport mode , even worse loss of power. As I said last time will take my diesel next time ! The main point of the comment is the similarities between British climate reporting and Spanish. We were in the North East , Girona region, so missed the worst of the torrential rain. The news showed all the usual rivers running down the streets with litres/min values relating to rainfall. The flooding we saw was more related to things like an old Renault 4 jammed in a culvert creating a lake or the trees from a previously dry river bed jamming a road ditch and flooding the road . Virtually every town had huge puddles where the street drains were choked with dirt! The next day the same girl was reporting from a dam with record low levels of water but every swimming pool was full even though nobody was there, all the car washes were doing a roaring trade with all the muddy cars from the floods. The worst complaint from the people we spoke to was the beach had a great gouge in it from a river that re-appeared after being forgotten. Anyway, we get the ferry tomorrow night looks like rain the whole way back to Scotland.

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  37. Just putting an open broadcast out in case anyone is still alive.

    I went out between the forbidden hours of 11 and 3, without a hat, and I somehow made it back in one piece.

    Mind you, I wouldn’t have known to wear loose clothing and stay hydrated, if the BBC hadn’t told me. After all, it’s not just vulnerable people who are at risk in this dangerous weather. Everyone can be affected.

    As the man said, “You might call it ultraviolet radiation, but it’s only sunshine.”

    Liked by 1 person

  38. Jit – made it back as well, after a pint & chips at our favourite local pub in the Isle of Man the Terminus Tavern in Douglas where the horse trams leave from.

    As reported by weather presenters, seems heatwave threshold temps vary across the UK.

    What is a heatwave? – Met Office

    Quote from that link – “The geographical differences reflect the differences in climate across the UK. The threshold temperatures have been calculated using the 1991-2020 climatology of daily maximum temperature at the mid-point of the meteorological summer (15 July).”

    Every picture tells a story, as they say. Wonder what they call a crappy UK summer, average maybe?

    Liked by 1 person

  39. I have been dangerously far south today, in Staffordshire. Amazingly, I survived. A pleasant pint in the pub and a balmy evening. What’s not to like?

    Liked by 2 people

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