AFP

With Europe gripped by successive heatwaves, climate-change deniers are spreading scepticism by publishing data on social media on extreme temperatures allegedly recorded decades ago to imply scientists are exaggerating global warming.

But experts say the figures cited from the past are often incorrect or taken out of context — and even if accurate do not change the fact that heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense.

The posts typically include heat records from almanacs or newspaper reports from the past, arguing that they are similar to the record highs set during this year’s heatwaves in Europe.

One post that has gone viral on Facebook includes a screen grab of a brief article published in the New York Times on June 23, 1935, which said the mercury had hit 127 degrees Fahrenheit (52.7 degrees Celsius) in Zaragoza, in northeastern Spain, the day before.

That temperature is much higher than the record for the highest temperature in Spain of 47.6 degrees Celsius recorded on August 14, 2021 by national weather office Aemet at the La Rambla meteorological station in the southern province of Cordoba.

Contacted by AFP Fact Check, Aemet spokesman Ruben del Campo said the highest temperature recorded in Zaragoza that day in 1935 was just 39 degrees Celsius.

“The figure of over 52 degrees in incorrect. It is not a figure that is in our climate database, and in fact, there is no log of a temperature above 50 degrees Celsius,” he said.

And “even if the figure was correct, which I stress it is not, that is not proof that climate changes does not exist”, he added.

– ‘Warmer now’ –

Spanish daily newspaper La Vanguardia in 1935 also reported that temperatures had hit the low 50s in Zaragoza but explained that the measurement was taken “in the sun”.

Scientists recommend a series of strict criteria to ensure an accurate temperature reading.

“Sensors must be protected from the sun and the rain, and the temperature inside the weather station must be the same as what it is outside,” said Aemet meteorologists Ricardo Torrijo.

Another post that has gone viral on Facebook, Telegram and Twitter since last June shows a front page of Spanish weekly magazine El Espanol from August 1957 with the headline: “The hottest summer of the century”.

It referred to a reading of a temperature of 50 degrees Celsius in central Spain, which was also taken in the sun.

Isabel Cacho, a climate expert at the University of Barcelona, said that “in the hypothetical case” that the mercury soared above 50 degrees Celsius, “this would not be an argument to question that it is warmer now”.

– ‘Not change trend’ –

Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree that carbon emissions from humans burning fossil fuels are heating the planet, raising the risk, length and severity of heatwaves and other extreme weather events.

“These figures of high temperatures (in the past) do not discredit the existence of climate change,” said Jose Luis Garcia, a climate change expert at Greenpeace in Spain.

“They are unrelated. One thing is one-off temperature data and another very different thing is the tendency towards an increase in the average temperature.”

Pedro Zorrilla, a Spanish expert in climate change, said the “anomaly” of a very high temperature recorded in 1935 would have a “very small effect” on average temperatures.

“It does not change the trend,” he added.

Records show heatwaves are occurring with greater frequency in the Iberian Peninsula, said Mariano Barriendos, a geography and history professor at the University of Barcelona. 

“It is relatively usual for a hot air mass to enter the peninsula from the Sahara Desert. What is worrying is that heatwaves are happening more often,” he said.

Scientists on Monday welcomed the passing of US President Joe Biden’s “historic” climate bill while calling for other major emitters — namely the European Union — to follow suit and implement ambitious plans to slash emissions.

The bill, which would see an unprecedented $370 billion invested in cutting US emissions 40 percent by 2030, should provide a launchpad for green investment and kickstart a transition towards renewable energy in the world’s largest emitter.

It passed the Senate on Sunday night after months of arduous negotiations and only after a number of tax and energy provisions were tacked on to Biden’s original proposal. 

Michael Pahle, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said the bill was particularly relevant to EU lawmakers, who he said were on the verge of adopting “the world’s most ambitious climate policy” in the form of the bloc’s “Fit for 55” plan. 

“The EU’s policy can only succeed — economically and politically — when major emitters and trade partners take similar action,” he told AFP. 

“Especially in face of the changing geopolitical landscape, US-EU cooperation is key and the bill an important enabling factor.” 

The EU initiative — which envisages a 55-percent emissions fall by 2030 — has no set budget as yet. 

But a recent assessment found member states would need to spend an 350 billion euros more each year than they did between 2011-2020 in order to hit the climate and energy targets. 

Simon Lewis, professor of global chance science at University College London, said the US bill showed how lawmakers can advance climate legislation while responding to voters’ short-term concern over fuel price inflation. 

