CLIMATE CHANGE (4)

When I came back from my annual walking tour last April, there were hosepipe bans in most of England, and a further 19 counties had just been added to the list of those designated as undergoing a drought. Yet 2012 ended as the second wettest ever for the U.K. since records began in 1910; for England, it was the wettest ever. Basically, as soon as I left, it started chucking it down, and didn't really stop. Average rainfall in January to March was below average, in March 61% so; thereafter, it was above average in every month except May. There was 50% more in July and December, 76% in April (given our sunny holiday, it must have been miserable thereafter), and a staggering 103% more in June. At the beginning of 2012, politicians, farmers and water companies were holding "water summits" to discuss the crisis in places such as East Anglia. By the end of the year, the discussion had turned to poor crop yields and compensation for lost produce.

These facts seem to be backed up by ever increasing reports of flooding. When I was a boy, flooding seemed to be something that happened as often as England winning at rugby (i.e. hardly ever); now it's on the news - the Danish news too - pretty regularly. Some 8,000 houses in England and Wales were flooded last year, and flood warnings were sent out to 200,000 households and businesses. Flooding has also taken place on a very parochial level. My mother's lawn has flooded a lot during the past couple of years, which is a new development; neither I nor she can remember that ever happening before, even though she has lived in the same house in an unchanged neighbourhood in Derby since she first moved there in 1958.

The inescapable conclusion is that things are happening to the climate. Yet as evidence piles up that "something is changing", efforts to do something about it seem to be diminishing. My last post on climate change followed the Durban conference at the end of 2011. I think that there has been a further conference since then, but I have to admit that I can't remember anything about it, not even where it was. Don't expect much to happen in the near future.

Walter Blotscher