As rivers swell and homes are cut off, scientists say UK winter rainfall is already 20 years ahead of predictions
When flooding hit the low-lying Somerset Levels in 2014, it took two months for the waters to rise. This week it took two days, said Rebecca Horsington, chair of the Flooding on the Levels Action Group and a born-and-bred resident. A fierce barrage of storms from the Atlantic has drenched south-west England in January, saturating soils and supercharging rivers.
“It’s déjà vu,” she said. “The stress and anxiety is palpable in the community. We’ve all been here before, we know what happens and it shouldn’t. But since 2014, the weather events are becoming more and more frequent and the rain just dumps now.”
The climate crisis is here and now and this is its face in Britain, scientists told the Guardian. But the devastating impacts are accelerating faster than the work to keep communities protected, they said: torrential winter rains are arriving 20 years earlier than climate models projected. While those forced from homes engulfed by filthy water are suffering today, a darker question is looming: will some settlements have to be abandoned?
Storm Chandra, which pummelled the south-west this week, followed hot on the heels of Storms Goretti and Ingrid. New 24-hour rainfall records were set in places in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall. Setting new records is the new normal in the climate crisis.
Somerset council declared a major incident on Tuesday and across the south-west homes and businesses were flooded, communities cut off, schools closed, trains cancelled and dozens of people were rescued from stranded vehicles.
“These events are getting more frequent and more serious,” said Bryony Sadler, a hairdresser from Moorland, a village on the Levels. She was planning an evacuation of her family and animals when the Guardian spoke to her this week as the waters rose. “The rain is heavier and more intense, the winds stronger.”
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A crowd of people watching the setting sun from a hill in Ealing, west London
POLITICIANS, business leaders and celebrities were urged to “listen to the science” at Britain’s first “national emergency briefing” on the climate and nature crisis today.
The event, held at Westminster Hall, was called by National Emergency Briefing, a group of experts in the field backed by organisations as diverse as the Royal Meteorological Society, the National Trust, the University of Reading and teaching union NEU.
Lancaster University’s Professor Mike Berners-Lee, panel chair, said: “Business as usual means normalising catastrophe — homes destroyed by flood and wildfire in Britain, price shocks, food shortages and a destabilised economy.
“We are drowning in fossil fuel misinformation, and it is no accident. Fossil fuel companies are spreading messages in the media and in Westminster designed to stall action.”
In the day’s keynote address, broadcaster and naturalist Chris Packham challenged attendees: “Why are we unbelievably pulling back on rapidly and forthrightly addressing the greatest crisis to ever threaten our species, climate breakdown and biodiversity loss?
“Climate denialism has been a mainstream thing again, thanks to the well-oiled machines of the rich, powerful and influential lobbyists from the fossil fuel and other industries.
“A dangerous wave of misinformation and lies fill our lives, but worse, it fills the lives of our decision makers and these are the people who shape policy.”
Calling on politicians to stand up to fossil fuel lobbyist who remain “significant contributors” to some parties’ coffers, he urged them to “listen to the science,” warning: “If you don’t, things go wrong and lives are lost.”
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Left, Bjorn Lomborg speaks at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship Conference in 2023. Credit: ARC Forum, C0 Right, billionaire Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates. Credit: DOE/Ken Shipp, C0
Tax records reveal that the billionaire’s foundation has donated for years to Lomborg’s Copenhagen Consensus Center.
Bill Gates’ charity has donated more than $3.5 million to a think tank run by the Danish academic and climate crisis denier Bjørn Lomborg, according to U.S. tax records reviewed by DeSmog.
The donations, which were made between 2017 and 2022, were listed on IRS 990 Forms filed by the Gates Foundation. Those donations went to the Copenhagen Consensus Center, which describes itself as a “think tank that researches the smartest solutions for the world’s biggest problems, advising policy-makers and philanthropists how to spend their money most effectively.”
The center was created by Lomborg, who for years has argued in op-eds, lectures, and broadcast media that there are more important global issues to prioritize than climate change, writing in April that “it is not the existential threat that some would have us believe.”
Those views align closely with a controversial memo Gates recently published during the lead-up to the United Nations COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil, in which the philanthropist, who is worth an estimated $118 billion, argued that climate change “will not lead to humanity’s demise.”
The Microsoft founder and longtime public health philanthropist claimed that a “doomsday outlook” about the future of the climate is “causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals” and that is “diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.”
Gates’ “tough truths” post came on the heels of the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres noting that it is now “inevitable” that the world is on track to at least temporarily burst past the 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) warming target of the Paris Agreement, with “dramatic consequences.”
