GB News host telling meteorologist to be ‘happy’ about heatwave is the latest ‘Don’t Look Up’ interview

It turns out the controversial news channel GB News has a regular programme titled To The Point, though in an interview where they tell a meteorologist to be “happy” about rising temperatures, they appear to miss the point entirely.

John Hammond spoke to hosts Bev Turner and Mercy Muroki on Thursday, as the UK was hit with a heatwave this week and is due to face hotter weather this weekend into next week.

Very serious information, of course, which should be taken very seriously by very serious journalists, right?

Well, as she noted Hammond was sat outside while giving the interview, Turner said: “It’s not too hot, is it?”

Ah.

Hammond, remaining far more professional, replied: “No, it’s absolutely lovely, you’ve got 20 degrees out here, it’s lovely. On a serious note, folks, by early next week, you can scrap 20 degrees, it could well be 40 degrees.

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“I think there’ll be hundreds, if not thousands of excess deaths early next weeks. The charts I can see in front of me are frightening, so we all like nice weather, but this will not be nice weather – this will be potentially lethal weather, for a couple of days.

“It will be brief, but it will be brutal.”

Despite the warning of actual deaths, Turner continued to advocate for unabashed optimism, because of course that’s the most rational response.

“I want us to be happy about the weather. I don’t know whether something’s happened to meteorologists to make you all a little bit fatalistic and harbingers of doom.

“Haven’t we always had hot weather, John? The summer of ’76, that was as hot as this, wasn’t it,” she said.

Hammond was clear: “No, and we are seeing more and more records more and more frequently and more and more severely … Heatwaves are becoming more extreme, this is yet another one which is coming down the tracks towards us.

“I don’t think we should be too light-hearted about the fact that many are going to die over the next week because of the heat. 40 degrees, this sort of temperature in this country, I’m afraid, is not geared up to cope with.”

Turner’s stance has since been criticised online and compared to Don’t Look Up – the Netflix film whereby two scientists warn the media of an impending climate catastrophe:

And today, a day after the interview took place, the Met Office issued its first ever extreme heat weather warning for early next week, with temperatures potentially reaching as high as 40C – breaking the previous highest temperature of 37.8C in July 2019.

The weather agency said England could face an “extremely hot spell” on Monday and Tuesday, with the red warning pointing to a “potentially very serious situation”.

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