The week before last, the Eastern Daily Press was kind enough to print my reply to a piece by local Green MP Rupert Read. I think it was in the print edition only, so I’m pasting it in below.

Note that this is written for a general audience, not the old hands of Cliscep. It was rather mistitled: my own work, I admit – rather assuming that one of the editors would use their own, I put no thought into it. Rather than “The Importance of Putting Climate Change into Context” I ought to have said, “The Importance of Putting Adverse Weather into Context.” That’s because the argument is really about whether climate change is causing the adverse weather.

Here you can find Rupert Read’s original, “Rupert Read looks at the new climate challenge,” which you should probably read before mine. I will paste in a small section below, which was what prompted me to ask the editor for 600 words to reply:

Remember: Two devastating hurricanes hit Florida in the space of two weeks killing at least 232, costing at least $42 billion in damages, and leaving millions without power.

The horrific and still ongoing floods in Spain have already killed over 200 people with many still missing.

A story that you may have missed is that the UK has seen the second worst harvest on record.

We all saw and felt the severe flooding earlier this autumn, even though East Anglia actually got off lighter than many parts of Britain.

It has never been more evident that we are now all on the climate frontlines. Transformative Adaptation is about how we deal with this fact.

Among the list of disasters attributed to climate change, although Rupert Read calls it “climate breakdown,” was the second worst harvest on record. You do not have to know much about farming to know that this is not true. How could an MP think it?

I place this here with an encouragement to Clisceppers: if something particularly egregious appears in your local paper, ask the editor for a right to reply. The chances are, you know more about the topic than the person you would be replying to. My advice is to zero out the snark – the below, as you will see, was written with my very polite hat on. They may play rhetorical games, but we should not, having the facts on our side, join in.

The wise man referred to is well known in sceptical circles, but not to the general public. He is famed for having deduced the identity of the alleged forger of the Heartland memo.

Message begins:

Something I try to do when writing about climate change is to put things into their proper context. A favourite tactic of the alarmist is to claim natural disasters as proof of how terrible everything is, without admitting (or perhaps even knowing) that such events have gone on since time immemorial.

Thus Rupert Read in these pages (22^nd November) noted that two hurricanes this year cost 232 lives in the United States, with the obvious implication that this was a symptom of climate change. Those in search of context might like to know that hurricanes occurred before humanity made any significant contribution to carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. An important example is the Great Hurricane of 1780, which killed over 22,000 and, in sinking several ships of the British Navy, may have altered the course of the U.S. War of Independence. The Great Hurricane was one of 4 major hurricanes that year, each killing more than 1,000.

Rupert’s claim that this year’s harvest was the “second worst on record” is plain wrong. Records of UK wheat yields go back formally to 1885, and informally far before that. Wheat yield at the end of the 19^th century was 2 to 2.5 tonnes per hectare; this year, it will probably be 7 tonnes per hectare. This is low for the past 20 years (average about 8 tonnes per hectare), true, but not at all low in historical terms. If you want to go back still further, you will find that wheat yields in Medieval times were under 1 tonne per hectare. This year’s poor harvest is only the “second worst on record” if we forget almost all the past.

Farming was transformed over the course of the twentieth century, with seed filtration methods, mechanisation, artificial fertiliser and artificial pesticides leading to levels of productivity that a Medieval peasant would probably think of as witchcraft. One thing that cannot be controlled is weather, and that will remain the case if we somehow manage to return to the pre-industrial carbon dioxide level that some desire.

In Rupert’s view, “climate breakdown is here.” The language used by alarmists these days is revealing. Those of us of a certain age will remember when the threat was “global warming.” Because this was received by most with indifference, it became “climate change.” Then, when we ignored the peril of “climate change,” it became variously “climate emergency,” “climate heating,” or “climate breakdown.” The climate is not breaking down. I do not think the phrase has meaning.

Rupert advocates adaptation to prepare for the coming trouble. I tend to agree. A wise man once said, and I may be paraphrasing slightly, “Of course we don’t plan for tomorrow. We don’t plan for today.” By which he meant our civilisation is not resilient to today’s weather, let alone the worse weather prophesied to occur in response to climate change. Building in resilience (for example, in flood defences) will benefit the places where money is spent. This compares favourably to unilaterally cutting carbon dioxide emissions, where any benefits are spread across the globe – the savings of the frugal shared out among the profligate.

However, Rupert’s version of resilience to “climate breakdown” is not a wall against rising water, or an underground bunker against roasting temperature; it’s a community orchard. And while a community orchard is a fine idea, it is surely not for someone who believes that “climate breakdown” is here now, and getting worse.

To plant a tree shows no fear of next week, or next year, but faith in the future. It is the definition of optimism. And three cheers for that.