February 2016

What remarkable weather!  By the time you read this, we may well have had a fortnight of cold frosty weather.  On the other hand, we may well have had a continuation of the mild wet and windy weather that we’ve enjoyed since the end of autumn – if there has been an end to autumn that is.  The effect of this long spell of balmy (barmy?) weather has also been remarkable.  There were daffodils out in Hastings before Christmas; grass, which needs a ground temperature of less than 6 degrees C to arrest its growth, is still growing almost as fast as in summer; we have flowers on our comfrey and lesser celandine; last week I found a dandelion clock growing in the lawn – on one of the rare days that the wind didn’t blow it away instantly – dandelions, in January!  So is this just remarkable, or amazing – a freak event that happens every hundred years or so, or is it something more worrying?

Global warming is treated differently by different people.  Some choose to ignore it in the hope that it will go away, others deny that it is happening and point to natural cycles, etc., and many people are so passionate about the danger it poses to humanity that it appears to be almost a religion.  It isn’t a religion of course, no belief is required.  The science is there if you choose to look at it.  The science tells us that global temperatures are rising, and that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is rising at an ever faster rate.  It also tells us that there is no link between global warming and individual weather events, though it does tell us that extreme weather will become more common.  Warmer sea temperatures mean higher evaporation rates, more water vapour (a greenhouse gas in itself) in the atmosphere, and consequently more rain.  More rain is something the people of Cumbria and Yorkshire know something about this year.  (And Somerset a couple of years ago, and Yorkshire again before that.)

But apart from the weather, why should a few flowers opening earlier than usual be worrying?  It is worrying because everything in nature is connected.  If daffodils flower in December when most bumblebees are hibernating, they will not flower in spring, which means less forage for the bumblebees, as well as honeybees and all the other insects that depend on nectar and pollen.  That means less insects for the birds to eat, less insects to pollinate our vegetables, and ultimately less food for us to eat.  That may sound extreme and perhaps the only noticeable effect will be higher prices of vegetables in the shops, but it’s not a trend that can be sustained forever.  We live in a rich country where nobody needs to starve, and where insurance companies can pick up the tab for flood damage (albeit at a price), but in poorer countries people are literally being washed away.

Successive governments have proved unable to act or even to understand the problem, so it’s up to us – something to think about when your car or television needs replacing, or you want to turn the heating up.  Solar panels and wind turbines may not be to everyone’s taste, but they are so much better than the alternatives.