You may have noticed that climate catastrophism has gone nuclear over the past week, as if on cue (we’ll come back to that), but the good old British weather refuses to cooperate.

Disappointingly for the We’re All Gonna Fry brigade, it’s cool, rainy and sullen here with fitful gusts of wind; almost autumnal at times. As a July baby, I can tell you this is not unusual for July. (Prince George will have to get used to having his parties in the cloudy drizzle on our mutual birthday.)

Still, reporters scour the rest of Europe for better (i.e., bad) news. Tourists at the Trevi Fountain in Rome are invited to agree that the weather is “unbearable”. If it’s unbearable, why aren’t they back in their hotel rooms with a wet towel on their heads instead of happily licking their pistachio gelato and soaking up the rays? Why are reports of wildfires in La Palma being linked to soaring temperatures, when the weather on the island is in fact unusually mild, and set to be in the mid-20s all week?

Really not very unusual weather events have suddenly acquired important, scary names drawn from the mythological flames of hell. After Cerberus and Charon, get ready for Heatwave Hades. If the current weather in the U.K. had a name it would be Colin.

Are Brits really “cancelling their holiday plans” because of the “truly terrifying conditions”? Or are they, like me, stocking up on Hawaiian Tropic (used to be sniffy about it, now addicted) from Boots and crawling through the final fortnight of work before I can replenish my stocks of Vitamin D on a Turkish sunlounger.

There is something horribly familiar about all these apocalyptic warnings of catastrophic consequences if people don’t act. “Temperatures across the Mediterranean are nearing the highest ever recorded in Europe with travellers being warned that local medical and health services are strained in some areas.”

Ah, yes, that’s it. Knew we’d heard it before: Stay At Home, Save on Sunscreen, Support Net Zero.

It’s almost as if the same people who scared the pants off us during the pandemic, terrorising people into obeying often idiotic rules, were at it again.

The Behavioural Insights Team (a.k.a. the Nudge Unit) – spun out of the Cabinet Office, and now working for many large corporates, global institutions and national governments – is teaming up with broadcasters to drive messages about climate change.

A report by the BIT in collaboration with Sky TV called ‘The Power of TV: Nudging Viewers to Decarbonise their Lifestyles’ says that “behavioural change on climate can be driven by TV… It comes at a critical time as experts now widely accept that we must shift the behaviour of millions of people to deliver our collective Net Zero goals”.

You don’t have to be a climate sceptic to find something sinister in the idea of broadcasters plotting to manipulate the public into reaching “our collective goals”. Whose goals are they? Why no questioning of whether this is in the population’s best interest or not? Where are the alternative points of view?

After the disastrous impact of its Covid propaganda on the nation’s mental and physical health, a period of embarrassed silence would be welcome from the Nudge Unit.

Yet, here they go again with their sly tricks, their cold calculation of human weakness, their sneaky sleight of hand. What is the betting that the sudden change in TV weather maps, from pastoral greens and shy yellows to diabolical reds, even bruised purples and black, was suggested by the Nudge Unit?

Telegraph — 18 July 2023