Tag Archives: Climate

392, El Niño and the Case for Local Resilience

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Forecasters are warning that the developing El Niño could become a very strong event by the end of 2026, with its effects continuing into the spring of 2027.

El Niño occurs when unusually warm water develops across the tropical Pacific Ocean. This changes atmospheric circulation and can affect weather patterns around the world. It does not provide a precise forecast for any particular part of Britain, but it can alter the likelihood of storms, heavy rain and other extremes.

The article published by MSN and The Independent suggests that Britain could experience a wetter and stormier autumn and winter. This would follow an exceptionally hot and dry summer which has already placed water supplies, farming, wildlife and infrastructure under considerable pressure.

The important lesson is not that we know exactly what the coming winter will bring. We do not. It is that the weather appears to be becoming less dependable.

A disturbance arriving from afar

El Niño is a reminder that no locality is isolated from the natural systems of the wider world. A change in the temperature of the Pacific Ocean can eventually affect rainfall, food production and prices in Britain.

The direct effect on British weather may be uncertain, but the indirect effects could be considerable. Droughts and floods in food-exporting countries may reduce supplies of rice, tea, coffee, citrus fruit and other products upon which Britain has become dependent.

Modern supply chains have been designed for efficiency rather than resilience. Food may travel thousands of miles and pass through numerous processors, warehouses and distribution centres before reaching a local shop. A failure in any part of the system can be transmitted rapidly to consumers.

In an expanding economy, shortages can sometimes be overcome by purchasing supplies elsewhere. In a shrinking economy, characterised by high energy costs, debt and declining discretionary spending, that option becomes progressively less affordable.

From prediction to preparation

The national response will probably concentrate upon forecasts, emergency plans and the protection of major infrastructure. These are necessary, but they cannot provide every household and locality with security.

Localism begins with a different question. It does not ask whether an extreme event can be prevented. It asks whether a locality can continue to provide its essentials when the event occurs.

A resilient locality would know:

  • which roads and properties are vulnerable to flooding;
  • which residents may need help during power cuts or severe weather;
  • where emergency shelter and warmth could be provided;
  • which buildings have independent heating or electricity;
  • where local food stocks are held;
  • which farms, growers, shops and kitchens could cooperate during a disruption; and
  • who possesses useful equipment, vehicles and practical skills.

Much of this knowledge already exists informally. The task is to reconnect it.

Water must be managed locally

The possibility of heavy winter rain following summer drought demonstrates one of the contradictions of the present system. A locality may experience water shortage and flooding within a few months of each other.

Rainwater is rushed from roofs, roads and fields into drains and rivers. It may then contribute to flooding before disappearing downstream. Later, the same locality may be asked to restrict its water use.

A more local approach would retain water in the landscape. Ponds, restored wetlands, water butts, small reservoirs, permeable surfaces, healthy soils and carefully managed woodland could slow runoff and provide reserves for dry periods.

Flood protection and drought preparation should therefore be treated as parts of the same local water policy.

Food security begins before the shortage

Local food production cannot replace every imported product. Nor does localism require every locality to become completely self-sufficient. It does mean increasing the proportion of essential food which can be grown, processed, stored and distributed reasonably close to where it is consumed.

That might include vegetables, fruit, eggs, dairy products, meat, flour and preserved foods. Local mills, bakeries, dairies, cold stores and community kitchens may eventually become as important as the farms themselves.

Production must also become more varied. A single large crop may be efficient in a normal year but vulnerable to drought, flooding or disease. A mixture of crops, varieties and farming methods provides insurance which cannot always be measured by immediate financial return.

The shrinking economy increases the danger

Extreme weather is occurring while the country is becoming less able to maintain its complicated infrastructure.

Flood defences, reservoirs, electricity networks, roads, sewers and emergency services all require large and continuing expenditure. Governments may promise investment, but much of their available revenue is already committed to debt interest, pensions, health care and other unavoidable costs.

Infrastructure can therefore become less reliable at the very time when the climate is placing greater demands upon it.

