A few weeks ago, the Wokeist faction at the National Trust defeated the Anti-Wokeists in the Battle of Swindon (i.e. their AGM). One imagines the fatal blow was struck, not with a Welsh halberd, but a Devon scone. The victory was just in time for the NT to serve up their latest failed climate soufflé, which was however eagerly bolted down by several media Labradors.
In fairness, the Anti-Wokeists made their stand on matters more colonialist than climate, but one likes to think that they had their heads rather more screwed on in that department than the present shower. They also had the dice stacked against them, or so the rumour has it:
The group, which describes itself as opposing a “woke” agenda, also put forward two motions to the AGM. Its resolution to remove the “quick vote” system, where members’ ballot papers have recommendations from the National Trust’s Nominations Committee highlighted on them, was defeated with 60,327 in favour and 69,715 against.
YP, ibid.
They were perilously close to winning that one.
Malham Tarn: National Trust climate scientists to move into 18th-century Yorkshire mansion gifted to charity as they decide on Dales estate’s future
Why does the National Trust have climate scientists?
No, it’s not the setup for a cracker joke. The answer is because they have too much money.
Anyway, the climate report (mentioned by Mark here) wants us to believe that climate change is damaging the Trust’s historic buildings. I have my doubts about that.
Now, let us suppose you had been told – just now, by me – that the National Trust had a climate report out. What perils would you predict that their buildings, mostly built on the wealth produced by slave labour, etc, would be facing?
You would probably suggest flood, storm, and rising sea levels. I know I did. You might also throw in heatwaves, without a sensible idea about how heatwaves were going to damage old buildings. You might be developing a cynical idea that what we are actually dealing with here are weather events that would have happened anyway, but have been relabelled as climate events because everything is climate now and climate is everything. You might be right.
You can obtain said report here, should you be so inclined.
It starts off badly, in the Foreword:
As I write we are once again experiencing flooding in many parts of the country, and more storms are on the way. There is a lot to learn about the best approaches to climate risks, but we can’t wait for more academic research, we can see the impacts of climate change all around us (even at our favourite National Trust properties!) and we must learn on the job.
If you guessed that weather events were going to be conflated with climate change, you may recharge your glass. And have another two fingers if you have “storm” and “flood” on your bingo card.
After having got off on the wrong foot, the report then opens up by misreporting the IPCC, quoting the latest WG2 report as saying,
Many species could be ‘pushed past their physiological tolerance’ and there would be ‘irreversible phase shifts’ in marine ecosystems.
However, while there are several mentions of “irreversible phase shifts” in marine ecosystems (in my view erroneously), the first quoted excerpt is not to be found anywhere in the 3,000 page document, unless my browser got tired of searching it. The only mention of “physiological tolerance” is in connection with montane possums. Note to the author of the NT report: only put direct quotes in, er, quote marks.
But I digress. How is climate change actually damaging the buildings?
Well, a newsworthy snippet picked up by our local media in Norfolk had to do with Blickling Hall. Blickling is a nice estate to walk around, with some veteran trees including small-leaved limes, a bizarre pyramidal mausoleum and a couple of cafés, including one attached to the hall itself, in what was once presumably gardeners’ quarters or something.
Blickling Hall in Norfolk could crumble National Trust says
[See featured image.] From the article, this nonsensical statement:
Patrick Begg, outdoors and natural resources director at the National Trust, said: “Climate change presents the single biggest threat to the places in our care and the single biggest challenge to our mission – to look after places of nature, beauty and history for everyone to enjoy, now and in the future.”
No it doesn’t, you idiot. That would be entropy. But what are the alleged threats to Blickling Hall from climate change?
Today, new extremes in both rainfall and drought are threatening the structure of the building.
Actually the threats number 3. So far. They are the Silvergate Stream, which is apparently bringing more water than before, which cannot be handled [asterisk: it sometimes runs dry and the clay shrinks]; the increased rain, which the gutters cannot handle; and death-watch beetles, caused by damp, which is itself perhaps caused by the inadequate guttering, although as much is not spelled out in the report.
First, the stream. I don’t know whether stream flow peaks have gone up. I don’t know if stream flow peaks are measured. The cynic in me says they are not. The stream itself is an interesting matter.
The mansion is built on a seam of clay that follows the line of the Silvergate Stream up to the lake.
(from the report, and cut’n’pasted into the EDP story.)
