The Bay by Jane Schauer

At the turn of the century people use to call it global warming, when they should have called it climate change, because not everywhere got warmer.  Most people thought Britain would get warmer, but it didn't, it got colder.

Our family farm was on the western side of this bay.  It's mostly under the sea now.  In the summer the bay used to look very different than it does today.  There was a sandy beach, then green grass with wild flowers.  There were also some marshy areas with lots of birds.  The grassland stretched for about two miles inland and gradually rose into wooded hills.  As all those glaciers and ice fields melted, the seas rose and covered the beach, the marshes and the grassland.  They don't exist anymore.  The rising sea didn't happen fast though like the big freeze did. 

Before the big freeze happened the government had tried to make us feel we were okay, that things were just going to slowly get warmer, and that they were prepared for it.   When scientist told them that something very different was going to happen, Britain was going to suddenly have a big freeze, a sort of ice age, the government did not tell the people.  They did not want to panic them.

The big freeze abruptly happened ten years ago, in 2012.  It happened because the gulf-stream sea movement stopped, and it was needed to warm Britain's climate in winter.  The stream had to have heavily salted sea to work, but the climate change had been causing the salt to sink to the ocean floor for years.  When the salt level in the sea got too low, the gulf-steam just stopped.  Scientists had told the government it would stop suddenly; but it could only be started slowly over decades, possibly centuries.  It's all to do with the salt.

In the first winter of the big freeze lots of people and most of the animals and birds died.  Now Britain is more use to the horrific storms and endless freezing temperatures of winter.  The summers are not so bad, but still very cold, and there is snow left on the high ground from the thick winter falls.  As you can see this summer, here around the bay, there is still snow on the hills.  Almost all the trees that were here are gone, except the pines, and they will probably only last a few more years.  

When the big freeze first hit I was lucky to have been studying in Australia.  Back home on the farm, my parents died from the cold, but my younger brother managed to survive.  He was stronger than them and he lived off the dead animals.  Because of the catastrophe in Britain the Australian government let me stay.  I live in the northern part of Australia now and we get torrential rain, while the southern part of the country gets hardly any and is turning arid.

With all the wars and problems, this is the first time I have been able to make it through to Britain.  I wanted to see the bay again, but I think it was a mistake to come.  Seeing it makes me feel so desperate and angry.