Climate Change- what does it mean for rural business?

The climate change debate is like a boxing match. In the red corner are the climate change ‘enforcers’ and in the blue corner the climate change ‘deniers’. Both ‘boxers’ have been training in separate gyms. They have issued their own statements to the pre-fight press conference. They don’t speak and then the bell goes and they start hitting each other. No communications can the heard except for grunts and the noise of glove on jaw.

It is hard for the majority of people to know where to start in this debate although that doesn’t stop some individuals from pronouncing with great certainty. It is hard because it is so complicated and the climate is a model with so many moving parts. Think of how sophisticated climate modeling computers are and how they still struggle with a forecast that is more than 10 days away.

As I try to make sense of it I remember the flawed information on climate change from the University of East Anglia apparently supporting the notion of climate change, the fact that the weather recordings over the last 20 years or so have shown negligible temperature increases and the snow falls that have taken place in this country together with ships have becomes locked in pack ice in the Arctic recently.Yet I also note that passages through the ice have opened up for the first time for many years, that some glaciers have retreated miles and that some plants are flowering in the middle of winter.

Then there is the question of what to blame if you do accept that the climate is changing and, if so, what should be done about it and by whom. Is it CO2 or is it methane? Is the problem the drying out of peat or emissions from agriculture or from power stations? In a world climatic system how can one country influence another? Is this done by example or treaty? Should countries economic growth be held back when such growth can save lives? What is the ‘whole-life’ carbon cost of new technology that hasn’t been fully tested and while CO2 emissions from burning wood balances its absorption by growing trees, is that the right way of looking at it?

I tend to feel that the greater the professed certainty that people have in this debate the more uncertain I become. Without the benefit of huge computers and scientific laboratories I have to rely on my own experience.

What I have noticed is that we are suffering more extremes, in both directions. This is not a surprise in a country that sits on the edge of the European continent and whose climate is artificially controlled by the operation of the Gulf Stream. The jet stream seems to need oiling to restore its flexibility. If you live in the country you see it at first hand. If you are farming the impact is raw. How much summer feed can you make and how much will you need in the winter? How many pests and diseases will affect your crops or trees and how will you protect them. If you run a tourism business, the weather impacts on visitor numbers not only for day visitors but also holiday makers. These questions all therefore, have £ signs against them. Naively I thought that after the storms of 1987 and 1990 most of the mature trees that were going to come down had come down. These trees were destroyed last month by a lightening strike.

Whatever the experts say we are definitely living in more challenging climatic times and anything that we can do to help the situation we should. Whatever may be happening to the climate naturally we don't want to make it worse. What we need however is clarity, open debate, scientific consensus and this then needs to be translated into clear political consensus around which we can coalesce. Am I too optimistic? In the meantime we need to work out how to mitigate the effects of this variability. Farming and tourism will be in the front line.