Latest Moan From You and Me 2025

Probably a lot of burntosaurusses.

 

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hfSFIUrE_Bw

Summer holdays

 

Climate has always changed, but it's the recent speed at which things have altered that's creating the bulk of the problems now. As @Philippa said, we can only judge by the records that are kept, and those weren't around with the burntosauruses [nice one @Tidemark ] so we only have a couple of centuries' worth of them. I know how much it's changed in this area in my lifetime, as I've lived [within ten miles] and worked here all my life. I also spent most of that working life outside, regardless of time of year, so I'm aware of those changes. The changes to the wider landscape is something I'm also aware of due to my hobbies.
It's not just about temp itself with gardening, which is what people forget. It's about the length of time it stays hot or cold, wet or dry, dark or light. That's what makes the big differences with plants. A couple of hours at a higher/lower temp is totally different from a higher/lower temp for ten hours. A damp day that stays cloudy is also very different from a heavy downpour for twenty minutes then the skies clearing again for the rest of the day.
As far as gardening's concerned, we either adapt as much as we can, or chuck it and pave our gardens over. I know what I'll be doing.

 

The state my back's in now - it could be tempting @shiney, but I'd need to 'get a man in' to do it!

I passed a nearby house yesterday, and it looks like they're about to get plastic grass. Sigh....
The front gardens are small, and shady due to the mature trees on the footpath there, but it's really depressing to see it. The other half of the little plot is all newly paved. What's sad is, there's a garden just a few houses along, where the lady has done all the right things with an identical sized site. Lots of suitable shrubs, a wee bit of grass and a little footpath to the front door. It's lovely, and looks good all year round. It won't need much attention either. I had similar styles of garden when my children were young, and when I worked full time, as I wouldn't have had the time for lots of faffy planting.
It's why I'm doing things just now to make my garden more manageable, as I know there will be a point at which heavier work/maintenace will be a bridge too far.

 

Scientists don't need weather records to know what the weather was like in the past. They might not be able to tell you what it was like in a certain day or month in a given year but they can certainly see trends and that's what we use now.

The dinosaurs lived for a very long time, about 165,000,000 years so the climate varied. It was generally a fair bit hotter than it is today and quite a bit more humid, like we see in Asian countries today.

 

Most front gardens get turned into carparkng around here.
As soon as a house with a front garden is sold, usually because the owners have died, the front gets flattened.

 

@CanadianLori there is a dinosaur fossil in the church here - discovered in a nearby village many years ago and placed in the church for safekeeping. My turn for the locking/unlocking next week and I often have a chat with the Dinosaur so I'll try and remember to ask it

 

I rather think that that long ago the UK was a bit further south and very much warmer for any burntosaurus that were resident, fossilised or not - continental drift/plate tectonics theory.

We moved here nearly 9 years ago and had a 13 month drought and, whilst not a heatwave, summer temps far higher than my research indicated the average would be. 2022 was proper scorchio with 44C in the shade at its peak and was followed by a worryingly dry winter.

Last summer was "normal" with temps in the high 20s/low 30s for most of the summer and reasonable rain and we had such a wet winter we couldn't do the projects we'd planned to clear beds of pernicious weeds and mulch then and create new beds. This summer we're on our umpteenth heatwave and bone dry so veg crops are suffering along with some established shrub and flower beds.

We're allowed to water between 8pm and 8am but it's going to be expensive when we get the bill. However, the alternative is to have to fork out to replace all the plants I'd lose including seeds and composts for them and cuttings I've grown on. Never costed those.

I'm working on keeping future plantings easy to maintain and deep mulches of wood chips to keep down weeds and evaporation but won't be going for block paving, concrete or fake grass.

 

Where i live which is in a valley, i've been told that it was carved out by the melting ice, i can't remember it, so as it's a big valley there must have been a lot of ice, so yes chimate change

Isn't there a dinosaur fossal in the coast of Dorset which is being dug out now, so that dinosaur fossal which i believe is one that swim's in the sea/water, so it must have die in or close to land so if true the water levels were very high, so are we heading back to that time with all that ice melting

 

Not all scientists agree on weather trends in the present day so I doubt it was much different in earlier times.
Without delving too deeply into historical eras, it can be difficult for the average person to dispute the "unprecedented" claims made so often at the moment. One can only say " I remember that really hot summer/cold winter/when we were affected by floods " and so on. However, need to bear in mind that time also tends to colour our memories.
For myself I do remember the winter of '63/64 and the summer of '76 both in the UK. In SW France I can recall heavy snow one Easter in - I think ? - '91. The latest one was floods in 2013. Nothing else sticks in my mind but this Spring and Summer will be the next one on my list.

 

After the last ice age, the meltwater flooded the land between what is now mainland Euope and the British isles. The current rate of melt in high mountain glaciers is cauding floods of mud and wtare to head downhill at frightening speeds, wiping out villages and crops as it goes.

Icebergs are calving in the Arctic at alarmingly rapid rates and there is a huge ice mass in the Antarctic that is melting so fast now it is creating concerns about a subsequent catastrophic rise in sea levels. The Netherlands is working hard and fast to improve its land and buildings security against such flooding by building floating foundations but low lying land elsewhere remains vulnerable and I can't see any concerted plans being made for sea rise in the big French coastal islands such as Noirmoutier or Ile de Ré nor any plans to upgrade the London flood barrier or other big cities and coastal plains elsewhere.

 

I'm totally disgusted with all of our wildfires being blamed on climate change. It is pure rubbish. There have always been bonafide wildfires but what is happening in most places now is manmade. Nova Scotia is now going to fine people $25K if they set foot in a forest. Scott Moe (premier of Manitoba) admitted that all of their fires were started by humans. People in Quebec, British Columbia and northern Ontario have been arrested for starting fires. Yes, climate change is making things different but over here it all comes down to the deadly combination of fire and fools. For most of these fires our media should do the right thing and point to the idiots with matches, not Mother Nature!