Will Global Warming be the final blow for the High Street?

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At LSS we bring our readers an eclectic range of stories: medical research, energy technologies, geopolitics, cocktails… all human life is here, you might say. Yet one subject dear to our heart has been a little neglected, even though we first covered it six years ago (LSS 6/4/20): the good old British High Street — those lines and streets of shops, cafés, community buildings, pubs and whatever else that once made us feel we belonged, had place, and time, and even, dare we say it?-a little agency. It’s had a battering lately: rising rents, falling business confidence since 2016, and of course online shopping, which has taken such a juicy slice of the retail spending pie. No wonder everyone complains about empty shops and “hollowed‑out High Streets”. No wonder so many political parties make hopeful promises to restore the old place to its 1960s glory.

So all the old place needed was a fresh blow — the latest British Retail Consortium figures for July, which showed a 3.4% fall in visitors to British shops in June. In fact the headline number masks a worse result for High Streets, with footfall down 6.2%, while retail parks and shopping centres got off more lightly (0.3% and 2.5% respectively). And the reason? The weather: the heatwave, which was England’s hottest on record and the UK’s second hottest. A grim explanation which nevertheless seems widely accepted.

Which made us wonder: what other parts of the economy are already starting to suffer losses due to climate change? A quick survey allowed our Research Department to suggest that winter sports, coastal leisure, outdoor festivals, gardening and horticulture, recreational fishing and boating, heritage tourism, wine production, and amateur community sport are all showing measurable economic losses as climate change disrupts seasons, damages landscapes, raises insurance costs, and forces cancellations across activities people once assumed were stable, perennial — and rather fun.

How ironic, then, that some parties who call most loudly for the restoration of the traditional High Street are also those demanding the reversal of policies designed to mitigate climate change! They argue that the projected costs of adaptation are too high to bear. But the actual costs are already very real — and rising. However, you have a remedy, gentle reader. The next time someone moans to you about the state of the High Street, you may agree that the Government must take action. Starting with policies to slow and reverse global warming.

[1] UK shopping trips fall in June as heatwave takes toll, BRC says

[2] Impact of climate change on global economy: A comprehensive review – ScienceDirect

#economics #climate change #global warming #high street #retail #shopping

Has Global Warming happened to you yet?

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Everyone can choose how they learn about global warming. For some it is to read the science by consulting sites such as the Royal Society[1] , NOAA,[2] the Met Office [3] and other adults in the room. The second is to wait until it happens to you. Increasingly, people are choosing the second option because the climate is now delivering personal tutorials: a fire that shouldn’t have burned, a flood that shouldn’t have reached that high, a heatwave that shouldn’t have been possible at this latitude. We’ve got three examples for you today, which we present with due apologies and sympathy to the victims( it really isn’t their fault).

A. The 2022 UK 40°C heatwave

Most people who lived in Southern England that year can share memories like driving around the M25 through clouds of smoke from the burning heaths of Surrey, or seeing our beloved green South Downs turn the colour of chamois leather. Attribution studies conclude climate change made it at least 10 times more likely.[4]

B. The 2021 Pacific Northwest heatwave

You’d think the cool, rainy Pacific Coast would be the last place to expect a catastrophic climate change event. But this one was described by scientists as “virtually impossible” without global warming. [5]

C. The 2023–24 Canadian wildfires

The largest in Canadian history; attribution work shows climate change made the conditions significantly more likely and more severe.[6]

We could go on- but at this point there pops up the usual man from the Dog and Duck who yells “these are only (expletive deleted) probabilities! Just models! No one has PROVED these were caused by climate change!” To which we reply:

If you refuse to act until science gives you 100% certainty, you’ll never act on anything. Climate attribution uses the same probability standards we rely on for medicine, insurance, and engineering — the ones we trust every day without complaint. When scientists say “an event was made ten times more likely by climate change”, that’s not vague. That’s the same level of evidence we use to approve drugs, design bridges, and set insurance premiums. If you accept probability‑based evidence when it keeps planes in the sky and hospitals running, but reject it only when it concerns climate change, that’s not a scientific position — it’s a political one. It’s also disingenuous. But above all, it is very short term.

