- The Guardian Saturday 3 August 2019
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Airline boss
urges pilots
to accept BA’s
‘generous’
pay off er
Scientists say climate
crisis made July heatwave
‘100 times more likely’
Rob Davies
The chief executive of IAG, the owner
of British Airways, has urged pilots
threatening summer strikes to accept
BA’s “generous” pay off er, saying he
remains optimistic that a deal can
be reached to avoid disruption for
holidaymakers.
Willie Walsh, a former airline pilot
and union negotiator turned airline
boss, said he was not involved directly
in pay negotiations but advised pilots
Jonathan Watts
The record- breaking heatwave that
roasted Europe last month was made
up to 100 times more likely by the
human-driven climate crisis , scientists
have calculated.
Around the globe, July at least
equalled and may have surpassed
the hottest month in recorded history,
according to data from the World
Meteorological Organization. This
followed the warmest June on record.
Temperature records were bro-
ken in many countries, wildfires
continue to devastate vast areas of
Siberia , the Greenland ice sheet is
melting at a near-record rate, and
the risk of drought has grown more
acute across areas of central and east-
ern Europe.
The extreme heat is particularly
unusual because this is not an El
Niño year – the climate phenomenon
usually associated with prolonged
temperature surges. Instead, scien-
tists say, it is driven to a large extent by
carbon emissions from car exhausts,
power plant chimneys, burning forests
and other human sources.
How much these factors loaded
the dice in the heatwave during the
last week of July was the subject of an
attribution study by a consortium of
meteorologists and climatologists at
the UK Met Offi ce, the University of
Oxford and other prominent European
institutions.
It found that the extreme heat in
to accept an 11.5% pay rise over three
years. “I’ve had experience on both
sides of the negotiating table. If I was
on management’s side I wouldn’t have
made such a generous off er and if I was
on the union side I would have grabbed
it ,” he said.
“I fl ew for 18 years so I understand
the pressures of the job. I’ve always
been impressed by the professional-
ism of BA pilots and I remain so. By
any measure, it’s a fair off er and peo-
ple would say it’s a generous off er in
the context of other pay awards that
are being discussed in the UK.”
France and the Netherlands – where
temperatures peaked above 40C
- were made at least 10 times and
possibly more than 100 times more
likely by climate heating. In the UK - where Cambridge sweltered in a
British record of 38.7C on 25 July – the
human impact on the climate made
the high temperatures two to three
times more probable.
There was considerable variation
from place to place, but in all the
studied locations the scientists said
it would have been 1.5C to 3C cooler
without climate heating.
“It will not make history. These
records will be broken in few years,”
said Friederike Otto at the Univer-
sity of Oxford and a participant in the
World Weather Attribution consor-
tium. “What we see with European
heatwaves is that all the climate
models are underestimating the
change that we see.”
The paper warns that the extreme
heat will have an impact on human
wellbeing, although the data on this
often lags, which can mean it fails to
draw much public attention.
“Heatwaves during the height
of summer pose a substantial risk
to human health and are poten-
tially lethal,” says the paper. “The
full impact is known only after a few
weeks, when the mortality fi gures
have been analysed. ”
The UN secretary general, António
Guterres , who has called a climate
summit of world leaders in September,
said the seasons are moving alarm-
ingly far from their usual path. “We
have always lived through hot sum-
mers. But this is not the summer of
our youth ,” he said.
The World Meteorological Organ-
i zation expects 2015-2019 to be
the warmest fi ve-year period ever
recorded.
“July has rewritten climate history,
with dozens of new temperature
records at local, national and global
level,” said Petteri Taalas , its secre-
tary general.
“Unprecedented wildfi res raged
in the Arctic for the second consecu-
tive month, devastating once-pristine
forests which used to absorb carbon
dioxide and instead turning them into
fi ery sources of greenhouse gases.
“This is not science fi ction. It is the
reality of climate change. It is happen-
ing now and it will worsen in the future
without urgent climate action.”
Talks with the pilots’ union, Balpa,
are continuing in an eff ort to stave off
strikes that could begin this month if
the union gives two weeks’ notice.
IAG, the product of a £5bn merger
between BA and Iberia in 2010, cheered
investors by reporting rising revenues
and a better than expected profi t for
the fi rst half of the year.
Despite rising fuel costs, an 8% rise
in sales to €12bn (£11bn) helped IAG
deliver pre tax profi t of €1bn in the fi rst
half, broadly fl at on the same period
last year after stripping out a €620m
pension-related benefi t that boostedthe 2018 fi gures. The second quarter
was particularly strong, with a good
Easter period helping drive pre tax
profi t up nearly 20% to €921m over
the three-month period.
IAG said that it had not set aside
money to cover the £183m fi ne issued
by the Information Commissioner’s
Offi ce over the theft of its customers’
data.
“It is British Airways’ intention to
vigorously defend itself in this mat-
ter, including using all available appeal
routes should they be required,” the
company said.A helicopter dumps water on to a
wildfi re near Rafi na, GreeceРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS