It's raining in Edgware! - Weather, Climate Change and Global Warming

Sometimes, I have to write blogs, as I am driven to distraction by crass stupidity and willful misinterpretation of proveable facts by people who are either very thick or very malicious. 

Let me start, with a short diversion, to explain why this interests me and why we should all educate ourselves on the subject. About 40 years ago, Gray Ramsey, the drummer in my band excitedly played me a cassette demo of a new track by the legend that is Steve Strange called "It's Raining in Edgware". Steve had bought a sampler and sampled a fart and played a melody with it at the beginning of the track. It was a rather good track and since then I've always associated Edgware with rain (rather like I associate Borehamwood with overripe tomatoes, but that's another story). My Dad was also there. He roared laughing and berated me for not being able to make such amusing music. Later that evening, he took me to one side and said, in his thick Aussie accent "I really like your mate's song. But did you know that Mill Hill is the coldest place in the whole of London?". Dad had been a WWII pilot and part of the qualifications was in meteorology. For bomber pilots such as my Dad, it was literally a matter of life and death to understand the weather. He explained that as Mill Hill was the highest point with a London post code and was the most North Westerly, it was colder, up to four degrees colder than central London. Dad came from Australia, they didn't have weather in Blackall, Queensland. He was born during a drought, a proper drought. There had been no rain for five years, he told me that he first saw rain at the age of four. What had been a dustbowl was now a huge river, called Coopers Creek. The land sprung into life. Plants and strange animals, dormant for years, sprung into life. When we had what we called droughts and hosepipe bans. he'd laugh.

Dad died in 1987, he was an intelligent man. He believed that understanding the patterns of weather was a something that was fundamental to an education. When he first heard of the subject of global warming, he was fascinated. As an Aussie, born in the outback, where the temperatures were always around 40 degrees, he dreamed of such a climate in England. When he studied it, was horrified. He told me that it would not make Britain like the outback of Queensland. He explained that due to the unique position of the UK, the prevailing change was that the UK would simply become wetter and more miserable. This is because the more the earth heats up, the more water will evaporate in the seas. This will form clouds in the Atlantic, that will dump water on Edgware and Mill Hill. Dad felt that the reports he'd read failed to take into account many factors, not least this evaporation. As clouds are white, they actually reflect sunlight, so to some degree would offset the rises. None of the papers he read mentioned this. He did however 100% accept the science and explained it's effects to me in detail. It is a shame that schools seem unable to do the same.

I was lucky. Dad took time to explain everything to me properly, in terms I could understand. What makes me laugh is just how stupid most of the people who tweet about the subject are. They look out of the window, see clouds in July and dismiss the whole matter, stating that as this July is colder than last July, climate change is nonsense. I felt it is high time, that I explained the fact that weather, climate change and global warming are three different things. I am under no illusion that this will be wasted on people, who cannot tell their backside from their elbow, but you have to try and help the poor darlinghs.

So first of all, we need to understand the difference between weather, climate change and global warming.

Weather. This is what we describe the state of the atmosphere at a given time, in a given place. As my Dad explained, Mill Hill is colder thand Edgware. Inverness is colder than London. In Mill Hill, the thing that determis the weather is the direction the wind is blowing. If it is blowing from the South West, off the Atlantic, it is likely to be wet, as that is where clouds are former. If it is blowing from the north, it is likely to be cold. If it is blowing from the South East and up from Africa, it is likely to be warm. If it is coming from the East, in Winter it will be dry and cold and in summer it will be warm.  

In the UK, the most common weather pattern is prevailing winds from the South West. The sea is colder than the land in Summer and warmer in winter. Presently, this is the way the wind is blowing, so that whilst Europe swelters, the air we are getting is colder and damp. Last year, when we were sweltering, we had a large area of high pressure, that is fairly still, with air moving from the warm south east. The biggest factor in determining our winter and summers are the jet streams, huge air currents that determine how the air systems move around the north atlantic. When these move north or south, we get different weather, hot summers such as 1976 and cold winters such as 1962/63.

Weather in the UK is often almost impossible to predict, even with massive computers and hundreds of stations monitoring weather. Knowing exactly where clouds will drop rain is very difficult to know. Sometimes, it rains in Edgware and is sunny in Mill Hill. This year, the Mill Hill Music Festival cancelled an outdoor gig, because rain and Thunderstorms were predicted. They never materialised, although South West London had flash floods. This is what weather is like. If you see someone comparing a random day this year with last year, they simply don't understand that the wind in the UK was blowing in a different direction. 

