Do people forget that Autumn is the season of gales? Every year since the `Fish Episode', the same panic ridden bollocks. It's part of our annual cycle, it's how spores spread, seeds move around, it helps with the excision of leaves, it churns the sea and breaks up the weed to spread that seed, it knocks down the trees with rotten or inadequate root plates allowing regeneration, from herb layer upwards over subsequent decades. It intermixes the very air we breathe.
I wonder what a year following a windless year would be like?
However the Beeb seems to focus everyone in on a two `highly probable (but unfortunate) in the grand scheme of things deaths', the fact that trees fell on train lines and houses, and the losses to the economy due to said infrastructure being buggered for twenty four hours, by something as unstoppable as the change of season.
Most tree falls can't be predicted with great certainty, but again those by train lines perched on banks are in the high probability zone. But lets not forget that people want trees by train lines and roads to stop the transmission of noise and improve a view. However seeing beech trees down, almost certain to have been old trees affected by Meripilus giganticus is a tell tale sign of ignorance and or poor inspection process. I saw the cut up trunk of one on last nights news with the typical discolouration of rot. That trees demise in these circumstances was highly likely, but slipped through the net due to poor tree management by a local authority. It fell on a church. I wondered as I looked at it how many times, in recent years people have seen the huge fruit of the root destroying fungi and marvelled at its size in total ignorance, of it eating the substance of the roots system, leaving it balanced by dint of its canopies weight pressing its mass down into the soil. For those that do: when next you walk the woods, see the fallen trees, and find the mythical `Tap Root'. There are very few trees with such a thing, trees hold to the soil with a web of roots that extend maybe an arms length into the soil, but as wide or a little wider than the canopy, the leaves feed water to the edges to a zone called the drip line, from where the majority of dissolved nutrients are extracted by a system of Mycorrhiza (mycelia-friendly fungus) that form a symbiotic relationship with the tree, extending the root surface area. and providing pre-digested nutrients to the root hairs, for uptake into the main body of the tree. This root system effectively binds the tree to the ground by Frictional forces.
However I digress.
Why does the Beeb need to send some moron up in a helicopter at my expense to state the fucking obvious about the lack of trains on a trainline that is closed due to fallen trees and power lines? And why do we need some women standing outside St Pancras Station describing the scene of `no one fucking there?' ... er because no trains are running. And then finally linking the whole business of big storms and increased `Extreme Weather' to `Climate Change', that has itself been in abeyance according to some sources for maybe sixteen or seventeen years (when I say Climate Change in this context I mean an overall increase in Global Temperature) ... but fuck it, if the Beeb can re-brand Global Warming ... ahem ... why can't I follow their lead?
Hurricane season around the tropics leads to Autumn gales in the temperate regions and has probably done so since the end of the last Ice Age. Lets not bemoan this phenomena, instead lets run an Autumn Watch special on why this kind of event is essential for the natural world, that we are increasingly isolated from by virtue of technology and mind-set, due in greater part t othe news media `not having a fucking clue and having some other agenda to promote'.
Normal service will resume shortly.
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