Local resilience cannot replace national infrastructure. It can, however, reduce the consequences when national systems are temporarily overwhelmed. A building with stored water, a wood stove, some local electricity and a supply of food is less vulnerable than one which depends entirely upon continuous deliveries through distant networks.

Localism is practical insurance

El Niño will eventually fade, as every El Niño does. The vulnerabilities it exposes will remain.

The lesson is not that Britain should withdraw from the world. It is that necessities should not depend entirely upon distant systems which local people cannot control.

A locality that retains water, produces some of its food, maintains local skills and knows how to organise itself will be better prepared for storms, droughts, power cuts and economic contraction. These arrangements also strengthen everyday life when no emergency is occurring.

Localism is therefore more than an economic response to the end of growth. It is a form of practical insurance against a world in which both the weather and the economy are becoming less predictable.

214. Will a Shrinking Economy Make Global Warming Go Away?

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As the economy shrinks, global warming will ease – but it will not disappear, and there is no honest basis for saying when it might.

Economic contraction reduces energy use, transport, construction, manufacturing and long supply chains. These are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions. If contraction is deep and long-lasting, emissions will fall sharply. On this point there is little dispute. A smaller economy emits less carbon.

But global warming is not driven by today’s emissions alone. It is driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide remains for centuries. Methane is shorter-lived but highly potent. Even if emissions were cut close to zero, temperatures would remain elevated for a very long time. Some further warming would still occur because the climate system responds slowly.

This means there is no moment at which global warming simply stops. There is only a slowing, then possibly a stabilisation, and only much later a very gradual decline.

Some changes are already locked in. Sea levels will continue to rise for centuries. Oceans will stay warmer and more acidic. Ice loss will not reverse on any meaningful human timescale. These processes do not respond quickly to economic change.

What contraction can do is prevent escalation. It can stop warming from running away beyond human capacity to adapt. That is not a full solution, but it is the difference between difficulty and collapse.

Timing matters, and here certainty is not possible. If global economic contraction were sustained:

  • emissions could fall within one or two decades
  • temperature rise might stabilise later this century
  • climate instability would persist for many decades
  • sea level rise would continue well beyond 2100

There is no credible date at which the problem “goes away”.

The honest conclusion is this. A shrinking economy does not restore the old climate. It limits further damage and makes adaptation possible. That is not failure. It is realism. It shifts the task from chasing growth-based fixes to learning how to live within new climatic limits, locally and materially.

That is as far as authenticity allows us to go.

177. When the Waters Rise: Localism in an Age Without Government Rescue

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Aviva’s report, Building Future Communities, prompted this piece. It warns that millions more homes in Britain will face flooding by 2050. The threat is not confined to coasts and rivers. Much of the new risk will come from within towns and cities, where heavy rain overwhelms drains and the land can no longer clear the water.

The report describes a Britain where formal defences can no longer cope. Dykes, pumps, and culverts were built for a climate that no longer exists. The ground is wetter, storms are heavier, and budgets are thinner. Aviva calls for resilience in building and planning, but it also hints at a more profound truth — that some places may no longer be defendable.

History offers a warning. On the Humber estuary, the medieval town of Ravenser Odd was once a busy port with its own market and church. It stood near today’s Spurn Point. Repeated storms and shifting tides gradually destroyed it. By 1362, it had been swallowed by the sea. The people left, and the name survived only on old charts.

Hull stands further inland, but faces a similar danger. About ninety per cent of the city lies below the level of a high tide in the Humber. Its safety depends entirely on a network of pumping stations that lift water out of low ground and push it towards the estuary. When tides are high, sluices close and the pumps must run continuously to prevent water from flowing back into the city.

In 2007, heavy rain overwhelmed parts of the system. Pumping stations failed, and water poured through streets and homes. Since then, the pumps have been modernised, but their dependence on electricity, maintenance, and constant management remains. Without them, large areas of Hull would lie underwater within days.

