Weather

Strange, isn’t it, that despite having such famously terrible weather, we Brits are so fond of a picnic. It’s something to do with making the most of what sunshine we get — but if you ever plan to eat outdoors, it will almost invariably end up raining. Never mind. There’s very little that we’re better at than embracing our terrible weather, and keeping buggering on. This year’s Ascot was, for me, a case in point. Every day of the meet was blessed with excellent weather — except, of course, the one day I went. A person more sensible than I might have looked at the forecast and planned accordingly. I

Did you know that 2014 was the hottest year ever recorded in the entire history of the world? Probably you did because it’s been all over the papers. Not only that but President Obama slipped it into his State of the Union address and the president of the World Bank quoted it at Davos and the singer and rap producer Pharrell Williams is so concerned that he plans to stage a series of Live Earth concerts with Al Gore to emphasise the seriousness of the problem. And these luminaries must know what they’re talking about, right? After all, it’s not just one distinguished scientific institution which has endorsed the ‘2014:

The heroic Kurdish resistance in Kobane rightly commands headlines. A larger disaster, however, looms in Iraqi Kurdistan where – absent urgent action by the UN and Iraq – thousands of vulnerable people who fled from the Islamic State (Isis) could die in weeks from cold-related illnesses. It was comfortably warm in the Kurdish capital of Erbil last week, but in December temperatures will drop to below zero in the cities and much lower in the mountains. The warmth made the makeshift camp I visited in the Christian enclave of Ankawa look almost bearable. It occupies a public park and houses 50 families, mainly Christians from Mosul, in increasingly threadbare tents.

From The Spectator, 17 October 1914: In view of the possibilities, naval and aerial, we cannot help thinking that it would be a good thing if our newspapers suppressed the weather forecasts and all information as to barometrical pressure, which are very probably communicated by wireless to our enemies. These forecasts are now exceedingly accurate, and we can well understand how useful it might be to the enemy to know what kind of weather they might expect when they reached British air. If the authorities think there is anything in the point, they will no doubt take it up. We feel perfectly sure that there will be no annoyance expressed

Are all of Britain’s fasting Muslims about to die because of the heatwave? This is what’s worrying me as I sit in my darkened room — curtains drawn and lights down low, according to the official government advice. Dr Paul Cosford of something called ‘Public Health England’ said: ‘Many members of the Muslim community may be fasting during the current period of Ramadan. During hot weather it’s important to balance food and fluid intake between fasts and especially to drink enough water.’ One can only hope and pray that as most of England’s Muslims come from Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, where the temperature exceeds on a daily basis what we’re

It’s right, isn’t it, that the storm we’ve just had was far, far, worse than the Worst Storm In A Million Years © we had a month back and which was trailed in advance by the Met Office and all the news programmes? And as others have pointed out, while there was far more damage done to the country and more people were left without electricity this time around, public transport – and especially the trains – were nowhere near so badly affected. We are back, slightly, in Mandela territory; blanket coverage and predictions of an apocalypse on the news programmes seems to have affected the train companies more deeply

Enormous thanks to OGT for alerting us all to the brilliant article from the Independent – published on Monday March 20th, 2000. Here’s the first bit of it: ‘Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives. Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries. The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall

Just as a follow up to what I was talking about below. Here’s the government’s chief scientific advisor, Sir John Beddington: ‘Professor Sir John Beddington said that time lags in the climate system meant that accumulations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere now will determine the weather we experience for the next 25 years. ‘Climate change is already manifesting itself in huge variations in the weather, clearly illustrated by the way Britain experienced both drought and extreme rainfall last year, he said.’ That’s from today’s Torygraph. I’m sorry, I just don’t swallow it. I’m perfectly prepared to accept that man-made climate change is a reality. But to tie it to