Just take it in — every year is a new record. The hottest year ever. Again. And again. And again. The headlines come prepackaged with hysteria: we are boiling, we are melting, we are one heatwave away from spontaneous combustion.
But does it?
Where I live in Vienna, the hottest year in recent memory was 2017 — a sweltering 42°C. That was real heat. That was frying-pan-on-the-balcony, sleep-on-a-wet-towel heat. We were cooking, literally and figuratively. Since then? 2018 through 2025 — not once has the thermometer breached 40°C again. The hottest day since then hit 38°C. Four full degrees less.
And this year, 2025? The mercury barely flirted with 35°C before shyly retreating. That’s a seven-degree drop from our supposed “climate apocalypse” year of 2017. Seven degrees, sustained over seven years. I may not be a statistician, but even a half-baked sentient being can see a trend forming — and it’s not “ever hotter.”
We are not far from a decade of slightly cooler, shorter summers. But you’d never know it, because the media prefers their thermometers screaming in all caps. They’ve discovered that fear sells better than weather reports.
So every time the press blares “Hottest Day Ever Recorded!” people dutifully sweat on cue, their glands obeying the authority of the headline. The mind obliges, the body follows, and the hysteria sustains itself like a feedback loop of faith.Meanwhile, the thermometer just sits there — mute, uncooperative, and stubbornly unaligned with the sermon.