That sounds like a dubious plan. Why would anyone build a mansion there rather than safely out of the stream’s path? Well, the answer is quite obvious if you think about it for a few moments.
I’ll wait.
Yes, the original reason for the location’s choice was to make it easy to build a moat. In these decadent days of mostly peaceful protests, it is easy to forget the uncivilised manners of our uncouth forebears. [Asterisk: from what I have read, the moat was mostly dry by the time the present house was built in the early seventeenth century. It was by then a pretend defensive structure, when in the original Medieval circumstance, it was a genuinely defensive structure.] Peruse a map, or an aerial photograph of Blickling, and you will see a narrow stream heading northwards and then, just as it reaches the house’s curtilage, disappear out of view under the road. It reappears to the north of the house just before the (artificial) lake.
From the report:
At one time the Silvergate Stream – a tributary of the River Bure – ran through the walled garden, feeding the nearby lake to provide fresh water to the house and help with waste management. Over time this developed into a more complex water system, with a series of culverts, drains, sewers and chambers installed by the Victorians.
And when it floods, they blame it on
The Hall’s connection to the water continues today, but the effect that climate change is having on the river, as well as local rainfall, is making the estate more difficult to manage.
You can apparently listen to live audio from the Silvergate Stream here.
In this case, the attempt to blame climate change is entirely spurious. The stream wants to go where it wants to go, and after heavy rain, it is hard to dissuade. Keeping it trapped in a mid-Victorian drain system is going to be difficult. Every so often, the stream is going to burst forth and find a faster way to the lake.
Next, we have the gutters. I do not know whether rain has become harder, but even if it has, the gutters are only going to be overmatched on very rare occasions. It is far too easy to blame an increase in rain, without demonstrating that one has occurred.
Finally, the death-watch beetle infestation. What has this to do with climate change? Well, the beetle eats oak timbers, but only after they have been partly digested by dry rot. The dodgy gutters seemingly allowed water ingress, and consequently damp, with fungus and the beetle following on.
And as everyone knows, nowhere in the UK suffered infestations of death-watch beetle until the climate catastrophe began. That’s why Thomas Browne, who just so happened to be based in Norfolk, did not mention it at all in his 17th century writings, as he hadn’t heard of it. Oh, wait:
Few ears have escaped the noise of the dead-watch, that is, the little clickling [sic] sound heard often in many rooms, somewhat resembling that of a watch; and this is conceived to be of an evil omen or prediction of some persons death…
via Wiki
The clickling sound is due to the males and females of the species signalling to one another by banging their heads against the wood. Not unlike the males and females of our species today.
This note is already long enough, so I will surrender the stage now. But I would like to make an observation about artificial structures. As soon as they are finished, they begin to fall to pieces. Left to itself, a house’s roof is unlikely to keep the rain out for more than a couple of decades. After the rain gets in, the dry rot gets in, and everything turns to powder in another decade. After the roof has come down, the walls might stand for another few decades, ultimately to be smashed apart by the hydraulic forces of tree roots.
There is no point blaming all this on human emissions of carbon dioxide. There just isn’t. If your building is proof against today’s weather, it will be proof against tomorrow’s.
Finally, the National Trust do good stuff. They look after the nation’s heritage. They keep old buildings from collapsing. We should praise and salute them for that. But it is sad to see that they, like so many charities, are fully signed up to the climate cult.
Will Blickling Hall crumble? Certainly, eventually. But let us hope the day that happens is far in the future.
Climate Scepticism 
‘Climate scientists’. LOL. A couple of staff members or volunteers given some climate models to play with and probably some rudimentary training by Met Office staff in how to use them, then let loose to generate scary ‘settled science’ scenarios for various National Trust properties and locations – all in the splendid surroundings of an 18th century Yorkshire mansion set in 800 acres of landscaped parkland and woodland. Nice ‘work’ if you can get it. Anybody who contributes to the NT is supporting these idiotic and wasteful extravagances.
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When critically reading, it is good to remember that “climate crisis” is a term that informs the reader that the point being made will be indistinguishable from bovine patties.
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The NT have largely remedied the flooding from the stream:
“In 2019, we restored the Silvergate Stream, because over several years it had deteriorated into muddy patches and barely flowing water. The project involved re-digging the stream path and introducing a series of measures to trap silt and create natural riffles (shallow areas). We also re-dug channels around an existing reedbed to help it develop, and created a small wet woodland just upstream, which is meant to flood during heavy rainfall and help filter the water before it enters the stream and moves into the lake. Since finishing the project, we’ve found that flooding in the Hall’s basement has noticeably reduced and when it does flood it’s on a much smaller scale.”
