Host Bev Turner interrupted.
“So, John, I want us to be happy with the weather and everything. I don’t know if something has happened to meteorologists that makes them a bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.”
clips of the almost three minute segment on the right-wing news network, sometimes referred to as Britain’s Fox News – have gone viral. For Thursday morning, a had racked up more than 18 million views on Twitter by juxtaposing Hammond’s interview with a scene from the movie “Don’t Look Up,” in which an astronomer played by Jennifer Lawrence yells during a news segment that a meteor is about to hit. about to hit and destroy Earth, only to be told by a TV host that they are trying to “keep the bad news light”.
Hammond’s prediction of brutal heat came true. Since he was featured in GB News, the UK and much of Europe have been roasting. On Tuesday, Britain broke its record for the highest temperature and authorities described the heat wave as a “national emergency”. A large part of England, including London, was subject to the country’s first “red” warning, meaning the heat posed a danger even to healthy people. the Associated Press reported. Meanwhile, forest fires have ravaged countries across the European continent.
Neither GB News nor Turner immediately responded to requests for comment from The Washington Post earlier Thursday. Despite Turner conceded on Wednesday On Twitter, Hammond said he was right to say the country was “unprepared to deal” with the heat, saying he hasn’t suffered a freak wave of deaths from it. Hammond told The Post in an online message that it’s too early for him to count those numbers.
After Turner implored him to be glad for the weather, Hammond backed off. Once again, he reminded her that he was predicting that he would kill people. “I don’t think we should be too…joyful about the fact that many are going to die early next week from the heat.”
Turner also compared the heat wave to one that occurred 46 years ago: “Haven’t we always been hot, John? Wasn’t ’76, the summer of ’76, as hot as this, was it?
“Uh, no,” Hammond replied. You’re right: the high temperature that year was about 96.6 degrees Fahrenheit (35.9 degrees Celsius) compared to 104.5 (40.3) so far this year. according to the bbc. Although people mention 1976 as a way to write off climate change, it was a “strange event,” Hammond said. Unlike that outlier, Britain is now “seeing more and more records, more and more often and more and more severely,” he said during the GB News segment.
This week, Turner has repeatedly downplayed the heat wave on Twitter. On Wednesdayhe complained about “all this heat hyperbole”. On MondayTurner said he was enjoying “a lovely breeze.”
“If everyone wasn’t telling me to be scared…I wouldn’t even notice,” she wrote.
For many people, there is still a disconnect between what they have always known as “good weather” (clear skies, sunshine) and the reality that hot days are occurring due to climate change and will only become more extreme and damaging. ., Hammond told The Post.
“The notion of thousands of excess deaths is clearly not understandable to many,” he said. “Similarly, until floodwaters hit our front door or food runs out due to drought, we don’t really ‘get’ the threat of climate change until it hits us personally.”
Hammond said he hopes his brush with internet fame will help change that.
“It has certainly started a conversation about the language we use and how we communicate the threat of extreme weather in our forecasts,” he told The Post. “That has to be a good thing.”
