The big freeze

It’s hard to get away from the weather. As you read this we’ll be in the middle of a cold snap. Less wind, more sleet and snow – the January we’ve not had yet. And before that, storm after storm.
I’ve lost count, but there has been at least six that you’d call major and highly destructive. The last has rampaged onwards into the UK and Europe, killing upwards of a dozen.
Our more easterly fellow Europeans are less used to such phenomena than we are. One German friend sent an email last weekend saying she hoped that everyone had survived the storm they named Kyrill. It wasn’t in me to say it was just the latest in a line, partly because I know some people in Donegal might well say yeah, and we have those every year. And they’d be right.
The storms were marked by tragedy and farce. The tragedy struck, as often before, at the southern coast. Two fishing boats – the Pere Charles from Dunmore East and the Honeydew II from Kinsale – went down in violent seas with the loss of seven lives, two of them Polish.
These were not devil-may-care buccaneers roistering on the high seas but were, by common consent, highly professional and careful. The Pere Charles had been safety-tested recently. There is a growing consensus that the boats may have been hit by a massive wave, something that is apparently too common off the Irish coasts to be called a freak.
Heartbreakingly, no bodies have been found as I write. All around the coast you can find memorials to those lost at sea. You can’t read the names without being moved to tears. With the way the weather is going, there’ll surely be more.
And the farce? Surely it has to be the reports on RTRs Liveline of flying trampolines. An increasingly incredulous Joe Duffy was regaled with stories of how 4-metre trampolines had taken to the air in recent and previous storms.
They jumped over garages and fences and were swept into fields, damaging cars and buildings. This being Ireland, the debate quickly focused on whether insurance would cover the damage and if so how. But the whole thing was amazing. You got a sense of flying saucers or giant Frisbees, hoisted by stormy weather and hurtling hither and thither with little concern for the safety of people or property.
The underlying theme to these phenomena is global climate change. Is the weather changing? It seems so.
The consequences may be apocalyptic. The scientists who mind the Doomsday Clock think so and as a result they have moved the clock two minutes closer to midnight.
The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists created the Doomsday Clock in 1947 to warn the world of the dangers of nuclear weapons. Midnight symbolises the end of civilisation. But in their view, and indeed that of Professor Stephen Hawking, climate change represents as great a threat to the world as international terrorism and nuclear war, so they’ve added the perils of global warming to acute nuclear threats.
Professor Hawking said on Jan 17 that “the twin dangers of global warming and nuclear proliferation” needed to be tackled urgently. It is a refrain that will thread its way through 2007. The storms have made their point.
And remember, if we have a very hot summer, it comes at a price. That includes the storms as well as soggy fields from which farmers can’t take the potatoes because the machines would sink, possible drought and water shortages and unseasonable weather that plays havoc with bird and bee and plant.
And that’s just here.
Elsewhere, snow didn’t come (yet) in the Alps but it fell in vast amounts in Colorado. There was a massive avalanche on the Eiger last year and in Colorado this year. There’s been droughts and floods and landslides and forest fires across the globe.
And anyone who watched the Ó hAilpín brothers on RTÉ2 will have enjoyed seeing Seán Óg going to the birthplace of his mother Emeli ’s birthplace in Rotuma in the Fiji Islands. A small island with a close-knit community, you could say it’s poor in cash but rich in culture and time.
Well, the sunsets over the ocean may be achingly beautiful, but there’s not a lot of elevation and if the seas keep rising as they seem set to do, Rotuma will be much reduced and ultimately may largely disappear under the waves.
That’s what global warming is about. That’s why, from now on, you’re going to hear increasingly strident voices asking you to turn the central heating down, use different bulbs, walk to school or college, dump the SUV…
Some say their little gesture will make no difference. Wrong, every little bit helps. And in turn, maybe we’ll have less storms, less destruction, less flooding (here, there and everywhere) as well as less tragedy.
In return, we can live with the farce. Haven’t we done so for long enough?