England is sweltering under an red heat health alert and could see its hottest June day on record. In North America, football fans and players are suffering, with a quarter of this summer’s World Cup matches forecast to be played in dangerous heat.
The public know to expect this in advance because the science of forecasting has become remarkably powerful. Scientists can run a million versions of the future before it arrives. But seeing the future in data is not the same as being ready for it. The gap between knowing and doing is not a gap in our technical capability. It is a gap in human imagination.
