![\"Article](\"https:\/\/assets.joe.co.uk\/uploads\/2026\/08\/GettyImages-2289765561.jpg\")
<\/a>Wildfires have raged across the nation. Image: Getty.<\/p>\nA country melting<\/p>\n
For decades, the issue with climate change, the artist formerly known as global warming, was its elusive existence as just warnings in a form of a prediction \u2013 it must be said a prediction based on science and data.<\/p>\n
As time progressed, for those living in the West, the issues of islands disappearing in the Pacific and extreme weather phenomena thousands of miles away were swept aside with the mantra \u201cthat couldn\u2019t happen here\u201d.<\/p>\n
So verbal warnings and physical warnings came and went and the denial continued.<\/p>\n
READ NEXT: Three-quarters of UK media stories on June heatwave made no mention of climate crisis<\/a><\/p>\n However, as the phrase \u2018seeing is believing\u2019 lays out, only a denier who covers their eyes could be blind to the current situation in the UK \u2013 and beyond.<\/p>\n It has taken more than 1,000 wildfires in the UK this year,\u00a019 houses gutted by the flames, and potentially the\u00a0derailment of a train (or two)\u00a0\u2013 although no official causes has been given yet \u2013 for people to realise that things are getting out of hand.<\/p>\n Around 25,000 hectares of land in the UK is estimated to have been scorched by wildfires as of 10 August according to\u00a0EFFIS<\/a>, a number expected to rise dramatically.<\/p>\n This goes without even mentioning the harrowing affect the dry, hot weather is having on\u00a0farmers across the nation.<\/a><\/p>\n The worst thing about these statistics is that it\u2019s not that they\u2019re beating records from 100 years ago, or 50 years ago, the UK keeps beating records from this century, a worrying trend.<\/p>\n As per the\u00a0Met Office<\/a>, only one of the 10 hottest days in recorded British history have come before 1990.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, just three of the 10 predate this century and six of the 10 were this decade \u2013 it doesn\u2019t take a graph to visualise this trend.<\/p>\n If you needed more proof, just three of the hottest days by month of the year came before the year 2000.<\/p>\n And, to put the nail in the coffin, not a single record for coldest day by month of the year has been broken since 1995.<\/p>\n Even The Telegraph, YES, The Telegraph\u00a0conceded to climate change<\/a>\u00a0at the end of July this year, calling on the right-wing to \u201cget serious\u201d about it \u2013 if that doesn\u2019t tell you the end times might be here, nothing will!<\/p>\n The physical body of an invisible killer<\/p>\n One of the issues with heat related death is that it is rather invisible.<\/p>\n Heat can trigger a multitude of malaises in the human body and is often attributed as a secondary cause of death rather than a primary.<\/p>\n Think of cardiac arrest, asthma, diabetes, kidney disease, etc. \u2013 all these things can be exacerbated by heat.<\/p>\n In a report,\u00a0Bloomberg estimates<\/a>\u00a0that more than 25,000 people have died due to extreme heat in Europe this year \u2013 that was published on 6 August, it is likely many more have died since.<\/p>\n In May and June alone, the UK government estimated that there were\u00a02,877 heat-associated deaths.<\/p>\n The Met Office estimate that 42% of these deaths were\u00a0caused by human-induced warming<\/a>, around 1,208 people.<\/p>\n Now, while this may sound flippant, imagine 1,208 people were killed collectively by any other human-caused catastrophe, say a terrorist attack or a plane crash caused by human error \u2013 imagine the sheer uproar and outpouring of discontent.<\/p>\n It is ignorant at best that society continues to treat such heat-events any differently, but it seems people are finally waking up thanks to the proliferation of the physically body of this silent killer.<\/p>\n RELATED: John Major takes aim at right-wing calls to scrap climate policies<\/a><\/p>\n Someone dying from a heat-induced illness wasn\u2019t enough, but the sight of houses burning due to wildfires, forests and heathland being decimated and public infrastructure grinding to a halt as train tracks yield to the sheer heat subjected upon them.<\/p>\n Climate change has a physical projection, and it is known as chaos.<\/p>\n We\u2019re all to blame, just some slightly more than others<\/p>\n While the issue of climate change is a collective one, it is obvious there are some more culpable than others.<\/p>\n Big oil has an (alleged) dirty secret \u2013 which is not much of a secret anymore \u2013 that many of the world\u2019s biggest fossil fuel companies knew about the effects of climate change decades before it worsened.<\/p>\n Now, of course they all deny this, but many scientists and climate activists continue to point the finger.<\/p>\n The most high-profile case is that of ExxonMobil, the largest US oil company, and one of the biggest in the world.<\/p>\n The story goes that in the 1970s, private research conducted by the company predicted \u00a0how burning fossil fuels would warm the planet with activists claiming they ignored this data.<\/p>\n And this doesn\u2019t just go for ExxonMobil. The Stanford Research Institute\u00a0presented a report<\/a>\u00a0to the\u00a0American Petroleum Institute<\/a>\u00a0(API) in 1968 that warned the release of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels could carry an array of harmful consequences for the planet.<\/p>\n So yeah, it\u2019s hard to say they didn\u2019t know.<\/p>\n And, it\u2019s also hard not to connect these companies to the extreme heat we\u2019re seeing today.<\/p>\n An\u00a0Oxfam report<\/a>\u00a0from the end of July stated that: \u201cEmissions from five fossil fuel corporations were enough to cause about 1 in 4 heatwaves between 2000 and 2023, which would have been virtually impossible without climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n Oxfam\u2019s Climate Policy Lead Mariana Paoli said: \u201cFossil fuel corporations are making a killing, literally and figuratively.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s quite the burn \u2013 literally and figuratively.<\/p>\n Where we go from here<\/p>\n The reason why scientists and environmentalists were so keen to raise the profile of climate change is that it\u2019s rather hard to reverse once the damage has been done.<\/p>\n Certainly, the effects of it are irreversible on a timescale of humans alive today, that\u2019s what\u00a0Nasa says.<\/a><\/p>\n While much of what is going on around us is worrying with climate change trends curving upwards ever since their inception, limitation could still be possible, but we are skirting very close to the point of no return<\/p>\n For years, the warning has been the global average temperature rising by 1.5C to 2C.<\/p>\n<\/a>While no cause for the derailment has been given, TV images clearly show buckled tracks due to heat expansion. Credit: Sky News screenshot.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a>The scorched remains of houses burned down in West Midlands wildfire. Credit: Getty.<\/p>\n<\/a>Activists allege that ExxonMobil were aware of the effects of climate change decades ago. Image: Getty.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n