Climate Change is a different thing all together. This has little to do with day-to-day weather. Climate change means that prevailing temperatures and rain patterns show a marked difference over a longer period of time, which results in physical changes to the landscape. This may mean crops won't grow, animals lose their environment, waterways disappear or flood become common place, when they weren't before. I went to Pune in India in 2015 and the locals told me that the dates for the monsoon, which used to be accurate almost to the day, had completely changed. Areas that, unlike the UK, are not surrounded by water, see this to a far greater extent. As my Dad noted, there are all manner of factors, which we may not understand until we see the effects in action. But the bottom line is that when climate changes and food supplies are affected, that results in huge impact on local populations.

Global Warming is different to climate change, although it is also a driver. This is the thing that the armchair army of tweeters understand least. They see clouds today, when we had glorious sunshine last July and announce that Global Warming is a myth. It is a shame that they don't actually understand what it means. Across the globe, there are tens of thousands of stations that monitor the temperatures, humidity, air pressure and wind levels. Any one of these, on any one day, records the weather. When you take the sum of them all, from across the whole planet, and analyse the changes over a number of years., this tells you whether the planet is warming up or cooling down. Having all of this data, is a relatively new phenominum. We have no idea of global temperatures in Roman or Neolithic times. Does that mean that the modelling we have now is invalid? Of course it doesn't. The job of scientists is to analyse the data, identify trends and postulate theories based on this data. The way science works is that until someone disproves a theory, we tend to accept it if the data supports it. Sadly, what climate change deniers and people who refute Global Warming tend to do is look at very small subsets of data to make their point. So the fact that it's raining in Edgware in July, to them means that the fact that subsistence farmers in sub saharan Africa cannot grow crops due to the changing climate is 'nonsense and a scam'. It may well be that the people who decry climate change and global warming are correct, but if they are, they need to base their theories on complete data sets, rather than a small subset that they can manipulate to suit their rather fatuous arguments.

If you want to know which way the wind is blowing in the UK, check out the Met Office Surface pressure charts. As you can see, the wind is coming off the Atlantic from the North West, which explains the clouds and the slightly lower temperatures. If it was coming from the opposite direction, the temperatures would most probably be 15-20 degrees hotter. 

 

Environment Monday - Should the UK stick to its net carbon zero target

 

We need carbon neutral, clean developments

Did you see the Conservative Leadership debate last night, where the candidates were asked whether they would stick to their net carbon zero target. You would think that being asked this the day before the UK had it's hottest day on record may have lead to a degree of caution. Strangely it seemed to inspire them to even more stupid responses. Apparently we can afford tax cuts, but we can't afford to try and save the planet. There was a time when Conservatives were supposed to be sensible and cautious. That seems to be a thing of history. The problem with the UK is that if a costly policy can be postponed it will be, if there is the slightest politcally expedient reason to do it. 

The truth is, one which the gutless fools refused to acknowledge, is that the reason our energy costs are going through the roof is because the UK has chosen to have no long term plan for energy security. If we'd started to decarbonise in an orderly fashion 40 years ago, when it was clear that there was a problem, we'd not be in the position we find ourselves in. If we'd changed planning laws to make new homes energy efficient and well insulated, with solar panels, then we wouldn't be sitting in our homes boiling. If we'd had a sensible strategy to move away from petrol and diesel cars, we'd have less exposure to hikes in oil prices. If we'd moved new homes to heat pump technology, we'd not be caught up in the mess of spiralling oil prices. 

What Truss, Sunak, Moradaunt and the other two forgot to say is that all of this will only get worse. By dropping our targets, we are exposing ourselves to the ever wilder fluctuations in prices. For a nation to be truly independent, we simply cannot afford to be at the long term whim of other nations. We should not only be investing in new green technologies, we should have a plan that means we know where our supplies will come from and what the costs will be. The country needs massive investment in energy storage, so the excess electricity produced by solar arrays today can be used when the sun isn't shining. We should be looking at hydrogen cell technology, which produces clean energy. 

The problem we have is that the schemes we have introduced are ones which penalise people who are least able to afford it. I installed solar panels when there were incentives to do so. I could do this as I am reasonably well off. Now I am paying nothing for my electricity when the sun shines. With the ever rising cost of electricity, I am doing OK out of this deal. If the government made it a planning condition that all new homes were well insulated and had solar panels, then those in new social housing would get some benefits. As it is it is only those who could afford to who have benefitted. 

What was shocking to me was that none of the candidates had anything positive to say about any sort of energy security plan, let alone a green one. The way to secure familes futures against spiralling enrgy costs is to ensure our supplies are reliable and the costs are fixed long term. 

