Drought

I’m finding the drought increasingly depressing. Our garden is suffering now quite badly. Annette is saving water even directing the washing machine into a watering can. By this means she is ensuring the flowers on the patio are thriving. Everything else is suffering. I am watering our French beans as we value the crop and there aren’t many. Adjacent marrow ( courgette ) plants are also getting water but a other than that we are in the hands of nature.

I had been carefully cultivating a replacement heather patch. We inherited one which I liked but it became overgrown and out of control. About 8 years ago I cleared it completely and started again. The heathers took a long time to grow and it is only in the past couple of years that it had started to merge plants into a satisfying bed. Now one has died completely and there are signs of distress in others. It doesn’t help that they are in probably the driest area very near to tree shadow. And of course in full sun which doesn’t help at all.

Fruit is very early. I’ve been picking blackberries for a few days which is about a month earlier than I expected. The crop looks decent helped by the fact that that they have spread now I am cultivating much less ground. Plums look ripe and are falling so I need to start picking soon.

Apples look a mixed bag. Mature trees appear to have good crops but trees planted on dwarfing rootstock about ten years ago are looking dodgy. The problem appears to be that they are producing a lot of small fruit which aren’t maturing. I’ve been thinning the fruit quite vigorously in the hope that fewer fruit will mature better. We shall see.

Clearly it is difficult to make a direct link with global warming. However an item in “New Scientist” .sees a clear statistical link with the probability of extreme weather sharply increased. Certainly the general climate forecast seems to have been supported by the experience with extreme events occurring more frequently.

There is a glib assumption that the UK will benefit from a few degrees temperature rise. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that as extremes inflict problems whether flooding, drought, gales etc. . The feature I dread is a big change to the Gulfstream, that Atlantic flow which has given the UK an equable mild climate even though we are quite far north on the globe. If the Gulfstream becomes less influential we will end up with a climate like Norway with heavy winter snowfalls and low temperatures combined with bursts of summer drought.

There is some action taking place. The global consensus of restricting greenhouse gas emissions to below a 1.5C rise now looks unachievable- it will be higher. In some areas there is recognition that that a switch away from fossil fuel burning is essential. It is interesting that China as a command economy, has extremely ambitious targets. Sadly Trump in his profound stupidity is doing his best to ensure USA nationally does nothing. What is heartening is that much of the US is proceeding without him and moving to reduce fossil fuel use. The USA is home of the premier electric car company, Tesla, in the world. It is also true that Tesla are planning to expand in China where the government is savvy enough to see that a good position in electric vehicles will be a big competitive advantage in the future. It is also true that the Chinese suffer badly from air pollution which is a big reason to move away from fossil fuels.

The green claque are fond of criticising big oil companies ignoring the fact that they are responding to demand  not creating it. This looks very much like blaming the other feller rather than seeing what individuals can do in their own lives.Similarly the green lobby actions on nuclear power don’t seem very helpful.  Big oil is certainly positioning themselves for a time where service stations are about charging points not petrol pumps.

It is very unfortunate that many green groups are captured by the extreme left wingers. They have an agenda of blaming fossil fuel companies and the free market economy in general for climate issues. This is well put by something I’ve read about them being “melons” ie. green on the outside, red on the inside. Frankly climate change is too serious for this posturing which only increases suspicion among deniers.

I’m reviving the idea of ending with a joke.

A man went into a bookshop and asked the woman behind the counter “Do you keep stationary here?”

“No” she said” sometimes I wriggle about a bit”