Future of Aviation: Enhancing Safety and Resilience

The aim is clear. A safe, secure, sustainable and resilient aviation system. I’d add to that list an ambition to continuously improve.

And that’s in the face of the challenge that was recognised 30-years ago. With an aviation system that knows how to archives a high level of safety, even incremental improvement is challenging. Factor in a projected air traffic growth that’s resilient and unabating.

We know that continuously improving the global accident rate requires active interventions. 

Since here I can only highlight the key priorities, I’ll choose three aspects of active intervention. Back to what I said earlier in my talk. Aviation is still climbing that maturity curve.

Digitisation has facilitated a growth in proactive work. Initiatives and plans identify actions aimed at solving known safety problems. But the next step remains some way off. It’s that ability to anticipate safety problems before they occur. 

We have the notion of safety intelligence. There are Big Data projects that are gathering large quantities of aviation safety data. Today, what might be called prognostics continues to depend on expert judgement. That’s not negative. In fact, that augmented by safety intelligence is the route to the next step in maturity.

Here’s the three categories that must be addressed now and, in the future, – in my view.

  • One is a foundation stone of aviation safety work. It’s the capability and will to react in a timely manner to events. Not just accidents and serious incidents but any event that elevates aviation safety risks above acceptable levels.

Top operational risk that are likely to need immediate actions are those concerning loss of control and those concerning runway incidents.

To take timely corrective action the results of investigation need to be readily available. As pointed out by the industry, across the globe, there’s much scope for improvement here.

  • My next category is that of systemic risks. System wide safety risks. People, organisations, processes, procedures and the human factors and human performance issues.

Much is being done to ensure the effective implementation of safety management systems (SMS). The four pillars of SMS have proven to work – safety policy, risk management, safety assurance and safety promotion.

The mitigation of risks is not an act that begins on one day and stops on the next. Digitation can be a help but there’s always the dangers of the needle in a haystack or even a problem sitting there in plain sight.

What’s often weak is the communication of what’s discovered. Believable, understandable straightforward communication to decision makers.

  • Thirdly, what’s ahead of us is an order of magnitude more complex than what’s gone before.

I’m calling this emerging aviation safety risks. The question arises; are we ready for advanced leaps in technology? Hydrogen, hybrid propulsion, machine learning, quantum computing, complex airspace network and robotics. Humans as executive manager whilst retaining control in emergencies.

It’s a famous quote; data is the new oil. We are ushering in extremely large and complex datasets that are essential to the workings of automated and autonomous systems. Could data be the new quicksand? This is a huge issue in densely used airspace where crewed and uncrewed aircraft must share the airspace.

Another emerging aviation safety risks, that industry and regulators are starting to address is the fact that safety and security become inseparable. In the past these two were addressed as silos. That’s no longer a viable approach.

Another emerging aviation safety risk is that of the workforce. Aviation has attracted dedicated professionals who acquire experience and train to a high level of competence. A safety culture is embedded. In this respect the fundamentals of safety remain the same.

The rapid growth of technology is a two-edged sword. Now, there are many opportunities for future generations, but aviation may not be at the top of the list. As it may have been in the past. There’s a serious aviation safety risk if investments are not made and people are not motivated and able to gain the competencies needed by this industry.

To sum up. Everything I’ve spoken of can only be addressed in partnerships. In the past, the aviation industry and its regulators have proven themselves to be resilient and forward looking.

The challenges ahead are, dare I say, even greater. Levels of integration, interdependency and rapid technology adoption are off the charts. Yet, I believe we can continually improve global aviation safety.

Current State of Aviation Safety: Data-Driven Insights

The present day. Today. There will be Press Releases galore at this air show. I expect ambitious and upbeat predictions. More orders. More growth. More developing markets. Demands for more skilled people, more performance, more pressure for the early adoption of rapidly changing technologies.

My subject is safety. Where are we with aviation safety in the present day? There’s a sound legacy. Afterall aviation has a long tail. What we have now, and if I look at the Farnborough show catalogue of ten years ago[1], is digitisation. The aim to be data driven. A continuing ambition to exploit data of all kinds. Extracting information from ever increasing sources of aviation data.

