Extreme weather will go on and on, scientists say

What you need to know:

  • The government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, said just last week that there is already enough CO2 heating up the atmosphere to ensure extreme weather for the next 25 years.

The British are notorious for boring on about the weather, but this year at least we might be forgiven. Spring has arrived – that’s official – yet March has been colder than the peak of winter in December and January.

One family, trapped by snow in their remote Welsh farmhouse, broke up and burned old furniture to keep warm; a young man froze to death in a Lancashire field having lost his way after a night out with friends; and a house collapsed in Cornwall after heavy rain, killing the elderly woman inside.

Day after day, news bulletins have begun, “Thousands of homes are without power and many roads impassable as severe weather affects much of the United Kingdom.” Or, “Bitterly cold winds from frozen Europe will persist all this week.” Or, “Scores of motorists slept in their cars after being trapped in blinding snowstorms.”

The National Farmers’ Union warned that hundreds of farmers across Britain are facing ruin as livestock struggle to survive and crops rot in waterlogged fields.

Blizzards have been claiming the lives of new-born lambs and forcing farmers to work all hours to keep stranded animals alive.

The freezing early months of 2013 represent a double disaster for many farmers who have not yet recovered from the sodden summer of 2012.

Debate is endless about new weather patterns, the effects of climate change, melting ice caps and floods. For while Britain right now is suffering from extreme cold, not long ago the problem was drought and in some countries, famine.

January of 1963 was the coldest month of the 1900s in Britain, with an average temperature of minus 2.1C. I can testify to that because it was part of my first leave from my job in Kenya.

Throughout my holiday, I never saw ground without snow, not a single professional football match was played and my mother piled so many blankets on the bed of her shivering boy from Africa, I could hardly turn over.

Wreak havoc

That couldn’t have been climate change, could it? Fifty years ago, nobody was sending loads of CO2 into the atmosphere to wreak havoc on our weather.

But I’m not a sceptic. Listen to the experts and the case for climate change is overwhelming.

The government’s chief scientist, Professor Sir John Beddington, said just last week that there is already enough CO2 heating up the atmosphere to ensure extreme weather for the next 25 years.

“The evidence that climate change is happening is unequivocal,” he said. “The current variation in temperatures and rainfall is double the average. This suggests we will have more droughts, more floods, more sea surges and more storms in quite a short timescale. There is a need for urgency in tackling this problem.”

A drawback, the professor said, was that the build-up –and the reduction – of CO2 is so slow that efforts to cut back now will not affect the situation for years.

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Coincidence stories make fascinating reading and the strangest I ever came across concerned a man who went to open a bank account. “This is your account number,” the clerk said and the customer stared in shock. He then pulled up his sleeve and revealed a six-digit number tattooed on his arm. It was the ID number he received in a Nazi concentration camp. The numbers were identical.

Something of a coincidence happened to me recently, though a lesser one. I greeted an African guy at church. He said he was studying for a Master’s at one of our universities, that he was from Uganda and his name was Leonard.

A few weeks later, another black guy appeared. He told me he was studying for a Master’s at the university, that he was from Uganda and his name was Leonard.

Once I had established that I was not the victim of some elaborate joke, the two Leonards told me they had never met before but when they did, they also discovered that they came from the same area of Uganda.

And by the way, Leonard, they say, is not a common name back home.

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Thank God for church bulletins, from which the following items were taken verbatim:

– Miss Charlene Mason sang, “I will not pass this way again,” to the obvious pleasure of the congregation.

– The Low Self-Esteem Support Group will meet on Thursday. Please use the back door.

– Weight Watchers will meet at the First Presbyterian Church. Please use the large double door.

– Irving Benson and Jessie Carter were married on October 24. So ends a friendship that began in their school days.

– At the evening service tonight, the sermon topic will be, “What is Hell?” Come early and hear our choir practise.

– A bean supper will be held on Tuesday in the church hall. Music will follow.