[1] Evidence & Causes of Climate Change | Royal Society

[2] Climate Change | NOAA Climate.gov

[3] Climate – Met Office

[4] UK heat scientific report

[5]Philip et al. (2022), “Rapid attribution analysis of the extraordinary heat wave on the Pacific coast of the US and Canada in June 2021.” Earth System Dynamics, 13, 1689–1713.

#global warming #climate change #fossil fuels #fires #floods #droughts

No more plants, no more antibiotics

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Losing plants and fungi to climate change is a quiet catastrophe for antibiotics and medical research in general because these organisms are our undiscovered pharmacy. A huge share of existing drugs — from penicillin to paclitaxel — came from obscure species that someone happened to find before they vanished. As habitats heat, dry, burn, or shift faster than species can move, we’re not just losing biodiversity; we’re losing chemical ingenuity that evolution spent millions of years perfecting. Every extinct fungus is a potential new antibiotic gone forever, every vanished plant a missed anti‑cancer compound, every collapsed ecosystem a library burned before we even opened the first book. The tragedy is not only what we lose now, but what we will never get the chance to discover.

Fortunately, the Royal Botanic gardens at Kew in London (one of the world’s most enlightened and learned places) is on the case as the erudite Damien Carrington makes clear for this article in the Guardian. The vital, almost neuralgic need, is to identify new plants before they are destroyed forever under a concrete miasma of shopping malls, motorway interchanges and cheap hotels. To say nothing of climate change: if you want proof of that, the flowering time for plants has been changing by 2.5 days a decade for the last hundred years or so, according to this article But the RBG are at last deploying the wonders of AI to speed up identification and classification, so the task of exploring the pharmaceutical cornucopia can be made much easier

Digitisation and online access to millions of specimens that were until now only accessible in archives is also producing new insights, especially in the global south, reports Damian They are even getting genomic data from 180 year old fungi, potentially opening a completely new line of research But read the lot for yourselves gentle readers, by clicking on Damian’s lucid article

Now we could tell you much about how the foregoing cheers us on behalf of our pet project, antibiotic research or even for medical science in general; for we know some of you have wider concerns and interests. But we won’t. Instead we shall close with a naked, unashamed plug for that self-same Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew.[2] Easily reached by bus , train or licenced London Taxi, it contains a formidable treasure of plants from the entire globe cunningly arranged in some spectacular displays Plus some delightful lakes full of fish and water fowl, pleasant lawns and excellent cafes and souvenir shops. If in London, visit it we say. Personal note: we remember from more than 30 years ago an excellent bar on Kew Gardens station where they sold excellent cold lager to compensate for the hard slog around the tropical greenhouses Does anyone know if it is still there?

[1] AI could help win ‘race against extinction’ of vital plants, say botanists | Plants | The Guardian

[2] https://www.bing.com/alink/link?url=https%3a%2f%2fwww.kew.org%2f&source=serp-local&h=9bhqK4eCioVZh7YfDibjFqdXtmBATJUp73lhpA8kti0%3d&p=lw_magsmlt&ig=

#botany #pharmacology #medical research #royal botanic gardens kew #ecology #plants #fungi

Chikungunya: another potential Climate Change epidemic?

News that we’re in for a record El Niño[1] this year brings a depressing thought is Climate Change going to deliver a whole new wave of tropical diseases alongside all those floods. fires and migrations? We’ve touched on this before (LSS 25 10 21,14 11 23, 2 10 25) but had rather hoped that it had all gone away. It hasn’t, as this excellent article by Shivali Best of the Mail [2] explains in forensic detail. And it’s her work we’ll be riffing on today, with a little help other sources.[3]

Shivali takes Chikungunya virus as her theme. It’s a nasty little disease caused by an alphavirus of the Togaviridae group. Discovered in Tanzania in 1952 it delivers a painful cocktail of symptoms including fever and severe joint pains: the latter may be extremely debilitating and long-lasting. But the real problem lies in its vectors, the famous yellow fever mosquito Aedes aegypti and the scarily named tiger mosquito (a. albopictus) Do they call it that because of its bite? Not only does climate change allow these insects to spread to lands where the cold had formerly precluded their presence. The same warming allows the virus to breed up to five times faster inside the mosquito. Before you ask: there are vaccines of sorts underway: but progress has been slowed because most of the money has been spent on wars and shopping malls.

