Global warming and climate change or just changing opinions and changeable weather?

In August 1976 Britain was undergoing the driest summer in over 200 years.  The then Labour Prime Minister, James Callaghan, appointed Denis Howell Minister for Drought.  Days later heavy rain brought widespread flooding and Howell was made Minister for Floods. 

In 2005 the BBC reported that “experts” and “scientists” predicted Britain would have a Mediterranean climate with “warmer drier summers” and “rainfall cut by a third”.*

In February 2020 two scientists had the following very interesting opinions published in letters to The Daily Telegraph.  I came across them in the 22 February edition of The Week.  I reproduce them below:

Water, water, everwhere.

As a geophysicist, I find it fairly obvious that global warming means the Atlantic will be putting far more water into the atmosphere from now on.  As our weather in Britain is mainly driven by Atlantic weather fronts, flooding in these islands is going to become far more common.

The flood defences being built now by the Environment Agency only shift the problem downstream – and were anyway only designed for the lesser floods of the last century.

If Brunel were alive today, we’d probably see a far more long-term vision, such as diverting excess water from upstream choke points through large underground tunnels connected to the nearest estuary such as the Ribble or Humber.

After all, our tunnelling expertise is second to none after the Chunnel and Crossrail projects.  Why not capitalise on this and then export the engineering skills to other countries in a similar position?

John Howard, Birmingham.

Forty years ago I was employed as a geologist by an aggregate company to develop gravel pits around the UK.

Under no circumstances would planning permission be granted for any permanent structure on a river’s flood plain, where sand and gravel are generally deposited.  Any structure that might restrict the flow of water across the flood plain was prohibited; not even a Portakabin would be tolerated.

Nowadays, entire housing estates are built on flood plains.  And people wonder why they are regularly flooded out of house and home.

Jeremy Spencer-Cooper, Easebourne, West Sussex

Oh well, I wonder if the last 45 years has seen climate change, changing opinions or just changeable weather!

*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk/4091068.stm

Puckington and its Church of St. Andrew. A South Somerset village having "an old world look".

The charmingly named South Somerset village of Puckington straddles the B3168, or The Curry Road, between Ilminster and Curry Rivel.  Puckington appears in the Domesday Book as Pochintone.  However it appears to be derived from puc and tun; puc being the Old English word for Hobgoblin and tun meaning enclosure, farm or smallholding.  One could say that Puckington was once The Hobgoblin’s farmstead!

The South Somerset village of Puckington viewed from the south. The tower of St. Andrew's Church can be seen above the treetops in the centre of the photo.

Kelly’s Directory of Somerset (1914) tells us:

“Puckington is a village and parish, on the River Ile and on the road from Langport to Chard, 3 miles north-east of Ilminster Station on the Chard branch of the Great Western railway and 7 miles south west from Langport.”

Today the railway to Ilminster and Chard is no more, a victim of the Beeching cuts, and the River Ile is more commonly spelt Isle.

Kelly’s also informs us that:

“Viscount Portman is Lord of the Manor and chief landowner.  The soil is partly sand and partly sand and clay, and the subsoil is limestone.  The chief crops are wheat, barley, oats, beans and roots.  The acreage is 774; rateable value £1,001; the population in 1911 was 136.”

The Portman family also held estates around Durston and Hestercombe, including Hestercombe House, but by 1976 the family had disposed of their land in Somerset and the 9th Viscount Portman had moved to Portman Square in London.

Puckington, with its thatched cottages, farmhouses, and Church of St. Andrew is described by Arthur Mee in his The King’s England – Somerset (Hodder and Stoughton Ltd. 1968) as having “. . . an old world look, especially about its 15th century church, with a chancel 200 years older in which is still the original piscina and the triple sedilia added when the church was 100 years old.  In the sanctuary are two old carved chairs.  The font has the Norman mason’s cable moulding around it, and in the tower is still a bell which rang out before the Reformation.”

Church of St. Andrew in the village of Puckington, South Somerset. 

I came across this interesting tomb in the churchyard at Puckington in July 2015, but could not decipher the inscription.

The Church was restored in 1857 and again in 1910, when a new organ was provided.

February flora and fauna in South Somerset. A stroll on the fringe of Ilminster with my camera.

At the start of February I went for an afternoon stroll without my camera.  Needless to say I saw something interesting, a great spotted woodpecker, within range of my 300mm lens, but as I said – no camera!

On the 6th I took another stroll in Dillington Park Drive on the eastern fringe of Ilminster in South Somerset, and had my camera with me, but no woodpeckers this time.  However, there were quite a number of squirrels around and one stayed still long enough for me to take a photo.

As usual there was a lot of evidence of badger setts, and signs of fresh digging beside, and over, Sustrans’ cycle track.

Evidence of badgers at work alongside the Sustrans cycle track through Dillington Park in South Somerset

In Dillington Park itself the leafless branches of the oak and beech trees made an interesting photo, one of the trees is dead and its white bark stood out against the blue sky.

Dead or dying oak or beech in Dillington Park, South Somerset.

More squirrels were scampering around on the ground beneath a huge evergreen holm oak - if my tree recognition is correct - the branches of which were almost touching the ground.


I have been reading Arthur Conan Doyle’s Hound of The Baskervilles and recalled Dr Watson’s sighting of hart's tongue ferns as he journeyed by wagonette with Sir Henry and Dr Mortimore along the banked Devonshire country road leading to Baskerville Hall.  On my return along Dillington Park Drive, which is steeply banked in places, such ferns were a common sight.

Hart's tongue ferns in Dillington Park Drive, South Somerset.

Not a lot of colour in the photos I took that day, but the weather was quite tranquil – the lull before the arrival of Storm Ciara!