WORLD EXCLUSIVE!! Sunak's secret global warming speech to Tory MPs!

Stop the boats! Stop the ULEZ! Stop the Green Cr*p! Stop the Woke Climate Blob!

That's how we'll win the next General Election!

Now, of course, saving the world from frying and ensuring our children and grandchildren have a planet to live on involves making some tough choices, and I've made them! I've taken the tough decision to delay all the action we Tories promised we would take to fight global warming! We know saving the planet is important, it's just that saving my job and the job of Tory MPs is more important!

I've also taken the incredibly tough decision to scrap a whole lot of laws that don't exist! 

Now, we can't have action to fight global warming making people in Britain poorer. That's Brexit's job!

And speaking of Brexit, I know some of you have been concerned that my promise to be honest about global warming means that I might start being honest about Brexit! Don't worry. There'll be no nonsense of that kind! And, by the way, I'm not really being honest about global warming either! There will be no backsliding from the Conservative policy of lying whenever it's convenient.

So Stop the Boats, Stop the Ulez and we Tories can rule for another five years, or until the end of the world, whichever comes sooner.

Our climate really IS getting stormier

Rainstorms really are getting worse. Examining how the UK's weather has changed, the Met Office concluded that heavy downpours were 17% more common in the decade from 2008 to 2017 than they had been between 1961 and 1990.

It also says that our climate is warming up, with hot spells lasting twice as long as they did between 1961 and 1990, and our hottest days nearly a degree warmer than they used to be, while our coldest days are more than a degree and a half milder than between 1961 and 1990. And the number of 'tropical nights' when the temperature never gets below 20 degC (68F) is going up too.

A stormier climate is precisely what scientists have been saying global warming would cause, and the United Nations is now calling for 'unprecedented' action across the world to slash carbon emissions to zero by 2050, and stop the temperature rising more than 1.5 degC above pre-industrial levels.

For more on how climate change affects storms, as well as the history of storms, the role they have played in religion, art, films and literature, plus the methods people have used to try to tame them, see my book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion). https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Nature-Culture-John-Withington/dp/1780236611

Radio interviews on the history of storms and 'Storm: Nature and Culture'

Interviewed on Talk Radio Europe last week by Dave Hodgson about the history and future of storms, how storms changed history, climate change, global warming and my book: Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion).

Interview is in two parts. Part 1 is here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bOZFSMmmaU&feature=youtu.be

And this is part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWkGy7i3C9c&feature=youtu.be

Wars, ethnic rivalries and weather

Last year, nearly 102,000 people were killed in armed conflicts across the world according to the Peace Research Institute Oslo. Many of them died in civil wars, and since 1946, two-thirds of civil wars have been fought between rival ethnic groups.

But climate-related problems, like crop failures, also play a role. Research published last year found that between 1980 and 2010, 23% of civil wars coincided with climate-related disasters in countries with deep ethnic divides. And worryingly global warming may make this kind of disaster more common.

Delving back into history, another study discovered that outbreaks of violence against Jews often seemed to be linked with economic shocks. The authors examined more than 1,360 pogroms or expulsions in more than 930 cities between 1100 and 1800, and plotted them against falls in temperature big enough to reduce crop yields.

They found that a fall of just one third of a degree increased the danger of a pogrom or an exclusion by half over the next five years. As we have seen recently, in times of economic difficulty or disappointment, it is very tempting to blame people who are different in some way.

For more on the link between global warming and war, see my posts of 21 September and 25 November, 2009.

Storms and floods: Met Office says they'll get worse

New analysis from the Met Office says there is an increased risk of ‘unprecedented’ winter downpours in the UK, perhaps even worse than those that caused the major floods of 2014. Its supercomputers have calculated that for each year over the next decade, there is a one in three chance of record rainfall in an English or Welsh region.

In my book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion 2016), I noted that four of Britain’s five wettest years since records began have happened since 2000. Globally, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which seeks a consensus from the views of thousands of eminent scientists all over the world, predicts fiercer rainstorms ‘over many areas’.

In my previous book Flood (Reaktion 2013) I quoted a United Nations report from 2011 which said the number of natural disasters had quintupled over the previous four decades, and that most of the increase could be attributed to what it called ‘hydro-meteorological’  events, including storms and floods.

I also wrote about a UK government report in 2012 which concluded that climate change would greatly increase the danger of flooding, saying the number of people at risk could more than double to 3.6 million by 2050.    

Free talk on storms TONIGHT, North London

What were the deadliest storms ever? Which storms changed the course of history?  How have storms been portrayed in literature, art and films? What impact have they had on religions?And are they going to get even stronger?

These are some of the topics I will be tackling in my free talk at Highgate Library Civic and Cultural Centre, Croftdown Road, London NW5 1HB at 1930 tonight.

The talk is based on my book, Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion).

