Global Boiling

A new hobby for the leisure class

In the summer of last year, a cold and wet season in Northern Europe, much like this year of 2024, UN secretary general António Guterres pronounced “today, the World Meteorological Organization and the European Commission’s Copernicus Climate Change Service are releasing official data that confirms that July 2023 is set to be the hottest month ever recorded in human history.”

“The era of global warming has ended; the era of global boiling has arrived.” 

Reporters rushed to the European hot spots and stood in front of the throngs (or should that read “thongs”?) on the Costa del Sol, Sicily, and the Greek Islands, mournfully repeating Guterres’ words. Behind them the crowds soaked up the rays, retreating to the beach bars for beer, fried calamares, and barbecued fish. The newsreaders dutifully read out the boiling temperatures and sadly recited the statistics, but those who paid attention noticed something, especially those Northerners who’d been chasing  the heat for years. It wasn’t hotter than many other times they’d visited but the reported temperatures were higher, sometimes by as many as 10 degrees. These readings had been taken from the baked earth rather than the air and shaded spots; sure, it was hot but that’s why chilly Northern Europeans flock to the Mediterranean for their hard-earned summer holidays. 

On the Greek mainland and the islands, wildfires had broken out and were cited as concrete proof of the warming effect. Later, the truth emerged and was ignored, as usual. Vassilis Kikilias, the Greek minister of climate crisis and civil protection, told reporters: “During this time 667 fires erupted, that is more than 60 fires a day, almost all over the country. Unfortunately, the majority were ignited by human hand, either by criminal negligence or intent”. He added: “The difference with other years were the weather conditions. Climate change, which yielded a historic and unprecedented heatwave, is here. There were very few days where the extreme weather was not combined with strong winds.”

Guterres again: “The air is unbreathable.  The heat is unbearable.  And the level of fossil-fuel profits and climate inaction is unacceptable. Leaders must lead.  No more hesitancy.  No more excuses.  No more waiting for others to move first.  There is simply no more time for that.” Tell that to the sunseekers drinking San Miguels in the bars after a day spent boiling on the beaches of the Costas. Tell that to the neglected elderly shivering in homes from Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads.

“And for scientists, it is unequivocal – humans are to blame” said the sad Sibyl Guterres, apportioning the shame. And these pullulating humans must pay for their irresponsibility in the form of higher taxes and more onerous restrictions.

Meanwhile, in the previous year in the UK, 2022, the record was broken at the weather stations situated on the runways of Heathrow Airport and RAF Coningsby where the recorded temperatures were above 40 degrees. The recording stations, however, were situated in the open sunlight on airport runways where the location and the aircraft tend to raise the temperature; others are sited in natural suntraps and in direct sunlight. These sites were unavailable to independent verification.

Influencers, so-called celebrities, Hollyweird narratives, uphold the fear and apocalyptic dread. In 2020 the film The Day After Tomorrow was a high-watermark in fear-porn disguised as entertainment, and a previous cinematic terror-fest, 2012, by the same director dubbed “the master of disaster” had a similar message. No doubt these films are impressive effects-laden entertainments for a Saturday night; don’t we all love a bit of virtual destruction? After all, we all know it’s not real. But does it implant a seed in the mind? Meanwhile, an endless stream of gloomy privileged finger-wagging talking heads mournfully intone the latest climate-based horrors. I can’t be arsed with the TV.

Back in the day the weather report was an adjunct to the news proper; on a hot summer day a cheerful weather prophet would urge the viewers to get out into the sun and enjoy themselves against a backdrop of blue skies and wobbly yellow sun blobs. Scorchio; come one, come all, and lay down your towels on the beach at Felixstowe. Now, a sad-faced gloom-monger stands in front of a display painted in angry reds and oranges and recites tales of fear and fright like a bearded prophet in the howling night. The earth is burning and it’s all our fault. 

Regardless of the weather prophets and whether the stats are correct the UK is doing alright with a 1% global emissions score. Yet we are continually lectured about the harms and damages caused by our ‘selfish’ lifestyles. Poor old cows are blamed for burping and farting. We are some kind of blight on the planet. Blank-faced and stern activists block roads and railways, fling paint and soup at artworks and try to smash the display-case of the Magna Carta.

The luxury belief that is climate change serves the insecure upper middle classes as a near-sacrament and visible proof that they are the “good” people. Climate activists are from that narrow group with received pronunciation spiced with a touch of Estuary, relatively well-off and comfortable, expensively educated and mostly liberal. They can afford the contradictory status symbols of electric vehicles and wood-burning stoves unlike the despised and mocked “white van man”. Lovers of a state they imagine loves them back, they cheer the imposition of restrictions and costs which are concomitant with the immisseration of the working class. 

