Climate Change and Extreme Weather

Article by Fr. Seán McDonagh
Extreme weather is one of the clearest signals that climate change is happening. During the first part of August 2010, news of extreme weather in various parts of the world was seldom off the headlines.
Pakistan suffered its worst monsoon-related floods in 80 years. More than 1,600 people were reported dead, though the real number is probably a multiple of that figure. Rivers burst their banks sweeping away houses, food crops, roads and bridges, leaving areas such as Gilgit Baltistan cut off from the rest of because the Karakurram road has been swept away. The extreme flooding in the Swat valley was partly due to the fact that since the Taliban took over that area forests had been chopped down at an alarming rate.
By the end of the first week of August it was estimated that around 12 million people have been affected by the flood waters in Pakistan. Because the rains had not stopped, rescue operations were difficult to mount. Some charities reported that the only way they could reach the victims was by loading the supplies on donkeys.
The tens of thousands of people, fleeing from the floods by whatever means they could, were often without food, potable water, medicines, dry clothes or rainproof tents. The Pakistani authorities are worried that the death toll will rise dramatically as people suffer from malnutrition and water borne diseases such as typhoid, cholera and malaria. The elderly and the very young are most at risk.
Further east 127 people died and almost 2,000 were reported missing on August 8th after mudslides in north-western China. At least one village in Gansu province was buried entirely in mud forcing 45,000 people to evacuate. One half of Zhouque country was submerged by flood waters which forced 50,000 to flee their homes. The flood waters swept away cars, trucks and even houses. According to figures issued by the Chinese government the number of people who have died in flooding in the first seven months of 2010 stood at more than 2,000. The number of people forced out of their homes by the recent flooding has reached 12 million.
Poland, Germany and the Czech Republic have also been hit by extreme weather events. On August 7th 2010, torrential rain caused rivers to burst their banks in south western Poland, submerging towns and causing at least 3 fatalities. In the town of Goerlitz close to the Germany Polish border, 1,400 were evacuated as flood waters cascaded through the main street. At one point the flood waters topped the seven metre mark. Three people were killed by flood waters in the northern part of the Czech Republic. The Mayor of Bogatynia in the Czech Republic said that the there was little warning. Within an hour the town was totally submerged. Many houses collapsed and the inhabitants were cut off from the rest of the country. Storms and high winds left many communities without electric power in eastern Slovakia.
Further east in Russia the problem is not excessive rain or floods, but the opposite, a prolonged heatwave with temperatures at record levels of 38 degrees Celsius. These have led to numerous forest and peat fires right across the country. A government minister, Sergei Shoigi told the media that there were more than 550 fires covering 17,000 hectares burning across Russia. As a consequence Moscow and its many landmarks such as the Kremlin have been shrouded in a toxic smog for weeks. Flights into Moscow’s southern airport were severely delayed and car drivers used fog lights. The air monitoring service reported that carbon dioxide levels were more than six times higher than they should be. Many people wore gas masks in an effort to protect themselves from the toxic fumes. Despite such initiatives, the mortality rate has doubled in recent weeks according to Andrei Seltsovsky, the head of the Moscow’s health department. Normally there are about 360 to 380 deaths per day in Moscow. In late July and early August 2010, it was double that number. ` Further south there are fears that the fires could release radioactive nuclides from the land contaminated by the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
Yet, despite this extreme weather, global efforts to tackle climate change seem to be unravelling.

Heritage Week

Heritage Week (August 22nd – 29th) is fast approaching, and Cabragh Wetlands is planning a special Open Day on Sunday 29th August, when we hope to celebrate the many good things that are done in the Thurles area to support, cherish and sustain our natural and human heritage. We want to encourage awareness of and support for the many local enterprises and groups which play a part in raising awareness of environmental and heritage issues, be it hill walkers, green schools, sustainable energy businesses, farmers’ market stallholders, food producers, allotment groups, gardeners, chicken coop manufacturers, education and transport providers, and so on.



