If anything suggests we’re seeing the effects of Global Warming, specifically a rise in unusual weather conditions, it’s the UK right about now. Last week, appropriate outdoor clothing involved a scarf. This week I am reconsidering my decision not to look into air conditioning for my office. It’s April and we have a minor heatwave. April is usually a wet, blah sort of month. It’s not really warm or cold. It just happens and we hope it’s nicer in May (and it often is because the one thing the British weather hates is being sunny when the kids are on holiday come summer!).
Not that this is really ‘extreme,’ but it is out of the ordinary. On a BBC science programme, Horizon, a few years back, the phenomenon of increasing instability in our ‘usual’ weather conditions was given the name ‘Global Weirding’ by a meteorologist working on the weather in the southern US region where long periods of drought were becoming more common. The programme was a big influence on the state of the planet in the Fox books.
Meanwhile, I’m busy writing the next Ultrahumans book (again). That’s a world where ‘Global Weirding’ takes on an entirely different meaning…
Witches and Ray-Guns 
I’ve sunbathed in February and seen snow fall in July. This country has some of the most variable weather possible – no cause, no global warming, just business as usual for the great British weather.
Well, I’ve seen people sunbathing beside a lake in the mountains around Switzerland. Two women, topless, lying happily beside a small lake which had ice on it. One of the most surreal experiences of my younger years. But…
Actually, British weather is generally very stable, massively middling. The Gulfstream tends to keep us nicely insulated. Yes, we get weird stuff (people told me about snow falling on July 1st in Aberystwyth when I was at university), but we tend to avoid weather extremes and the weird stuff is weird because we don’t really get that much of it.
Oh, and also because we can’t stop talking about the weather.
Remember hearing about a cricket match one summer that was in Yorkshire I think? That ended up with a snow ball fight 🙂
Yeah, but that’s Yorkshire…
Hay! Yorkshire man here 😛
So if we take the fox books as a reference of the future, what you are saying is the planet is FUBAR’d but we will all get cute Japanese fox spirit AI’s?
Seems fair.
Even if we don’t FU the planet, someone is going to make Japanese fox-girl AIs. I mean… it’s just a given.
I thought you were talking American politics at first.
Well until the last two days or so in Sydney we were having 30C+ days all April, ie mid autumn. Pretty weird stuff and once a again a record breaker.