So what’s the big deal? Also, the claim that droughts and extreme rainfall are affecting the property more because of climate change is not borne out by the statistics on rainfall in the East Anglia region (since 1836). Take a look: drought and extreme rainfall episodes cover the entire period – there’s nothing particularly outstanding about the late 20th or early 21st century. I bet if you were to plot the data, you would probably see evidence of multidecadal natural variability too.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Raindays1mm/ranked/East_Anglia.txt
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/pub/data/weather/uk/climate/datasets/Rainfall/ranked/East_Anglia.txt
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I have probably mentioned this before, so please forgive me. Several decades ago, after a glorious few hours on the High Stile ridge above Buttermere, I allowed myself to be persuaded to join the NT by an enthusiastic recruiter based on the path heading from Buttermere (lake) to Buttermere (village). Perhaps it was the sunshine, perhaps I was just in a happy mood after a wonderful hill day, perhaps it was hearing the first cuckoo of the season…whatever it was, I joined.
Some years later I left. There was a resolution requisitioned by members to oppose the NT allowing stag-hunting on NT land. As it happened, I voted for the resolution to ban the practice, but losing the vote wouldn’t have made me leave the NT. What made me leave was the fact that the motion was carried, then promptly ignored by the Committee. What is the point of allowing the members to vote, if the high-ups ignore the results of votes they disagree with? The high-ups still seem to have the same contempt for the oiks now that they displayed then.
By the way, the practice of “quick vote” procedures on annual voting resolutions for an AGM is an egregious one. My local building society, who featured here:
engages in this practice, and they achieve positive votes on their resolutions that would make a North Korean dictator envious. Sadly, the bovine and lazy tendency to put a quick X in the easy box, rather than thinking about each resolution in turn, reflects as much on the memberships as it does on the cynical directors.
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The only climate change impact on National Trust properties that I can imagine is more and more “climate scientists” taking up office space in NT buildings and thereby limiting public access:
Malham Tarn: National Trust climate scientists to move into 18th-century Yorkshire mansion gifted to charity
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If those NT climate scientists are going to spend a winter at Malham Tarn, they’d better pack their thermals. It gets cold there in winter.
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Jaime, I read that passage but I really don’t believe it. Here is a goggle earth look at the site – you can see the stream coming in from the south and disappearing, then the walled garden, then the lake to the north. If there is a culvert then it’s too narrow to see. I guess the stream is fully underground until it re-emerges north of the garden. No doubt this channel fills up with silt – but it doesn’t look as if they’ve done a great job of reinstating the natural roaming of the stream.
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love this partial quote from WIKI – ”
Work began in October 2015 to introduce a heat pump system, using residual warmth from the estate’s lake. Tubing, filled with a plant-based glycol, would be placed in the lake and the resulting liquid pumped into the house for further warming, enabling the heating of large parts of the house. The Trust estimated the project would save some 25,000 litres of oil each year, with cost savings in the region of £16,000.[7][8]
In February 2021, it was reported that the parasitic wasp species Trichogramma evanescens was being deployed to the hall in an attempt to prevent damage to various artworks there, including a tapestry from Catherine the Great, caused by difficulties controlling the common clothes moth. In conjunction with this, chemicals to confuse the moths’ mating behaviour would also be used.[9]
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“Climate change: Seasonal shifts causing ‘chaos’ for UK nature”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67705812
Dig a little deeper, and where does this story (front page on the BBC news website, naturally) come from?
The whole thing is a puff piece, full of claims that are easily demolished. Truly the National Trust has lost its way (the BBC having done so a long time ago).
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“National Trust fits ‘pioneering’ ground source heat pump at Kingston Lacy
New system should help preserve art collection at Dorset country mansion by providing a steady, gentle heat”
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/jan/17/national-trust-pioneering-ground-source-heat-pump-kingston-lacy
In this case, it might be a sensible response – I simply don’t know. However, it triggered a few questions in my mind, which the Guardian article doesn’t ask, and certainly doesn’t answer:
What has this cost?