We face a difficult future in the light of so many environmental challenges, and as individuals and communities we will need to be resilient and innovative if we are to adapt more sustainable styles of living. For our Open Day we hope to have a range of stalls and displays set up by groups and enterprises which can contribute in this area, adding to our local vision of how a better future can be built from the grassroots. We hope that the cumulative effect of a number of such displays will make an informative and challenging statement to visitors about how we can cherish our heritage while adapting a new mindset to help us build a more sustainable future.



As an Open Day there will of course be the usual range of raffles, sales of cards, cakes and bird boxes, animals to see, children’s events, and guided tours of the Cabragh Wetlands, and plenty more. A great afternoon out for the family! Visiting stalls will be welcome to advertise their own events, sell their goods and seek new members. After all this is a community day, a chance for those of us with a common interest to network and build links.



If your group would like to take part, please get in touch in the next two weeks, via e-mail (cabraghwetlands@eircom.net), or call 0504 43879 (mornings), or 086-3179919. The event is supported by the Heritage Council, which will give it some national advertising.



There will be a second Heritage week event at the Cabragh Wetlands on Sunday 22nd August, run in conjunction with Thurles Library, when popular bug expert Dale Treadwell will join children and families in exploring the wetlands, and there will be a display about how the European Union is helping to protect our environment – a timely reminder that communities and government institutions from the local to the supranational, must work together. Competition for progress is a myth – it is cooperation that is needed.

Summer Course

For many months now Cabragh Wetlands have been ringing with the most important sound of all – that wonderful chorus of children delightfully absorbing this fascinating corner of the natural world. Michael Long and his team have brought the ooh-ah factor to hundreds of children throughout the early summer, while the recently held Summer Camp saw drawn-out, sunny dappled days go down a treat along the towering passages through the humongous reedbeds. While having fun, the children have also been learning ideas, values, skills and information that will help them adjust to living in a world facing great environmental changes and challenges.

On an adult level, this joy of limitless movement in the great outdoors turns to concern for the future of all “wildscapes”, and particularly their defining characteristic – their biodiversity. Maintaining the biodiversity of any natural habitat entails a good knowledge of those habitats, initially through personal experiences and hands-on approaches. When we come to understand how a natural habitat developed, its stunning variety and current threats to its viability, then we can work to ensure that this patchwork world of Irish nature survives and maybe flourishes for generations to come.

Increasing numbers of visitors are experiencing the magic of reedbed, wet meadow, hedgerow and pond at Cabragh. This year in the last week of July an introductory course about Tipperary’s varied habitats takes place at Cabragh Wetland Centre, Monday to Friday, 9am to 2pm July 26th to 30th. The course is entitled “A Handful of Habitats” and is targeted at adults who enjoy the varied world of Irish nature. It will also be enjoyed by Primary School teachers who want to develop their confidence and expertise to take children out of the classroom and into the real world, and also older teenagers who might wish to add to their store of knowledge of the natural world, perhaps in preparation for their science certificate examinations. Tourists will also be very welcome.

Wherever you are coming from, your time at Cabragh in the last week of July be of great benefit and is “probably the best staycation” around! The course costs €60 and will be led by local teacher, naturalist and heritage expert Jimmy Duggan. For details phone 0504-23831 or 087-7567273.

Nettles

Of course many people had a good moan, but hasn’t the rain been fantastic over the last week? Getting deep into the ground, it has revived the struggling roots of many plants, from hedges, trees and grass to flowers, fruit and vegetables. The spuds have really perked up. Rivers were running very low and it’s been a blessing to have several downpours. Sorry if your tan has lost its edge, but after months of sunshine, rain is unequivocally good weather – just ask those who live near the world’s expanding deserts.

