Autumn colours to be cut short as climate change ‘altering landscapes forever’, warns National Trust
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
More climate lunacy from the National Trust.
As usual, the useless Emma Gatten simply trots it all out, without bothering to do any factchecking:
Autumn colours could be cut short as climate change causes leaves to turn and drop earlier and more quickly, the National Trust has said in its annual review of nature in the UK.
Climate change is “altering our landscapes forever”, the Trust said, with the familiar red and gold of autumn leaves from September into December potentially one of the casualties.
This year, dry conditions from a warm September led to concerns that some trees would shed their leaves before Autumn arrived, the Trust said.
In the end, the extra September sunshine meant a “spectacular” array of reds in leaves when the Autumn colours finally arrived in October.
“Climate change could affect seasonal autumn colour in ways in which we are still to fully understand,” said John Deakin, the head of trees and woodland at the National Trust. “But leaves could end up turning or dropping earlier with warmer temperatures and less rainfall. “An increase in storms at all times of year will also stress trees and leaves are likely to fall quickly in autumn.”
Note that it is all “could” and “potentially”!
Despite their assertion that “Climate change is “altering our landscapes forever”, there is no actual evidence offered to back this up. The nonsense about warmer, drier Septembers, for instance.
This being the National Trust, of course, they go on to make other unsupported claims about climate change:
“Climate change is making some forms of extreme weather events the new normal,” said Ben McCarthy, head of nature conservation and restoration ecology. “Heatwaves and heavy rainfall are becoming more frequent and more intense.
“What we’re seeing in the UK with the impacts of wildfires and severe storms such as Arwen and Barra, is how climate change is altering our landscapes forever.”
The “topsy turvy year” experienced by the UK’s terns in 2021 illustrated the impact of climate change on wildlife, the Trust said.
While Arctic tern numbers rebounded at Long Nanny in Northumberland thanks in part to restarting the 24-hour ranger surveillance of the nest sites to help ward off predators, 38 individual Little Terns which arrived in May were forced to abandon their site after high tides at the end of the month flooded the area they use for nesting .
“Terns are some of the UK’s seabirds which literally live on the edge – not just in terms of their coastal habitats being squeezed by rising sea levels, but also at particular risk from human disturbance, predators and storm events at crunch times during the breeding season,” Mr McCarthy said.
“We suspect the reason for the recent declines of certain species is down to cold weather and more frequent heavy rain falling in the summer at the vital incubation and early post-hatch stage. Predation could also be a factor. This trend could continue if we get more frequent heavy rain in the summer as a result of climate change.”
Heatwaves and heavy rainfall are not becoming more frequent, and there is no evidence that storms are getting more severe, despite the fact they now have silly names.
Apparently, despite all of these heatwaves, cold weather is also on the increase in summer! But there again, maybe falling tern numbers are due to all of those predators!
Hey, we don’t actually know, says Mr McCarthy, but let’s blame it on climate change anyway!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Also repeated by Justin Rowlatt at the BBC propaganda unit.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-59757497
The NT are backsliding. Not just weather weirding, surely.
Have they forgotten that it is all the fault of those racist, supremacist, slave owning melanin-deficient men and women who dutifully pay their NT subscriptions? And enjoy seeing British cultural history trashed?
I suspect a dwindling number.
We gave up being members of the NT many years ago when they started wasting money on “climate change”.
Sometimes it just needs saying as it is. In this case the NT are simply lying.
Not lying, they are uttering falsehoods certainly, but they are too limited in their reading and information sources to realize that what they are saying is not true.
You have too high an opinion of them. They know they’re uttering falsehoods.
The National Trust ‘could’ go bust, as so many members are ‘potentially’ sick of all this guff.
They also still have to deal with the fact that they gave their paying members almost nothing for their membership fees for a year. Their solution to this problem is to ignore it, the un-happy members are not ignoring it. As far as I can make out their membership has dropped significantly, despite the spin piece in the Graun a while ago cherry picking numbers to create a false impression that they were doing very well.
I left after 2018. For the whole year everywhere I went was plastered with chatty reminders of the 14-18 war which for me is a bit like the Holocaust. Something to be thought about occasionally, carefully and deeply, it’s painful. The vacuous disrespect of the NT was simply appalling.
“meant a “spectacular” array of reds in leaves”
The National Trust? I am so fed up of this nonsense. This is the organisation that wanted to convert native coppice oak and hazel woodland in Siverdale, Cumbria (the name is a hint) to beech woodlands when I was in the Conservation Corps in the 1970s. It appears that after 40 years they have still not learnt any woodland ecology.
Here is an example list of some of the alien deciduous species from cold continental influenced climates that have red leaves in autumn:
Norway Maple
Japanese Maple
Japanese Flowering Cherry
American Red Oak
Liquid Amber Tree
Red Alder
By contrast British native deciduous trees grow in a maritime climate and are not famed for red autumn leaves and are more typically yellow to gold in colour.
Field Maple
Gean Cherry
Bird Cherry
English Oak
Silver Birch
Common Alder
Small Leaf Lime
and so on.