The city’s long history of self-reliance is reflected not only in its flood defences but in its communications. Hull is the only place in Britain with its own independent telephone network, founded by the city council in 1904. Local control of the telephone system meant that engineers and pumping stations could always stay in contact, even if national lines failed. The decision was made for practical reasons — to keep the pumps, power, and emergency services connected — but it became a symbol of the city’s independence. That local autonomy, once an oddity, now looks like a model for the future.

The lesson is stark. Hull does not stand above the flood. It stays dry only because machines keep it so. As sea levels rise, the pumps must work harder against higher tides. When costs or power shortages interrupt the system, flooding will return.

Flooding is not just a coastal story. Inland towns face a different but equally dangerous threat. Tewkesbury, where the Severn meets the Avon, has flooded repeatedly in recent years. In 2007, it was cut off entirely, and thousands of homes were lost to the water. Each time the pattern repeats — heavy rain, full rivers, overwhelmed drains, and a slow, difficult recovery.

Another, quieter problem is rising groundwater beneath our cities. In Liverpool, engineers now have to pump water constantly out of railway tunnels to keep them dry. The British Geological Survey has found that the city’s water table is rising because industry has gone. Factories and shipyards once drew large volumes of groundwater for cooling and process water. When that abstraction stopped, the underground water began to return. Basements, subways, and tunnels that were once dry are now under threat.

The same is happening across post-industrial Britain. Groundwater is creeping back into places built on the assumption that pumping would go on forever. It is a hidden flood, rising from below, just as the tides rise above.

Together, these examples show how fragile the modern landscape has become. We have built towns and cities that depend on constant effort to keep nature out. When that effort falters — through power failure, neglect, or economic decline — the land reclaims itself.

Government cannot hold back every tide or drain every valley. Aviva has told Parliament that hundreds of thousands of properties are already more at risk because existing flood defences are deteriorating. Insurance is being withdrawn from high-risk areas. The era of guaranteed rescue is ending.

Localism will become the only workable response. Communities will have to decide which ground can be held and which must be given up. They will need their own plans for shelter, food, and recovery. In some places, retreat will be wiser than defence.

Abandonment is not failure if it allows life to continue elsewhere. New settlements on higher ground could become the next generation of self-reliant communities, built around local supply, shared work, and mutual care.

Ravenser Odd was lost when the sea advanced faster than its people could adapt. Hull, Tewkesbury, and Liverpool each face the same test in different forms — the sea, the storm, and the water below.

When Water Has the Last Word

The idea of retreat is not new. Throughout British history, many inland settlements have disappeared when the land became too wet to live on.

In the 14th century, the upland village of Hundatorra on Dartmoor was abandoned after years of cold, wet seasons. Its fields, once tilled for grain, turned to bog. The people left, and a few stone houses are all that remain today.

Further north, in 17th-century Moray, the village of Culbin was lost when violent storms and shifting sand choked the drainage of the River Findhorn. The rising water and drifting dunes buried farms and crofts. Families walked away and never returned.

The pattern continues in modern form. Tenbury Wells in Worcestershire has flooded so often that insurers are withdrawing cover. Businesses cannot reopen after every deluge. One by one, they leave. This is how abandonment begins in our time — not with disaster relief, but with quiet departure.

When the waters rise, the question will not be whether government can save us, but whether we can save ourselves. Localism is not just the response to a failing system. It is the only way of living that can endure when the formal world begins to sink.

Postscript

The story of flooding is also the story of economic change. The industrial economy depended on heavy infrastructure, central planning, and a constant flow of energy to hold nature in check. Pumps, drains, and flood defences were all part of that system.

As the formal economy weakens and energy becomes more costly, these systems can no longer be sustained everywhere. What follows is the return of the informal economy — the local, the adaptable, and the human.

Localism is not just a social response to crisis; it is the next stage of the economy’s evolution. When the machines fall silent, it will be the people nearby, not the institutions above, who keep life going.

