Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
Well, it’s stopped being dark and cold and miserable, and right now it’s being sunny and cold and not-so-miserable. Somebody once told me that the reason the English are so obsessed by the weather is because nothing interesting ever happens here. Or maybe they said it was because it was the most interesting thing that happens.
Bearing in mind the old Chinese proverb – ‘May you live in interesting times!’ – I’m becoming a bit bored with interestingness, climatologically-speaking. I’ve often thought how lovely it would be to live somewhere that varies from warm to hot in the day and rains every night just after midnight for an hour or two. If you know of such a place, please tell me where it is and I’ll start packing.
Mankind’s ridiculous aversion to change
The evidence for climate change seems to me to be pretty conclusive, as is the need to start using the obvious things for generating energy, such as ocean currents and solar power, but I suppose mankind’s ridiculous aversion to change is stopping us from backing these things until the cost of petrol goes so high that only oligarchs can afford it.
Apparently last year, after the drought was announced, the meteorological system stepped in and pushed the jet stream down a bit so it blew right over us, bringing all that wonderful wet rain from across the Atlantic to our rescue, instead of dumping it on the Scottish Isles and out to sea up in the northern regions. This apparently stopped any rain from falling across the U.S.A., causing their harvest to fail and resulting in higher food prices.
Eddies between us and Norway
This year so far the jet stream is over northern Europe instead of the Mediterranean Sea, and that’s causing eddies between us and Norway, which is swishing very cold wind down over us, which is why we’re freezing our fingers off instead of doing the garden in shorts and sunhats, as we were this time last year.
In the Pacific they have a benign current called El Niño, which occasionally flows the wrong way, bringing drought and famine to one continent and flood and ruin to the other. I don’t know why that happens, but it’s no fun. We depend on a similar current, the Gulf Stream, which gives us lovely Cornwall summers and makes winter New York so much colder than London.
Worth fighting over
I wouldn’t like the Gulf Stream to flow the other way. Apparently it might if enough cold fresh water melted off Greenland and pushed it off-course.
The thing about global warming is that it’s not local, it’s truly global. So when the world gets warmer on average, some places are going to become colder, and wet places will become wetter and dry places dryer. So water could well become more precious and dangerous than previous commodities like gold or oil, and thus worth fighting over.
It’s customary for people who go on about this to predict Doom and Disaster, but I have more faith. Disasters are always with us, although we sometimes fail to notice them or misname them. For instance, was there ever a war that was less than a Disaster? How long have the awful droughts and epidemics being going on in Africa even though we have the technology to stop them? But Doom hasn’t happened for a very long time.
When did we last have Doom?
The last time we had Doom, by my reckoning, was 64 million years ago, and it was only Doom for the dinosaurs. It turned out to be the making of mammals, ourselves included. We’ve had a pretty good time of it, the last 64 million years, so far. Tough for the dinosaurs though.
I really believe that we have the brains and knowledge to save ourselves from whatever disasters face us. I think we will find ways to deal with the things that get thrown at us, even when they’re our fault, and I think we will go on.
But I don’t think we’ll ever manage to make the weather behave in a predictable manner, and part of me rather hopes it never will.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
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Image: US Federal Government under CC
Image: Micky ! under CC BY 2.0