This desire for actionable safety intelligence is not new. On my desk I have a coaster celebrating the UK CAA’s MOR Scheme[2]. That’s been alive for 50 years (1976-2026). Occurrence data has been, and is being, used to construct all sorts of safety performance indicators. These indicators can be useful but it’s not always so. They are fuel for safety management systems.

I used the word “actionable” with purpose. Today, making the results of safety data analysis useable by front-line actors and responsible managers has been a challenge we wrestle. I’ve often heard it said – that’s great but what do I do about it? Too many “greens” on a chart and complacency can set in. Too many “reds” and everyone goes into panic mode.

I was fortunate to work with a safety initiative called CAST in the US. To match its work, on this continent, I set up a European version; ECAST. The focus was on data-drive analysis.

There’re safety teams for Rotorcraft and General Aviation too.

These initiatives came about a reactive way. Reporting in 1997, the Gore Commission, was a rection to dilemmas that is still with us. What to do in the wake of catastrophic accidents. And more pertinent to this talk; what to do when the global accident rate curve looks flat at the same time as predictions are for a significant growth in global air traffic. Reading the report now, the predictions were horrifying. Predictions of one large aeroplane fatal accident every week by now. Luckily, commercial air transport didn’t suffer that fate.

I should NOT say “luckily”. Current safety performance is down to an enormous amount of work done by thousands of aviation professionals over a sustained period. Not only this but shocks, whether they be financial crisis, volcanic eruptions or global pandemics, have tested our industry severely.

Taking on board what was learned over three decades, safety management has developed and matured. Incorporated in aviation’s regulatory framework, it’s now practiced across the whole industry. Almost. We have don’t just react. We now have Safety Plans. Lists of actionable tasks aimed at continuous safety improvement. On the scale mentioned earlier we are proactive.

Let me stop. This is not a utopia. I’d say at least half the global aviation industry is struggling with the need to be proactive. So, the road we are travelling on remains a long one.

We don’t just need the capability to do better; we need to maintain the will to do better.

[1] 50th Farnborough Air Show in 2016.

[2] https://www.caa.co.uk/about-us/make-a-report-or-complaint/report-something/mor/occurrence-reporting/

The Evolution of Aviation Safety: A Historical Overview

A quick tour of the history of aviation safety. In a couple of minutes.

As powered aircraft took to the skies it quickly became apparent that, of all the means of transport, aviation was less forgiving than others. Moving at speed in four dimensions, with the necessity to take-off and land safely, inherent risks are unavoidable. By no means does this mean that flying is an unsafe activity. What it does necessitate is an exercise of sound engineering, preparation, and proficiency. When these are missing, and in cases of misfortune, accidents and incidents happen.

In the days between the two world wars, aviation moved from the military and a circus-like amusement to a viable means of public transport. Progressively, more and more passengers had the opportunity to experience the wonders of flight.

Today, it’s not the early days of flight I want to focus on, but we do owe the engineers and aviators of that time a great debt. Much was learned as aeronautics matured. Since the end of the second world war the production, promotion and application of standards has embedded what had been learned. This established the way that civil aviation works.

One simple expression of the stages we’ve been through is Patrick Hudson’s[1] maturity model. This model describes five distinct levels of cultural maturity. The steps are pathological, reactive, calculative, proactive and generative.

This sits alongside the steps in the development of technology that has been a hallmark of aviation safety. Different categorisations exist. Helpfully AIRBUS[2] have one that is easily understood in terms of generations of civil aircraft.

First are the “classics” of the 1950s and 60s. Next, the second generation starts down the road of more electronics. More safety critical systems. Third generation starts flying in the early 1980s when automation becomes the norm (early fly-by-wire, glass cockpits, flight management systems). The fourth generation introduces safety systems, which address the major causes of fatal accidents, namely Controlled Flight Into Terrain (CFIT) and Loss Of Control In-Flight (LOC-I). That’s the early 1990s. When I made that transition from industry (design and production) to an aviation safety regulator.