Quite how drought has anything to do with this is beyond me.
Amazing how so many of these once august institutions are now all infested by the common denominator of left wing political activists using climate, race, religion, gender who by default are far left of centre it is not funny and who politicize everything.
I quote from Mr McCarthy’s Linkedin:
Causes Ben Cares about: “Civil Rights and Social Action, Education, Environment, Politics, and Science and Technology”
Oh Science and Technology managed to get onto the page after all the leftwingedness! Pity it did not find any place among his meaningless pronouncements!
We can sleep safely in our beds in the knowledge that such institutions are all now full to the brim with Klymutt experts from the cleaner on up who all share the same opinion untroubled by facts, from English Heritage to Christian Aid to the Wildlife Trust etc etc.
However it is of course quite easy to be such an expert today because whatever you say, however baseless or outlandish the claim and how impossible the connection or prediction, you will be quoted verbatim and never questioned or challenged and certainly never will be called to book when none of the “could be s and possibly and maybe s” do not come to pass. Indeed these are such insightful people that they know trends and facts before any empirical data has been gathered sufficient to support them.
Perhaps “klymutt shaman” would be a more appropriate title for him?
But I digress. To quote Shaman McCarthy: “Terns are some of the UK’s seabirds which literally live on the edge – not just in terms of their coastal habitats being squeezed by rising sea levels, but also at particular risk from human disturbance, predators and storm events at crunch times during the breeding season,” Mr McCarthy said.
So this over promoted opportunist with an ecology certificate does not know that coastlines migrate? Perhaps he was awarded a special merit for asininity? As long as there is land there is a coastline! Secondly his cites as evidence things nothing to do with Klymutt…Human disturbance, predators……also as far as “living on the edge” has this moron stopped to wonder about why they are called “Arctic Terns”?
He is just one more of the myriad of people today employed on parasitic job creation projects doing and saying everything to make their job permanent. The invented job has created this monster which has to see problems at every turn. This is why people in equality and diversity non jobs are constantly saying “It has never been worse”, why ‘elf and safety executives are strangling the life out of business and industry finding “problems” where none were ever seen before and inventing new ones when they find nothing.
Notice the dimensionless, unitless conflation of factors oh and the liberal application of emotional language now apparently default for any “scientist” hitching their waggon to the klymutt gravy train. However remember the quote from his Linkedin page. I would suggest he sees pontificating meaninglessly about klymutt as a tool to forward HIS career on the back of a left wing agenda beneath a gossamer thin veil of respectable science. As a supposed scientist the pursuit of truth does not seem to figure in the thoughts of Mr. McCarthy but a pretence of it of course can provide a veil to hide his left wing politics which all but the foolish can see through.
Something that would change the landscape forever would be decarbonisation of our atmosphere!
Very true. But they are spending millions trying to remove enough CO2 to reach net-zero. So far they can’t even remove and store just one ppm. So, forever will have to wait a while.
When KNOWN empirical data based science demonstrates there is a serious problem for life on Earth which has been developing for 160 million years and continuing which shows clearly rather than there being too much CO2 in the atmosphere there is dangerously too little. That puts any suggestion to removed CO2 from the atmosphere on the level of a criminal act against the future of life on Earth.
Maybe Mr McCarthy can start by offering to “decarbonize” his body!
Without carbon and the gas we would all die ! – but he does not know that !!
And the fact that he is not expected or required to know that is rather compelling regarding the voracity of the alarmist thesis do you not think?
Those of us who are well aware that the climate change hype is “supported” by spurious and cherry-picked statistics from those who gain some benefit in misusing these figures have to be very careful not to fall into the same trap.
Many will have read the comment above the graphs that says “The nonsense about warmer, drier Septembers, for instance”. How many of those who read this studied the actual graphs to see for themselves if that is what they say?
By my reading, the mean maximum temperature graph trendline indicates the following ranges: 1890-1932 17.1 to 17.4; 1930-1960 17.4-17.7; 1960-1990 17.3- 17.5; 1990-2020 17.4-18.6. What does this indicate other than that Septembers over 130 years are showing a warming trend, most significantly in the last 30 years?
A similar examination of the rainfall trend line indicates that the rainfall for 2010-2020 is lower than any point on that trendline since 1920.
If, therefore, Emma Gatten did check her facts by referring to these charts, would she not have thought they confirmed her opinions?
However, I can’t explain why colder weather and heavy rainfall are also used in the same article to draw the same conclusion! In my observations some combination of frost, wind and wet weather (making leaves heavier) is the most likely cause of early leaf fall, which doesn’t seem to tie up with warmer and drier weather in any way.
And there is STILL no empirical data based support for the claimed cause. Did you consider that?
It is of course one thing to record accurate data (and there are serious questions now about not only recording but actually manipulating historical data in the US UK Australia and NZ) it is another thing to use it correctly. Attempts to publicly abuse data used to be dealt with at the peer review stage. Misrepresentation and sleight of hand appears so universal in the For Profit Climate Hustling Industry that balanced presentation of acquired non biased empirical data is almost unheard of because funding simply does not exist unless clear bias is intended. Now it is just bonus points and get out of jail free cards for inserting “climate change” into papers as often as possible with no comeback whatsoever for making baseless proclamations. Terms like “science” “scientist” and “expert” are used to silence dissent while those claiming to occupy those positions of authority abuse the trust put in them by manipulating science for political ends in return for a salary.
