Climate change and extreme weather are now part of our daily vocabulary. But as Michael Fewer, observes, it is far from being a modern phenomenon..
In the media and in general conversation, One hears mentions of Global Warming almost every day now. It’s just as well, because it seems that it is crucially important that we do something radical about the matter, rather than continue like lemmings racing for the cliff. How long, however, has global warming being going on, I wonder.
I noticed recently a thought-provoking editorial that appeared in The Irish Times:
‘According to the US Commerce Department, which has been collecting statistics on the subject, the world, at least the northern end of it, is getting warmer. The Arctic ice is retreating. Open water is to be found at latitudes far north of anything previously known. Vast glaciers have been melted away by a summer of exceptional length and warmth. Polar bears, seals and other fur-bearing animals and certain fish have been driven by this unexpected heat wave from their normal summer haunts into the North…
It is one of the interesting attributes of the terrestrial globe that, while, in fact, nothing out of the way has happened to it for thousands of years, anything may happen. If the Northern ice-cap is to melt away and leave the Pole as hospitable as Picardy, and Terenure as torrid as Timbuctoo, the change is likely to take fifty thousand years than five months – but there is always the possibility that it may take five months. A slight divergence from the absolute in the movement of the earth or sun or some intruding planet could frizzle the earth to a white ash or turn it as cold as a stone. It has not happened, and we human ants presume that it will never happen.’
Believe it or not, the date of this editorial was November 16, 1922, ninety-eight years ago. Is it a hint that global warming has been creeping up on us for longer than we had thought? Only the older amongst us, however, will remember extreme weather events that occurred long before the term was invented. The snows of 1947 and 1963, the heatwave of 1976 and the severe winter of 1986 were just called ‘extreme weather’ when they happened. Admittedly, we haven’t had our rivers freeze over since January 1881, when mini ice bergs flowing down the river Barrow destroyed the bridge at New Ross.
Extreme weather conditions, now generally blamed for flooding at Enniscorthy is typical of the results of severe weather conditions. The snows of 1947 and 1963, the heatwave of 1976 and the severe winter of 1986 were just called ‘extreme weather’ when they happened
Early in the twentieth century, six years before that Times editorial, an extreme weather event caused a major tragedy in my family. On the night of 16 November 1916 Ireland was struck by a severe storm. The south of the country was hit by what the newspapers called hurricane winds, and the Lee valley was heavily flooded, inundating many houses and creating a great lake stretching westwards from Cork city. Livestock was swept away, and six people were drowned in floods across the country. There was widespread damage to buildings, and towns were left with streets strewn with slates and bricks.
My grandfather, Thomas Sheridan, was living at the time on the Quay in Waterford with his wife Margaret, three young sons, and an infant daughter. During the storm a particularly strong gust of wind dislodged the chimney of the house next door, and tons of masonry collapsed with a great crash onto his house. The roof fell onto the third floor which, like a pack of cards, collapsed onto the second floor. In a chaos of masonry and timber and choking clouds of dust, Thomas, Margaret and the little boys were pinned in their beds by timber and masonry. Margaret held baby Mary in her arms, but couldn’t move a limb.
Four brave dockers of the Clyde Shipping Company, Martin Alleyne, Joseph Colfer, John Brown and James Hayes, rushed across the Quay, and in spite of the danger of fire and falling masonry and detritus, they managed to enter the building. Digging through the rubble, plaster and twisted timbers, they managed to locate all the family and bring them out. Thomas, Margaret, Gerard, the eldest boy and the baby Mary survived, but the two youngest boys, three-year-old Thomas and eighteen months old Patrick, died.
My grandparents probably never completely came to terms with the disaster that occurred that November, but I believe that generation were no strangers to tragedy, and they soldiered on, somehow. The baby Mary survived to become my mother and lived a long and happy life, surviving many other weather events, and died at the age of 79, leaving four children, nine grandchildren, and seventeen great-grandchildren.
It is easy to forget that the climate, as measured by the long-term distribution of temperature, rainfall sunshine and weather conditions generally, is always changing, and in a person’s lifetime the changes may be so small compared to the ordinary day-to-day and year-to-year variations that they are hardly noticed, or a large fluctuation is very much noticed.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys wrote extensively about the harsh winter of 1683 to 1684, and there were another series of severe winters between 1794 and 1810
During the last 2,000 years western Europe has experienced eight major changes in climate, including our recent ‘climate change’. By the middle of the last century BC, when Ceasar invaded Britain, it had been mainly wet and cold for about 400 years, and it remained so until about AD 100, when a warmer spell set in for almost a century. There followed a bit more than a century and a half of wetter weather, before it reverted to warmer and drier. This dry spell became very dry indeed between AD 600 and 800, during which a number of severe droughts occurred. It should be remembered that the grape vine, brought to Britian by the Romans, flourished in the Vale of Gloucester from around Ad 400 to 1200. After a stormy 13th century which dragged on until the 15th century, a period of extremely variable weather occurred, from wet years to dry ones and from bitter cold to very warm ones. Between 1650 and 1850 European winters became very cold, and it was during this period that frost fairs, the subject of many contemporary paintings, took place on rivers and lakes.
The English diarist Samuel Pepys wrote extensively about the harsh winter of 1683 to 1684, and there were another series of severe winters between 1794 and 1810: the last frost fair was held on the Thames in the winter of 1813-1814. From about 1850 to 1950 the weather became milder overall: parts of Greenland and Norway, previously frozen since the Viking era, became free of ice and were again used for cultivation. As winter temperatures increased, however, summers became less reliable.
No one has discovered, as yet, the basic reasons for the past climate changes, but it seems certain that our present situation, facing yet another summer of extreme temperatures, is simply due to mankind’s complete and arrogant disregard of nature.
Michael Fewer is an architect by profession, and he combined a successful architectural practice with an academic post for many years until he changed direction in 2000 to spend more time writing and travelling.
Since his first book was published in 1988, there have been a further twenty seven: he has produced more than 400 illustrated magazine and newspaper articles, and is an Irish Times columnist. He has also illustrated books for other authors, written book reviews and was a consultant contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Ireland. He has contributed to a considerable number of television and radio programmes, particularly Sunday Miscellany.
Michael is married to Teresa, and has four grown-up children and eight grandchildren. He lives most of the year in Dublin,, but in spring and summer, when not travelling, he divides his time between Dublin and a cottage in County Waterford, on the south coast.