175. Building Future Communities 2025: Reporting on Prospects for Flooding in the UK

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The Aviva “Building Future Communities 2025” report is a well-structured analysis of how the UK must prepare for the escalating impacts of climate change—especially flooding, subsidence, and heat—by mid-century. Although written from a corporate and national policy perspective, it contains significant implications for localism that go well beyond its surface message.

Aviva is a major UK-based insurance and financial services company. It’s one of the largest insurers in Britain.

Aviva warns that by 2050:

  • Flood-risk homes in England could rise by 25–27%, reaching about 8 million properties.
  • 1.4 million more properties could face subsidence risk.
  • Extreme heat will endanger health, infrastructure, and habitability.

The report proposes six “calls for change”:

  1. Tougher planning rules to stop building in flood zones.
  2. Compulsory low-cost flood-resilience measures in all new homes.
  3. Mandatory Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems (SuDS).
  4. Government-backed Natural Flood Management (NFM) and private-sector investment.
  5. A Resilient Buildings Taskforce to unite housing, finance, and planning policy.
  6. More innovation and regulation to protect homes from heat.

Case studies (York, Cardiff Bay, Edinburgh Castle, etc.) show practical responses already underway.

Implications for localism

Although the report’s framing is largely top-down, its findings implicitly confirm the necessity of a bottom-up, community-led transition—the essence of localism.

1. The failure of centralised systems

The report highlights how national flood defences, urban drainage, and central planning cannot cope with climate-driven pressures.

  • Surface water flooding, now the biggest rising risk, is inherently local and unpredictable.
  • Many defences are owned privately or by local authorities, not by the Environment Agency.
  • Maintenance and funding backlogs show that central government control is overstretched.

→ Localism implication: resilience must increasingly be managed at the community level—through neighbourhood flood groups, local adaptation plans, and locally funded or self-organised works.

2. Community resilience and neighbour networks

Aviva praises the Pontcanna (Cardiff) initiative, where residents created a local flood plan, registered vulnerable people, and rehearsed emergency procedures. This is an explicit demonstration of social capital in action—the very network of informal relationships on which localism depends.

→ Localism implication: the most successful adaptation is social, not technical. It arises from relationships of trust, cooperation, and shared responsibility—core principles of an informal economy.

3. Nature-based solutions as local land stewardship

Natural Flood Management (tree planting, leaky dams, wetland restoration) relies on small-scale, distributed action across catchments. Such systems cannot be delivered solely by national agencies; they require local landholders, farmers, and communities to collaborate.

→ Localism implication: environmental resilience becomes a shared landscape duty, giving rural communities a new civic and economic role as custodians of their ecosystems.

4. Adaptation of the built environment

The report calls for widespread retrofit of flood and heat-resilience features. This aligns with the idea of re-localised construction trades—craftsmen, small builders, and voluntary repair groups—replacing large corporate developers. Local adaptation will depend on distributed skills and small-scale enterprise, not remote regulation.

5. From formal control to informal initiative

Although Aviva recommends new national regulations, the underlying data point to a future where:

  • Insurance cover becomes increasingly conditional or unaffordable.
  • National defence budgets cannot protect all communities.
  • Individuals and local groups must act pre-emptively.

→ Localism implication: a gradual withdrawal of the formal system (insurance, national infrastructure, planning control) will push resilience functions into informal systems of mutual aid, self-protection, and local investment—hallmarks of a shrinking, post-growth economy.

6. Restoring natural and social capital

Aviva’s support for nature-based flood management and local resilience groups unintentionally endorses local economic self-reliance—where communities invest time and effort in collective maintenance rather than financial growth. This is consistent with your argument that as discretionary markets decline, social and ecological repair will become the new economy.

Critical reflection

While the report’s tone remains corporate and technocratic, it reveals an unavoidable truth: the formal, centralised model of climate governance cannot secure the nation’s resilience. Communities must become self-organising, ecologically literate, and mutually supportive. In short, climate adaptation is the practical route by which localism will emerge from necessity.

concluding observation

The “Building Future Communities 2025” report, though framed as a call for national coordination, actually illustrates the limits of that coordination. In practice, resilience will depend on thousands of local initiatives—socially embedded, place-based, and self-managed. Climate change is not only a threat but a catalyst for the transformation from a formal industrial society to an informal, localist one.