Now, I’d say we are well into fifth generation aircraft, with composite structures and integrated modular avionics. In fact, we are well into speculation about what the sixth generation may look like. Machine learning, single pilot operations, hybrid powerplants, aircraft as a node on a network.

Because aviation is a learning industry, and a conservative one, the expectation is of a progressive growth in maturity throughout the aviation system and innovative technology enhancing safety.

This is not to say that the potential for error, missteps and recklessness don’t exist. They do. I expect continuity in a way that takes full advantage of advanced methods without scarifying the legacy of an astonishing good global safety achievement.

Later, to cover a lot of ground in a short time, I’m going to condense all the above into three distinct categories. But before that, I’ll talk about the present and a vision of the future.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753507000227?via%3Dihub

[2] https://d10x.airbus.com/generation-of-jets/

Public and Private Life

What’s public and what’s private? There was a mythical age of the past when the dividing line between these two was self-evident and sacrosanct. Wholy respected by every member of society. A time when an Englishman’s home was his castle. Anything that happened within it’s walls was not for prying eyes or journalistic speculation. Everyone knew their place.

Naturally, this is utter nonsense. At least described in the way I’ve put it. Times change. Those immortal two words. So, the line between what’s public and what’s private has wobbled around over the centuries. I’m not, as you might expect, saying that nothing has changed over time because a hell of a lot has changed. Now, there are factors that make the public life different from past decades. Themes run through the ages along with unyielding change.

It’s very much in the News now. The impression given is that the act of standing-up in public has risks that can be high. Not so much the traditional risks of humiliation, being ostracised or suffering abject failure but real risks to life, in a physical sense.

It would be ridiculous to say that these are more violent times. When I look out of my kitchen window, I am reminded of the English Civil War[1]. Father and son, brothers, uncles, and cousins fought on opposite sides with fatal consequences. The ruined castle on the hill to my North is a monument to that terrible bloody conflict. In the lifetime of my parents the bombs fell from the sky on innocent civilians in this land, as they do in Ukraine to this day.

The tendency to think that we are a much more civilised society in the 21st Century is a liberal and progressive notion. We are better fed and read. There are greater comforts and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are kept at arm’s length. Not disappeared but kept in check. Although the recent experience of COVID did unsettle everyone for a while.

What we do cherish. I hope we cherish, in this country. Is the relative freedom of speech that allows debate to be conducted in public. I use the word relative because the absolutists, who have an anything goes attitude, are not what I mean. Fundamentalist often ride with the four horsemen. Words do matter.

I’m straying from my point. There’s great merit in protecting public life. In matters that are of fundamental importance individuals must be free to stand-up and say their piece. Stifling debate is like putting the heat on a pressure cooker without a safety valve.

I’ve always been struck by the civility of most people. That’s what I’ve found when knocking on doors during political campaigns of one form or another. There’s a core of decency at all levels of society. Now and then, that thread is broken. It does take a lot to paint a different picture. That’s where the proliferation of social media has changed the dynamic.

The printing press was not an evil invention. That didn’t stop it being used for evil ends. The same with social media. Printed media is subject to regulation. A system of regulation that has developed over decades. That doesn’t stop a wide range of views being expressed. The fertiliser of public life. Similar boundaries are set for broadcast media. This is civilisation.

To date, social media is the wild west. It’s become essential to public life. At the same time, it’s a grave danger to public life. When it’s used to stir-up passions that lead to violence the danger is self-evident. Social media is not sacrosanct. Regulation is essential.

[1] https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/the-english-civil-wars-history-and-stories/

Seasonal Changes

When summer is at its peak, winter is easily forgotten. The reverse is true too. When winter is at its peak summer is a million years away. That’s the experience we have here on the British Isles.

So, it is to live on a spinning planet with an incline. That variation in seasons is the clock by which we live. The slowly shifting path of the Sun as it appears to move with the seasons. Of course, the Sun doesn’t move relative to the Earth. It’s our planet’s inclined rotation that makes the difference. How that came about we will never know beyond some good theories.

