I do care what the weather man says

I'm not a 'global-warming' sceptic, but I am starting to realise that the climate models that were created when 'global-warming' was all the rage were not entirely accurate. It used to be all so simple - increased temperatures meant melting ice caps, rising sea levels and a hotter climate for the UK (mild frost-free winters and long sunny summers). We all thought that this meant breeding Mediterranean birds, street cafes and a run on flip-flops in the shops. Now it seems that 'global-warming' actually manifests itself by producing weather from any of the four seasons that can appear at any time of year. Extreme weather has always been a part of our climate, but not so much of it at such regular intervals. We are currently 'enjoying' a very late spring (coldest March since 1963), which has followed on from the wettest summer on record which in turn followed the hottest March since dinosaurs ruled the Earth. And this followed the bizarre weather of 2011 when we had unbroken sunshine and temperatures to match between March and June that were followed by a spell that was very wet and very cool, more November than BST. This isn't normal. It reminds me of the visions of nuclear winter that were pedalled around by the doom-mongerer's back in the Cold War days (for those of you under 40 this was a time when Russia and the US postured at each other in a game of nuclear war-head Top Trumps - here in the UK we were supposed to hide behind a door on its side to survive a nuclear attack - no, really). If such bizarre weather continues the only certainty is increased insurance premiums, but we should also concern ourselves with the possible failure of our breeding birds, the delayed arrival of summer migrants, a poor flowering of plants, a crash in the insect population, a lack of crop pollinators, possible crop failure, an increase in food prices - I could go on, but I don't want to depress you all further. But the way the weather is behaving, this time next month might see a hose-pipe ban, Bewl Water reduced to a cracked mud basin and the south coast under a plague of locusts.

The picture of the Little Owl above has nothing to do with the subject of this post - I took it last Saturday at Holmethorpe and quite like it. I wonder what it makes of all this weather...