In my lifetime, the hottest days I have enjoyed were in Jeddah (55°C), Adelaide (47°C), and Death Valley (46°C). For some strange reason, these were in summer in a dry climate.

The atmosphere is a natural air conditioner that modulates air temperature by the evaporation and precipitation of water. The adiabatic heat of the evaporation of water shows that to vaporise water, energy must be taken from the air, soil, plants, lakes, rivers, and seas. This is why your skin feels cool when wet. To precipitate water from the air as rain or snow, heat is given out.

Townsville and Mount Isa are at almost the same latitude. Air in Townsville is humid and contains about 4 per cent dissolved water vapour, the main greenhouse gas. Summer temperatures rarely exceed 28°C. At Mount Isa where the air contains less than 2 per cent water vapour, summer temperatures often exceed 42°C. Winter nights in Mount Isa are freezing whereas in Townsville they are quite balmy.

Both Mount Isa and Townsville have the same atmospheric carbon dioxide content. The only variable is water vapour as humidity and clouds which modulate temperature. It is humidity and rain that stops the planet from having an excessively high air temperature, runaway global warming, or any other concocted crisis on the catastrophist climate menu.

When the news cycle is quiet, people are away on summer holidays and, if there are a few warm summer days in a row, then it’s time to scare people witless. Tell them it’s the hottest day for the last 10 years, since Wimbledon started, since records were kept, or for the last 125,000 years. Make sure the colour of the background on temperature maps is changed to fiery red.

This is aimed at keeping the climate gravy train on the rails with the implication that the alleged hottest day must be a result of human activities. If record winter lows in the other hemisphere are ignored, then the narrative is enhanced. This is fraud and the media perpetually promote such climate disinformation.

If asked whether the planet is heating or cooling, the only answer to give is ‘Yes’. For the last 50 million years, planet Earth has been cooling. We have warmed up at least 10°C since the cold dry Younger Dryas 12,900-11,700 years ago, a time when no fossil fuels were used by humans. Since the peak of the current interglacial 7,000-4,000 years ago, there has been a long-term cooling trend with spikes of cooling and warming.

If told the planet has warmed, then the reply must be ‘Since when?’ We have cooled since Roman times, warmed since the Dark Ages (535-900 AD), cooled since the Medieval Warming (900-1300 AD), and warmed since the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 AD). What would you expect after the Little Ice Age? Bitterly cold times or warming. The unsolved scientific question is: which part, if any, of modern warming is of human origin? To talk about warming or hot times without discussing climate cycles is misleading and deceptive.

How do we measure temperature? Is it by mercury thermometers which have been used for a couple of centuries? Is it by the homemade secret thermal probes used by the taxpayer-funded Bureau of Meteorology? Is it by infrared probes? Is the measuring station correctly located? What is measured at the measuring station? Is the spot maximum temperature or the average maximum temperature over time used? Has the measuring station been moved over its history? Have buildings, airports, roads, and air conditioning units encroached on the measuring spot? How has the urban heat island effect influenced the measurement?

Do we get told that the bulk of global ground measuring stations are in the US and EU giving a very biased land measurement record? Not all measuring station data is used. Why not? Those in extreme climatic and remote areas are being closed, especially in Russia. The Bureau of Meteorology ignores the long-term record of rural land-based stations. Some 70 per cent of the planet is covered by water yet most measuring stations are on the land. The average temperature from an irregularly biased array of measuring stations cannot be calculated. As soon as the words average global temperature are used, you know you’re being conned.

Atmospheric temperature, mainly above the land, has been measured from the millions of weather balloons released year in and year out. Over the last 40 years, the 24/7 measurement of atmospheric temperature in 3D up to the stratosphere of the planet has been measured by satellite. Satellite is the most accurate measurement of temperature but is not used. It does not give scary data hidden away by some taxpayer-funded institution and is much harder to ‘adjust.

To compare the measurement of modern temperature with less accurate temperature deduced from proxies is invalid. Modern temperature measurements with an accuracy of ± 0.1°C are combined with older measurements with an accuracy of ± 0.5°C and then it’s claimed that the 20th-century average has risen by 0.86°C. A school child educated 60 years ago learned that every measurement must be accompanied by an order of accuracy and they could have shown that the claimed 20th-century average temperature rise is invalid. It is doubtful whether an ‘educated’ teenager today could see the flaw.

Proxies have an order of accuracy of 0.1-0.5°C, depending upon which proxy is used and how far back in time it is applied. A great diversity of proxies have been used to determine the past temperature record. The geological record shows us that the hottest days ever were 600, 500, 400, 200, and 100 million years ago. They were Thursdays!

Over the last 500 million years, the temperature has been up and down many times between numerous hothouse and icehouse conditions. As a result of cooling for the last 50 million years, we are currently living in one of the coldest times on planet Earth for 300 million years.

If Antarctica would just break up into microcontinents or move away from the South Pole, we would reach the planet’s normal wet warm greenhouse planetary conditions with a high sea level. Antarctic rift valleys and 150 sub-glacial geothermal areas and volcanoes show that the fragmentation has started.