Here in Scarborough the sea fog has closed in and the foghorn is wailing forlornly every minute from the lighthouse. It’s a classic Scarborough summer evening, cool and clammy. But what’s this!? The BBC’s flagship evening radio news programme, PM has just reported that today has been the hottest on record in the UK. And what’s more, this year has been the hottest globally on record--ever (or least the last 125,000 years, which is as far back when I guess ice core proxy measurements could be made before we actually started to measure the temperature with our own devices). How to deal with this problem?
News presenter Evan Davis captured the seriousness of it all by asking whether it’s better to cool down with a cup of tea or an ice cream? A test was undertaken on the roof (terrace, I presume) of Broadcasting House in London. I have to say I’m not sure the question was answered satisfactorily, to the extent that the testers seemed to have ended up having a cup of tea and an ice cream (how often does the BBC offer free ice creams?). Could this be the solution to climate change? I am sure there will be a divergence of opinion as to whether making a cup of tea or an ice cream has the same carbon footprint. Such questions should be at the core of future scientific analysis. In the meantime let’s all go back to sleep if that’s all there is to it.
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