By Vijay Jayaraj

Growing up in the sun-scorched plains of Southern India, where summer temperatures often flirt with 104 degrees Fahrenheit, I learned early that extreme heat is not an anomaly but a seasonal reality to be expected. Yet, all of us confront the metaphorical heat of relentless rhetoric from climate alarmists who insist our planet is overheating beyond the point of salvaging.

In Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore), the city I now call home, climate narratives often echo global hysteria. Headlines scream of “record-breaking heat” and “unlivable cities,” yet the data – raw, unfiltered and grounded in reality – tell a different story, one that challenges the hyperbole regularly sweeping over the public.

On average, a Bengaluru March experiences 17 days where temperatures reach or exceed 93 degrees. This year has been no different. We recorded exactly 17 days of 93 degrees or above in March – right on par with the 15-year average. Far from the apocalyptic predictions of endless heatwaves, this summer has been, in a word, normal.

Over the past 15 years, from 2010 to 2024, temperature records for the months of February through May show us that there is no summer crisis. The entire summer of 2018, for instance, had only 23 days above 93 degrees, whereas 2023 had 30 days. In contrast, 2016 had 76 days. Does this indicate an existential crisis? Or does it simply affirm that climate fluctuates? It is the latter.

Climate Alarmism: A Manufactured Crisis?

It is not just temperatures. The broader climate narrative is laced with outlandish predictions that fail to materialize. The “end of snow” prophecy, the vanishing of Arctic ice by 2013, and the frequent claims of “hottest year ever” – all have proven misleading at best, deceptive at worst.

Consider rainfall patterns in India, which have a major influence on the livelihood of 1.3 billion people. There is a significant year-to-year variability in precipitation, which is typical of India because of the unpredictable nature of monsoons.

The average annual rainfall between 2000 and 2023 shows us that there is no crisis. The early 2000s experienced several significantly wet years, with 2003 recording nearly 49 inches of precipitation. From the mid-2000s to the early 2010s, there was a notable decline in rainfall, with 2009 being especially arid. The latter segment of the dataset, spanning from 2019 to 2022, indicates a duration of consistently elevated rainfall levels.

There is no discernible linear trend of increasing or decreasing precipitation throughout the period. The data reveal fluctuations between wetter and drier years. This variability underscores the intricate nature of India’s monsoon system and its susceptibility to diverse climatic factors.

Now, imagine asking the city’s 14 million residents to relinquish their ambitions for an uninterrupted power supply based on coal as a fuel in favor of unreliable “green” technologies such as wind turbines to address a fabricated climate crisis.

Sadly, such requests are made by activists and media outlets that peddle worst-case scenarios as inevitabilities, ignoring historical weather records and honest science. The result? A public psyche primed to view every warm day as a portent of apocalypse.

Individuals are not only subjected to feelings of guilt regarding the supposed degradation of the Earth’s climate, but they are also deceived into thinking that erratic wind and daytime solar energy can supply baseload electricity required by their urban and industrial centers.

The truth is summers are hot, particularly in the middle latitudes of my city. And there is nothing the climate industrial complex can, or should, do about it.

This commentary was first published at California Globe on April 21, 2025.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO₂ Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.