“It’s really important that the world’s largest economy is investing in climate and doing it as part of a package to generate jobs and a new, cleaner, greener economy,” Lewis told AFP. 

“Part of that is a package tackling inflation. I think that shows the world how to get climate policy passed, by hitching it to things that really matter to ordinary people, to make sure it’s part of an overarching package to make life better for people.”

– ‘Massive increase’ –

The independent Rhodium Group think tank said the “historic and important” bill — officially the Inflation Reduction Act — would reduce US emissions by at least 31 percent by 2040, compared with 2005 levels. 

However it said that with favourable macroeconomic conditions including increasingly high fossil fuel prices and cheap renewables, a 44-percent emissions drop was possible. 

“The cost of living is here partly because we didn’t get out of fossil fuels early enough,” said Lewis. 

“This bill means is that the transition away from fossil fuels is about to speed up.”

Eric Beinhocker, director of the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School, said the bill would lead to a “massive increase” in clean technology and would drive the cost of renewables down even further. 

“This is particularly important when the world is suffering not just from the climate effects of fossil fuels but also from their skyrocketing costs,” he told AFP.

The legislation provides millions to help conserve forests and billions in tax credits to some of the country’s worst-polluting industries to accelerate their transition to greener tech.

It almost didn’t happen, however, with the bill delayed for months after Democrat Joe Manchin blocked Biden’s more expensive Build Back Better infrastructure plan.

Pahle said that a failure by the US to agree an ambitious emissions cutting plan would have been a “major drawback on the viability of the Paris Agreement”.

The 2015 accord enjoins nations to work to limit global temperature rises to “well below” two degrees celsius above pre-industrial levels and envisages a safer 1.5C heating cap. 

With a little over 1.1C of warming so far, Earth is already being buffeted by extreme weather such as drought and storms supercharged by rising temperatures.

– Just the start –

Although acknowledging that the bill represented progress, scientists were quick to stress that it was far from perfect. 

Michael Mann, director of Penn State’s Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, said the bill’s commitment to build new gas pipelines was “a step backwards”. 

“It’s difficult to reconcile a promise to decarbonise our economy with a commitment to new fossil fuel infrastructure,” he said. 

Radhika Khosla, from the University of Oxford’s Smith School, said that only action on a global scale could achieve the emissions cuts necessary to stave off the worst impacts of global heating. 

“The effects of climate change are being felt by all of us,” she said. 

“This summer alone parts of the globe as disparate as China, the UK and Tunisia all saw record-breaking, deadly heatwaves.

“Lasting change will require ambitious action from all of us as well,” she told AFP.

A malnourished beluga whale that has swum up France’s River Seine is no longer progressing but is still alive, environmental group Sea Shepherd said Monday.

Hopes are fading to save the animal, which was first spotted on Tuesday in the river that runs through Paris to the English Channel.

“It is alert but not eating,” Sea Shepherd France president Lamya Essemlali told AFP in a text message.

There was, however, “no worsening of its condition”, she said.

Since Friday, the whale has been between two locks some 70 kilometres (44 miles) north of the French capital.

Rescuers are considering last-ditch efforts to extract the animal from the Seine as the river’s warm water is harming its health.

One alternative would be to open the locks in the hope that the beluga will swim towards the English Channel, authorities said.

Opening the locks would harbour the risk of the whale moving further upriver towards Paris, which would be even more disastrous.

Several attempts to feed the whale have failed in the past days.

A three-person team from Marineland, Europe’s biggest sea animal theme park located in the southern French resort of Antibes, was expected to arrive on site later Monday.

“We’ve been following the operations at a distance from the start,” said Isabelle Brasseur, in charge of education, research and conservation at Marineland.

“We are slowly making progress,” she told AFP. “There’s not an ideal solution, we must weigh the pros and the cons” of each option to rescue the whale.

One of the experts on the team is a specialist for sea mammals, she said, adding they were bringing a stretcher and other equipment to try and move the animal.

On Saturday, veterinarians administered “vitamins and products to stimulate its appetite”, said a statement on Sunday by the police in Normandy’s Eure department, which is overseeing the rescue effort.

Belugas are normally found only in cold Arctic waters, and while they migrate south in the autumn to feed as ice forms, they rarely venture so far.

An adult can reach up to four metres (13 feet) in length.

According to France’s Pelagis Observatory, specialised in sea mammals, the nearest beluga population is off the Svalbard archipelago, north of Norway, 3,000 kilometres from the Seine.