And so Chikungunya joins the long sorry list of diseases spreading due to global warming. To which we could append Malaria, Dengue, Zika, Lyme, Tick Born Encephalitis, Vibrio group……..enough! LSS readers are a well-informed lot. They know what’s happening. They know why. The real task before us all is how to clear up the damage, and make those culpable pay for it

[1]Prepare for El Niño, UN warns – it could be the strongest in decades – BBC News

[2]Chikungunya virus is heading for Europe: Scientists warn mosquito-borne tropical disease could spread to major cities thanks to climate change | Daily Mail

[3]Chikungunya fact sheet

#chikungunya #malaria #climate change #disease #vector #epidemic #health #mosquito

Round Up for Bank Holiday Weekend: Climate Migrants, Migrating whales, Wales’ climate-and more

Stories we liked but never had time to cover this week

Every Immigrant an Emigrant If you’re really serious about migration, tackle the causes, we say. This article from the Conversation makes our point rather well. Economics and ecology: tackle those and you will have solved the problem.

https://theconversation.com/who-moves-away-when-climate-change-hits-the-hidden-household-politics-of-migration-281470?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Latest%20from%20The%20Conversa

Wandering whale The immense migrations that some animals make have always impressed us none more so than the journeys of this remarkable humpback whale as chronicled by The Guardian. Incidentally, cetacean fans will be delighted by the forthcoming edition of that remarkable magazine Sussex Local, which carries a tour de force of in-depth reporting on dolphins and other large mammals in the English Channel. Don’t miss it!

Twenty-two years and 15,000km later: fluke discovery sets new record for humpback whale journey | Marine life | The Guardian wandering whale

Was T Rex fairly armless? Sorry we couldn’t think of a single Marc Bolan gag that we could decently publish here, so we’ll let you read this article about one of the more famous unsolved puzzles in science.

Why did T. rex have such small arms? Scientists finally SOLVE the mystery – and say the answer may lie in their giant heads | Daily Mail Online

How long can a civilisation last anyway? If you’re one of those types who thinks “I don’t give a monkey’s about climate change, I’ll be dead before it happens” then this article from EL País may give pause for thought.(note-in Spanish)

https://elpais.com/ciencia/2026-05-20/cuanto-tiempo-puede-vivir-una-civilizacion-antes-de-colapsar-las-utopias-estables-son-los-escenarios-menos-probables.

Fortress Britain People in Britain used to sneer at the disasters-climatic, political, economic-which befell less fortunate countries. Not any more, as climate change erodes their complacency in many forms, including biting insects, burning summers and flashing floods. Even in cool green Wales, as this link from the BBC makes clear

‘Negligence’ not to prepare for climate change emergencies in Wales – BBC News

Basically, it’s reckless indulgence in our beastly pleasures that have brought the climate crisis upon us. Shakespeare had this to say

“Thou art so fat-witted with drinking of old sack… that thou hast forgotten to demand that which thou wouldst truly know.” — Henry IV, Part 1 (Act 1, Scene 2)

#climate change #global warming #whales #dolphins #dinosaurs #economics #sociology

Hats off to the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, doing so much to make a sustainable world

Give us credit: we’re always trying to cover organisations who are trying to make a difference to the enormous toxic mountain of stuff that everyone throws away every day. We’ve no ideological bias- we’ve lauded the efforts of governments, charities and universities down the years. One thing though: we’ve always had a soft spot for is start-up companies, because they are often where the best and the brightest are to be found. Over the years we’ve looked for them in places as diverse as Nigeria (LSS 23 12 25) Australia (LSS 13 11 25) and the UK (19 9 23;3 3 25) A tiny sample of what’s out there, but we know it gives you all hope. And if you want more hope, we have discovered an amazing place to look: The Ellen Macarthur Foundation.

Because their website [1] is a cornucopia of good news about companies, initiatives, and projects all designed to create a circular economy, which is, in their words:

a system where materials never become waste and nature is regenerated……. products and materials are kept in circulation through processes like maintenance, reuse, refurbishment, remanufacture, recycling, and composting. The circular economy tackles climate change and other global challenges, like biodiversity loss, waste, and pollution, by decoupling economic activity from the consumption of finite resources.

And there is a truly encyclopaedic guide to the vast range organisations they work with to achieve this laudable end Click for yourself, it’s so far up our LSS street we could put our brass plate on one of the doors. It’s always unfair to pick examples: but we could not resist telling you about Arda Biomaterials of the UK who are transforming waste barley grains from the drinks industry into new types of fabric. And a Spanish outfit called AOS who build advanced insect bioconversion plants using larvae to recycle food waste and by‑products into organic fertilisers and animal feed ingredients.

