The Holiday Season, this year in the UK, has been marked by the advent of lots of white stuff. You know – slippy, freezing, powdery, crunchy, slushy, icy, get your feet entirely wet in three minutes walking, white fluffy stuff: snow.
In other countries, this really wouldn’t be such a big deal, but in Britain, we have largely enjoyed mild winters for the last two decades. Meaning the odd sprinkle or dusting of icing sugar crystals.. but nothing akin to the literal big freeze that has more or less ground the UK (and some parts of Europe and China) to a skidding halt.
So why after only a few feet of snow are we experiencing so many problems? Over the last 20 years, Britain has enjoyed an abnormally warm climate – wet, temperate, mainly damp. Our local authorities prepare for each winter with about three days grit for the roads, our utilities hold reserves for maybe a week’s worth of upsurge in energy usage due to a cold snap.
What we didn’t expect was nigh on three weeks of solid ice and snow. Politicians have been busy throwing insults at each other over why government seemed so ill prepared for such a climatic challenge.
Thing is, Britain is used to routine: it’s a way of life over here. We don’t plan for the unexpected. We just seem to think things will keep plodding on the same way they always have. It’s an attitude we simply can’t afford any more – because in my opinion, I think there’s a likelihood of more erratic climatic change. On a larger worldwide scale, I think we can’t have been meddling with the environment for so long without tipping something off kilter. We’ve seen mass deforestation, pollution of the seas with mass death of marine life, extensive droughts due to over extraction of water tables, landslides and desertification due to over-farming – the list goes on.
I’m cynical that the world is warming up: the irony being that with a mass meltdown of glacier ice, it could dilute the North Atlantic ‘conveyor belt’ of heated water and bring it to a halt. That same conveyor belt of warm water that keeps our worldwide weather system on the positive side of zero degrees. It could just as easily cool down and we could all end up in a mini ice age. Everyone’s so busy jumping on the CO2 emission ‘Earth could become a hot-house’ band wagon, they really haven’t considered things could very easily go the other way. Instead of going for sunblock, maybe we should be reaching for the anti-freeze and a big fake fur coat. Don’t believe me? Some bedtime reading for you…

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