Lynton and Barnstaple - Operations and Development

Sadly I don’t recognise that prediction. Climate scientists (including the Met Office) have consistently and for many years predicted climate change in the UK would produce a trend towards (a) warmer wetter winters; and (b) hotter, drier summers. Overlayed on that would be normal variability of weather. So we could still expect some deluged, stormy, flood prone summers - and/or snowy winters, as in the past. The point is though that the probability of those sort of extremes, at those seasons, was declining; while the probability of extreme weather of any kind would tend to rise, due to more energy in the warmer atmosphere.

The only thing that seems to have changed recently is a growing realisation that the caution in scientists' predictions may be leading to the actual speed of change having been underestimated. Hence we are getting more weather records being broken, years earlier than expected, as with the sudden “flash drought” this summer.

All this adds to the uncertainty about the future of heritage railways. More extremes of weather will add to costs. Then there is the state of the economy - and unknown changes in what holidaymakers in a few years time will want and be able to afford. Some railways will possibly close. Smaller ones like the L and B with great scenery in a holiday area may end up in a good position and even be able to get cheap and suitable locomotives, etc from lines that close.

That is one scenario; but none of us can know what the future holds. It is sensible to make plans and debate options. But as with military plans, it is also important to stay flexible and not pursue plans blindly. Good commanders know that even an excellent plan may lose all validity once there is contact with “the enemy"- who may well do something completely unexpected.

 

Well, I guess we will never know for sure how the weather will react over time. The other day I was browsing YouTube and came across one about dinosaurs. According to the guy who was presenting it reckons that we have had these heat spells before; then came the meteor killer and wiped out 90% of all dinosaurs, and the burning of what plant life was still about caused a pollution bubble, which in effect was a thick cloud cover. This stopped the sun from reaching the Earth, and the world was plunged into a cooling period (no one for sure knows just how long it lasted) until plant life started all again.

This was compared to the Industrial Revolution, and as he said, since we have had various clear air controls in place, the weather has been getting hotter each year, as the level of pollution becomes smaller each year. How many of you remember the scare tactics when they started to say we were losing the ozone layer?

I have concluded that we will always need some air pollution, though not at past levels, but just enough to have a shield against any extreme temperatures. If you take a look at China were is still a lot of pollution, then they suffer from storms and heavy rainfall

 

A man on youtube said...
Possibly not that credible...

 

It's a subject which is not really for here as it hasn't much to do with the L&B except for any arguements of pollution and it calls for long posts too exploring so many complex systems.

In truth, when you compare the L&B against the massive global output from manufacturing and commercialisation, energy production, the resources being used by the big corporates, the materialistic way in which society lives now, and the more recent phenomena of building huge data centres to 'digitalise' everyone's life and create endless rubbish by AI, any pollution by the L&B is infinitely and incredibly small.

I attached a document which I have been compiling over the past few weeks to be posted elsewhere for anyone who is interested, and it is an exploration of what I think you saw in the YT video.

It's still being edited so may have spelling and grammar mistakes.

(Edit: I've been a member of one of the leading Weather and Climate forums in the UK for over 20 years, where there are topics on many aspects of Climate Change, Ice Cores, Pole Ice, weather teleconnections, El Nino/La Nina, storm tracking, stratospheric systems, oceanic systems, and endless scientific studies and papers as they are published, although I haven't been quite as active in recent years I do read them to keep up to date.)