It’s funny where people get their hope from, isn’t it? Some from a bottle, some from various white and brown vegetable products. Ours comes from knowing there are still many intelligent and rational people labouring their utmost to overcome this sorry mess which the ignorance and greed of others has landed us all into. And the Ellen Macarthur foundation is a big part of the solution.

[1] Leading the Transition to a Circular Economy | Ellen MacArthur Foundation

#circular economy #recycling #sustainability #waste #commerce #business #green economy #The Ellen Macarthur Foundation

Collapse in AMOC equals havoc

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In theory, you can rebuild after a war. But if the Atlantic currents collapse there will be no rebuilding. Because the change will be irreversible, and anyway there will be no economy left to rebuild with. That’s now a real possibility according to this story from Damian Carrington of the Guardian.[1] [2] We start with something called the AMOC or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation for short.

The world of oceanography and currents can all seem a bit remote from everyday life. But to plunge in briefly: Global warming has been adding colossal amounts of fresh meltwater—especially from Greenland—into the North Atlantic. This reduces salinity and density, in turn preventing surface water from sinking, which is the key engine of the AMOC. As sinking slows, the whole circulation weakens and it will eventually tip into a collapsed state. The question is when and what are the chances? According to Damien:

they found an estimated slowdown of 42% to 58% in 2100, a level almost certain to end in collapse.

And what will that collapse look like? After the initial shock, a permanent series of frozen winters in western Europe. There will be catastrophic ruptures in food chains as fields ice over, fish stocks migrate and transport is disrupted. Societies will face massive dislocation as people migrate from flooded coastal regions and river valleys. In turn producing massive conflicts on higher ground, as refugees discover that they are suddenly immigrants in what used to be “their” country.

Leaving you, gentle readers, with a choice on the balance of probabilities. You can rely on the findings of scientists [3] who have studied this issue assiduously for more than three decades and whose work is publicly available for anyone to examine. Or you can rely on opinions expressed in online comment sections. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. The real question is which source of information a reasonable and informed person would choose to act upon.

[1] Critical Atlantic current significantly more likely to collapse than thought | Oceans | The Guardian

[2] Atlantic meridional overturning circulation – Wikipedia

[3] Observational constraints project a ~50% AMOC weakening by the end of this century | Science Advances

Global warming #climate change #atlantic ocean #amoc #flood #ice age #ecological collapse

Eleven Hottest Years: While the world argues, the planet sets another relentless record

We once asked someone who is far more intelligent than we are: “what is the secret of intelligence-what do intelligent people really do?” And he replied, “they pick out what is really important from what is merely important,” And in that spirit we urge you gentle readers to approach this story from Nature Briefing with due attention. Put it, as t’were in context with the doings of Mr Trump , the England cricket team and the various rescued felines who will flicker across your screen this morning. All important, no doubt. Yet this is the story which will affect you, your children and their childrens’ children for decades to come. Or maybe not: for it has the potential to ensure that such generations do not exist They’ve called it We’ve just had the hottest 11 years on record

The years from 2015–2025 have been the hottest stretch on record, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization. For the first time, the report includes a measure called Earth’s energy imbalance — the difference between incoming energy from the Sun and the amount radiated back into space — which is at its highest level since observations started in 1960. And in 2024, the latest year that global figures are available, atmospheric CO₂ reached its highest concentration in two million years. “In this age of war, climate stress is also exposing another truth: our addiction to fossil fuels is destabilizing both the climate and global security,” said United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement.

Nature | 5 min read
Reference: State of the Global Climate 2025 report

There are many sorrowful things in here gentle readers, but we advise you to read them for yourselves. What actually scares us is this. Humans seem really good at identifying a perceived threat from other groups of humans. And reacting to it with hysterical fear and anger. They seem less good at perceiving and contending with long term insidious but ineluctable threats that threaten them all with extinction. Is this an actual cognitive defect of the human mind? In which case what chances will Natural Selection offer us in the next few decades?

