Nine members of Bury St Edmunds group gathered in my living room this evening for our first proper indoor meeting since November. The topic, when decided upon last September with COP26 looming, was to be ‘Climate Change’. However, we felt that to concentrate solely on gloomy predictions was more than we needed with the current global situation as it is.
So – as 23rd March is ‘World Meteorological Day’, we decided to lighten the topic and spread it out a bit: to ‘The Weather / Climate Change / Water in the World’. Basically, anything to do with Weather.
Hence, we had a most interesting and entertaining evening thinking and talking about:
….the origins of Weather Forecasting; Weather terminology; Flanders & Swann’s Weather Song; measures being put in place locally by our Council to mitigate climate change; how National Trust properties are affected (more invading insects and leaks!); paved over surfaces, flash flooding and porous ‘concrete’; festivals around the world celebrating Spring and good weather; the effect of CO2 levels on plants (they use more); Biodiversity, Natural Capital and Ecosystem Services; how climate change is affecting birds; a lovely poem about Rain; and a look at natural methods of weather forecasting (pine cones, seaweed, bees, dandelions…). It was important to end on a lighter note!
We haven’t quite put the world to rights, but we certainly learned some interesting facts.
