Spain and Portugal are at their driest for 1,200 years

What advice would you give to the new Uk pm on climate change

The index used in the Spanish Met tool I linked to is the SPEI, which is the preferred drought monitoring tool in use globally. It takes into account not only rainfall but also potential evotranspiration. Looking purely at precipitation anomalies doesn't tell the full story.

Humans have broken the natural cycle. We are likely to push the earth into a new equilibrium due to increased Gahags in the atmosphere. That equilibrium can be either hospitable or hostile to human life depending on the actions we take now

I would tell the new UK p.m. not to believe everything they hear from experts but of course the sort of person who succeeds in modern society is exactly the sort of person who believes that experts are infallible since they themselves are experts (on politics).

This is how we got into the mess we are in, believing that we have wrecked the weather machine, when in fact all we have done is to tinker with it slightly. And our response should be proportionate to that reality.

Leftists are going to say, thank goodness you're not giving advice to important people, because they will realize that their dreams of wrecking the economy (and the irony being that stuff about wrecking the atmosphere) would be thwarted by a common sense approach and leftist political goals would not be met.

As it is, we are staggering down the road to oblivion, having decided to commit economic (and social) suicide in some vain attempt to fix a problem which we cannot fix and which may not even be a problem.

I should probably retire, obviously I am one of those "old people out of touch" or what leftists call elders in every culture but our own. We will own nothing and be happy, we are told by people who don't plan to own nothing because, well, somebody should be rewarded for saving the earth.

The calibre of contesters for the next UK PM, and we are asked as to what advice we would give them?

😏

Parts of England have seen zero rainfall in July and are looking at the driest July on record, a dry August will mean drought conditions. As well as record breaking temps this summer.

Not sure how July 2022 can be a record dry month when July 1800 had 0 mm. Can't get drier than that.

I was just parroting what I saw on BBC Weather about an hour ago. Either way, they're going into drought territory in much of England. As are swathes of the USA. Maybe this is normal but it seems to me that there's a lot of drought going on right now.

You do realise the new PM in UK is likely to be Truss…good luck with telling her anything.

For the question of how much rain has fallen in England, the EWP (England and Wales precip) stands at about 15 mm and will likely finish the month between 20 and 25, the sixth driest July in 256 years of data they have. 1825, 1800, 1911 and probably 1868 will finish drier, and this July may be around 5th or 6th driest so it's not quite as bad as some have implied, albeit that is a regional average and perhaps parts of the south are very close to zero. The hot summer of 1976 also had considerable drought problems in southern England. August looks like it will begin to return to a more normal pattern, so perhaps this drought will eventually be alleviated in the worst hit cases.

Don't think its a leftist agenda in fairness, After all its big business that are making a fortune by convincing us it our fault while doing nothing to really correct the problem. Sure they are selling us the dream that we can effect change by buying more stuff, changing where the emissions are produced and telling us we are not producing any. In the end until big business really start to make meaningful changes we are only being fooled.

There is also other ice core evidence which shows that a fluctuating climate is the normal for our planet, it is only an abnormally long stable period which has enabled the human race to develop.

Can you explain (in layman's terms, so that most people can understand/visualise your explanation) how planetary dynamics are causing what is in-arguably a change in the climate on planet earth in recent times? It's clear you are the expert on planetary dynamics and as you say that the climate of the planet is derived from that, I would assume that you can shed some light on to the actual cause of climate change, unlike those foolish scientists who clearly know nothing and merely speculate and postulate.

Because reckless behaviour is so beyond these people, right? Protesting on the track at the start of a Grand Prix, putting their and many other lives at risk, is just unheard of. Those fires were more of these divine spontaneous combustions with no human hand at play? A row of fly-tip along a road up in flames just like that. Oh yes, because the UK broke the 40-degree mark. Right. I wouldn't be surprised if it turns out that they were started maliciously, like the majority of wild fires in Europe (yes, they are).

Yeah and you're right there in the seat beside him in the special class though arent you? Whats your latest theory? The fires in London were nothing to do with the heat, they were started by climate extremists? So when the London Fire Brigade says they had their busiest day since the Blitz dealing with random fires and people collapsing all over the city they're just part of the liberul conspiracy aswell I suppose?

I see Danno who I assume is still supposed to be the mod of this "Science" forum thanking the complete dribbling lunacy about climate theory being like "a priest at the old Latin mass" up at the top of the page aswell, you just have to laugh, poor auld Orion was a figure of fun when he showed up but once a lunatic starts coming out with the right kind of propaganda and he gets welcomed into the crew 🤣

You linked protesters to arsonists in your first post and now you're off on another rant talking about spontaneous combustion.

Not only have you deduced that the fires were started maliciously but you seem to know who caused them as well. Have you informed the relevant authorities? I'm sure a little Sherlock Holmes like yourself could be of great use.

North American experience with wildfires is similar, a disturbing number of them appear to be deliberately set, and another portion are clearly due to human negligence (like tossing a butt out a window onto a dry forest margin) and at some point that negligence is hardly different in legal terms from deliberate arson.

Another growing cause especially in California comes from ill-advised "green" initiatives to leave fully grown vegetation in place along hydro-electric lines. When the usual combination of high temperatures and strong down-canyon winds sets up, this leads to sparking from the oscillating hydro lines and fires are set in the dry brush, spreading rapidly to nearby forests. In other jurisdictions, this practice has not been encouraged and this is one reason why California has seen worse wildfire impacts than elsewhere. Another reason of course is that the urban population of California has spread rapidly into "interface" zones where their homes are more likely to be in the path of spreading fires.

