CLIMATE change could see Edinburgh mutate into the new Paris, leading to speculation that the controversial Scottish capital could become sophisticated.

If that sounds far-fetched, the serious message behind a report by the Zurich-based Crowther Lab is that things will literally be hotting up as the British climate essentially moves hundreds of miles south. By 2050 (always the year picked on for climate change predictions), Manchester would become like Lyon, and London like Barcelona.

At a superficial level, the predicted climate change might sound welcome to Londoners, but they should recall that Barcelona experienced drought in 2008, and that there could even be widespread subsidence in buildings as different patterns of heat and rain affect the type of clay used in the English capital.

It’s all rather scary and confusing. Famously dreich Scotland could get a pleasant climate out of this, but it would come at a terrible cost to places like Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, and wouldn’t be good for the planet as a whole.

Apart from the fact that it would extend the ghastly shorts-wearing season in Scotland, on a more worrying level social unrest would be seen in many places abroad, and there could be huge problems caused by mass emigration from drought-ravaged areas. We might not get peace to enjoy our new balmy climes.

I think it’s fair to say that Scotland and Britain have been trying to enact measures to fight global warming, but this week John Gummer, chairman of the UK Committee on Climate Change, blasted “Britain’s” approach, likening it to the defence against Nazi Germany prepared by Dad’s Army.

In other words, while the country faces the risk of heatwaves and flash flooding, we have a few brave old boys defiantly staring back at the rising waves all the way from Timothy White’s to the Novelty Rock Emporium.

That might sound unfair, but the committee’s substantive point was that the UK isn’t prepared for 2C of warming when 4C is predicted by the end of the century, if greenhouse gases aren’t cut globally (Hello, China. Are you receiving us?).

Another sobering effect of confusingly pleasant climate change in Britain would be more winter rain and summer heatwaves killing off the elderly, which some people – by the way they go on about our senior citizens – would probably welcome, until they realise that they’ll be the elderly when it happens.

Gummer’s committee said that, as things stand, 7,000 elderly people will die every year by – all together now – 2050. Maybe if we just removed 2050 from the calendar, the crisis could be averted.

The point about climate change is that it presents us with an unusual problem at a political level: planning for the relatively distant future. Politics based on periodic elections is inevitably short-term in outlook, though there are signs of that changing (if you don’t do something about the future, we will vote you out today).

Earlier this week, Sir David Attenborough told the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee at Westminster that young people should be credited for trying to bring about change, though that’s only because it will affect them, whereas the people currently in charge will by and large be deid.

Next week, Extinction Rebellion is holding protests in Glasgow, eliciting the usual mixed response. On the one hand, it comes across as hot-headed activists grandstanding, desperate to get peer-approved brownie points for being arrested (though still no sign of their booking flights to China), and operating on the strategic miscalculation that it’ll help the planet if one glues one’s buttocks to the furnishings.

On the other hand, such protests keep this arguably important issue in the public eye, which even now is scouring the ominous horizon between Stone’s Amusement Arcade and the Marigold Tearooms.

Robert McNeil: When it comes to drink and politics, moderation should be everything

Indefatigable midges

MIND you, if you told many people in the Highlands and Islands that climate change might get rid of midges, that would put them in a real quandary (I still look like a plague victim weeks after a recent visit to Skye).

It says a lot for man, “Master of the Universe”, that he, she or it cannot defeat a tiny creature 1.3mm long. The defeatist news, reported by the occasionally respected BBC media organisation, is that “bumper numbers” of the blighters are due to start bullying folk in the next few weeks.

If I’m reading this correctly, that’s because of the warmer than usual temperatures we’ve been having, so you might want to reconsider my opening sentence rather than taking it as Gospel like you usually do.

I could be wrong (readers’ chorus: “Never!”) but, this year, I don’t remember the plethora of “midge cure” stories that are usually such an annual staple of the Scottish media diary.

The only big headline featuring them came when Tory/Britain leadership hopeful Boris Johnson vowed that he would swat the SNP “like midges”. In other words, he will flap away ineffectually before conceding defeat and hiding himself indoors with a net over his head.

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Bothy bouncers?

IS nowhere safe from people who like to “revel”? Police have stepped up patrols of bothies in southern Scotland, as these places of refuge have been discovered by party-goers and vandals.

One recent incident saw a group of innocent hillwalkers seeking shelter, only to be confronted by a “bothy full of revellers”. The hillwalkers had to be rescued off the hillside.

Bothy locations used to be a secret of walkers’ lore, but their locations can now be found online, resulting in their becoming an attraction to over-social anti-social elements.

I’ve never stayed in a bothy myself as, from what I can gather, they lack jacuzzis, and there’s always the possibility of meeting other hillwalkers, many of whom are preternaturally dull.

But I’d rather have artlessly dull than inappropriately convivial. The police say bothies have attracted “a different type of user”. Perhaps the answer is for bothies to have bouncers who only let you in if you are wearing proper walking boots and a woolly hat, and have a well-worn map and at least one squashed sandwich about your person.