My flight shame, or flygskam in the original Swedish, has grown so intense of late that I’ve started to feel guilty while sitting at home watching aviation YouTubers (no sniggering in the back) review their trips. Because they are making money out of the adverts I’m watching.
We’ve all become somewhat desensitised to rising temperatures and tumbling records, so much so that it takes something quite spectacular
to rouse us from our carbon-intensive slumbers. Perhaps that is wild heatwaves in the South American winter or most recently, record-breaking ocean temperatures at the wrong time of the year.
Mammals left the oceans to start a new life on land roughly 400 million years ago, and I show my solidarity by refusing to enter the water whatever the temperature. Still, it strikes me as a little alarming that the average daily global sea surface temperature has hit a new all-time high of 20.96 degrees Celsius, according to the EU’s Copernicus climate change service.
This is bad for a number of reasons. The oceans are home to 80 per cent of life on what is, as far as we know, the only place in the visible universe that can support even single-celled organisms, let alone a YouTube algorithm. Warmer temperatures drive marine life to search for cooler climes, disturbing delicate food chains.
But this is about more than fish, fond as I am of smoked salmon. Warmer waters melt sea ice, leading to higher sea levels. They are also less able to absorb carbon dioxide, leaving more of it to build up in the atmosphere, further fuelling climate change.
Yet the truly frightening part is that this record fell when it did. Ocean temperatures should be at their highest in March, not August. Meanwhile, water temperatures around the UK were 3C to 5C higher than average in June, though nothing on Florida, where surface temperatures hit a little over 38C.
We ask a lot of our oceans. To provide navigation, reliable weather systems and a source of food, particularly protein. But the seas also act as something of a climate shield, having absorbed 90 per cent of the warming that has occurred in recent decades from greenhouse gasses, according to Nasa. Meanwhile, and I learned this today, the top few metres of the ocean store as much heat as the Earth’s entire atmosphere.
There’s no grand lesson from today’s newsletter or pay-off witticism. It’s Friday, it’s nearly four o’clock, the world is hot, it’s getting hotter, and a rubbish British summer provides no evidence to the contrary.
In the comment pages, Sarah Baxter warns us to prepare for a referendum on Donald Trump that may split the United States. Paul Flynn says Netflix’s Heartstopper offers queer youth what they’ve always missed: their own fairytale. While Simon Hunt thinks London would be better if it were more Canadian.
And finally, with new openings, a Fringe to rival the Scots and a south London music festival, Mike Daw has everything you need to get up to in London this weekend.
Have a good one.
