00:04Hello, and welcome to The Cube, Euronews' fact-checking show.
00:08Now, Europe has been experiencing a spell of unusually hot weather.
00:11But, alongside the heat, claims casting doubt on climate scientists are also spreading online.
00:17This post, viewed thousands of times, points to a major heatwave in 1921,
00:22arguing that extreme temperatures occurred long before modern cars, planes or industrial emissions.
00:28Another post references the 1976 heatwave in the UK, one of the country's hottest on record,
00:34claiming people just got on with it.
00:36This isn't disputed. Scientists agree that Europe experienced heatwaves
00:40long before modern concerns about climate change.
00:43But, researchers say that still does not contradict modern climate science.
00:47The debate today is not whether heatwaves have happened in the past,
00:51but whether a warming climate is making extreme temperatures more frequent,
00:54more intense and more likely than they otherwise would be.
00:58Likewise, a single historic heatwave cannot, on its own, prove or disprove long-term climate trends.
01:04Other posts go further and allege that temperature records are unreliable
01:08because cities are warmer than rural areas,
01:11whilst others accuse public bodies of manipulating temperature records.
01:15The first is a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect,
01:18where urban areas can record higher temperatures than nearby, rural regions
01:23because buildings, roads and concrete absorb and retain more heat.
01:27But this effect is already understood and accounted for in major global temperature datasets.
01:32Researchers compare measurements from thousands of weather stations around the world and cross-check them.
01:37Different temperature datasets produced by different research organisations
01:40show a similar trend of long-term warming, despite using different methodologies.
01:45Meaning, there is no evidence to suggest that global temperature records
01:48are being systematically manipulated to exaggerate climate change.
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