Is it really “green”? I wonder what the carbon emissions and environmental issues are associated with this:
I am pleased to note this:
but wonder if it’s worth it. As for the claim that the new heating system is “saving approximately 57 tonnes of carbon a year”, in order to appreciate what that means, we need to be told how many tonnes of “carbon” (they mean CO2, but always say carbon because they think it sounds so much worse) the installation involved.
It appears the heating has to be on all the time. This has the advantage of reducing spikes in temperature (fair enough) but will presumably cost one heck of a lot to run every year. So I come back to my question about cost – as well as not being told how much it cost to install (including the cost of two years of surveys) we aren’t told whether it will be cheaper or more expensive to run.
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The rebellion goes on.
National Trust going in the wrong direction, warns former chairman
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Not just the National Trust, but English Heritage too, it would seem:
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“Garden planted to cope with weather extremes”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg3el4wz1n0o
A Mediterranean-inspired garden has been planted at a North Yorkshire stately home to suit the changing climate, the National Trust said.
The garden at Beningbrough Hall, near York, opens on Monday and featured more than 4,000 herbaceous perennials, grasses, trees and shrubs from across the globe.
Designer Andy Sturgeon said climate change had meant landscapers needed to start “changing the way we garden” to cope with warmer summers, prolonged dry periods and drought.
The garden also included a stormwater tank to reduce the impact of flash flooding, with the stored rainfall used for watering....
...Mr Sturgeon said: “In the UK we can expect warmer summers with prolonged dry periods and drought, but also an increase in very wet days, particularly in winter.
“We need to start changing the way we garden, and I have taken the opportunity to embrace this at Beningbrough.”...
...The National Trust said extremes in local weather had underlined the need for adaptable planting.
“Since starting the build in 2023, it has rained almost every day, holding up our progress,” head gardener Sam Shipman said.
“The irony of building a Mediterranean garden in one of the wettest autumns, winters and then springs on record has not been lost on any of us.”...
And the irony of announcing this during a cold, wet summer. Don’t forget the cold, wet summer.
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“National Trust warns UK’s most precious heritage at risk from extreme weather”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20e338wlxno
Lots to have a go at, including this:
…April was cool and wet which meant many flowering plants, including bluebells, flowered later than usual …
Despite the climate change narrative being one of spring arriving earlier. Now that spring has been cool and late, the narrative changes to unpredictable weather – as if the UK’s weather has ever been predictable:
…“Our unpredictable weather is resulting in confusion for our wildlife and the slow loss of what once were ‘predictable’ seasons,” said Keith Jones, the Climate Change Advisor at the National Trust.…
Now there’s someone with a vested interest in the climate change narrative, if ever there was one!
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Thank you Mark. It seems that the National Trust has decided to give us a new injection of hysteria at this time every year (scroll back in comments 12 months…). Presumably this is a cynical attempt at prising money from the public.
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Cool wet April? Not according to the Met Office. It was slightly warmer than average, sandwiched between two very warm months:
Just as the British weather varies greatly from day to day, week to week, so also do the seasons vary greatly from one year to the next, as do the months within seasons. April 2024 was warmer than average and wetter. April 2021 was very cold and much drier.
The essence of the British climate has been, and always will be, its inherent unpredictability and astounding variability, qualities which the climate change grifters are now unscrupulously exploiting in order to disinform the public about the existence of an imaginary ‘climate crisis’. Yes, it has got warmer across all seasons since the 1960s/70s but the weather and the seasons are still just as fickle and unpredictable and, if anything, extreme variability in seasonal and day to day weather has become less pronounced, not more so, in the last 50 years.
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You can see how desperate they are to bend the narrative any which way they can in order to fit their assumption of a ‘crisis’. Consistent with the unremarkable fact that winter and spring have got warmer, bluebells now appear sooner in the season. But this is a ‘nature crisis’ supposedly and it’s evidence of chaotic unpredictability, even though bluebells and frogspawn are predictably appearing sooner, though with the same variability about the mean trend from year to year.
Says the BBC:
Oh no! Nature is being ‘tricked’ by natural weather and climate variability! It’s an extinction crisis!
Note also that, contrary to what the BBC are now saying about bluebells flowering late in 2024, that graph just from yesterday shows that they flowered predictably early this year. The BBC can’t make its mind up about the climate and nature crisis obviously.
https://www.bbc.com/weather/articles/cly24dxeer1o?at_bbc_team=editorial
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Jaime; those BBC comments makes me wonder how they think nature has coped in the past. More or less everything that’s alive today was around in the last interglacial which was, I have read, markedly warmer than this one. All that life then endured a major ice age. Since that ended, it has lived through various warm periods and the little ice age.