In Thorstein Veblen‘s The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899), a study of excessive consumption to signal high social status, he highlights the stratification of a burgeoning consumer society and the use of what he termed ‘conspicuous consumption’ as a class marker. He was harsh on the essentially non-productive leisure class and, contrary to classical economic ideas of rational agents pursuing merit and social/economic utility, made the case that the economic drivers tended more to irrational displays of the wealth, status, and power which comes with a high societal position. Those we would nowadays call ‘show offs’

Since Veblen’s day many of the lower classes have attained a much higher standard of living and can now afford- or mimic - displays of conspicuous consumption and ‘affordable luxury’ such as designer clothes, foreign travel, cruise holidays, food and drink. In a mostly-unconscious response the middle/upper classes adopted a new way to look down their noses at the proles and display their superiority. This is a virtous belief system which encompasses social equality, anti-racism and anti-imperialism (oh, the delicious irony), and urgent climate change orthodoxy, all of which serve to distinguish them from the great unwashed and is all about status and little to do with that vacuous term ‘saving the planet’. These are what are known as ‘luxury beliefs’.

The blanket-term ‘climate change’ is an example of Veblen’s economic irrationality. The near-slave children in Africa and other resource-rich regions who dig for earth minerals to construct and power expensive mobile phones and electric vehicles is of little concern to the luxury beliefs crowd. The fact that the UK is one of the lowest producers of emissions including CO2, a vital promoter of plant growth, regular people’s standards of living will be impacted, goods and services maintained and delivered by the mocked white van man will take a hit from ULEZ and traffic reduction, that we live on a rainy and temperate island, that China and India are overtaking the West in both pollution levels and economic devolopment; none of this perturbs the owners of luxury beliefs. 

I want to take you back to an event which shows the progress made since the end of WW2 to mitigate environmental harms in the UK. In the winter of 1952 a heavy smog decended on London and persisted for 5 days for what was the worst pollution-based fog in the city’s history. In total it is estimated that 4000 to 12,000 people died as a result. The seriousness of the event was undeniable and four years later the Clean Air Act began the work to mitigate the pollution which had led to the smog event. Much like the introdution of clean potable water in the 19th century led to a rapid reduction in infectious diseases long before the “miracle” of modern vaccinations, the smog led to the clean cities we enjoy today. Contemporary photographs show the sobering reality of what occurred in London and still occurs in the offshored, carbon-trading world manufacturies of China and India:

Again, I want to take the reader back to when we were environmentalists who practicised recycling and followed green precepts - without thinking about it or displaying our virtue - before the terms was invented. As a child in the 1960s and 1970s an electric float would appear along every road bearing milk and fizzy pop and, sometimes, butter and bread. Early in the morning these unobstrusive wagons would deliver fresh milk in glass bottles to the doorstep and pick up yesterday’s empties to be cleansed, recycled, and used again and again. 

In East Anglia us kids would return the Corona soft drinks bottles to local retailers for a small refund; enough to buy a paper bag of sherbet fountains, blackjacks, and rhubarb & custards. Beer bottles would be taken back by the grown-ups for a similar refund. Mum would go shopping with a string bag which she used and reused - till it fell apart - to bring back fruit, veg, meats, cheese, wrapped in greaseproof or paper bags. Local farms could be visited, veg and meat bought straight from the source; most shops were family-owned and often knew you by name. There were few self-service supermarkets and no big box retailers or out-of-town shopping centres, no plastic wrapping, no polystyrene packaging, just degradable paper which was reused and mum’s string bag. We walked or cycled everywhere and if the family was doing alright there would be a car. 

Forward to 2024. The ongoing autumnal floods in Europe are predictably being blamed on the new phenomenon of ‘climate change’. The state media outlet and the main disseminator of disinformation - the BBC - has a story today under the headline: “Climate change supercharged Europe floods - scientists.” The lead continues: “Central Europe's devastating floods were made much worse by climate change and offer a stark glimpse of the future for the world's fastest-warming continent, scientists say”. Scientists say, as they examine the entrails of freshly-sacrificed chickens for auspices of tomorrow’s weather. And have you noticed how the state mutter-lines now call that atmospheric business ‘climate’ instead of ‘weather’? Big and scary, eh? Tell me again, Mr Big Scientist boss man, how Europe is “the world's fastest-warming continent” when we’re freezing from late September to at least early April? The world's fastest-warming continent; are they having a giraffe? 