“Lies, damned lies and statistics”,possibly James Balfour 1892
I did notice that but concluded that the change was insignificant when one considers the whole range between lowest and highest.
Thanks, Stephen, I tend to agree, but the lowest to highest range is 1.5C, which is the level at which the alarmists claim there will be major disruption and the effects will be severe and bad for humanity. You and I might think a change of that nature could be far more beneficial than damaging. However, a trend of that size over that length of time does have to be recognised and explained. After all, it does look suspiciously like a (rather bent and flattened) hockey stick!
However, the point I was emphasising was that this community should not publish data that appears not to support our arguments. Of course, the scientific method requires us to look more broadly at far more data in case that forces us to partly change our position. Not something the alarmists have a good track record at doing, and that approach tends to set us apart.
This autumn in southern England was excellent for its colours and duration. Largely due to no early hard frost. Alas the idiots at NT dont know anything and spout propaganda.
The problem is the leftist activists infiltrate and take over institutions; they’ve done it to NT and many Universities and the Quangos are full of these ‘fifth-columists’.
They rely on the good nature and often apathy of the majority. They rely on their opponents not showing up to fight.
We all need to get engaged and fight back. Ive become a Parish Councillor and fought off many evil leftist ‘climate alarm’ attempts at subversion.
I will renew my NT membership but also engage in all the politics now. I’ll go to the AGMs etc and speak and campaign to overthrow the lefties.
If we want to stop this nonsense we have to commit our time and energy and get out and fight them.
Sitting back and bemoaning the corrupt drift is what our opponents rely on.
Get engaged and fight back!
It’s an inherent problem – we are, after all, just humans. And the whole problem has been around for some time:
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity” (Yeats)
I moved to the Scottish National Trust, which is slightly cheaper and still offers free entry to all UK NT properties, because it seems to be rather more sensible and less political.
Phew! No winter. Snow unseen by future generations. Now no autumn. Oh dear! They will be coming for spring or summer next.
Whereas Canada has two seasons: winter and July (so the joke goes), England will also have two: summer and January. Telegraph readers will be the first to know 🙄
Unless of course everyone switches to heat pumps, electric cars etc. ASAP and uses minimal resources forever blah blah…
The problem we all have is that we are looking for answers to questions about climate change and the truth is that right now, there are no answers and we all seem unable to accept that.
The sum total of human knowledge simply does not give us the answers we need.
I did get 15% off some walking boots from Cotswold with my NT card last week!
The ‘Restore Trust’ website (https://www.restoretrust.org.uk/about-us) is a fairly new site in which ‘members, supporters and friends of the National Trust can discuss their concerns about the future of the charity’. It is not associated with the NT in any way but is an independent organisation. Well worth supporting!
The human disturbance affecting seabirds? Wind turbines.
Bit off topic but I now note that the Met Office are “predicting” the warmest evah New Year’s Eve with temperatures reaching 15°C. So how is it that they have already decided that this year’s possible 15°C should be warmer than the 15.6°C recorded in 1901 in Great Yarmouth?
They are ALL AT IT !!!!!! Nobody thinks scientific research is necessary any longer; we can just pluck ideas and temperatures out of the sky and hold them up as TRUE !!!! God help us in the future with all this nonsense.
Yes.
But their ‘ideas and temperatures’ come more likely from their fundements than from the firmament.
Let’s hope we CAN HOLD THEM to this lunatic idea !! In FIVE years time we should come back to this article and ask them if there was a GRAIN OF TRUTH in it and has it been shown to be true in 2027 ??????
There are so many failed such lunatic predictions/projections already that I despair of them ever being held to account.
More unsubstantiated “coulds”, which means more likely “could not”.
Record temperature warning: readers are warned of a flood … of propaganda related to exceptional/unprecedented/wake-up-call warmth in coming days in the UK. Get your daily maximum/minimum temperature plots ready.
The temperatures forecast are crazy….. said the forecaster making them tonight !!
Although I noticed that the 17C for Norfolk has been removed.
They seem to be making a habit of forecasting higher highs days in advance of what eventuates in something far less at the end of the week.
An amusing climate catastrophe characteristic of the NT is their recent propensity to close parkland due to a forecast of stormy weather, because “dangerous trees” that might drop branches on your head.
I ignore this idiocy make up my own mind about the risks and often get challenged, my reply is ” I drove under thousands of roadside trees to get here”.
In the olden days when I was a kid, temperature records would be announced AFTER they occurred. Now they are always announced in advance. These folk truly do believe they have a crystal ball.
And then the lame legacy media never hold them to account when they are wrong! Anyone else remember the Bournemouth Bank Holiday incident? The MetO said it would be a wet day and so people must have made other plans for what then turned out to be a lovely day to be on the beach or at the seaside. Bournemouth council complained about scaring people away.