Being confined indoors for most of July, I was taken aback to see how much the nettles have grown recently – in part due to the rain, of course. This is a much maligned plant, which most of us are only too keen to chop down and rip out of our gardens. It is as important a plant as you will find for the conservation of Ireland’s butterflies, and it is getting close to the time of year when most butterflies will emerge from their chrysalis stage to adorn our gardens and countryside. Their habitat needs protection, and that means looking after your nettles. Nettles are the solitary food plant for the larvae of three major butterfly species, the Small Tortoiseshell, the Red Admiral and the Peacock, and are a major food source for the Painted Lady, which you may remember arrived in Ireland in unusually great numbers last summer. Please allow a patch of nettles to grow somewhere on your land, and cut it back now so that new growth can come through for a second brood of butterflies.

So what if the hairs of nettle leaves secrete a liquid containing formic that causes a few tingles, if you are careless enough to brush your skin against it? Remember the old saying: “A little bit of pain never hurt anyone!” This is a seriously valuable plant. What we eat is largely a combination of fashion and food company policy – they select the vegetables and seed types that we use, giving us a choice from a mere handful of options, while Nature has tens of thousands of varieties that are mostly ignored. Fresh young nettles can be picked and cooked like spinach, chopped nettles make great liquid manures and organic pest deterrents, nettle seeds mixed with mash induce hens to lay more. Many homeopathic remedies pick up on age old folk-wisdom which used nettle to help cure eczema, cramps, anaemia, dropsy, diabetes, diarrhoea, urinary problems and rheumatism – and even dandruff and baldness. Throw young nettles (without roots and seeds) on your compost heap – they are nitrogen-rich and their long root systems draw in much goodness from deep in the ground – more green manure.

I heard a familiar yet out of place sound yesterday, a solitary buzzy-bellow that spread hauntingly across the fields on the edge of Holycross. Could this be a lone specimen of a southern African species that normally lives in huge flocks, enjoys human company and displays with memorably vibrant tones? Despite scanning the area with binoculars, there was no sign of its instantly recognizable long streamlined body and bulbous head, but one must have migrated from the southern hemisphere, perhaps smuggled in a tourist’s luggage. Yes, the first vuvuzela has arrived in Tipperary. No doubt many more will be in the pet shops in the coming months. Now there’s another use for a large patch of nettles – just chuck the vuvuzela into it.

June on the River Suir

Many thanks to George Willoughby for this beautiful video
http://www.thurles.info/2010/06/20/river-suir-water-lilies-and-mute-swans/

June On The River Suir, Thurles, Co Tipperary, Ireland. from George Willoughby on Vimeo.

Tigers and Whales

It is hard to find words to describe the anger felt when reading about the continued slaughter of two of the most iconic species on the planet. There are apparently only about 1400 wild tigers left in India today. Between 1800 and 1950 something like 160,000 were shot by virile, trophy hunting big game hunters, with numbers reduced to around 40,000 by 1900, and by 1972 down to just 1,800. Hunting, felling of forest habitat for timber and encroachment of ever growing human populations into precious wild areas, brought this beautiful animal to extinction in some parts of India, as well as in Java and Sumatra.



The Indian government in the 1980’s stopped the export of tiger skins, but they still fetch €28,000 on the Tibetan black market, and the demand for tiger body parts for traditional Chinese medicine and aphrodisiacs has been met by the rise of poaching. To preserve the skin, trapped tigers were sometimes killed by the insertion of a red hot poker into the anus. Protection boosted numbers to about 4,000, but standards slipped, more habitat was lost and although tiger tourism boosted income for conservation, it created more problems with tourist vehicles disorienting and killing animals, and continued growth of human habitation to support the tourist trade. Two Indian tiger sanctuaries now have no tigers. At least 12 have been killed by poachers this year already. As numbers fall, so it gets harder to avoid in-breeding and genetic decline.



