The Gloomsday Scenario

~ beetleypete

When I was young, we used to be told of ‘The Doomsday Scenario’. This basically involved nuclear war between the West, and The Soviet Union. Despite a lot of rhetoric, and much commentary, this never happened. Instead, the reality is now the ‘Gloomsday Scenario’, and that is happening, as I write.

Over the last twenty years or so, we have heard from the Green lobby, and the other agencies concerned with ‘Global Warming’, about the evils of technology, and the combustion engine. The ‘Carbon Footprint’ has been synonymous with disregard for the environment, and we are made to feel guilty, for the use of every light bulb, or any journey involving foreign travel. When I retired, I expected that retirement to be in a haze of unrestricted UV waves, with sunshine warming my old bones, and the climate of the UK eventually resembling that of Sicily, or Arizona. I would be warming my contended bones, like a grateful iguana, in the endless sun of a corrupted weather system.

Who was I fooling? And who was fooling me? The reality is gloom. Endless grey; occasional heavy rain, and no sun. One of the things about retiring to Norfolk, is acquiring an acute sense of weather. The expansive skies tell all. In London, or other big cities, the sky is seldom seen, and the occasional glance above the tall buildings becomes a  novelty. Here, the sky is panoramic, omnipresent, and indicative of mood. It is grey, featureless, and the only change heralds darkness, and impending precipitation. It is as if someone, or some huge power, has painted the horizon in battleship grey, and it is as dark at 7am, as it is at 9pm. The outlook is gloomy; all the time, day or night, spring or summer, autumn or winter. Gloom prevails.

This may seem dramatic, but I assure you, it is not. There will be sunny days, surely? They have been few and far between, and notable for their presence. I grant you, it is not cold at the moment, but it generally is. The Greens have got it completely wrong. The change is not to create deserts and heatwaves, at least for the UK, and a few surrounding countries. It is the opposite in fact. The summers of my youth, those steaming months between June and October, are gone and forgotten. They will be unknown to future generations, consigned to be merely an historical oddity They will not understand them, and will be wearing full clothing in August, considering that the norm.

Environmentalists, please be circumspect. You have been terribly wrong, and your predictions little more than sand between the fingers. Embrace the reality. All those diatribes against fossil fuels, carbon emissions, cars, cheap air travel, and anything other than wind power to generate electricity, have been a misguided sham. You were in error, and you have to admit it. Nature will have her way; and her way is cold, grey, and gloom, whether you like it , or not. The UK is in the grip of a regressive weather system, that according to the BBC, will last about fifteen years. More pertinently, about the length of my retirement, before I die.

There will be no more summers of note. Winters will be relentlessly bad, and spring little better. Rain will be the dominant weather, and summers will be cool, and wet. Damp, cold, and wet will rule, and the sky will be grey. Always grey. The bigger the sky, as here, the greyer it will be, and the more relentless that weather will appear to be. The prospect of lazy summers, retired, enjoying a sit in the evening sunset, glass in hand, bones warmed and relaxed, will be but a forlorn hope, a forgotten dream. There is a cost to this too. The heating will be on for ten months, instead of five. More food will be required, to heat the body, and electricity bills will soar. There will be power cuts, as demands cannot be met, and we will return to fossil fuels, wood and coal, to supplement other options.

Gloom will prevail, and moods will suffer. Happiness will be rare, depression a normal state. Crops will suffer, starved of sunlight. Insects will die, and be replaced by those attuned to damp and humidity. Midges, Mosquitoes, and other bugs will flourish, at the expense of bees, and other pollinators. We will have to eat less fresh food, and pay more for a better diet. Our energy consumption will rise, causing untold problems. Old people will be marginalised, unable to afford the increased costs of food, and heating. The tourist industry will disappear, coastal towns become ghosts, as the populace seek some sun in the hotter parts of Europe. The outlook is bleak. The prospects are grey.

Gloomsday is upon us, and nobody seems to care.

(Update- 25th June, 09.10. The Sun is out!)

 

44 thoughts on “The Gloomsday Scenario”

  1. I think that people have a confused understanding of Global Warming… Global Warming means climate change because the increase in temperature means everything is out of whack… for many places it means more cold, wet, wind… etc

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. Ah, Pete, I keep dropping loud hints to the OH about retiring to Portugal, but I am not going to get him there. I just get so fed up with all the rain! Short days and hardly any daylight are soul destroying and I can’t even get out into my garden which is what keeps me sane. I’d rather have cold days and sunny skies, but that’s definitely not the case here. Thank goodness for the blogs to keep me occupied.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. When my father retired to Coastal Oregon in the 1970s, he claimed that to know what the weather will be today, one only needed to remember what it was yesterday. In an odd sort of way, that is still generally true worldwide, However, there are subtle changes from day to day, that make the comparison of days years apart dramatic. One has to keep in kind that global changes will be the most noticeable at the extremes where most of us do not live. So, despite knowing in the abstract the world is going to hell (literally) we look around and don’t see the change, day to day. Hmmm.
    Warmest regards, Theo

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I have definitely seen an increase in rain here. It was wetter than I expected when I moved here in 2012, and has got progressively worse with each subsequent year.
      Best wishes, Pete.

