British news anchor does a ‘Don’t Look Up’

Even as Europe reels from a heatwave, an anchor on British news channel GB News tried to play down the danger of severe weather, drawing the ire of social media.

One Twitter user compared it with a scene from the Hollywood film Don't Look up, which satirizes the global response to climate change.

In the broadcast from July 14, the GB News anchor asks a weather expert, John Hammond, whether it was too hot out. “By early next week, you can scrap 20 degrees, it could well be 40 degrees,” he replies. “I think there will be hundreds if not thousands of excess deaths. This will be potentially lethal weather for a couple of days. It will be brief, but it will be brutal.”

Hammond is interrupted by the anchor, “I want us to be happy about the weather. I don't know, something’s happened to meteorologists to make you all fatalistic and harbingers of doom…haven't we always had hot weather?”

The reaction on social media were as you might expect.