171. Energy and Biochar: Using Fire to Cool the Earth

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Every economy depends on energy. In the fossil age, that energy came from coal, oil, and gas — fuels so powerful and portable that they shaped the whole structure of industrial life. But as those fuels fade, we will once again draw heat and power from wood. The question is how to do it cleanly, fairly, and in a way that strengthens the land rather than exhausting it.

The Return of Charcoal

Charcoal has always been the craftsman’s fuel — dense, light, and steady. It burns hotter than wood, and with far less smoke. In a wood economy it becomes both energy and culture. Charcoal burners return to the coppice, tending slow fires under turf, producing the black fuel that feeds forges, kilns, and cookhouses. Their work is seasonal and skilled, and the village depends on it.

Biochar: Carbon That Stays Put

Out of charcoal-making comes a second gift: biochar. When wood is burned in a kiln with little oxygen, part of its carbon becomes stable, refusing to return to the air. That char can then be:

  • Used as fuel in stoves and workshops.

  • Buried in soil, where it improves fertility and locks carbon away for centuries.

  • Mixed into building materials and roads, turning the built environment itself into a carbon store.

This idea, developed by Albert Bates and Kathleen Draper in Burn: Using Fire to Cool the Earth, turns an old craft into modern climate care. Instead of spending carbon, we begin to bank it.

The Carbon Cascade

Bates and Draper describe a “carbon cascade” — a chain of uses where carbon is stabilised a little more at each step.

  1. A tree draws carbon from the air.

  2. Some of its wood is burned cleanly for heat.

  3. Some becomes biochar and is locked into soil or walls.

  4. A portion stays in standing timber or coppice, growing again.

Each step keeps more carbon in useful form and less in the atmosphere.

Smoke and Health

The old image of smoky chimneys belongs to the past. In a managed system, wood fuel is well-seasoned, kilns are airtight, and masonry stoves replace open fires. Communal bakehouses and bathhouses concentrate combustion in efficient hearths, run by trained stokers. Biochar kilns produce far less smoke than open burning, making clean air a community achievement.

The Energy Ledger

Energy in a wood economy is measured as carefully as money.

  • One coin might equal a sack of wood worth about 100 kilowatt-hours of heat.

  • A household might use 60–80 coins a year for heating and cooking.

  • Coppice yield decides how many coins can be minted.

This keeps heat within the limits of the forest. Waste becomes expensive; thrift becomes virtue.

Heat, Light, and Motion

Beyond household fires, energy is shared:

  • Masonry heaters store warmth for community halls.

  • Waterwheels and hand-cranked flywheels power workshops.

  • Biochar kilns provide heat for drying food or timber.

The goal is not endless power, but enough — reliable, renewable, and rooted in the land.

Using Fire to Cool the Earth

The paradox is real: by burning wood in the right way, we can cool the planet. Each kilo of carbon locked in biochar is carbon taken from the sky. Each cottage that burns seasoned wood instead of coal avoids adding new carbon. The coppice that regrows next year closes the loop.

A wood economy does not fear fire. It learns to use it with precision and respect — to warm homes, to forge tools, to enrich the soil, and to steady the climate.

141. Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse

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I am in two minds about publishing this. Is it believable? I hope not – Barry

Southern Ocean current reverses for first time, signalling risk of climate system collapse

The reversal of ocean circulation in the southern hemisphere could double current atmospheric concentrations of CO₂ / ICM-CSIC

By bne IntelliNews July 5, 2025

A major ocean current in the Southern Hemisphere has reversed direction for the first time in recorded history, in what climatologists are calling a “catastrophic” tipping point in the global climate system.

The development, which was confirmed by Spanish marine scientists at El Institut de Ciències del Mar (ICM-CSIC) in Barcelona, has triggered widespread alarm among climate scientists due to its potential to accelerate global warming and destabilise weather patterns worldwide.

