CLIMATE CHANGE PROMISES HAVE LITTLE MEANING
Appalling loss of life, horrific devastation, thousands of people terrified, many fighting for their lives, many left homeless, possessions ruined.
Those of us who have never been caught up in flash floods cannot possibly know what it is really like to experience what those most unfortunate people living around Valencia went through last Tuesday.
Thankfully all of us living in the Torrevieja neighbourhood escaped what was happening a mere 170 or so kilometres away and knew nothing about it until we saw it on our TV screens. Our hearts and thoughts, as do all of Spain, go out to all those affected by those terrible events.
The Met offices both in Spain and the UK knew eastern and southern Spain were going to be hit by severe weather four days previously with computer modelling showing that moist cool air over the eastern Atlantic would hit moist warmer air over part of the Met. But it’s severity could not be predicted.
This summer other parts of Europe have been hit by severe weather too and sadly these events are only going to get worse.
Cast your mind back to 2015. Remember all the discussion about global warming and the dire warnings from scientists about what would happen if world temperatures rose to 1.5 degrees above pre-industrial levels?
World leaders then pledged to do everything possible to cut emissions. But those pledges had little meaning, because guess what – the rise in temperature has already all but reached that 1.5 degree tipping point.
And scientists predict that unless drastic action is taken, the rise will be around 3 degrees by 2050.
The hope was to stop pumping out CO2 and also remove it from the atmosphere to avoid a cataclysm, but that would need 400 gigatonnes of CO2 to be removed by 2100, using new and as yet untested technology on a vast and economical scale.
A recent report shows that even temporarily overshooting 1.5C will still allow climate change to build up over the next several decades. And that means severe storms, intense heatwaves, deluges of rain and many other disastrous outcomes will carry on increasing.
Even assuming carbon can be removed on a gigantic scale, impacts such as a total collapse of the Greenland ice sheet, melting permafrost, dieback of the Amazon rainforest, and rising sea levels may all reach the point of no return. Keeping 1.5C in check was an overconfident target, but the longer the world spends in overshoot, the greater the risk of inflicting vast damage across the globe.
It’s a very worrying future – and a reality unless the world finally wakes up, stops putting greed and money first and spends a lot less time talking and a lot more time doing.
At the time of writing I see on an Arctic ice map that sea ice is at its lowest ever recorded and that the North West Passage, often in the past always iced over, is still ice free and it’s the end of October!
Here’s what the world could do if only it could stop the wars and do something constructive. The Sahara is one big desert doing nothing other than creating dust. Imagine solar powered desalination works all along the Atlantic coast, and solar powered pumping stations sending vast amounts of water inland.
This could turn the Sahara green and, in time, into an artificial ‘rain’ forest trapping millions of tons of CO2 and thus reduce global warming.
Perhaps billionaire Elon Musk, instead of sending rockets into space and trying to persuade people to vote for Trump, could spend his fortune to make the first steps to save the planet by irrigating the Sahara.
TOLL BOOTHS DAMAGING THE ENVIRONMENT
All this takes me conveniently on to what I was thinking on the long car journey from the UK to Spain, which we do each year.
We pass through many road tolls and it got me thinking how much pollution these are causing.
Just imagine the millions of vehicles stopping and starting at the booths and engines ticking over while the driver fiddles around with cash or cards.
For the planet’s sake get rid of this nonsense which no motorist wants and just put a few cents or pennies on every litre of fuel to cover the cost. I would love someone to calculate just how much toll booths are damaging the environment and adding to global warming.
ALL THEFT HAS TO BE PAID FOR
We’ve read in the UK press how shoplifting has soared to its highest level in 20 years.
It’s up by almost a third (32%) on the previous 12 months, when 304,459 offences were recorded. Just another appalling statistic to demonstrate how Britain has so rapidly gone to the dogs.
But theft is not rife only in Britain. On our drive back to Spain from the UK we stopped at a hotel in Rouen and were amazed at what we saw when we went for breakfast.
On a nearby table were a couple in their 60s. Despite a number of people in the restaurant, the woman repeatedly went to the food counters and helped herself to croissants, other bakeries, coffee and tea sachets and loaded them all into a large bag.
Perhaps, like in Britain, it is useless for anyone to challenge a thief unless their haul is over £200 because police won’t bother to attend.
