Climate Stories 19th April 2024
Climate stories from the last week.
Climate change is making things very difficult for British farmers.
Food security threatened by extreme flooding, farmers warn
“Debbie, whose family have farmed there since 1936, said the land used to flood every six years when she was young, but had flooded three times last year and six times already this year”
Dead lambs and ‘decimated crops’ on rain-soaked farms
The stories from these farms are heartbreaking. Lambs born into conditions that they cannot survive. Unplantable fields.
UK facing food shortages and price rises after extreme weather
Farming is the business of providing the rest of us with food. If crops fail, as they already are this year, this will cause shortages and price rises. If farmers are in trouble, we all suffer.
Heavy rains, lightning in Pakistan kill at least 50 people
Rafay Alam, a Pakistani environmental expert, said such heavy rainfall in April was unusual.
“Two years ago, Pakistan witnessed a heatwave in March and April and now we are witnessing rains and it is all of because of climate change, which had caused heavy flooding in 2022,” he said.
How Nigeria is reeling from extreme heat fuelled by climate change
“Since the start of this year, Africa’s most populous nation Nigeria has faced prolonged stretches of severe heat.
A recent quick-fire analysis found that the conditions in February, when temperatures exceeded 40C, were made 10 times more likely by human-caused climate change”.
World faces ‘deathly silence’ of nature as wildlife disappears, warn experts
Birdsong is beautiful and I am lucky to live in an area where there is a lot of it. But like so many parts of the natural world, it is under threat. If there is no habitat for nature, it is lost and so are those joyful sights and sounds.
Finally, you might have seen astonishing footage of a storm in Dubai. This is a desert region, so flooding is very unusual. Yet, video clips showed streets flooded, wind damage and aircraft at the huge international airport apparently taxiing across a lake. Some of the video was obviously fake and there was discussion of cloud seeding. So this analytical article in The Guardian is welcome.
Don’t blame cloud seeding for the Dubai floods
This was an extraordinary weather event. It was not caused by cloud seeding getting out of hand, it was greatly exacerbated by climate change.
This is part of the challenge of climate change. People can survive in all sorts of places if they have the infrastructure and techniques to do so. Climate change does exactly what it says. It turns deserts into lakes and fertile, food-growing regions into deserts and its happening faster than we can adapt.
Thanks for reading.
