Snow Use Grumbling

It’s all gone very festive outside Rob Towers.  There is snow on the ground.  Not a huge amount it has to be said – but certainly the white, scenic carpet so beloved by Christmas card designers.   This morning I had the dubious pleasure of accompanying my dog across some fields that were an unblemished white landscape.

Then the illusion was shattered when I turned on breakfast television to be informed that England was now on something approaching a war footing.  There was a rather chilly looking girl somewhere near a place called Royston where a car was parked on the side of the road.  It had been abandoned apparently because of the harsh conditions.  A similar story was brought to us live from Heathrow, where if we could ignore the traffic going about its business on the A4 – and the unceasing flow of planes taking off… well there might be a problem if your flight started at Luton.

It was a similar story of mass mayhem on the local news.  The last day of the school term was now yesterday – because all the local schools were apparently closed for the day.  The old chestnut of how does the bloke who drives the snowplough get to drive the snowplough was re-written by the stoic camera crews of Look East, who had not just got there – they filmed the aforementioned gritters and snow ploughs setting off through a couple of inches of snow.

All of which got me wondering.  When exactly did a sprinkling of snow become such a problem?   First World War veterans may longer be with us, but every pub has its survivor of the great freeze of the early 60’s when life carried on despite snow and frost being with us for months on end. 

Just think, if the great freeze of nine sixty whatever it was happened now, not only would it all be the fault of global warming.  The entire country would starve to death, education would cease – and our cars would fall apart from lack of use. 

So life went on despite huge volumes of snow in the 1960’s.  But the country now ceases to function if any snow falls at all.  When?  Why?  Maybe it is all part of 21^st century life.  Towards the end of the 1990’s, I distinctly remember being chucked off a broken down train in the 1990s at Bishops Stortford because the train had broken down due to ‘the wrong sort of snow’.   I can’t imagine Victorian steam trains had such a technological problem.

Maybe technology is to blame.  In an era when people can’t exist without useless gizmos with things called ‘apps’ a little bit of adverse weather is well, just a bit too adverse to be bothered with.  My own cynical theory is that this is why people nowadays are so concerned with global warming.  They like a gizmo to make things faster, easier, better.  And as the weather refuses to be controlled or even occasionally play ball – then it is best pretend the world will end – unless we do something (or anything).  As if that is going to make the slightest bit of difference.

Global Warming

It’s raining again.  Rain doesn’t do today’s rather feisty weather justice.  It is pouring buckets, cats and dogs, accompanied by lightning bolts and deafening  thunder claps.  I simply daren’t go outside and take the dog for a walk.  An unusual year this – it seems to have been raining every day since Wimbledon – yet it was bone-dry during the oft-rain sodden tennis event. 

 

Yet during Wimbledon, when the weather was actually rather nice – the government got concerned.  A hot weather warning was issued.  Obviously not enough people were dropping dead from Swine Flu to be concerned about – so they were worried about some sunny weather instead.

 

I must be one of the few people in the world that doesn’t really belive in global warning.  I still believe in the phrase ‘nice summer’s day for example.  And I like to sit outside with a drink at the end of the day – despite the hidden dangers lurking in all that sunshine.

 

You see to my mind the eco-terrorists that think me changing my light bulbs will make a better world are missing a few salient points.  Now granted, if any of them were born in 1976 – but there were a good few summer’s days that year too.  In fact it was bone dry for months on end.  Even Test matches went on for 5 days with no interruptions for the rain.  Yet nobody bleated about global warming, no government minister read stupid platitudes from an autocue.  We simply made the most of the hot weather, safe in the knowledge that we wouldn’t see another year like it for years.

 

We. Still haven’t of course.  In point of fact, ever since somebody invented global warming, carbon footprints, ozone layer holes etc – our summers have gone largely cold and distinctly damp.  Which is all down to global warming of course.

 

There was an interesting photo in the Times yesterday.  The village of Lynmouth in North Devon had been hit by a freak storm of biblical proportions.  Nine inches of rain fell in 24 hours.  Over 100 buildings were destroyed.  34 cars were washed out to sea from roads that had become raging torrents.  420 people were made homeless – and a staggering 34 people lost their lives.  It happened in August 1952.

 

The eco-warriors are simply busting for some such tragedy to strike again – or a hurricane to sweep in and turn Sevenoaks into Oneoaks as happened so memorably in 1987.

 

The funny thing is it WILL happen.  Britain is a temperate island that occasionally has violent storms.  The very worst one on record occurred in November 1703 – even I don’t remember that one.  But global warming was not to blame – it is simply a fact of nature.

There is no such thing as average rainfall and average sunshine.  The are simply convenient statistics.  So it is nonsense to take random events and extrapolate a bleak future.

 

Sure Britain and the world is warming up.  It has been for a few hundred thousand years since the last ice age.  But Britain now is colder than it was in Roman times.  So if you wanted too – you could claim with statistical back up that we are actually suffering global cooling.  And all those flatulent cows, gas-guzzling cars, Indian and Chinese power stations are doing us a big favour.