process, so that we may have, unwittingly, opened a Pandora’s box of unexpected and uncontrollable changes to life on our planet. According to the boffins, the rate of change today is rapidly increasing to the point that they are concerned that life on Earth, including humans, will not have time to adapt to the changing conditions. Of course, one could remain sceptical about how they know the rate of change has increased when they have no ‘barometer’ to gauge by. But, that’s another story.


Evidence of past changes to our climate comes from the geological records of ancient environments and glaciers, fossils of plant pollen, isotopes of elements such as carbon and oxygen, tree rings, and the distribution of fossils. Okay, so that’s sorted. Climate change is happening, but what about this wretched weather?


I’m still confused how we can have “the worst floods since 1927”, “the hottest summer since 1976” or, as most recently, “the coldest winter in thirty years”. If we have had all these weather patterns in the past, how can the climate be changing?


The UK’s weather is affected by all manner of weird and wonderful things - the position of the Gulf Stream as it makes its way across the Atlantic, El Nino meandering around the southern


hemisphere or pesky Siberian winds. You may well remember a few occasions when sand from the Sahara has ‘rained’ down on us.


But, even the experts confuse the issue. Professor Ian Hall, a Paleoclimatologist from Cardiff University, stated that “if you look globally, in most places the temperatures are above average for this time of year [January]. The Mediterranean, North America and Asia are all experiencing milder winters - in Canada it is 10O average.”


C above Umm, well, actually, whilst Florida


experienced frosts for the first time in decades (those records again), and Canada suffered extreme low temperatures that caused ice build up and breakage on power lines, you wonder where they get their statistics from. Professor Hall adds: “It is important


to remember that 2009 was the UK’s fourteenth warmest year on record (records again), so the present cold snap doesn’t say much about the global process of climate change, it is just part of a natural variation in climate, just like we sometimes have summer heatwaves.” Last year we were promised a ‘barbecue summer’ by the forecasters and, as we all know, that didn’t happen. That prediction was based, in part, on


the then current position of the Gulf Stream. It took just a slight shift in its position - coming in further south than expected - to give us another wet summer. No doubt someone broke wind in Brazil to effect that change! Seriously though, because of the position of the British Isles on the global map, sitting between the North Pole and the warmer Mediterranean and African climes, our weather is always likely to be a smorgasbord of bizarre events. The forecasters have been pretty accurate over recent years at predicting the short term weather. It is looking ahead that still proves difficult. So, there you have it. The weather is what you see when you open your bedroom curtains. Snow, rain, winds, frost, sun, showers are all ‘weather’. The climate is is the average weather in a location over a long period of time. A place that doesn’t get much rain over many years would have a dry climate. A place where it stays cold for most of the year would have a cold climate. Simple! In other words, look out of your window any day, any time and you see weather. Look out your window every day for a month or longer, observe the weather each day, and you can determine the climate. And, anyway, without our British weather, what would we have to chunter about as a nation?


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