Gates’ arguments have drawn outcries of dismay from some of the world’s top climate scientists, who have pointed out that “this memo is already being championed by those seeking to misinform and sow doubt about climate change and delay climate progress–up to and including the executive branch of the United States government.”
But Lomborg is full of praise for the billionaire who has frequently donated to his think tank.
“Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it,” he posted on X.
Bjorn Lomborg praises Bill Gates’ climate memo in a tweet: “Revolutionary climate truth: @BillGates nails it for Brazil #COP30”
The Gates Foundation and the Copenhagen Consensus Center didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“He’s read some of my stuff”
In total, the Gates Foundation (formerly known as the The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) has donated $3,519,491 to Lomborg’s think tank. The most recent tax filing on record includes a 2022 donation to the Copenhagen Consensus Center worth $1.25 million, which went to support “community engagement grantmaking.”
Lomborg’s center credits the Gates Foundation with providing “financial support” for a 2021 report identifying development priorities for Africa. That report ranked climate solutions such as “resilience to drought” and “solar energy for unreliable grids” in the bottom third of a list of investment opportunities for the continent.
The report ranked objectives such as “family planning,” “R&D for agricultural yield increase,” and “tobacco control” at the top of the list. “All other things equal, the policies producing high returns should be funded before the ones with low return,” it noted.
The relationship between Lomborg and Gates goes back at least as far as 2014.
That year, DeSmog reported that Gates had published a blog post promoting Lomborg’s views. In the post, Gates argued that as rich countries “push to get serious about confronting climate change,” telling poorer countries not to rely on fossil fuels is wrong.
“For one thing, poor countries represent a small part of the carbon-emissions problem. And they desperately need cheap sources of energy now to fuel the economic growth that lifts families out of poverty. They can’t afford today’s expensive clean energy solutions, and we can’t expect them wait for the technology to get cheaper,” Gates wrote.
In the video, Lomborg can be seen climbing a staircase with the words “Fighting poverty with fossil fuels” painted behind him.
Bill Gates was featuring the work of climate crisis denier Bjorn Lomborg at least as far back as 2014. This GatesNotes video shows Lomborg against a backdrop with the words “Fighting poverty with fossil fuels.”
As recently as 2023, Lomborg co-authored a GatesNotes post with Gates arguing that the UN Sustainable Development Goals are “too much of a good thing” because they say the world is not “stepping up to fund all of them.”
In response to the October 28 Gates climate memo, Lomborg told Newsweek that “I’ve met with Mr. Gates himself several times. He’s read some of my stuff.” However, Lomborg did not directly take credit with influencing Gates’ views in the “Three Tough Truths about Climate” memo.
Deniers Celebrate Gates
Shortly after the memo’s release, U.S. President Donald Trumpdeclared on his social media platform Truth Social: “I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax. Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”
Trump is not alone in his celebration. Several long-time climate crisis deniers are cheering the statement from Gates, including Robert Bradley of the Institute for Energy Research, a nonprofit that attacks renewables and criticizes decarbonization plans.
Alex Epstein, who himself has cited Lomborg as an influence, said last week that “we should celebrate that Bill Gates has seen the light.” Epstein, the “fossil fuel philosopher” who helped shape the clean energy cuts in Trump’s domestic policy bill, claimed that Gates’ memo is in part a response to a Trump administration that “that is pro-fossil fuel and very anti-climate catastrophist.”
Gates’ backsliding on climate is not just words, it’s money and resources. For instance, in March, he made deep cuts to the climate policy staff of Breakthrough Energy, the “clean energy” organization he founded in 2015 and whose work he touted in his October 28 memo.
Explaining his “pivot” on climate change during an interview on CNBC, Gates said, “I’ll let the temperature go up 0.1 degree to get rid of malaria. People don’t understand the suffering that exists today.” Afterwards, Lomborg took to X to praise Gates, writing, “Exactly right!”
Arguments like this have garnered sharp criticism from climate leaders.
Gates is wrong to frame climate change and human well-being as disconnected, zero-sum issues, argues climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe. “We are nowhere near maxing out investment in & implementation of [solutions] that benefit people, health, climate and nature at the same time,” the Texas Tech professor and chief scientist at The Nature Conservancy posted on Bluesky. “[The climate, pollution, and nature crises] are already actively amplifying poverty, hunger, and division.”
“There is no greater threat to developing nations than the climate crisis,” Michael Mann, University of Pennsylvania climate scientist, told CNN in response to the Gates memo. “He’s got this all backwards.”
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Nigel Farage’s party was recognised for “widespread embrace of climate change denialism and antivaccine misinformation”
Skeptic magazine editor Michael Marshall presents the Rusty Razor Award to an absent Reform party. Photo: Dave Hughes. / The Skeptic
Reform UK has received an award for being the organisation that engaged in the “most prolific promotion of pseudoscience” during 2025.
