Seasonal Alarmism

El Nino - not somebody that Spurs were trying to sign on deadline day, but actually a weather phenomena.  That said, the number of times the BBC, in particular, have mentioned El Nino of late, you could be forgiven for thinking that they were referring to a footballer who had had great World Cup and was attracting record breaking bids from Premier League clubs.  But, in reality, El Nino is the latest weather bogeyman (remember the 'Beast From the East'?) being brought up to cause public panic.  After a long, hot and record breaking Summer, courtesy of global warming, we're now slipping into Autumn, with the fine weather starting to break up in favour of cloudy skies, showers and thunderstorms.  Which is actually a pretty normal weather pattern for this time of year.  But that's not good enough for the media - they want to be able to capitalise upon the chaos caused by the record breaking temperatures set this Summer, by raising the spectre of an Autumn dominated by El Nino-inspired storms.  Because, apparently a 'record-breaking' El Nino is forming and this could result in a record breakingly bad Autumn and Winter with the aforementioned storms plus plunging temperatures causing yet more misery and chaos.  But that word 'could' is doing a lot of work there, because, despite what the headlines are screaming, there is no clear link between El Nino, no matter how strong it might be, and weather patterns in the UK and Europe.

Indeed, I read an article on the BBC News website that started off with all the alarmism outlined above, but which then had to qualify all of it.  Apparently, there is no established strong correlation between El Nino activity and storm activity in the UK, no strong correlation between it and Winter temperatures in the UK.  No, correlation, in fact, with any UK weather phenomena.  All of which rather undermined all of the dire picture of the coming Autumn and Winter that article had started off with.  In fact, it just emphasised the fact that it was largely sensationalist alarmism designed to get attention.  Not to mention generating interest in the BBC's long range weather forecasts.  In truth, all of this El Nino alarmism seems to be a convenient way to try and give some kind of credence to what is effectively superstition: the idea that good Summers are inevitably followed by harsh Winters because nature, you know, has to 'balance things'.   Except that it doesn't.  I can't say that I've ever seen any correlation between dry Summers and Cold Winters or vice versa.  Things just don't work that way.  The truth is that, right now, nobody has any clear idea of how Autumn, let alone Winter, are going to play out.  Maybe they will be characterised by storms, gales and freezing temperatures, not to mention blizzards.  But then again, they might turn out to be mild.  But hey, we're British, so we're obsessed with the weather, which means that the media will just keep on spinning this sort of alarmist speculation.