When did the narrative around warm weather change?

[Katypp]

It used to be considered a lovely thing if we had a warm summer. Older people (me!) have happy memories of summer 76 and endless days playing outside in shorts during the holidays.
No it seems to be considered a bad thing, with people complaing about the heat, getting agitated about children going to school or even going outside at all. Weather forecasters wanging on about 'staying hydrated' as if we are children and delivering the forecasts as if it is a bad thing that we can enjoy nice weather for once.
Why are we so joyless, sucking on to bottles of water as if they were dummies and seemingly afraid to venture outside in case we self-combust.
Yes i know ow global warming and skin cancer but our reaction to a pleasant day is somewhat OTT i think.

Yep. We're so bombarded with alarmist headlines so frequently that it's really difficult to tell the difference between genuine danger, and media scaremongering. Somebody needs to learn the lesson of the boy who cried wolf. See also:
1999: The whole of Cornwall will be gridlocked because of everybody "flocking" to see the eclipse.
1999: People will burn their eyes out watching the eclipse. The papers were full of people wearing "eclipse glasses": like the virtue-signalling pictures of the masks in 2020.
1999: The millennium bug will wipe out humanity.
2000: Everybody will be killed by their mobile phones frying their brains. (Probably screen addiction that we now have is far worse than this.)
2001: Foot and Mouth.
2001: Terrorists are around every corner.
2001: Paedophiles are around every corner, teaching your children, and offering them sweeties. (fast forward to now, and people telling little boys they can become little girls and vice versa are welcomed with open arms.)
2003: Iraq has weapons of mass destruction.
etc. etc.

I just don’t buy the apocalyptic messaging

So, what do you think the end game is as the world gets hotter and hotter and hotter?

One degree warmer on average across the year but with extremes of summer heat that are far more extreme.

Brilliant! It's the fatties' fault!

(I am a fatty...)

We haven't had a sunny summer for 2 years. I love all this sunshine.

I remember the summers of 1974 and 1976 and have lots of lovely photos of us on the beach and in the garden with the hosepipe on. I don't remember anyone complaining (except my grandmother who didn't like the heat and used to come out with all those phrases from Peter Kays stand up routine):

'There's no air movement'
'I like it warm but not this warm'
'It's sticky weather'
'I prefer winter, at least you can put another jumper on'
'I'm sweating cobs'

...and my favourite which makes me smile whenever I hear it:

'There's no air.'

I just don’t buy the apocalyptic messaging

Questions to you though:

What do you think will happen when glaciers stop feeding the rivers that flow into the Bay of Bengal?

What do you think will happen when human life becomes insupportable in large parts of the Arabian peninsula and Indian subcontinent? Have you ever experienced 50 degrees Celsius in a home that lacks aircon? What do you think all these people will do? a) stay where they are or b) move north?

What do you think will happen when permafrost on the tundra thaws and releases the methane that's stored in it?

It depends how you define ‘hotter.’ Over what time scale? Compared to what baseline? A lot of charts start in the 1850s, right after the Little Ice Age, of course it’s warmer now than then. But if you look at historical climate trends over thousands of years, this isn’t shocking. What is shocking is how aggressively we're told to panic, while ignoring historical context and uncertainty in climate modelling.

I’ve absolutely loved this hot few weeks and the beautiful sunny spring we had.
I am concerned about climate change but last year was so miserable and wet that this year has been a lovely welcome boost.
The last prolonged hot spell I can remember was in 2017 and I loved that too!

I love the nebulous phrase 'since records began' which is trotted out every few minutes by the news media. I always want to know a) WHEN did the records begin and b) what the precise criteria for those recordings is. Some measurements only started being taken in the 1950s or 1980s for example. Without this information, it doesn't mean anything really. It just sounds alarming.

Most of the people posting on here who remember 1976 were probably still kids at the time. Of course we only remember wall to wall sunshine and playing out all day, and the novelty of stand pipes and all those ladybirds. I think the adults around at the time might have been a bit more concerned. Unrelenting sunshine with no rain on the horizon for weeks on end is not something to celebrate.

"We" also need to get far more proactive about the proper use of water. It seems that because of misuse and bad administration, unless we have long rainy spells, water shortages start occurring. I feel this is another consequence of the privatisation of water - users are being treated as customers rather than water being treated as a precious resource. Water companies' main policy when things get a little dry is to hope it rains soon rather than pre-empting any issues. I saw quotes from consumer groups yesterday who are outraged at the thought of being more conservative about water use, because they are customers and there are leaks. Yes there are leaks, but in the meantime, we still need to be more careful with our water consumption. Long twice daily showers and washing towels after every use are unnecessary.

https://constructionmanagement.co.uk/housing-ombudsman-publishes-report-on-leaks-maladministration/

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/20129903/water-bill-housing-association-failed-fix-leak/?utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=sunmaintwitter&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1666005526

If you need to ask OP, you won't like the answer. Off to your sunbed.