Sadly we all know that there will climate change commentators claiming that there has always been hot weather. How many temperature records do we have to break before they admit there may be a problem. You can be sure that ion January when it is -5, they will say "Look there is no such thing as climate change". It will not be temperature records that ultimately force us to grasp the nettle. It will be the fact we need a reliable energy supply at a predictable cost, to allow businesses to plan. You'd think that Conservatives would get that?

Environment Monday - Everything you need to know about climate change

For many lay people, the issues around climate change can be confusing. We read about global warming, then the UK is hit by "The Beast from the East" and has the coldest winter for years. We read about climate change scientists, but most of us don't understand what they do, who funds them and why they are relevant to our daily lives. Most of us know that 'pollution is bad', we cough when a bus goes by spewing out diesel fumes, or when we get an asthma attack following a day where there is poor air quality, but many of us are unaware that climate change is none of these things, even if these issues are all inter related.

So what do we mean when we talk about climate change and how do we know whether it's real?

Climate change, is the effect on temperatures caused by increasing levels of greenhouse gasses.
The science is very simple. When we burn fossil fuels, we release carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. CO2 is a better insulator than than oxygen, so as the level of CO2 rises, the atmosphere retains heat better than it did previously. Different materials all have different properties when it comes to retaining heat. For example, metal loses heat far more quickly than wood. As the CO2 level rises, the heat from the Sun's energy is retained and temperatures go up.

What complicates the issue is that the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes up and dow naturally. We don't fully understand the process, that drives this, but its most likely down to the health of the ecosystem. Volcano's and the temperature of the Sun will clearly have some effect (The sun heats up and cools down periodically).

What we do know is that plants remove CO2 from the atmosphere and use the carbon to build structures, such as leaves, branches, stalks. These then die, decay and form peat, coal, oil etc. When humans  dig them up and burn them, we release the carbon back into the atmosphere as CO2. There is a  government website that explains the changing CO2 levels of this in detail, if you are interested. It supplied these two graphs

The changes are stark and worrying. As climate changes, the eco system changes and habitats become unable to sustain the established life forms, as any changes to delicate balances disrupt the way species interact. As temperatures rise, soil dries out quicker, meaning that plants with shallow roots etc start to struggle. It is far more complex than this, but that is a small picture of some of the reasons why it matters.

What are the different viewpoints on Climate change

There are four main viewpoints.

1. People who don't care.
Sadly, it seems that the vast majority of the population don't care about climate change. For many, it doesn't seem to affect them so they are not bothered. Like many things, by the time it affects you, it is too late. Think of cancer as an analogy (something I know a bit about). If you catch it and deal with it early, before it affects you, then you can fix it. It may not be pleasant, but you can stop it killing you. If you ignore the warning signs, then sadly you might not be able to take the required action in time.

2. People who don't know.
For some, it is all too confusing. So much of it seems contradictory, especially when the President of the USA says it's all nonsense and we should ignore the experts. Surely he's the president he must know? I have sympathy with anyone who is confused. I was before I researched the matter. What I read convinced me that we must err on the side of caution. Why?  Again, if I can use a cancer analogy. When I was diagnosed in 2011 with Prostate cancer, I followed, the advice of my doctor, to go onto a programme of active surveillance. This meant regular biposies and scans. A friend, who is into alternative medicine, told me that the medical profession were lying to the public about cancer and that it could be cured simply by lifestyle changes. He'd seen videos on the internet and was convinced. I religiously watched all of these. Most seemed to actually be selling food supplements. Some of it was sense. Eventually I settled on what seemed to be sensible lifestyle changes. In 2014, my friend was telling me that the fact that it hadn't developed was down to the changes. In 2015, the cancer became more aggressive. Then it was all the fault of the dodgy doctors and me not taking more supplements. Much as I love my friends, I would prefer to trust qualified doctors, who know what they are talking about. That is why I trust climate change scientists, rather than blokes in pubs and dodgy internet videos, peddling conspiracy theories. Even the big oil companies such as BP recognise the need for change, which is why BP have a growing renewables subsidiary BP acknowledge the need to tackle climate change. They would not be doing this if there wasn't hard scientific evidence.

3. Large vested interests defending fossil fuel industries.
Petrol, Gas, Oil and Shale are big business. The companies operating in these sectors have huge investments in the business. The CEO's of these companies are employed to defend the financial issues of the shareholders in the companies. Whilst some like BP acknowledge the need for change, there is a history of corporate dragging of feet. Companies fund all manner of studies and research, in the hope that they can find ways to justify a business as usual approach to fossil fuel production. Change hurts profits, so is not something they will do unless they have to. Climate change sceptics have often been funded by such organisations. This is not because they doubt the science, but because they take the commercial viewpoint that if they can delay changing their ways for a few years it will be good for the balance sheet. Some are looking for magic bullets to fix the problem, such as carbon capture schemes or looking for other sectors of the economy to clobber.  This is pretty normal capitalist corporate behaviour. Sadly not everyone realises that science is being manipulated simply to improve the balance sheets of large corporations. Have a look at this list of climate change deniers. Sadly it seems many are mislead by these people. That is why we need to set the record straight.

