Ilkley Moor has been on fire this Easter weekend. Since I live about ten minutes walk away from the flames, I have been paying particular attention, and Twitter has proved a useful information source.
It was from Twitter that I learned that some men have been arrested in connection with the fires, and it was also from Twitter that I heard a story that some boys were having a camp fire that got out of control. There’s no real clarity there or anywhere else at the moment about how the fires started, except that some person or people seem to have been responsible.
In the dubious pantheon of our current political leaders, only one seems to have recognised this event. The award goes to Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the UK’s Labour party, who tweeted about it.
I’m not a great fan of Mr Corbyn’s and he spelt “Ilkley” wrong, which wasn’t a great start. Plenty of answering tweets called him out on this. However, there were also a lot of contemptuous responses from people along the lines of “It was arson, not climate change (you idiot)”. The people sending these tweets should have stuck to correcting his spelling, because it can clearly be both at the same time.
Climate change is not a dodgy character with a box of matches who was saved the trouble of getting out of bed and onto the Ilkley train that day, thanks to helpful arsonists who did his evil work for him. The role of climate change here is that of creating conditions where fires can easily catch hold, grow and spread. We had the warmest February day on record this year and March was pretty warm too compared with historical averages. Given the recent lack of April showers, the conditions were perfect for foolish or malicious humans to start fires.
Without man-made climate change, perhaps the moor would have been soggy and cold at this point in the year. We’ll never know, but it’s certainly hard to imagine even the most determined arsonist or camper trying anything under those conditions.
I suppose that my bigger point here is that sometimes, even if you don’t like someone, they might be right about something. At least consider that possibility before you launch your Twitter broadside.
