False claims suggesting that the BBC has been misreporting temperatures in southern Europe have been spreading on social media.

A clip of Neil Oliver, a GB News presenter, accusing the BBC “and others” of “driving fear” by using “supposedly terrifying temperatures”, has been viewed more than two million times.

For the past few weeks, an intense heatwave has been sweeping through parts of southern Europe and north Africa, with extensive wildfires breaking out in Greece, Italy and Algeria - leading to more than 40 deaths.

Speaking about the fires on Rhodes on GB News on Monday, Mr Oliver accused the BBC, and other broadcasters, of trying to “make people terrified of the weather”.

  • VentraSqwal@links.dartboard.socialOP
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    1 year ago

    Deny, deny, deny. Now climate change deniers are doing that even to observable, recordable phenomena, just to avoid the truth of what is happening. This is what’s stopping progress towards saving our children’s future.

          • ZombieTheZombieCat@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            The worst was the people who insisted it wasn’t funny enough. I thought it was pretty funny, but was that really the point?

          • SkyeStarfall@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            1 year ago

            It’s funny, isn’t it? It’s so “on the nose” and yet perfectly reflects reality.

            “Difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to be believable…” and all that

          • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            1 year ago

            There is something to be said about subtlety in story-telling. When writers tell their message with a sledgehammer, it comes off as unrealistic.

    • Deuces@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Don’t worry, next year (assuming it’s not another el ninio) they’ll accept this years temps and use it as proof that the climate change is fake since “it’s colder than last year”.

  • Buffaloaf@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So we’ve actually gotten to the point where these idiots will argue whether or not it’s hot outside. I knew people could be stupid/crazy, I just didn’t realize how many of them there are.

      • agitatedpotato@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yep, with the future in store for the earth the pandemic was basically a social test and the results weren’t promising.

        • El Barto@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I look at the bright side. Many idiots won the Darwin award during the pandemic.

          The problem with these new idiots is that they won’t get to experience their idiocy because they live in a place that’s not affected yet.

          • jubilationtcornpone@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            I know people who literally came close to being dead from COVID who still have a lot of stupid ass opinions about the pandemic. Hell, my FIL suffered permanent lung damage to the point that he can’t handle being at high elevations for very long. He struggles to breathe with any physical exertion whatsoever. Still a skeptic. Some people just kind of go all “sunk cost falacy” on their own idiocy.

          • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            The problem with these new idiots is that they won’t get to experience their idiocy because they live in a place that’s not affected yet.

            Or a place that is getting affected, but not in a way that looks like what they think global warming means.

            More intense storms and more extreme weather of all types are still symptoms of the same problem, even if a local area isn’t hotter today than last summer.

          • gornar@lemmy.ca
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            1 year ago

            Absolutely, now these fools can Darwin award the whole planet! For a couple of people to be really rich!

            • El Barto@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Nah. Earth will be fine. We and any species that won’t adapt to the shit we did, not so much.

        • Baron Von J@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          The pandemic officially retired the phrase “avoid it like the plague” for at least a third of the USA population.

    • gapbetweenus@feddit.de
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      Giving every moron the ability to broadcast to the whole world, turned out to be a really bad idea.

    • Mynameisnotdoug@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I’ve watched flat earthers conduct foolproof experiments to prove the earth is flat, then come up with excuses when their experiment fails.

      The heat is caused by Jewish space lasers or something.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Here in parts of the south USA it’s been a normal summer, getting adequate rain and temps not hitting 100+ like last year as well. So I can see some of the skepticism but the world is fucking huge…If I drive one hour further north or south…the weather has changed…

      • sin_free_for_00_days@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        Didn’t June break some heat records in the UK? I thought that I had read that. I’m in Southern California and this summer has been super mild.

  • Obsession@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    This is my parents, who emigrated from Europe in 80s.

    “Greece is always this hot in the summer”

    “I remember 40 degree weather when I was a kid, no one was complaining then”

    “Do they expect the Mediterranean not to get hot?”

    I hate to see it, especially since they’re both otherwise smart people. They’re just completely taken in by climate denialism.

    • illi@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      hate to see it, especially since they’re both otherwise smart people.

      I hate to say it… but they are not really that smart based on that. Amd I’m saying this as someone who’s mom who is “otherwise really smart”, but pretty fucking stupid.

    • Dark_Blade@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s the fear and guilt of having destroyed the planet their children and grandchildren (especially their grandchildren) will inherit. What they’re doing right now is shoving their heads right into the sand and selling themselves on whatever climate change denialism is out there right now.

      • phaedrux_pharo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        The commenter you’re replying to is using a common English colloquialism: “go out.” In this particular construction, “go out” is short for “go outside,” which generally refers to the act of transporting one’s physical body (assumed to currently exist inside a structure, underground, or somehow contained within some sort of boundary) to a location that could be considered exterior to their present location.

        In the context of the thread, the commenter is inviting those making claims about the air temperature to experience it for themselves by exiting their current containment units and exposing their sensory organs to the actual air temperature of the external world, thus providing the counterpoint to their proposition.

        For the beginning of the sentence, please see:

        [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/my-brother-in-christ]

  • CALIGVLA@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 year ago

    Boomers gonna boomer ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    At the end of the day, they’re again the ones that are going to suffer the most with the higher temperatures, it’s kind of like karma really.

  • Strayce@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    How does anyone maintain even a shred of hope in the face of this rampant bullshittery?

    • afraid_of_zombies@lemmy.world
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      About half of my job is dealing with infrastructure so I fight the second order effects of this every day. That gives me hope, that I am delaying the unavoidable disaster ever so slightly every day. Maybe if I work really hard I can buy the human race a single second.

      Also I started a guerrilla gardening group and committing myself to planting on average 3 new plants a day.

  • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I was on holiday in southern Europe. I was there at 43° Celsius. I know a person who witnessed 47 more southern. In places where these temperatures have been seen only over the past 10 years

    I mean, it’s pretty simple to know the temperature, thermometers exists. Just call someone in southern Europe and ask

    • shadesdk@lemmy.world
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      I’m not denying there is a heat wave in southern Europe, but where I am in Spain, it was actually hotter last year. I’m enjoy this summer and am usually able to sleep without AC and at the same time I have family outside of the country calling and asking if I am OK because of what they see on the news. There is definitely parts that have it worse than others.

      • Zeth0s@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I was in the same place same period of last year and this year was definitely hotter. I grew up there (although I don’t live there anymore), in south of Italy. This year was really bad

  • bluestribute@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    If these people were on fire and their talking heads told them they weren’t they would say they weren’t.

  • iquanyin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    well, the millions who live there and the millions upon millions with heat waves all over the world aren’t fooled. almost no one denies climate issues now, other than people paid to do so, and soon even they will be forced to stop. too busy dealing with climate fallout they themselves experience.

  • SaltyLemon@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Mr Oliver accused the BBC, and other broadcasters, of trying to “make people terrified of the weather”.

    As we should be. These changes on our planet will be the end of us.