Remembering the Hottest Month in Human History
A survivor's memoir...
Ah, August, blessed August, how have I missed thee! For the inhabitants of the earth who suffered through the long July - yes that harbinger of sweltering summers, and sweat-soaked survival; the seventh month of the seventh month fanned by the winds of Satan’s breath - for these residents, a mere changing of the month comes with such sweet relief.
Yea, for the brave few that dared to venture into the sun-drenched streets amid the withering trees and steaming asphalt, pitiful puppies whining for just a kiss of water upon their tongues and small children clawing their way slowly back towards their cool front doors - for these valiant souls, arriving alive at the end of such a month (the hottest in human history, don't forget) - for these intrepid few, what a prize the month of August must be!
Nevermind thermometers telling stories of average weather (15°C in the morning and daytime highs of 25°). Think nothing of the cool breeze that makes one yearn for a sweater. These things are merely distractions and one certainly knows how prevalent misinformation is these days…
The news broke early in the month and I knew something was afoot.
The hottest month in human history! My God, what have we done?
In these unprecedented times, it made me wonder how we arrived at such an event and so I spent a few late nights pouring over the mountains of temperature data that have been dutifully collected by our government. I had hoped to find a solution for this seemingly inevitable calamity. What I found chilled me to my core.
This did not look at all like what I was hearing on the news. I stared at the screen, awestruck. These temperatures appeared to be perfectly normal for the month of July. Obviously the misinformation machine had penetrated even our government.
Now I was frightfully concerned. I immediately downloaded as much temperature data as I could relating to my hometown. I started with the last sixty years of July temperatures, just so I could get an idea of how bad it really was out there.
Again, that pit in my stomach as I realized how the data had been corrupted. This was literally nothing like what I knew as fact (I'd been informed by the CBC, after all).
This is what I found:
I could barely contain my disgust, for I knew with certainty that we were on a collision course with catastrophic warming, the likes of which no human on earth had ever experienced. And yet, this data seemed to tell a completely different story. July of 2023 showed up as barely average, maybe even a bit below average in temperature. And what's this? A little red trendline at the bottom of this graph telling me that there has been no increase in July temperatures for over sixty years!? Surely Big Oil must be involved here somehow.
I decided to dig deeper.
I went back as far as I could - to 1905, the year temperature records began in my hometown. I downloaded the data for every July back to the beginning and my eyes settled on this chart:
Again, I was mortified, stupefied, putrified to find out that not only was this July a perfectly average month, but there were many months that were much hotter than this last July. And again with that trendline! Why, there's no trend at all!
What is really going on here?
Then more headlines. These at least I knew I could trust because they were from our faithful mainstream news media.
And this one:
I'm so glad someone thought to keep accurate temperature records back in the year 118,000 B.C. so we had a way of comparing to today. If only people nowadays were so concerned about future generations.
And then this:
Over the next few days I tried to resist the urge to wear a sweater in the mornings as I knew what lay in store for the day. I stopped looking at my weather app because by now I realized how deep the deception was. Even the Weather Network couldn't be trusted anymore. When I saw cool temperatures like 15° Celsius as a high, I knew they were shills for Big Oil and the American far-right trying to spread misinformation to make me believe there was no emergency.
Now I was really determined to get to the bottom of it. I scoured the data I had collected as my hopes began to fade. This time I included all the summer months - not just July. I wanted to get the full picture of the magnitude of this impending disaster.
The chart I found was for the last 100 years of summers in my town. And once again, further proof of climate deniers hijacking our sacred government institutions. Not like I needed any more proof, and yet here it was. The same summer year after year, with an obvious exception in the mid-thirties. No wonder those deniers like to refer to the “dirty thirties” - it's a dirty trick indeed. Almost as bad as the Medieval Warm Period. And there's that ridiculous trendline again. Preposterous how they can expect anyone with any amount of sense to believe that our summers haven't gotten any warmer in a full century.
These obvious lies only further cemented my resolve to get to the bottom of this hoax.
I talked to friends across Canada - from coast to coast. I called acquaintances in the UK, the US, and Europe to find out how they were managing this unprecedented weather event. None of them seemed to be at all worried about the extreme heat in spite of the dire warnings from scientists and government.
These people were clearly duped. Their easy dismissal of the seriousness of the issue was proof of that. I could barely handle the thought of these friends and acquaintances blithely going off to enjoy their summer with no apparent regard for the safety of their loved ones in such a hostile environment. I can only hope they'll somehow find a way to return to their super-cooled homes once they realize how deceived they've been.
As I hung up the phone for the last time, the horrifying truth began to make itself known. I slowly descended into my chair beside the window air-conditioning unit and turned it up another notch. The air felt cold, but good. I glanced to my right where my wool sweater lay in a heap on the couch and once again resisted the urge to put it on. The sounds of children's laughter outside were barely audible over the hum and rattle of the old window unit, so I turned on the news to drown them out. More bad news of course, but it was comforting to know I could face it with the knowledge that soon it would be winter, and this latest chapter in our human catastrophe would come to a close. The frozen, lifeless terrain would be a welcome comfort…
Further reading:
Our Questionable Climate “Catastrophe” - Part 1
Our Questionable Climate “Catastrophe” - Part 2
Well played, Ken. Well played indeed!
"I live in Canada and I don't feel hot" is probably the weakest reason anybody has ever come up with to deny climate science.