Once again a Guardian headline casually and lazily misinforms its readers:

“Scottish households urged to cut water use as climate crisis limits supplies – Scottish Water boss says average Scot uses 40% more water than people in Yorkshire partly due to mistaken belief water is abundant in Scotland”.

In reality, the article is a puff piece for Scottish Water’s net zero credentials, and is a less than subtle piece of propaganda to try to encourage its customers to use less water, because that will help it to save money:

…In an interview with the Guardian, Plant said that Scottish Water, which supplies nearly all Scotland’s homes and businesses, faced spending up to £50bn by 2050 to adapt the country’s water and sewage networks for the impacts of the climate crisis.

But significant voluntary action by consumers would cut that deficit and the £50bn bill, most of which would need to come from households and industry, because Scottish Water’s ability to borrow money is significantly constrained by its public ownership rules….

The article contains a lot of speculation about what problems a future climate crisis might cause, and tells us that “Scotland already has a deficit of 60m litres a day during droughts, but by 2050, that deficit could hit 240m litres a day.”

It also tries to suggest that the drought-ridden climate crisis is already here, by pointing out that Scotland has had its driest spring since….1964. And that’s all there is in the way of substantiation for the headline claim that the climate crisis is limiting Scottish water supplies. Is the claim justified? I had my doubts, given how much rain I experience when I venture north of the border to climb a few hills. I thought I should check the data to find out. Here is the Met Office rainfall data for Scotland.

As can be seen, it goes back to 1836, and so it covers just over a decade short of two centuries. This spring saw 204.3mm of rain, which is rather more than the 196.3mm recorded in 2001, the 187.8mm recorded in 1984, the 150.3mm recorded in 1980, and the 159.8mm recorded in 1974, so the article’s claims fall at the first hurdle. Strangely, given the 1964 claim, that year saw quite a wet spring, with rainfall of 279mm recorded by the Met Office, though 1963/4 did see a dry winter. Not that this fact helps the Guardian, because the winter just gone saw 425mm of rain. That’s more than in 2019, 2017, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2006, 2003 and so on – you get the picture.

In case any climate alarmists think I’m cherry picking (I’m not), let’s look at annual rainfall. 1836 saw an annual rainfall figure of 1,500.6mm, which isn’t much different from 2024’s figure of 1,551.7mm. The decade before that has seen annual figures between 1,397.5mm (2021) and 1,837.6mm (2015), with no discernible trend. The driest year in the record (at 954.6mm) is 1855. Indeed, the mid half of the 19^th century seems to have been much drier in Scotland than of late, with eleven years showing rainfall below 1,200mm up to 1857. The last time the Met Office recorded less than 1,200mm of rainfall in Scotland was in 1941.

Climate crisis limits water supplies in Scotland? Pull the other one.