      Like

      Reply

  6. I leave all talk of Nature to the environmentalists (who finally woke up) these days. I spent decades trying to convince people of what was happening and I was called a “tree-hugger’ and trouble-maker and ridiculed for my efforts. Now, I do my thing, but let others do the talking.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

      1. No, not cooler, but we saw too many of those movies where they drove alongside the Med in little summer frocks (not the men) and sort of assumed that was all year round. I’m still in tshirt and shorts – and no one told us they have 2 ski resorts in the mountains. We do get ay least 7 months of hot weather though – we know we’ll have a summer 🙂

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  8. I suspect that you are looking back to your schooldays with rose tinted spectacles. I know I do.

    I spent all of my teenage years in Wales, one of the rainiest parts of the country. But, like you, I can only recall long hot summers.

    On the other hand, ardent environmentalists suggest that we should use less, re-use more, and recycle what can’t be re-used. If everyone did that to the best of their ability (especially if people didn’t buy anything they didn’t need), the end result would be the collapse of capitalism. Capitalism relies on people buying ever more stuff, if we all stopped, then we’d need to find a better way to sustain society.

    Marx got it wrong when he said that workers should revolt, and that they have nothing to lose but their chains. It is consumers who should revolt; they have nothing to lose but their smartphones.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Nice thoughts, Ian, and I naturally agree.
      I just wanted to reblog this to show how things have changed remarkably, in the short time since I wrote it.
      Best wishes to you and Janice, Pete.

      Like

      Reply

  9. Hi Pete. I really sympathise; or should I say empathise? I don’t relish the onset of winter, but I try to remain positive, as giving in to despair cannot be an option! Having said that, Seasonally Affective Disorder is a recognised syndrome; I try to get out & about as much as possible in the winter, when weather permits, to top up my vitamin D quota, if nothing else. With regard to climate change (which seems to be the acceptably less contentious term for how the weather will change in the future) I don’t feel qualified to comment, so I won’t; however, although it’s very easy to become fixated on the microclimate in our own little corner of the world, the mammoth task that is engaging the climate scientists is the pattern of change on a global scale, and even the most staggeringly effective computers currently available struggle to accommodate all the variables in the system, so the only inference I think we can draw from that is that being careful & considerate might not benefit us here immediately, or for the foreseeable future, for that matter, but it could help redress the balance in other parts of the world where that change has already been extreme. If it doesn’t, well: at least we tried. 🙂 Cheers, Jon.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. Well Florida has certainly gotten warmer over the 15 years I’ve been here Pete. Several of the warmest summers ever have occurred in the last 5 years. And storm surge seems to be a bigger problem than it ever was before. Places flood now that never previously flooded. We just ended a 150 days stretch when the temp never fell below 70 degrees. Even in the middle of night,

    Oh well. What me worry? It won’t get too hot before I go and we will still be using gasoline.

    🙂

    Regards from sunny Florida.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  14. Reblogged this on beetleypete and commented:

    I was looking back over some old posts this evening, and found this one about the weather, and Global Warming. It is over six years old, but still strangely relevant, at least as far as life in Beetley is concerned.
    Hardly any of you have seen it before, or commented previously.

    Like

    Reply

  15. SOUND. Pete, you are golden. Prominent leading scientists signed an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal expressing their belief that the theory of global warming is not supported by science. This has not been getting the attention it deserves because politicians are too embarrassed to admit that they are wrong about “global warming”. Not only has our planet stopped warming but we are headed toward another ice age. Data shows that in fact the Earth has not warmed at all over the last 15 years. In fact, the Met Office and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit have reported, after taking data from nearly 30,000 stations around the world, have found that the earth stopped warming in 1997.

    People (“Greens” and other hippies) need to get their head out of their nether region and study the science. Well done on highlighting an incredibly important and controversial topic. Me xx

    Like

    Reply

    1. It has subsided here Brian, but we had mini-gales at the weekend. Today has tried to make me out a liar. Warm, with some sun, about 19 degrees. Still mostly cloudy though,

      Like

      Reply

  17. I think the new term they use is weather disruption, it’s no longer global warming:) 27 C here today, but thunder in the air so yet another storm to wash away more road and crops! Happy days.

    Like

    Reply

  18. I’m not sold on anthropogenic global warming, reeks of government conspiracy to wring more money out of tax payers and excercise control in the name of green. Typical short termism as per our political system. This planet will continue to experience periods of hot and cooling over vast periods of geological time, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. The feedback mechanisms this planet is capable of are massive and they will continue long after humans are extinct. We are so unimportant in the grand scheme of the planet’s history. Commentators and some scientists have also conveniently forgotten about The Little Ice Age and The Medieval Warm Period. Sometimes the weather has a wobble on a global scale and it could last a very long time. Sorry for this further adding to your Gloomsday experience, if its any coincidence, it’s broadly the same here at the mo, except for the odd day when irratic 40 mph winds send the clouds scudding across the sky, otherwise it is grey, flat calm and the midges devour you. Anyhow, I’m now really on a rant, must stop, think I may move to Tuscany after all… Tx

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. That was a good rant though Tracey, and we need more like that, to counter those conspiracies you refer to. I am sure you could add some Island flavour to Tuscan Cuisine! Regards as always, Pete. x

      Like

      Reply

Leave a reply to beetleypete Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.