4. People who recognise the need for change.
Those of us who recognise the need for change need to to take action now. We have science on our side and we have reason on our side. One of the arguments of the vested interest is that the case is not proven. Going back to my cancer analogy and my friend who was a cancer treatment sceptic stated that I should not trust the specialist. I ignored his advice. The treatment was not pleasant, but four years later, I am in a good place. I don't know how my cancer would have progressed if I'd ignored my doctors and listened to the bloke in the pub. What I do know is that when it came down to it, I wasn't prepared to risk my life on the word of a bloke in the pub who'd watched a video on the internet. I had a responsibility to myself and my family to undergo some fairly unpleasant treatment. It is the same with climate change. We can't be 100% sure exactly what will happen, but we have a small window to make a big difference. We have a responsibility to ourselves and our children to be cautious and make changes.

You may say "what difference can I make?". There are many things you can do. I started this series to outline many of them. If you enjoyed this article, read the rest in the series. But today, there is only one thing I would ask you to do. It might not be easy, but please try. If you read this article and think it makes sense and you know someone who isn't really sure what Climate change is all about, ping this onto their Facebook page or email it to them. Ask them to read it and ask them what they think of what I had to say. If they ask you a question you can't answer by all means ping me an email. I will do my best to get you an answer. If I get a few meaty questions, then I may put them into a blog. If you are a climate change sceptic, by all means email me, with the science that supports your arguments. It is only by discussing such matters in a sane and rational manner that we can hope to fix the problems of the world. And if you don't want to fix the problems facing the world, please don't email me, as we really have nothing in common.

Environment Monday - If Greta Thunberg was a bloke she wouldn't get all this nonsense

I was pretty busy yesterday, hence didn't have time to post my scheduled Environment Monday blog. I thought the Thomas Cook story was more important and needed the focus. As a result I rescheduled the blog I'd been working on for next Monday. I hadn't intended to write anything on the subject this week. I had to pick my daughter up yesterday and when when we returned, I watched News at Ten. There was a small piece on Greta Thunberg addressing the United Nations. I thought to myself "Wow, that is a pretty powerful speech for a sixteen year old". I thought back to myself at that age. How would I have been able to deal with addressing the great and good? I had nothing but admiration for her gumption and passion. It was the biggest moment of her life and she got on global news. She has become the face of the campaign to reverse climate change.

“Right here, right now is where we draw the line. The world is waking up. And change is coming, whether you like it or not.”
My full speech in United Nations General Assembly. #howdareyou https://t.co/eKZXDqTAcP

— Greta Thunberg (@GretaThunberg) September 23, 2019

I have no illusions about how hard it must be for her. When I was sixteen, I had strong views about many things. I joined CND, I joined Friends of The Earth and  I formed a band to get my points across. It took us 18 months before our first gig and I was terrified when I played in front of 100 mates. It was so terrifying that our lead singer, who I'd founded the band with bottled it and didn't show up. Greta wasn't playing to 100 mates. She was playing to the whole world and some of the most powerful people in the world were watching her. The stress I had if the gig went wrong was that a few mates would think I was a plonker. She had the hopes of a billion young people on her shoulders.  I can only imagine how hard that was and if she was a bit emotional, it is understandable. A few  years ago, I went on a business trip to India. It is not only teenagers who are affected by ssuch stress. One of my colleagues had to give a presentation to the board of the large multi national company we were seeing. He had a panic attack, left the room and said to me "you do it". This was a man with decades of industry experience. Make no mistake, it isn't easy. She did amazingly well.

I wanted to see more, so I did what I always do. I went on Twitter to find a link. I mistakenly put in Greta Thunberg and was disgusted to see a complete torrent of bile. Sadly, the vast majority of it comes from the demopgraphic I sit in, white men of a certain age. I was ashamed. What's worse was that it was sexist, demeaning and patronising. I was so sickened that I was prompted to post a tweet myself.

