Debunking the myths

THE former boss of BBC’s weather presenters, Helen Young, is on a quest to put us straight about the real threats concerning global warming and the impact regarding ice ages, melting ice caps, higher sea levels and drought areas.

She pounces immediately on my vision of New York City being swamped by the sea and entombed in ice, as seen in the 2004 movie The Day After Tomorrow.

“Yes, yes, yes, no, no, no. I used to do a talk on plain climate change and I think that people do have an appreciation, but there is so much in the media, whether it be television, radio or newspapers. Every time we get a severe weather event it’s attributed to climate change,” Young says about updating her Royal Geographical Society lecture at Darlington Arts Centre, on Tuesday, to the title of Debunking the Myths of Climate Change.

“There are these things like the Hollywood films that gets people’s imaginations and steers them on a different course and gets them thinking something is happening when actually it’s as far from the truth as possible,” she says.

Her starting point is that the climate definitely is changing.

“The greatest myth of all is that ‘this is just nature and we don’t really need to worry’. The scientists can’t explain our unprecedented rate of warming by natural factors alone. It’s not until you introduce man-made factors and things like our use of cars and factories which burn fossil fuels, then you begin to see a correlation between what’s actually happened and what we’re going to see in the future,” she says and fears that no easy solutions lie ahead.

Even the arrival of emissions-lowering President Barack Obama in the White House isn’t a massive step forward because Young says that China is now the world’s main polluter.

Other myths are that carbon dioxide isn’t driving our current warming. “That is our main cause for concern, Yes, there are other gases that affect our environment, like methane... and that also comes from rice paddies so even vegetarians can’t claim they are not accountable,” she says.

Young also debunks the story that computer predications are unreliable.

“People say that computers are only as good as the information you put in.

People also say ‘you can’t forecast from five days out so how can you forecast 100 days ahead?’ So I put that myth to bed as well.

“We have to say that computer models are our best estimate of the future. In the Met Office the computer models are run backwards as well as forwards to see if it correlates to what happens in reality.

There’s a pretty good correlation, but you’re never going to get it 100 per cent right. So if you run it forwards then you can confidence we are in the right ballpark.

“But no one has a definitive answer about how much our climate will warm by. But 99 per cent of results show that our planet is warming at an unprecedented rate of between 1.5 degrees and six degrees over the next 100 years.”

She recalls when she joined the Met Office in 1990 and started presenting the weather in 1993 she was told not to discuss climate change because a large number of scientists weren’t sure that the planet was warming.

Young says that the view that Britain and Ireland will lose the warming impact of the Gulf stream, as a result of the polar icecap starting to melt, is still uncertain. “That might be still 10,000 years down the line,” she says.

Having left the BBC four years ago to spend more time looking after her two children, Young says that she’s now entitled to express her own opinions on the subject.

“The scary thing is we’re heading for a period of unprecedented warming. Can we actually reverse that? We hear of the weather window, the window of opportunity to try and do something about this. My concern is how far can we shut that window, have we left it too late to get us back where we were pre-1970?

I’ve got children and I wonder what type of world will they be living in when they are my age,” she says.

Her main fear is that climate migration will lead to war. “I worry that if we follow along this line our wars are going to be more about water and resources than anything else. Mass migration, particularly from south-east Asia, could be a huge problem for the world because we don’t have a good track record,” Young explains.

She’s seen a dramatic change in opinion over the last few years and is currently involved in a schools’ programme where she talks to children about the climate.

“What gives me hope, and I could get incredibly depressed about the situation because everything has been so slow, is the children today are going to be so much better placed and better informed about our environment and how to look after it. They don’t think twice about recycling. At a school I was in today they were going round switching off lights and computers. That’s better than my generation. Their parents are hopeless,”

Young says and bursts out laughing when I mention it’s her 40th birthday soon.

Young celebrated by taking her girl friends on a barge weekend and holding a big family party.

“I never would have thought that ten or 12 years ago that I’d be having the life I am now and being able to talk to people on a subject I’m really passionate about.

It’s fantastic,” she says.

Young misses the buzz and excitement of working for the BBC and the adrenaline rush of doing TV presenting but opted for a life based more on being a mum to two small children.

“I can still work and go into schools to do talks and it fits around my children,”

she says. Some other fascinating facts surface when you study the career of the woman who became interested in meteorology while studying geography up to degree level at Bristol.

Young is married to an airline pilot and admits “that is something I try to keep on the quiet side. I’m going round trying to get people to clean up their act and he’s still flying the skies. To be fair he’s like a bus driver and taking a lot of people with him. Just because we’re talking about climate change doesn’t mean we have to go back to living in the Stone Age,” she says.

During her TV days she presented the BBC2 programme Airshow and began taking flying lessons.

“With great regret I didn’t finish the final exams because I was promoted to manager of the BBC Weather Centre.

But I’m much happier with you saying I had my head in the clouds rather than calling me a weathergirl,” Young laughs.

Rail commuters might also be interested to know that it was she who wrote one of the first reports involving the problems of leaves on the line.

“I try to keep that one quiet too,” she jokes.

I remind her of the comment she made when she left the BBC after 12 years… “It’s the only job I know where you get paid for getting it wrong every now and again”.

She says: “I stress the every now and again and I do use that comment in my talk, but I’ve noticed the bankers have joined in as well now.”

■ Helen Young – Debunking the Myths of Climate Change, Darlington Arts Centre, Tuesday, 8pm. Tickets: £10.50.

Box Office@ 01325-486-555 darlingtonarts.co.uk