I think people look at the 'old days' through rose tinted specs. I reckon a lot of the problem with hot weather nowadays is that we seem to be getting more and more of it. I know a lot of people will disagree,indeed I am totally expecting a lot of people to say oh we've had a lousy summer this year, even though we've had 3 heatwaves so far,with another one possibly looming. Britain is meant to have a temperate climate, meaning that we don't really get extremes of heat or cold,but over the last couple of decades,really cold or really hot weather seems to be becoming far more common. I think what a previous poster said about a higher proportion of the population being overweight or obese doesn't help. I know from personal experience that being very overweight makes you feel the heat a lot more. I have lost a considerable amount of weight over the last few years and it has helped quite a bit with my tolerance to heat, although I still don't enjoy anything over 25 degrees. Also the urbanisation of so many places now. All the buildings and concrete traps and retains the heat so even when it does cool down after several days of high temperatures,it still feels pretty warm. I can guarantee that whenever there is an announcement about the highest temperature reached on any particular day,where I live near Heathrow airport will be one of the places as there's so many tall buildings and miles of concrete.

Ive been both a size 28 and a size 12 and i hated this kind of heat just as much both times. im also in a top floor flat which was hot to start with but health and safety and fire safety rules have turned it into even more of a sweatbox.

It will be a bit of a bummer though if non of that stuff actually happens.

This is the problem with Project Fear.

It's not like governments don't have form for it.

I think climate change is a really interesting problem. Maybe the first problem we have that is on a timescale longer than our political systems operate, and also on a timescale longer than many people alive today will live.

Will human beings be like bacteria in a petri dish and just use up all the resources and die ?

Or will they succeed in managing their way out of the problem ? And how with the competition for resources pan out, how will those resources be distributed ?

I doubt I am going to be around to find out.

Eh? I've actually said I am not keen on very hot weather and I have never used a sunbed in my life.
What a silly response.

This is an English phenomenon.

in Scotland we are grateful for the 2-3 days of summer we get each year.

and find the constant reporting of the ‘UK’ heatwave tedious and tone deaf.

The one that amused me is the bloke in pub with the 'look at me, I'm so clever' attitude the 'climate change is to tax everyone and doesn't exist' followed by 'the psychotic bastards are spraying to change the weather'
So we can change weather but its beyond belief that we are influencing climate.

Why a sunbed?

Well, apart from having sun cream at all in the UK, never mind SPF6, was weird and for 'fussy women because it's not as if they're abroad/the point of going abroad was to get as brown (or burned) as possible, no point going if you're not going to come back with a deep tan'.

Not only was there huge metal jugs of water provided at every meal in school, it was constantly available from multiple fountains in the playgrounds (in addition to the milk being given out first thing so it was cold).

Anybody who did have a car would stick a (tartan) blanket in the back for the multiple kids bundling in to avoid burning legs - except the ones in the boot section who were cooler rattling around with the spare and the back window open - and babies were usually underneath parasols clipped onto buggies and prams. Except for Wednesday and Saturday afternoons and all day Sunday when the shops were closed, so they'd be indoors. And Monday was washday, so indoors for that, too, Tuesday morning for shopping for the week...

Oh, and those people who did do the sunbathing until they were leather are (the surviving ones at any rate) dealing with cataracts and skin cancer now.

Apart from that, yeah, it's a complete lack of moral fibre.

1659 early enough for you? Or shall we be conservative and opt for 1914?

Sure it’s “nice” weather, but only if you see it outside of the context of wider climate changes.

have you noticed there’s a hosepipe ban across many parts of the UK because we’ve had the driest spring and summer in over 100 years. All this made so much more likely because of our changing climate.

It’s not “nice weather” - it’s weather that is costly to health and economy. It might be nice to you now, but wait until you’re in your late 80s and you’ll be struggling in the heat.

try asking a farmer whether this is lovely weather or hell .

I don’t even know where to begin with people who think that the new normal of heatwaves is preferable to what we had before.

And the fact that it's normally young people who are fine with dealing with hot weather because they are as a cohort in relatively good health, plus the fact that babies and older people have a generally poorer capability at regulating their body temperature and so feel heat and cold more.

have you noticed there’s a hosepipe ban across many parts of the UK because we’ve had the driest spring and summer in over 100 years. All this made so much more likely because of our changing climate

Well that and the fact the water industry keeps pissing away water by failing to fix the leaks and dig new reservoirs for the hundreds of thousands of people piling into the country while paying themselves fat bonuses instead.