Rough Winds in May

Yesterday as much rain fell on South Wales in a day as normally falls in the month of May. Unseasonably cold temperatures make the British Isles rather unpleasant now; hail has fallen upon some and in London rough winds have shaken those buds brave enough to appear, even though their appearance has been delayed by the cold weather until now. Snow has fallen in Devon, once called the British Riviera in May.  Centrica, owner of British gas, has sold 20% more gas to households in the past six months than it usually sells over the same period in past years.

A cold Easter and our greed and carelessness

The weather this Easter has been odd for Easter. Easter lambs are trapped under snowfalls as a rare cold easterly wind sends temperatures down to below freezing; Easter is early this year and Easter Sunday sees the day when the clocks are would back an hour, the start of longer evenings but the weather takes no notice. The biosphere is loaded with heat in places where it has not such year for a hundred millennia and the great oscillations have been moved fractionally to change their behaviour which has been more or less predictable for centuries. Now the oscillations are less predictable and more unpredictable.

The Plight of the Bumble Bee

When Arthur Conan Doyle retired Sherlock Holmes for the last time, he had the fictional detective spending his retirement keeping bees. It is, like coarse fishing, a most innocent occupation. Bees live in hives and serve for humans two purposes. They product honey, and everyone needs a little honey in their lives, and they pollenate plants.

Spring will come, but not just yet

It is a cold day in London. It is almost snowing as winter tries to hold on to its season. The welcome long days will warm the earth, but the cold wind from the north will freeze the bones that lie buried there. Spring will come, but not just yet, not just yet. It will be a cold night on London. Spring will come, but not just yet, not just yet.

Water, flooding and drainage

If my thinking on global warming is right then in the United Kingdom we will have more rainfall. The United Kingdom is growing its population and there are plenty of more people who are settling in these islands than there are who leave these islands. That means we will build more houses, more roads and more concrete based infrastructure, and that means that the increased rainfall that I expect will not be sinking into the grounds as much as running off it. That means, if I am right, more and more flooding.

Our lease of life: the environment is our landlord

The environment is our landlord and what we use from it we rent, we do not buy.

Quiet Days in London

It is quiet in London today. There is not much traffic and not much activity, as people seem to extend the New Year’s Day holiday into a week’s worth. We have had many holidays this year in the United Kingdom. London is quiet.

The winter sun rose as I went into work this morning. Just after eight o’clock and will set at just after four o’clock, as the days length in the earth’s cycle around the sun. In two days’ time we shall have eight hours of day light and by the 18^th March we shall have more daylight in twenty four hours than darkness. I like to see the days get longer and light spread upon the land, enabling new growth. The only thing that stops me from wishing it to be summer now is that if I made that wish and it came true I would be wishing my life away.

the creativity and destruction of nature makes all our greatest creations and destructions no more than the vain boast of a foolish mind

With less than three days to go 2012 has proved to be the wettest year in the United Kingdom since records began one hundred and two years ago. It has rained and it has rained and it has rained.

The machine stops

Some of us might be dreaming of a white Christmas, but in the West of Britain they might well experience a very wet Christmas. Floods are happening as a write in Cornwall, on the shortest day of the year and for some these floods are following the clear up after floods that happened a few weeks ago.

The Threat to Small Island States

I suppose that places like Nauru are what we think of as desert islands. It is located in the Pacific Ocean and happens to be the world’s smallest independent republic and probably only has that status because what it has is not of much interest to its neighbours, the nearest of which is 180 miles away.