Now the Sunday Times has exposed the extent of whale hunting over the last few years, at a time when there was meant to be a moratorium. Tens of thousands have been slaughtered, and it seems as if the ban on hunting will be lifted, with certain wealthy whaling countries using dubious financial inducements (including offers to build valuable infrastructure) in third world countries to buy their vote to overturn the embargo.



Man claims to be rational, but it beats me how any sane person can justify or tolerate this sort of extermination of our fellow creatures. Of course species die out, but by natural processes over tens of thousands of years, not by the deliberate action of a deluded self-important branch of the great ape family who has decided over the course of a mere 5,000 years and 200 generations that we humans are more important than anything else. What we are dealing with is not human rationality, but human mass hysteria, and human alienation from the natural world which produced and nurtured our species. We no longer seem to know who or what we are.



There is an urgent need for us to think. Ideas matter. Human rationality requires thought, reflection and silence. Education needs to move on from teaching children how to find an appropriate role in human society, and to start to focus instead on understanding the place and nature of human society within the framework of the natural world.

Thank You!

Many thanks to the good citizens of Thurles who gave so generously to the Cabragh Wetlands Church Gate Collection at the end of May. The total raised was beyond our expectations, and remarkable given the current economic climate when so many of us are having to tighten our financial drawstrings. We take it to mean that the local community supports and appreciates what we are trying to do at Cabragh, and that environmental issues are steadily becoming more important in public debate and education.



This is just as well, because climate change science has taken a bit of a battering in the press in recent months. We are indebted to Nenagh-based Father Sean McDonagh, a prolific writer on environmental issues, for a recent e-mail containing his latest thoughts on the issue. He points out that in the last year global temperature has been the warmest on record, despite the obvious contradiction that China, Europe and North America had a very cold winter in 2009-2010 (our coldest in 47 years). He cites NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen (mentor of Al Gore), who reports that data from 6,300 monitoring stations around the world show that the mean surface temperature was 0.65 degrees Celsius warmer in the year April 2009-April 2010 than the period 1951 to 1980.



Those childishly petulant private e-mails at the University of East Anglia damaged the climate change cause, as did overly pessimistic UN reports that Himalayan glaciers would be gone by the middle of this century. But the glaciers are still melting away; if they survive a century longer than predicted, say to 2165, the message is still the same. The planet is warming; the science is overwhelming. Predictions about the precise rate of change will always be predictions, and thus subject to doubt and imprecision. As a result of a well-organized campaign by climate change sceptics, a growing number of people think that global warming is not happening. Remember that climate and weather are not the same thing. Weather is what hits us locally day after day, with wide ranging temperatures and varied rainfall. Climate is the long-term global trend, which is demonstrably and inexorably getting hotter.



The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association reports that the first four months of 2010 were the hottest ever recorded, with record temperatures in North Africa, Canada and South Asia. In India and Pakistan temperatures have reached 47 degrees Celsius (116 Fahrenheit). On June 1st 2010 the mercury hit 53.7 Celsius in the Indus valley, the fourth highest ever recorded on Earth. In Baghdad there have been several days of over 50 degrees Celsius. People in northern India are dying from heat-related illnesses. Lake Tanganyika is at its hottest for 1500 years, threatening both fish stocks and the fishing industry on which many depend. You will not find many doubters about climate change in these parts of the world, nor in the Pacific Ocean, where they are watching rising levels remorselessly engulf their homes, and the evacuation of the Carteret Islands continues as the land is submerged.



Average ocean temperatures in the Atlantic and Caribbean are at their highest since records began in 1880 and scientists predict a very active hurricane season with 8 to 14 expected, half “major storms”. We may yet see that Gulf oil landing on Irish coasts as it is washed into the Atlantic tidal streams. Raw oil pollution seems an apt punishment for a problem largely caused by our fossil fuel usage. As ye sow, so shall ye reap.



As Monday 21st of June will be the longest day of the year, there will be a celebration of the Summer Solstice at Cabragh Wetlands at 8.00pm.