I might say something that an expert will say is nonsense. Can you imagine Stonehenge being bult in a people who live on the Equator? A place where the Sun spends much of its time high in the sky. At our Northern latitude, its movements maybe more significant than any other fact.

I wonder if seasonal variations and their impact go wider than dictating the weather? The British Isles is a pace where we are attuned to variations. Rarely extreme variations.

The sentence I started with alludes to an almost schizophrenic attitude to wide ranging variations. Normal would be a summer-winter cycle between say; plus 25 and minus 5 on the Celsius scale. Going outside those moderate thermal bounds causes a lot of heads scratching and newspaper column inches.

Britan’s story is a full one. Look deeply and so much is seasonally dependent. Even wars were shaped by the passing of the seasons. Yet, overall, much is built assuming moderation. It’s one reason air-conditioning is a rarity in a domestic setting. Structures are more designed to keep the wind and rain out than other considerations.

Now, we are experiencing unusual heat. Records are falling by the wayside. Once lush green lawns are looking like brown dirt, concrete hard, parking spaces. That is unless their owners sprinkle oceans of water over them on a regular basis.

Here’s the odd bit. It’s more socially acceptable to save a lawn than it is to own an air conditioner. True, portable air conditioners and fans are flying of the shelves. However, the general attitude is that these are to be used in exceptional conditions. They will be returned to a corner of a garage, to gather dust, after just a few days use. Thus, considered to be a luxury.

A hosepipe doesn’t fit into this category. Commonplace. Certainly, no luxury. Watering equipment of infinite variety is prominently placed in every DIY store. When it happens, a hosepipe ban feels like an afront to personal freedom.

Our habits and behaviours are conditioned by an experience of decades of relative moderation. The idea of building houses with shutters or generous ventilation still fit the bill as being usual. Something done in other, hotter countries.

Our reaction to climate change is fascinating. Hardly surprising in that the normal human reaction to change should tell us a lot. A fair degree of denial is nothing unusual. Put aside those who react early, the inevitable inertia deep in our society takes its toll. Whatever attitude to the causes of climate change may prevail, adaptation is a wise course of action. That said, wisdom is often in short supply.

The builders of Stonehenge knew how to adapt to the seasons. Possibly taking note of their variations. Dare I suggest a modern henge as a symbol of our recognition of the need to adapt?

Empirical Gardening

I’d say I was an empirical gardener. The try it and see formula. I do read the label that comes with plants in pots. Well, I do say read but more often there’s a series of symbols to decipher.

Getting to know a small patch of land is deeply ingrained in my psyche. It’s a connection that I find hard to break. There are times when I’ve lived without a garden to tend every day. Even then I found myself an opportunity to tend one on weekends. When I couldn’t do that, I’d visit a garden. This is a habit it’s likely I’ll never break.

My family farming background set the scene. A childhood link to the soil. A large farmhouse garden divided by a crossroads. A concrete path that ran north-south and east-west. Each of the four sections of the garden had a different characteristic. One had the shadow of the farmhouse for much of the day. Two were bounded by the deep litter houses and one got the full force of the weather. There was a slight slope towards a lawn on the south side.

I’d better explain. The deep litter houses were the two big wooden chicken houses. They were called that because chicken droppings and bedding were left to accumulate. The compressed mass of chicken manure was dug out once or twice a year. Most often by me and my brother. Could be three foot deep or more. That’s how we earned our pocket money. It certainly was the cases that there was no end of soiling enriching compost for the garden.

During my childhood, we were not entirely self-sufficient in produce. Got close, I’m sure. There was always a large crop of beans, peas, and potatoes. This was a practical garden with a purpose. The purpose being to feed four hungry boys. Me and my brothers.

There are many differences between where I am now and the farmhouse. The one that makes the most difference to gardening is the soil. The basic geography. The drainage may have been poor, but the fertility of the farmhouse soil was unquestionable. Heavy clay enriched by generations of cultivation. Produce grew on overdrive.