#climate change #global warming #fossil fuels #oil #middle east #pollution #human extinction

Why North Sea Oil is an error in critical thinking

It’s always touching to listen to the philosophical musings of our old friend Dave Watford and the lads at the Dog and Duck. Last night they favoured us with their thoughts(is that the right word?-ed) on the current Energy crisis:

“ Iss Bonkers! Why don’t we jus drill fer all that oil inna (expletive deleted) norwf sea, an forget orl this (expletive deleted) green palaver? There’s loads of it aht there, an we’d be enji sufichent and all that. Thass wot we did inner noineen (expletive deleted) ighteez an we ad loadsa munny”

That was the gist of what they said. But however well-meant their intentions, their chain of reasoning suffers from two fatal flaws: availability bias, and simplification. In fact this article from Cassandra Etter-Wenzel Anupama Sen and Nadia Schroedern so utterly confronts these errors that we offer it to you more in the spirit of a master class in clear thinking than a comment on energy policy.

Availability Trap 1 Yes there is oil under the North Sea. But even if extracted, it would go straight to world markets, meaning it would have no effect on consumer energy prices in the UK.

Simplicity Trap 1 All that gas would bring down prices The precise cost of the energy (gas renewable, whatever) is called the wholesale price and consitutes only 41% of the price paid per house. The rest includes many other factors like network running costs, etc.

Availability trap 2 Ignore the potential cost savings from renewables, which would actually bring the wholesale price of energy faster

Simplicity trap 2 Ignore other factors like insulation (at which the UK is dire) which would be addressed by a renewable based modernisation policy

Availability Trap 3 Completely ignore that the UKs utter dependency on fossil fuels has led to disaster in the past (1973: 2022) and is therefore likely to do so again

And finally: nostalgia for a vanished golden age is no guide to policy whatsoever. We don’t know the name for that error, but it’s probably the biggest one of all.

Hats off to Will de Freitas of the Conversation for commissioning this exquisite article

https://theconversation.com/would-more-north-sea-drilling-lower-uk-energy-bills-our-analysis-says-no-278467?utm_m

#fossil fuels #renewables #energy #climate change #north sea

Beyond the Nation#3: Assorted Pollution

We kicked off this series with a blog about global warming: if that’s not a pollution story, we don’t know what is. But as several of you pointed out, there are many other forms of pollution in the world, all equally insidious and all resistant to efforts to clean them up. So here we go.

Pollution is the purest demonstration of the nation state’s irrelevance. PFAS don’t recognise sovereignty. Microplastics don’t stop for border guards. Nitrates don’t care who won the last election. They move through the world according to the laws of physics, chemistry, and biology, not geopolitics. And yet we persist with a governance model that is incapable of addressing a problem so acute it threatens basic survival.

Meaning companies have every incentive to dump where enforcement is weakest. Meaning diplomatic stalemates ensure treaties — if they exist at all — move at the speed of the slowest government. Meaning a jungle equilibrium of absolute economic self‑interest prevails, and no state wants to, or can afford to, be the first to tighten rules.

Take mercury. The Minamata Convention (2013)[1] was meant to curb global pollution from this utterly unpleasant and dangerous substance. But it is a broken reed, riddled with exemptions, get‑out clauses and pulled punches. National opt‑outs, slow phase‑outs, feeble enforcement and zero penalties for non‑compliance. Global mercury emissions have not meaningfully declined since the treaty was signed — and in some sectors have increased — seeping into rivers, seas and oceans, and contaminating supposedly healthy foods with a potent neurotoxin.

And alongside mercury we could list such fracases as PFAS (no treaty at all), the Asian brown‑cloud smogs, [2] the Basel Convention on plastic waste (more holes than Emmental cheese), not to mention our own bête noire of antibiotic resistance, where a total failure of international co‑ordination may yet lead to the most deadly health emergency of all.

At no point do we blame individuals, nor look for sinners against whom we may throw stones. Everyone caught in this trap is acting in their own rational self‑interest. Governments, by definition, measure themselves against other governments. The system has worked reasonably well up to now — at least it allowed copying from better practitioners. And companies are simply obeying the iron economic rules of profit and loss, buy and sell.

The trouble is that these rules now operate globally, while regulation remains national. And all the pollutants we have mentioned fall into those gaps — where they will continue to accumulate with deadly effect.

[1] Minamata Convention on Mercury – Wikipedia [2] Asian brown cloud – Wikipedia

#pollution #governance #treaties #PFA #mercury #nitrates #antibiotic resistance