Climate emergency

[Marigold]

I'd been wondering whether to post this in the Nature Notes thread, but decided it needs a thread to itself, for our observations.
For a start, see https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/may/29/weather-forecasts-are-ignoring-the-drought-in-england
and the embedded link in the reader's letter.
For years I've been planting for a dry garden on our chalky soil, in the expectation of drought in July onwards, but already this year it's so dry I've had to top up the pond with tap water and keep watering new plantings. Weather presenters (and tabloid front pages) that hail the 'good news' of hot, sunny conditions are one of my main annoyances as well. Don't they realise we are in a climate emergency?

 

[Hen-Gen]

Does sound serious though whether it’s due to climate change or just a short term variation has yet to be established.
We have another annoyance with the weather forecasts. As in “temperatures will range from 9C in the north of Scotland to 20C in the south east” even though there’s a 7C over us. I didn’t realise we’d ceded from the UK!
Still, better than Ch 5 news where the map ends at Orkney and we don’t even exist.

 

[Marigold]

Does sound serious though whether it’s due to climate change or just a short term variation has yet to be established.

Sorry, HenGen - only too well established, I'm afraid. Just Google 'best evidence for climate change' and numerous reputable reports will come up.
eg https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/global-warming-real/
or https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
or https://www.wwf.org.uk/updates/10-myths-about-climate-change

- just a few.

 

[Hen-Gen]

Sorry. I wasn’t very clear. I absolutely do believe in climate change and that it is man made. What I meant to say was that we have to be careful not to attribute every variation to this.

 

[bigyetiman]

Even more worrying Hen- Gen on a programme the other day they stated the most northerly part of UK is the Orkney's, so where have you drifted off to ?

 

[LadyA]

I was just remarking to someone on FB that in the 20 years I've been in this house, the storms we get every year have gotten noticeably stronger and more frequent than they used to be. It can get quite nerve wracking here at times. We were talking about solar panels on the roof, and while I'd love to have solar power, I'd be very nervous of anything attached to my roof, in some of the storms we get here now!

 

[Marigold]

Our daughter is an active member of Extinction Rebellion, goes all over Dorset and further afield giving public talks to very large numbers of people on the need to understand and act on the reality of climate change. The Bridport group have managed to get their local Town and County Councils to declare a Climate emergency, which will entail a review of all their environmental and other relevant policies, with the aim of going carbon-neutral by 2025. O(ver 90 local and area Councils have already done this. I'm hoping to get an XR group going in my home town, but it's uphill work ATM. However, our Town Council has my latest letter about taking action on their agenda for the next meeting.

 

[Hen-Gen]

Excellent news Marigold. Lots of small changes add up. It’s quite hard to make decisions about ones own life too. What one is happy to give up and what would be so debilitating that one is loath to surrender.
I’m happy not to own a car or fly. But I would be reluctant to stop breeding ruminant animals.
The worst thing would be if we were terrorised by the vegan thought police.

 

[Marigold]

Yes I agree with you, ultimately you can only be responsible for how you live your own life, and globally, small changes in individual lifestyles must be helpful. But I do also see the sense in the way XR and other environmental groups are saying that the problem is bigger, and more urgent, than just personal lifestyle changes, and governments need to prioritise environmental legislation above the constant race for economic growth. Fat chance of that happening, though, I'm afraid - I just want to be able to tell my grandchildren that I did my best to improve things for them.
We are a far-flung group of friends, on here, and Just thought it would be interesting to share observations and experiences of environmental changes in our own areas, compared with what things were like a few years ago. When we came here to Whitchurch, Hampshire, in 1970, for instance, the fields at the bottom of the garden were full of nesting skylarks, singing their hearts out in the sunshine, and hundreds of lapwings, which would fly around with their eerie cries at dusk. All gone now, down to crop spraying during their ground-nesting breeding season. In the 1970s and 80s, husband recorded many species of birds on the water meadow adjoining the river Test here, which is an SSSI- hardly any birds left nowadays. Little Owls have nested in one old tree for many years - not seen in the last two seasons. Last week, had a depressing walk past glorious hawthorn and elder hedges in full flower - with no bees. Actual climate changes are being driven faster by local interference with the whole environmental ecosystem, resulting in depleted soil, lack of pollinating insects, and birds starving because there are so few larvae and invertebrates to feed their chicks. Or because the seasons have got out of synch, so that a particular species of caterpillar isn't available when needed because it has hatched too early in 'unnatural' Spring warmth.

 

[LadyA]

Well, there's also hedge cutting in late Spring/early Summer, Marigold, when birds are nesting. It's illegal here from mid February to I think August. But I saw kilometers of hedges here that were cut end of March to mid April. I actually ended up tearful one day driving a narrow country road where the hedge had obviously been cut that day, when I saw a pair of blackbirds sitting forelornly on a gatepost beside a decimated hedgerow. Just broke my heart.

As regards improving things, it seems here that everyone wants things done in a more "green" way, but ......not in their back yard! Modern, clean burning incinerators to dispose of waste and generate energy/heat? No, not here. Somewhere "more suitable" . Wind Farms? Yes. Just not here.. Solar farms? No.They would spoil the views.

When we moved here, every Summer, we could hear loads of curlews in the evenings. Haven't heard a curlew for several years. And we got very strong winds in Spring and again in Autumn. Now, we can get storms almost anytime. As I type, there's a wind howling outside that almost took me off my feet when I went to shut the chickens into the run.

 

[Tweetypie]

I have also noticed a decline in bees, so far this year. Last year, I did see huge numbers on my lavender bushes, so I planted another 10, which are almost in flower, so fingers crossed for an abundance of bees soon.
I have only seen one swift this year and a massive decline of blue tits and finches in my garden, despite the feeders being out all year. The blackbirds and thrushes are doing well, though.
In the Sherwood Pines forest, hundreds of thousands of trees were cut down in March. The forest looked like it had been vandalised. Where the lorries had been in, despite large roads they in, they still demolished lots of footpaths. In addition to this, the piled up stacks of logs (some of which I stole for my dustbath early April ;-) ), were removed last Friday!! Now I imagine that some birds or creatures may have built nests in there between March and June??
I wrote to the government about this, with a standard response that the trees were diseased (they were not - they were planted originally for pit props and telegraph poles). I thought we were meant to be planting trees to help save wildlife and our planet?

The bench photo is poignant, as it was put there in memory of someone, overlooking the beautiful forest. Sadly, hundreds of acres have now gone...

 

[chrismahon]

That's a disgrace Tweetypie and it's happening here as well. Half the woodland has been cut down since the 1990 mapping and these are oaks, so can't be replaced for a century. Of the remainder they have been thinned out to the extent that you can drive through them.

We had so many bees here beginning of Spring but now hardly any which means our tomatoes are on the third truss and still not pollinated. We think it's because of the Asian Hornets which hunt down the hives and destroy them. We have thousands of wild flowers on our land and just the occasional bumble bee flying about now. We have more butterflies than bees.

I remember a programme years back which said that warming of the Atlantic will cause storm ferocity to increase, fuelled by the extra heat which allows them to travel further East- sounds like it is happening.

We discussed a while back the hole in the ozone layer and that it was now mending. Well a French programme last month showed the hole which, whilst it has got a very tiny bit smaller, is still large enough to permanently cover the UK and because it tends to swirl a bit sometimes gets this far South- we get days when you can feel your skin burning after seconds of sun exposure! Yet whenI was last in the UK, I was the only person wearing a hat.

 

[LadyA]

It's a little late for the cuckoo, isn't it? But I distinctly heard one yesterday! We used to get them here, but I haven't heard any for the last four or five years until yesterday!