Where I am now, I’m getting to know and wrestling with a soil that’s way different. Although there is a similar origin to the soil. Rivers played their part in forming both soils. The farmhouse clay was sprinkled with small sandstone stones. A positive benefit. My garden soil has pebbles and pieces of flint just enough to hit the spade every time I dig. As the water table rises in the winter both soils create a swamp like environment. As the summer sun sits overhead it makes bakes the soils but with different effects.

Here, the untilled areas compact and take up the characterises of poorly mixed concrete. Impenetrable and hard. Without water the grass dries. Only the deep-rooted plants survive. The lawn looks like an unirrigated Greek field. Where it’s tilled the soil becomes like gritty dust.

In my empirical gardening way, I’m using what I have to hand. I’ve built a series of raised beds. Mixed up a cocktail of native soil, compost, and manure. I’ve created a better growing medium. Even so, with a limited amount of water it’s mostly the deeper rotted plants that are happy.

My sunflowers have been smiling. My potatoes are miserable. Onions seem fine. Tomatoes are indifferent. Only getting started it could be that my pumpkins will be momentous.

This is only my second year working with this new plot. Prior to my digging it was a blank canvas. The whole space was lawn grass designed as one big dog run. One remaining plumb tree was the only trace of a past kitchen garden. For me this is a beginning.

Traveling Through Time

My first trip to America goes back 45 years ago. Our PanAm flight departed London Heathrow on 25th August 1981. We were booked on a Fly / Drive package on our way to Seattle.

This was the country where Ronald Reagan had taken up the Presidency, earlier in the year. For nerds, like me, it was the start of a revolution that eventual touched us all. The IBM Personal Computer (IBM PC) was launched on the world in August 1981. It became a standards setter for everything that followed.

What was state of the art then is now described as “classic”. The PanAm Boeing 747 we flew on across the Atlantic was of the first generation of that massive passenger aircraft. Still, at the time, an object of wonder. My traveling companions and I were completely wide-eyed about America. There was definitely a feeling that we were leaving a depressed, rebellious, troubled country to visited one that was huge, just like the jumbo jet, full of adventure, optimism and possibilities. The old world to the new world.

The four of us had planned our trip meticulously. Sharing the driving, a couple of days here then a day there, constantly on the move from motel to motel. In the end we did over 6000 miles up and down the West Coast. Getting to know Interstate 5.

What of the America today in comparison with the Amecia of 45 years ago? For one, I don’t have to go far to find a Starbucks anymore. Coffee shops in Seattle were once special to that city, now there are everywhere. Then gambling was the specialisation of cities like Reno and Las Vegas. Now, the internet is festooned with gambling of every conceivable kind.

Those folk easily classified as the nerds of their time, started small businesses in Silicon Valley with an aim to change the world. Guess what, they did.

Some of the grandest, most awe-inspiring aspects of West Coast America haven’t changed. The immense landscape. Mount St Helens, The Rocky Mountains, Crater Lake, Death Valley, San Francisco Bay and even the freeway sprawl of Los Angeles.

There were lots of comedy sketches about Ronald Reagan and his background as an actor. Now, when listening to several of his well-crafted speeches, appealing presentation, and humour, the distance of time sheds a different light on him. The loss of professionalism that marks 2026 is a great shame. It doesn’t matter which side of the political divide.

Today we talk about the world being more dangerous than it has been in decades, at least a couple of decades. What we conveniently forget is that the Cold War was in full swing in 1981. Now, I live near Greenham Common. Back 45 years, that was a site for American nuclear missiles. The site of a legendary peace camp too. Maybe there are inevitable cycles in history. We are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past. Or more accurately old men are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past.

What have we learned? In politics, it does matter what you say. In business, innovation and optimism win out over caution and pragmatism. In conflict, nothing much changes.

In travel, wanderlust never dims.

Happy July 4th.

Digital Dependency

Here’s a collection of annoying and sometime hazardous events that can happen in our digital world.  Digital dependency is growing at an ever-increasing rate. There’s no way we can put our head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening. Yet, I’d say we are ill-prepared for the stuff that can go wrong. Well, anyone over the age of 25 years can be ill-prepared. Maybe the younger ones are ill-prepared too because of the immense trust they place in digital systems.