Each year the UK’s long-running publication for analysis of pseudoscience, conspiracy theory and claims of the paranormal, The Skeptic magazine, names their pseudoscientist of the year, and awards them the Rusty Razor prize.
The Rusty Razor this year went to Reform UK in recognition of “their widespread embrace of climate change denialism and antivaccine misinformation.”
The award was announced in front of an audience of around 700 people at the QED science and skepticism conference in Manchester on Saturday night.
In the Rusty Razor Award category, Nigel Farage’s party was recognised for ‘promoting pseudoscientific claims’.
…
Michael Marshall, Editor of The Sceptic, said: “Whilst the political positions Reform UK put forward are outside of the scope and remit of The Skeptic and our awards, their positions on science are not.
“On current polling, Reform UK is the party with the most support in the country, yet they have shown that they have no problem with spreading pseudoscientific misinformation that aligns with the interests of their donors, no interest in vetting their members and candidates for holding dangerously misguided views about science and health, and no issue with fostering and indulging all manner of conspiracy theories if they think there’s a vote in it.”
Marshall branded Reform “a threat to science and reason, and deserving of being singled out as winners of our 2025 Rusty Razor award.”
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An activist from the environmental movement Extinction Rebellion holds up a sign reading “Oil Kills” as police officers remove him from the premises of DNB Bank during a protest in Oslo, Norway on August 21, 2025. (Photo by Javad Parsa/NTB/AFP via Getty Images)
“Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue,” said one campaigner.
Although the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday sided with the Norwegian government over six young adults and a pair of climate groups, the plaintiffs still welcomed the tribunal’s ruling as “a major step forward,” in the words of Frode Pleym, head of GreenpeaceNorway.
The case stems from the Norwegian Ministry of Petroleum and Energy granting 10 exploration licenses to 13 companies for fossil fuel production in the Arctic Barents Sea in 2016. The plaintiffs argued that doing so violated Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, or the right to respect for private and family life.
The court unanimously held that “there had been no violation” of Article 8, but it also affirmed that the government must conduct a full environmental impact assessment, including greenhouse gas emissions from combustion, for any new petroleum production.
“It’s a relief to see the court recognize what science has told us for years—that new oil and gas fields threaten our most basic human rights,” Pleym said in a statement. “Requiring governments to assess the global climate consequences of oil and gas combustion before approving new fossil projects is common sense, and long overdue.”
Young Friends of the Earth Norway, which sued alongside Greenpeace and the six individuals, also praised the ruling as progress.
“This decision is a quantum leap for climate accountability,” said the group’s leader, Sigrid Hoddevik Losnegård. “The government can no longer continue its oil and gas policy as if climate change doesn’t exist. This judgment will have ripple effects far beyond Norway.”
I can think of at least seven ways fossil fuel producers could wiggle out of this, but still: holy shit this is huge.
The plaintiffs noted in a joint statement that the ruling “builds on” recent decisions from the International Court of Justice and the UK Supreme Court. The ICJ said in a landmark advisory opinion in July that countries have a legal obligation to take cooperative action to address the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency. At the time, Danilo Garrido, legal counsel at Greenpeace International, hailed the development as “the start of a new era of climate accountability at a global level.”
That decision came roughly a year after the UK’s top court ruled that Surrey authorities’ approval of the Horse Hill drilling project “was unlawful” because they didn’t consider “emissions that will occur when the oil produced is burnt as fuel,” as required by law. Friends of the Earth UK called the ruling “a heavy blow for the fossil fuel industry” that could impact other projects.
The European court’s Tuesday decision came less than two weeks away from the start of the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil. In preparation for COP30, the UN on Tuesday released a report warning that governments’ climate plans would reduce fossil fuel emissions by just 10% by 2035 compared to 2019 levels, far short of what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting temperature rise this century to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels.
As Oil Change Internationalpointed out in a June report, Norway and three other wealthy nations—Australia, Canada, and the United States—account for the majority of planned oil and gas expansion over the next decade. This month, the group commissioned a poll that found a majority of Norwegians believe their country should either stop exploring for new oil and gas or slow down the pace.
“The data show that Norwegians increasingly want political leadership that aligns the country’s oil policy with its climate goals,” Oil Change’s North Sea campaign manager, Silje Lundberg, said Monday. “People are calling time on endless oil expansion—it’s the government that’s stuck in the past. The public clearly wants a plan to phase down oil and gas and deliver real climate leadership, not more empty talk from ministers protecting the industry.”
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A crowd of people watching the setting sun from a hill in Ealing, west London
