Roger Moroney: The heat is on, then off, then on again

There may be blue sky and sunshine overhead but there's still a nip in the air. Photo/File

COMMENT:

I love meteorological irony.

On the day I read a couple of stories about rising temperatures and potential increases in fire risk and an overall global heatwave (with flooding) in 30 years time, the temperature had slipped from 21 the day before to 15.

I had to unearth the old vest for fear of chilling out...in the wrong sense.

To add temperature insult to injury, that was 1C cooler than Edinburgh...and the overall forecast for the following days was also around that 15C to 16C mark so no threat just yet.

Although one has to be alert to the seasonal factor of this whole weather thing.

We're only just into spring and daylight saving is still six days away, so it is early days.

Summer is still on vacation but rest assured, it is most certainly packing its bags for its annual holiday to these parts.

By many accounts that holiday could be a sizzler.

By futuristic accounts the summers of 2050 could be fryers and there is predicted to be potential major impact on our timber industry...for forest fires will most certainly flourish in those conditions.

The weather is a very popular subject for people to talk about.

It's a conversational opener as well as a very general comment..."funny old weather we're having lately" and "looks like spring's finally here".

For the weather often decides what we do, and how we dress.

An equally popular subject for people to talk about today, although this has only emerged over the past few years, is "climate change".

A lot of people are talking about the changing climate, and even the youngsters are in on the act now.

Roger Moroney

Which is fair enough as if there is a potential disastrous climate meltdown they are the ones who will have to live with it.

It's like the weather though, for there are two sides to it all.

For back in the late 19th century there was a huge rise in temperatures across usually tepid parts of the UK, to the point where they were able to grow things they previously could not.
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Lasted for a few years then the cooler (more normal) weather patterns emerged.
And there have been massive superstorms and cyclones since time began.

I think I read somewhere that the worst hurricane in the US was back in the '30s.

Maybe its all down to the sun and what it gets up to.

But there is the human factor through increased emissions of this and that, and this drives the clean-up...drives.

We have messed the place up, although the years of intensive industrial revolution a century or so back were, I suspect worse.

And we seemed to clean that up ok.

So then, "you can't do anything about the weather", is an old saying, but of course many sectors across the environmental and scientific landscape are saying the opposite.

The human being can...but many probably won't.

Because while lots of human beings in concerned and perceptive lands, like here, work to try to keep the air clear as best they can there are massive and giant industrial lands out there in the world who basically don't give a toss.

Keep the filthy fires burning...so what?

Our "contribution" to soiling the air is absolutely minimal on the global scale.

And we've seen the footage of people in distant lands where industrial regulations are effectively frowned upon with faces wrapped against the filthy air in cities where visibility is down to about three football fields.

It is an annual event.

There are daily events too...giant chimneys, hundreds of them, belching out smoky waste around the clock.

Compared to those lands we are pretty well spotless.

But unfortunately a lot of the stuff we buy comes from such places...so trade sanctions against anyone not playing the clean-up game would not work.

If there is one thing in our favour it is our location, for we don't get seriously hammered.

The odd polar blast from the south and an errant cyclone hangover from the tropics but on the whole, the weather stays stable.

There is a downsize to this though...for it makes us look very attractive as a bolt-hole for those seeking escape from major climate disturbances elsewhere on the planet.

We haven't got enough places to put ourselves so where could we put them all?

Hey, if we burn all the forests down we could build houses there...no, wait a minute.
Ohh, nice weather we're having...

*Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist for Hawke's Bay Today and observer of the slightly off-centre.