Last night, the wonderful “smart” TV that sits in our living room behaved in a way that is designed to get anyone’s back-up. Ironically that’s the function that is often missing – back-up.

Do I blame my clever Sony digital TV or the App that’s running on the TV? The many Apps. Anyway, the TV guide displayed but every time a selection was made the TV screen went blank. Me being used to troubleshooting, I tried another App. All worked fine. So, only one App was misbehaving. Ony one App was not doing what it should do.

To most people this would be a shout out to say; my TV is broken. How can it be broken it’s nearly new? It’s not performing its most basic function. To me, my deduction was that the App that provides the digital stream of the live broadcast channels was doing some kind of update but, unhelpfully, not telling anyone about it. The dumb thing is that the screen went blank. No information. Why the developers of this App couldn’t have thought ahead and put up the screen words saying – please wait – I have no idea. Perhaps they like to see our blood boil.

By the way, the above event happened just at the end of a world cup football game last evening.

Believe it or not, this irritating blank screen case has occurred in flight on an in-service aircraft. The main displays in the aircraft cockpit blanked. For those who may not be familiar, the main critical flight information is displayed to pilots on electronic screens in a modern aircraft cockpit. So, when everything goes blank it’s not a nice situation. Because safety is the primary concern there are independent standby instruments. They are only basic and aimed at managing the situation.

The case that I’m writing about above was because of a notorious software error. One that’s by no means new. Most serious and well-trained developers will know the case.

Do a little maths. Have you ever taken any number and divided it by zero? For fun, I picked up a desk calculator, yes, they still exist and did this simple sum. The makers, Casio have that one figured out. A small E comes up on the corner of the screen. E for error. Trapping this potential error is elementary best practice. For flight safety related systems, it’s vital.

What’s my message? It’s to understand what it means for something to be broken.

A vast swath of the population continues to have a, learned from experience, idea of what broken means. It’s basically an analogue notion. If I get a puncture in the wheel of my car’s tyre it’s visible, it’s understandable and it’s fixable. It’s a physical phenomenon.

If my super-duper mobile phone does something strange and unexpected, it might be visible, understandable and fixable but it might not be. In essence I have few ways of knowing. I hesitate to introduce the subject of Wi-Fi connected computer printers to this short article, but I will. Some of the most frustrating, unhelpful and mysterious software has been developed for this equipment. Annoying to a level that is difficult to match anywhere on Earth.

Restoring Regional Voices

He’s right in some respects. The new Prime Minister (PM) in waiting. The UK is highly centralised. Those Portland stone buildings in London encase power in a way that was necessary during war time. Served us well. Weirdly we’ve not been able to wean ourselves off this addiction to a concentration of power. Vested interests have made agreements that reinforce the route to disappointment. That’s the story of the last decades.

It’s got worse since Brexit too. This outdated imperialism, which puts a badly prepared elite in charge is the hallmark of Boris Johnson’s time as PM. What’s strange is that lots of voters bought that combination, even when it was destined to fail from day one. It’s a wee bit ironic that those who shouted about sovereignty during the referendum, ten years ago, are the once most guilty of disenfranchising the regions of the country. Promoting the idea that there’s a mythical national saviour who can ride in and restore past glory. Quite often these folk are male, prosperous and have a similar educational background.

During the UK’s membership of the European Union (EU) there was a distinct recognition of the regions. It was the basis for electing MEPs. It gave a voice to regional concerns and built relations between European regions. Those with shared challenges. It focused resources on specific regional needs.

However, the UK was so often constrained by those Portland stone buildings in London that fine words rarely turned into actions. The idea that Turin and Coventry or Liverpool and Cologne might have similar challenges was too much for classical imperial mentalities to make a connection. Politically too, in so many cases UK MPs and MEPs did not work well together.