For the third time in this piece I will take the reader back in time: to the North Sea floods of 1953 and the medieval lost city of Dunwich. Described as the worst natural disaster the UK had experienced in the 20th century, the eastern English coastal regions and our neighbours in Belgium and The Netherlands were hit by a tidal surge which left 307 people dead in England and 40,000 homeless. One of the many interesting points about this event was that the government, naturally, offered scant assistance at first and it was down to the local people to provide assistance and rescue as always. In the low-lying Netherlands an estimated 1,835 people lost their lives. In the aftermath of the disaster extensive flood defenses were built to protect the regions from other such occurrances.

One more trip back into the past to revisit the story of Dunwich in my beloved county of Suffolk. Dunwich was once the capital of East Anglia with 3000+ residents in 1086 and one of the ten largest towns or cities in England. Storms and floods beginning in 1286-87 started to abrade Dunwich and it is now the largest underwater medieval site in Europe with an entire town and eight churches beneath the murky waters of the North Sea. Imagine if 1953 or 1286-87 happened today and the hyperbole which would ensue? But it won’t because of the hard work over the centuries to protect the land from King Neptune. Or will it?

1953 and the fate of medieval Dunwich barely registers with the starry-eyed misanthropes who are laying plans to rewild the coastal regions by breaching sea defences and allowing the waters to again engulf certain areas, particularly in Norfolk, where Natural England propose to flood the villages of Eccles, Sea Palling, Waxham, Horsey, Hickling and Potter Heigham over the next 20 to 50 years.

As the Preacher said back in the day: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecclesiastes 1:9 KJV)

How to lie with statistics

The use of figures intended to prove that global boiling is an actual and frightening phenomenon breaks down after a few moment’s consideration. The planet does not have a climate; it has many climates and microclimates. It may be that Woodbridge is overcast and rainy but nearby Ipswich is bright and sunny on the same day and hour. There is no such thing as global climate and to aggregate world temperatures is to mislead. 

The caring people, unwitted and terrified by the sloppy-stern talking heads, threw millions of useless face masks onto the street, in bins, and rubbish disposal, to end up in landfill and then into the oceans to strangle sealife and further pollute our shared and beautiful world. The covid coup is tied to the climate emergency and both are tied to a global reset behind which some of the most powerful actors lurk. We are coming to the end-point of a short period of abundance and rising standards of living. 

The fourth industrial revolution is hurtling ahead like a juggernaut, crushing all in its path and gradually changing the lives of us regular folk, but not for those who admonish us for our greed and unconcern about what we’re constantly taught is a world on fire. The controlled teenage school truant Greta Thunberg wags her finger and shouts apocalyptic sound-bites: in a speech to the globalist World Economic Forum at Davos in 2019 she warned: “I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act. I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if the house was on fire—because it is". She came across like a behavioural psychologist nudging an unsuspecting towards a predetirmed outcome with words which were not her own. But the boiling, the heating, the burning, the rising sea-levels, these don’t really perturb the masters and their followers who fly around the world to conferences in private jets, who ride in limousine convoys to important greets-and-meets with mates, who invest in expensive seaside beach properties despite their warnings of sea-level rises. The Maldives are still above water.

The debts of Western nations are off the scale and the economies cannot even service the interest on those debts. They can continue with quantitive easing and further borrowing, but this cannot stand forever. They need to install an entirely new system based on a digital currancy and central bank control, preferably a global world bank. As Western nations have offshored manufacturing and internationalised their financial systems, their primary source of income is becoming the home populations and data, interlinked. The Chinese communist-capitalist hybrid is considered a model for Western nations undergoing managed decline, with their social credit system, digital tracking, facial recognition, biosecurity, controls on movement and employment and other oppressive 4IR measures. The double boon is both a tightly-controlled and controllable society plus a managed new digital economy, with the people little more than tracked and traced sources of data and income like cattle in the field.

The given reasons for these radical changes is the doubled-pronged devil fork of climate change and biosecurity and we are told these mitigations are for our safety. Who could possibly disagree with such kindly intentions?

There are advanced plans in the West for zoned 15-minute cities and neighbourhoods, for constant surveillance and tracking, for central bank digital currancies and the abolition of hard cash money, all with the bonus that dissidents can be identified, dissuaded, and, if they do not comply, punished. There is no need for camps and gulags when the world herself is repurposed as an open prison. To persuade and corral the population into the farmer’s field the twin prods of bio-security and climate change will be employed … are being employed. Judging by the success of the covid experiment and the ongoing climate-induced fear the powers-that-shouldn’t-be will have an easy ride into their - not our - bright shiny new technocratic transhuman future. Or so they imagine. 

The paradigm is shifting.
Are you ready? 
Is this what you want for yourself and your children?

Painting by “Mad” John Martin; Pandemonium (1841)