“The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase,” said climate activist Ben See in a post on social media.

The collapse involves the deep overturning circulation in the South Atlantic — part of the global conveyor belt of ocean currents, which typically pulls cold, nutrient-rich water up from the ocean floor and drives planetary heat distribution.

The study, published on July 2, identifies a collapse and reversal of the Deep Western Boundary Current (DWBC) in the South Atlantic — a key part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC).

This current system plays a crucial role in regulating global temperatures and storing atmospheric carbon dioxide in the deep ocean. The ICM’s data show that the flow of the DWBC current reversed from northward to southward for several consecutive months in 2023 — the first such event in 30 years of continuous monitoring.

“This is an unprecedented observation and a potential game-changer,” said physicist and lead author Dr Marilena Oltmanns, who warned the changes could “alter the Southern Ocean’s capacity to sequester heat and carbon.”

According to the ICM-CSIC, the reversal is likely linked to an ongoing weakening of the Antarctic overturning circulation, a deep-ocean process driven by the formation of cold, salty water masses near Antarctica. That system has slowed by up to 40% since the late 1990s, and the new findings suggest it may be destabilising regional ocean dynamics more rapidly than expected.

There has been a lot of speculation that the whole AMOC (otherwise known as the Gulf Stream), could come to a halt. The AMOC brings warm water to Europe from the equator, and when it stops flowing that will lead to a mini-ice age in Europe with winter temperatures dropping by 10-30C. While scientists are 98% certain that the AMOC will stop flowing by 2100, recent studies suggest that the collapse could come as soon as this year,  or at least in the next few decades.

The ICM report warns that the reversal of the DWBC could also unleash vast amounts of carbon dioxide currently trapped in deep-ocean reservoirs. The reversal will undermine the ocean’s role as a carbon sink, which currently absorbs about 25% of all anthropogenic CO₂ emissions.

“This could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries,” the report said. Such a release would likely obliterate existing climate targets, as the additional emissions would overwhelm current carbon budgets and render mitigation strategies based on gradual reductions, obsolete.

“The planet is sending us increasingly clear signals that we are crossing critical thresholds,” the ICM warned, characterising the event as a shift from “chronic climate stress” to “acute systemic breakdown.”

The reversal threatens to weaken the ocean’s crucial role as a carbon sink — one of the Earth’s key natural defences against rising atmospheric CO₂ — and will also dramatically disrupt global weather systems, sea level patterns, and marine ecosystems.

The Mediterranean is as hot as bathwater

The event coincides with an unprecedented marine heatwave in the Mediterranean. A Spanish metrological buoy recorded a sea temperature of 31C on July 4 – as hot as a lukewarm bath. The northwestern Mediterranean Sea has recorded a temperature anomaly of +6.21°C above the 1982–2015 average, part of a pattern of record marine heatwaves that scientists say are reshaping entire ecosystems.

The northwestern Mediterranean Sea is currently 6.21°C above the 1982–2015 average, creating what scientists have called “bathwater” conditions in a historically temperate basin. Warmer surface temperatures could further stall or disrupt ocean currents, feeding a dangerous feedback loop of warming and current instability.

While ocean circulations have shifted in the deep past due to glacial cycles, the current reversal is the first to occur in modern times due to anthropogenic climate change. Researchers now warn of increased risk of abrupt changes in monsoon patterns, fisheries collapse, and a rapid sea-level rise in the Southern Hemisphere. They are calling for immediate global attention and a reassessment of climate adaptation strategies in light of what may be a new and more volatile climate regime.

“The stunning reversal of ocean circulation in the Southern Hemisphere confirms the global climate system has entered a catastrophic phase,” said climatologist Ben See on social media.

The reversal of the current will bring cold water up from the deep in which is trapped CO₂. That means the reversal, “could double current atmospheric CO₂ concentrations by releasing carbon that has been stored in the deep ocean for centuries,” the El Institut de Ciencies del Mar said.

“The planet is sending us increasingly clear signals that we are crossing critical thresholds,” the Institut added.