Optimist as I am, the formula for future prosperity promoted by the PM in waiting is old-fashioned. Let’s take re-industrialisation. This is sold to people as a restoration of industrial landmarks from the days of mass employment in large factories. I’m not saying this isn’t needed. For some in-demand products, like wind turbines, electric vehicles and storage batteries mega factories will be needed. These will not provide mass employment in the old-fashioned way. Automation inevitably plays a growing part in production.

Whether we like it or not, a new industrial revolution is underway. The new oil is data. I’m echoing the British mathematician Clive Humby who is quoted as coming up with: “Data is the new oil.” Isn’t that classic. Back in 2006, when the iPhone arrived, it was a British mathematician who coined five words that summed up what was happening. 20-years have elapsed, but our political debate is still grounded in a mechanistic post-war philosophy.

As for Brexit’s high horse, namely “sovereignty” in respect of data we seemed to have seeded that to others. This is more of the Brexit illusion. If I was of a conspiratorial way of thinking, it’s as if diverting people’s attention has enabled powerful entities to control the future.

Now, Mr Prime Minister (PM) in waiting, take up your position at the lectern and say something that addresses the direction the windvane to the future is pointing.

I’m not saying cover the country with vast energy hungry data centres. No, where it’s happening, that’s really proving extremely unpopular. Instead make sure that the UK’s data infrastructure works as well at Lands Ends as it does in at the tip of the Shetlands. That education and training move to practical working with data rather than the theoretical. That no one is left behind.

Combatting Climate Change

What do you do with climate change deniers? There’re like the folk who persisted with the flat Earth society. Everyone knows they exist but I’m sure most of us would not give them much time. Being door stepped by the folk from the wacky fringes can be entertaining. No more. What’s cranky is that previously reputable, and I use that term advisedly, UK political parties like the Conservative Party are adopting and promoting the believe framework of the wacky fringes. Now, I’m all for “free speech” as far as it doesn’t harm others, but this is getting strange to say the least. Following the coat tails of those who espouse extreme opinion is a road to political oblivion in the UK. At least that’s been our history.

[Oblivion also being a Science Fiction film that’s enjoyable to watch even if it does focus too much on one character. Reminds us how important water is to life on Earth].

If I put myself in the shoes of the climate change deniers, hard to do I know, then I might say that the extreme heat experienced this week is just the normal long-term variation of our weather or the Sun getting agitated or God’s will. Nothing to see hear. I’d hope to be shot down quickly with those flimsy arguments.

It’s a wise move to stay up to date with the weather forecast at the moment. A summer heat wave doesn’t last forever, we hope, even if it does last long enough to cause immense problems.

Recollections of 1976’s summer get an airing on social media. For those of us who enjoyed that year there’s a tendency to normalise around that fact that we survived the heat 50 years ago. For me that was great fun as a fit and heathy 16-year-old. Having my own roadworthy transport for the first time and being easily able to get to the Dorset coast[1]. The year was one of leaving my schooling, working the summer at home on the farm and the starting an engineering apprenticeship. Going from sweltering hot classrooms and exams, to stacking and packing more haybales than it’s possible to count, to sweating in a machine shop with plate glass windows down one side.

If we’d heeded the warmings, with more drive, five decades ago maybe climate change wouldn’t be such a dangerous condition as it’s developing into. Predictions are not good. The legacy mine and past generations are leaving is an extremely poor one.

This is what shocks me about the “head in the sand” attitude to fossil fuels. The Conservative Party and alike, is insane with its idiotic “drill baby drill” policy. I accept that the transition away from fossil fuels will take time and can be a challenging road to take. Trying to reverse the process is beyond stupid.

Policy needs to focus on making substantial changes to our daily routines. There’s nothing sacred about past working practices. Pity those who work in jacket and tie in unairconditioned offices a rigid 9-to-5 routine. As did I, once in a portacabin on the edge of an airfield.

Climate change is real. The data is in. Being daunted by the calamitous possibilities is also a dead end. Yes, the scientist’s scenarios can be overwhelming. Too much detailed information can be as bad as too little.

We have agency. We can act. Every act makes a difference. Even the small ones matter.

[1] https://www.visit-dorset.com/explore/coast-and-beaches/