I was impressed with @GretaThunberg speaking at UN. For all the nasty trolls criticising her, wtf had you done at that age? What was the most important audience you’d addressed? What have you done to make the world a better place? Crawl back under your stones

— Roger Tichborne/RogT #CTID 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧 (@Barneteye) September 23, 2019

It seems that a lot of people agreed with me. All manner of strangers have liked it and retweeted it and it has had a massive response. Given her age, not only do I think the response has been a form of bullying, I think it verges on child abuse. I am not at all surprised that people with criminal records for such things have jumped on this bandwagon.

The sad truth is that if Greta Thunberg was a young man, she'd have to put up with none of this. Sure, she'd have to put up with people attacking her arguments, but not for all of the sexism and patronising comments. I am proud of Greta Thunberg. As the father of two adult daughters, I want a world where women are judged by what they have to say, not by their lack of a penis, their looks and the colour of their hair. To me it is criminal that Twitter allows such hate. I hope that by the time Greta Thunberg is my age, such sexism will be seen as a thing of historical oddity, rather like the way women could not vote was in the earlier part of the last century. As a society, we need to grow up. If you look at Greta and see anything other than someone who you should admire, even if you disagree with her, then it is you that has a problem, not her. As I said in my tweet, what have you done to make the world a better place. If you can't answer that positively, STFU.

Guest Blog : A message from Kenya

By Fr Jim Fanning MHM

Dear Friends,

How was your year? It is customary at the end of the day in the Church to reflect on all the blessings we have received during the day and repent of any failings. Well we thank God that this year has been a year of relative peace in East Africa and that the road building programme has continued with good roads at last from Nairobi to Kampala. The long delayed under water fibre optic cable has arrived and we are now promised high speed internet access in line with the rest of the world.

These are three big blessings but the big disaster has been the weather. I have never known such an irregular and poor rainfall. Instead of our usual afternoon downpours we seem to have had just sprinklings of rain. Often the clouds have built up with black skies and then nothing comes of it. There was both water and electricity rationings in Nairobi and many people and livestock have died in Kenya because of drought and crop failure. There has been a dawning realisation that cutting down trees is partly responsible for the poor rainfall. Sections of the Mau forest which have been cut down will now have to be replanted.

My work has taken me much further afield this year with visits to my old mission in Basankusu in the Congo in June and to Anglophone Cameroon in November. Everywhere people seem ready to support their own missionaries from Africa. This year has seen our numbers of African Mill Hill Missionaries rise from 15 to 18, with the newly ordained being appointed to more distant fields in Pakistan and the Philippines. One of the first African missionaries Fr. Ephraim Odhiambo, who was ordained in 1996, has now arrived in England to do mission promotion there. For years we have heard predictions that peoples from Africa will bring the faith back to Europe.

I continue to ply the highways and byways of Kenya and Uganda in my red Suzuki Grand Vitara with  ‘Friends of Mill Hill’ written on the door. It enables me to pass without many questions and difficulties back and forwards through the borders of Kenya and Uganda as well as the police checkpoints.

I have had many nice visitors this year. Fr. Sebastian Park from Korea came to visit me at

Easter. We travelled together from Kampala to Nairobi visiting all the beautiful spots in Kampala, Jinja (source of the Nile), Tororo, Kisumu, Masai Mara and Nairobi . I also enjoyed the company of my niece Alicia who came out to visit her Dad, my brother Paul, around the same time. Her brother John Paul with his girlfriend Danielle also paid us a joint visit just after the departure of Fr. Sebastian. Following that my sister Mary came to visit once again in September. She is becoming a regular visitor and this time we managed to finish with a very nice stay in the southern beach at Mombasa. Visitors are always nice to have as they pull me out of my routine and give me a chance to see places which otherwise I would not visit. Having reflected on the year and thanked God for his blessings I am aware too of my shortcomings and wrong directions. Sometimes we err in the things we do and other times it is in the things we fail to do. I won’t bore you with the details of all this but just simply ask you for your prayers.

In 2010 I look forward to celebrating my 60^th birthday. I am beginning to feel that my time on the road should be coming to an end soon. I have been mobile now for ten years and whilst relatively still in good health I would dearly like to work in a parish for a few years before I get too old. I am eyeing my old diocese of Basankusu in the Congo (DRC) as my next appointment if I can convince my superiors in two years time. I feel more comfortable having a focus for the future. Please keep praying for me and helping me. I love doing this missionary work of witnessing to Our Lord Jesus Christ.

It is his birthday which is the occasion for writing  this letter and I wish you all a happy and holy Christmas celebration and once again a peaceful New Year,

With much love and prayers,

Father Jim Fanning MHM

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Fr Jim Fanning is a Missionary working in East Africa. He was born and raised in Mill Hill before joining the order and being ordained in 1973. His work is supported by many people in Mill Hill.

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