That reminds me, I want to learn about how nature did recover from the last ice age, re-populating huge areas as the ice retreated while coping with rapid temperature increases, drastic sea-level rise, etc.. Slightly warmer Springs seem very unlikely to cause problems!
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Fascinating that we can simultaneously be afraid of bluebells flowering early because of climate change and flowering late because of climate breakdown.
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What’s even more fascinating is that in 2013, bluebells flowered very late after a very cold March and spring, very comparable to 1962. The year before, 2012, bluebells flowered very early. So we went from one extreme to the other. The Green nutters call this ‘climate breakdown’. But here’s a curiosity. Exactly the same thing happened in 1961/1962. 1961 was an exceptionally warm spring and then 1962 was exceptionally cold! So either the British climate was breaking down in the early 60s or it was just doing then what it did in the 21st century, i.e. flipping naturally from one extreme to the other over the course of just one year (an occurrence which is probably not just random but likely to have a well defined meteorological cause). Bluebells just took it in their stride and didn’t go extinct – because they’re a lot smarter than your average climate alarmist – who will hopefully become extinct within the next decade.
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Context -like attribution
is such a bitch!
Even bluebells
won’t conform to the
existential narratiff!
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“National Trust needs to carry out repairs to Felbrigg Hall”
Quite pathetic. Your enemy is entropy, National Trust, not climate change.
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Sorry Jit, but ‘entropy’, being a traditional physics concept, has been decolonised now and hence the National Trust would frown upon its use in this context, preferring instead the more just and equitable concept of ‘white supremacist extreme weathering’ which is affecting the material quality of the spoils of Empire which NT is preserving for the benefit of disadvantaged minorities using membership donations provided by native Brits.
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NT is blaming its current woes on the Chancellor’s budget. No doubt that has an impact, but the fact is, membership numbers are declining and so are visits by current members. Nothing whatsoever to do with their ‘woke’ campaigning or the fact that they’ve recently given free entry to ‘refugees’ into their (our) historic properties.
Quite how they can make that last statement when membership numbers have crashed by 89,000 is beyond me. Perhaps it’s true that paid visits to their properties are up but that’s because free admissions by members are down. It’s probably the case that former supportive members are now deciding to pay for entry to their favourite properties, having abandoned the organisation more generally over its sickeningly woke stance. The rest of the Guardian article does its best to disguise the truth (but fails):
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/jul/11/national-trust-to-cut-at-least-550-jobs-after-10m-rise-in-costs-from-reevess-budget
So, in one breath the NT are claiming a “yearly increase in visitors”, the next they are saying that domestic visitors are visiting attractions less often and spending less money! The hard truth is they’ve trashed their brand and now Reeves has hit them with an increase in staffing costs. Result: hard working (probably majority non-woke) staff are being laid off and our national heritage is being put at risk. I guess they’ll have to convert historic lawns and rooftops into solar generating plants.
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Jaime, perhaps the NT’s climate scientists will be among those given their cards? After all, they are not really part of the organisation’s core mission.
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Good grief, no Jit, they will be the last to lose their jobs! It’s absolutely vital that they remain on board to help protect the Trust’s properties against the ravages of climate change by giving expert advice on the projected location and timing of its dreadful weather related impacts.
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I would be interested to hear from any employer/small business about the “as they battled higher employment costs introduced by the government”
Meaning min (living) wage & NI effects on them. Seems obvious that will kill low skill jobs & lead to black market/money in hand employment.
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Behind a paywall unfortunately:
“National Trust gardeners ‘forced out after clash over values’
Managers claim some of group’s behaviour did not align with ‘inclusive culture’ but gave no examples”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/09/19/national-trust-gardeners-forced-out-after-clash-over-values/
It seems, though, that the story is at least a month old, and a detailed version (but only one side) of the story can be found here:
https://www.restoretrust.org.uk/media-and-press/mottistone-manor-gardeners-sacked-without-warning
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Mark, a bit of digging found this report from a local paper:
https://iwobserver.co.uk/mottistone-manor-gardeners-sacked-without-warning/
It doesn’t add a lot to the headlines but it’s not a happy story.
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Well, there are, of course, two sides to every story, but the NT seems to be failing to make much of a case. I fear that, as an organisation, it has completely lost the plot. I allowed my membership to lapse many years ago.
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