Who knows – but all this theft has to be paid for and those who pay for it are you and me with higher prices – and hotel lifting must be making staying in a hotel and holidays ever more expensive. It’s a sad indictment of humanity today.
ROUNDABOUT MAYHEM
I’m saddened to say the standard of driving around our part of Spain hasn’t improved, it’s got a lot worse. Why can’t people indicate their intentions at roundabouts?
It seems so logical and yet the majority of drivers just don’t – and they and everyone else has to hang back at roundabouts to check where another driver is going – or risk an accident of course.
Stupid or what? Come on Spain, sort yourselves out.
YACKY DOG
Still on the subject of our return to Spain, we’re saddened to find that a near neighbour still has a yacky dog which is allowed to bark all day in the garden, going berserk every time someone walks past, and if that person happens to have a dog then it’s hell on earth.
Any reader with similar experiences? Have you been able to do anything to stop it?
COMMONWEALTH FIASCO
We’ve just had another Commonwealth conference – and what a fiasco that was.
I thought the object of these was to discuss and implement ways of improving trade so that everyone benefits. It could be an organisation for considerable good. But instead all we have heard is black nations banging on yet again about Britain apologising for the slave trade and handing over basketfuls of cash in reparations.
Yes, slavery was and is an abomination. But history books tell me the blacks in Africa were just as bad, cashing in on it, one tribe attacking another, taking hostages and selling them to the slave traders.
Taking the reparations argument to its illogical conclusion, didn’t the Romans enslave Britons – so isn’t it about time Italy handed over bags of cash in reparations to us Brits?
And look at the damage caused by the Norman conquest – those French should pay dearly.
Seriously, if blacks want to be treated well they should end this never ending attempt to extract money. Commonwealth countries have done very well being part of the ‘club’ in recent generations.
If any UK government tries to hand over British hard-earned cash there will be massive unrest which would make the recent immigration riots a picnic in comparison and I could see Reform party being voted in with a massive majority!
SEAGULLS WON’T BE FOOLED
It’s common knowledge that Brits love fish and chips – and it’s a standing joke that if you are silly enough to eat them on the seafront in a traditional newspaper wrapping, some mega quick seagull will swoop down and snatch as much as it can get in its beak.
But now city fathers in Worcester are considering feeding seagulls with food laced with birth control drugs to stop the randy gulls from breeding.
It’s sad that seagulls have got such a bad press. They are actually one of the most intelligent of the bird species.
Back in the UK we live in a park home and several neighbours feed small birds with bird feed they buy in the shops.
We have a family of ‘friendly’ seagulls which wait patiently on neighbours’ roofs until we put our left-over food in a bowl in the garden.
It’s gone within seconds but the most interesting aspect is that unlike the small birds which poo everywhere and cover our van and others with mess, the gulls are intelligent enough not to do their business where they eat.
How many generations did it take humans to discover a simple fact, that throwing waste into the street and taking drinking water from near a sewage source was totally harmful – costing the deaths of countless people down the centuries? Seagulls are a lot cleverer than most humans give them credit for.
USA STILL NOT READY FOR INDEPENDENCE
Money mad America sickens me and latest example is tech billionaire Elon Musk offering cash incentives to swing-state voters who sign his petition before the US election on 5 November.
Rightly, questions have been raised about the legality of such cash incentives. The petition was created by Mr Musk’s campaign group America PAC, which was set up to support Donald Trump in the presidential contest.
Voters in Pennsylvania are being offered cash sums for simply signing the petition. And one random swing-state signatory a day is being given a million-dollar prize. This sort of thing is dreadful – Musk and others are so rich it’s possible for them to swing an election. Is that democracy? I think not.
The presidential election system in America is totally ridiculous. Instead of all votes across the country being counted and a winner elected, it’s done on a State by State basis, which means a few votes in a few ‘swing’ States can slew the entire election. Is that democracy? I think not.
We don’t hear complaints about Farage and no doubt other right-wingers going over to America to support Trump but when a few UK Labour supporters go to America to support The Democrats, how the Republicans squeal. What a shower!
All this and ridiculous gun laws which should have been sorted decades ago, costing countless lives. America saddens me. And when I see and listen to barmy Trump I despair.
I’ve said before, the UK should never have given America its independence. They were not ready for it then, and are still not ready for it.