Are storms getting worse?

Most scientists now believe the world is warming up, with 15 of the hottest 16 years on record all happening since 2001; 2014 and 2015 both setting records as the hottest ever, and 2016 likely to surpass them both. Global warming would be expected to bring more powerful storms because it means more water evaporates into the air, and warmer air can hold more vapour so when it does rain, the downpours are heavier.

My new book, Storm: Nature and Culture describes how the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which seeks a consensus from the views of thousands of scientists all over the world, predicts that downpours and tropical storms will indeed get more powerful.

Global warming makes sea levels rise, so when storms whip up the oceans, they become even more devastating. And every day, there are 200,000 more humans – more people to be hurt, and more property to be damaged. Britain’s worst ever storm was the Great Storm of 1703, which killed about 8,000 on land and sea. A study found that if it happened again today, 18 million homes would be at risk.

The IPCC has warned that rising seas and more powerful storms could make a number of major cities, such as Mumbai, uninhabitable.

Storm: Nature and Culture also explores the role of storms in religion, art, films and literature, examines how storms have changed the course of history, and tells the story of the worst storms of all time.

Lightning kills more than 50 in Bangladesh

More than 50 people have been killed by lightning in Bangladesh over the last few days, and scores have been injured. In total, over 90 have been killed since March, compared with 51 in the whole of last year.

Most of the victims were working in the fields, though two students were struck as they played football in the capital, Dhaka. March to May is the worst time of the year for thunderstorms, and more are expected over the next week or so.

M. Abdul Mannan, a meteorology department official, said storms had been getting more severe over the last 30 years because of climate change. He blamed this year’s exceptionally hot weather for the increase in deaths, while the Bangladesh Disaster Preparedness Forum said the felling of trees was also a factor.

Lightning is also India’s deadliest natural disaster, killing at least 1,500 people every year since 2003. (See my post of 7 September 2015. See also my posts of 1 July 2011 and 4 July 2015.)

*My new book Storm: Nature and Culture (Reaktion Books) is due out in September.

Floods: chronicle of a disaster foretold

Late in 2013, my book Flood: Nature and Culture was published by Reaktion Books. It noted the devastating floods seen across the world the previous year, and ended with a question:-

'Are we witnessing nothing more than the normal ups and downs of the climate? Or are those calculations by so many scientists right: does mankind now face a struggle with floods the like of which we have never seen before?'

Many people in the north of the UK in particular must have been asking something similar as the rainfall records I wrote about in the book keep being broken, leading more and more politicians to concede that what they had been categorising as 'exceptional' might, in fact, be becoming normal. The Environment Agency has admitted that a 'complete rethink' may be needed on flood defences.

In Flood, I also noted that in the United States, of the 48 Republican candidates for the Senate mid-term elections of 2010, all but one either denied the existence of global warming or opposed any action to combat it. It will be interesting to note what shift in opinion, if any, we see on the American right as the next year's presidential election looms.

Flood on Amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Flood-Nature-Culture-John-Withington/dp/1780231962/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451496198&sr=1-1&keywords=flood+nature+and+culture

Global warming - 'no one will escape untouched'

‘Nobody on this planet is going to be untouched by the impacts of climate change.’ So said Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, as the panel’s latest report warns of ‘severe, pervasive and irreversible’ effects.

The dangers it anticipates include greater flooding in some areas, along with water shortages in others. It foresees declining crop yields just as the world’s population races up to 9 billion. The panel says the amount of evidence on the effects of global warming has doubled since its last report in 2007.

There are plenty of people who still deny that climate change represents a threat at all, but this latest IPCC report has been criticised by others for being too optimistic. Apparently a view has been taken that if the panel paints too gloomy a picture, politicians will just give up trying to do anything.

The report is based on more than 12,000 peer-reviewed scientific studies, and is said to be the most comprehensive assessment ever of the threat to the world from global warming. 

*See my book Flood: Nature and Culture for more on how global warming may increase the risk of flooding.

Global warming and wars + deadly cyclone anniversary

Researchers at the University of California believe they have shown that global warming directly increases the chance of wars in Africa. Looking back over the period 1981-2002, they have calculated that conflicts are 50% more likely in hotter years. The war in Darfur is often cited as the first major conflict directly caused by climate change. (see my blog of Sept 21)

Meanwhile in the UK, the Royal Society, the Met Office, and the Natural Environment Research Council have issued an alarming warning about the environmental effects of global warming. And all this as expectations for next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen grow more and more depressed.

On this day…170 years ago, a cyclone is said to have killed 300,000 people as it whipped up 40 foot waves that devastated the area around Coringa at the mouth of the Ganges on India’s east coast. The storm also destroyed 20,000 boats.

Fifty years earlier in December 1789, a cyclone produced three tidal waves in the area that are supposed to have drowned 20,000.