On: European heatwave is worst ever and impossible without climate crisis, scientist

The question, I see, is not whether the heatwave is the worst ever, or whether it’s impossible without the climate crisis. Those are just answers, and rather definitive ones at that. The question I find myself asking is: why are we still so surprised when the thing we’ve been meticulously, industriously, and rather expensively arranging for decades finally arrives? It’s like spending thirty years building a very large, very complex, and entirely predictable Vogon constructor fleet in your back garden, and then expressing shock when it finally lumbers into the air and blocks out the sun. The real surprise would be if it didn’t happen.

We are told people in hundreds of cities are enduring their worst ever heat stress. The phrase “heat stress” is a masterpiece of bureaucratic understatement. It sounds like something a particularly dull committee would recommend you manage with better time-management techniques. It does not adequately convey the sensation of being slowly poached in your own atmosphere, of the air becoming a thick, wet blanket applied by a universe that is, as ever, spectacularly indifferent to your discomfort.

From a cosmic perspective, of course, this is a minor atmospheric adjustment on a speck of dust. The universe has seen planets melt, stars go nova, and entire galactic sectors forget to file their paperwork. A few million primates finding their weather unpleasant is not a notable event in the grand ledger. This is not a reason for nihilism; it’s a reason to stop panicking about the universe’s opinion and start asking the right question down here. Which is not “How do we survive this heatwave?” but “Why did we think the question was ever anything other than ‘How do we stop building the Vogon fleet?’”

Don’t Panic. But do, for Zark’s sake, look at the blueprint.