This is not to say that a significant number of our wildfires are not set by lightning, that was probably the main cause of the second wave of fires we had in BC last year (the first wave seemed to originate from various other causes brought on by the severe heat dome temperatures).

Going back to the political discussion, I think one poster was trying to say that the climate change movement is not of the political left but originates with big business and their conservative agenda. This, I would say, is a misread of political trends. Climate change has its origins in the green political movement and that is clearly of the left. There may be a split in the left in which some remnants of an older "working class left" still exist and some of those people may feel a disconnect with the new left which is clearly a movement of wealthy boomers and their many different political interest groups. Basically, as I see it, almost all politics nowadays are variants of globalism and the new left, even some centrist and self-described conservative political parties are following this agenda, perhaps more cautiously in some cases.

Big business may have been aligned with the political right in the younger days of many of us here, up to the mid to late 1990s, but the corporate agenda is basically to maximize profit and when business leaders realized that they now had an essentially groupthink-brainwashed consumer horde outside their gates, they rather quickly switched sides and now they position themselves as globalist (we are just as woke as you, don't let our country club memberships fool you, really, look, we are different now) ... so the old conservative coalition that was so successful under Reagan and Thatcher (due to an anti-communist foundation) now does not exist, it has split into three groups, neo-conservative (globalist war hawks), faux-con (conservative in name only, unwilling to make a complete split from the brand name, but already across the political Rubicon in terms of a belief structure), and libertarians and cultural nationalists who have formed a last stand alliance in most western countries, vilified by the media and all their political adversaries, because not woke enough, or (and this I assume is the "toxic" part) willing to call a spade a spade and say that people should govern themselves and not wait around for Karl Schwab, Davos and the WEF to send their disciples to govern. In Canada unfortunately the majority have said "you go right ahead, Karl, and Justin, we sure like your socks" and have decided to assist the globalist movement in dismantling Canada's economy and society in the interest of rich patrons of globalism such as the Middle eastern oil powers (why do you suppose it is that Canadian oil is "dirty" but Saudi oil is "clean" and why do you suppose this is what a stumbling horde of brainwashed individuals are heard to recite on their way to pick up the latest government benefit cheque drawn from made up money that will one day soon not even have any value at all). If this is toxic, so be it, I look at it as survivalist. I don't want to be governed by Karl Schwab, whether he's a socialist, a liberal, a communist or a fascist, and maybe he is a bit of all those, having drawn on whatever works to bring the desired results.

Also I don't appreciate having our science which had such a long and distinguished record through many decades hijacked by people who know nothing about weather or climate, pretend they know a lot, and are transparently using climate events to drive a dangerous political agenda. Here again, if this much truth is toxic, perhaps it's a good thing. Where else are you going to hear it? Will the "traditional left" who have nothing to do with all this (so they say) expose these truths? Unlikely. They are too busy inventing new narratives that have almost zero appeal as most have moved on and chosen their new 21st century political homes. And I would conclude by saying, most have chosen unwisely. We go through this about once a generation or two. The conservative revival of the early 1980s was mostly based on socialist failures of the 1970s. One can only hope the same cycle is about to begin, but with the amount of societal control gained by the globalist forces, that seems very improbable. The truth may never come out because instead we may descend into a series of ever more dangerous regional wars that will end up in a global catastrophe when forces align in such a way that nobody has anything left to lose. How close are we to this now? Five years? Ten? I am rather old, I may not survive to see it. But it's coming.

Oh look still the angry little forum policeman dictating who can say what... Well you can lie and claim not to have said it but its right there a few posts above yours... did you miss the bit where a retired firefighter took you up on it aswell or did that not happen too? Throw in a bit of gaslighting and strawman crap about spontaneous combustion which nobody claimed, real value being added to the forum there alright.

Whats your value contribution that you're always demanding from others here exactly then wannabe forum policeman? "I may be totally ott and wrong in my assessment and so be it. At least I have an opinion to give". Oh yeah very scientific approach professor! A wild conspiracy theory about environmental campaigner arsonists burning down rows of houses on the worst day for the London Fire Brigade since WWII and not a peep out of the police and the media about it? Jesus Christ. Nothing to do with AGW making drought and fire conditions more and more prolonged and prevalent year on year exactly in line with predictions no, only geniuses like you and Orion402 can see the real "science".

The climate change 'debate' is an interesting one. There are countless people who think humans aren't having an impact on climate and countless others who think they are. Plenty think all of this is natural and cyclical and plenty who think human activity is excarbarating the situation.

On one hand you have people who think we shouldn't change our behaviour and on the other people who think we should.

Now if you take this on a purely climate change angle that may be fine. Perhaps if we continue as we are things will remain cyclical and we had no impact on anything but really, when common sense comes into it you really have to accept that we need to change our behaviours drastically and not from a climate change perspective although the change in behaviour would help those that accept human led climate change is real.

Our consumerism based society is leading to a hell of a lot of negative consequences that we have to accept are bad for the human race ultimately. Whether is it slave labour and questionable work practices, microplastics, utilising finite materials, throwaway culture, and so on. The list is endless.

Not saying we need to stop investing in tech or go back to the stone age, but that we need to take a long hard look at where we are going.