Britain's Lessons From The Winter of 2008-2009

The first claim made in the article is a lie. The one attempt to argue that point seemed to think that the weather in China was relevant to the claim, and that ‘at least a decade’ was the same thing as ‘several decades’. Sorry, but that isn’t going to win any arguments.
The claim is an outright lie, and this obviously makes the rest of the article quite worthless.
Reply: As noted above, the article is a year old. Let’s all tone down the anger please ~ charles the moderator

Rachel (13:52:35) :
The one attempt to argue that point seemed to think that the weather in China was relevant to the claim
Granted. I have already conceded that point.
and that ‘at least a decade’ was the same thing as ’several decades’.
My point here is that event the MET office, aka the Hadley Centre, prominent advocates of AGW conceded that this winter has been the coolest in at least 13 years. I was actually being conservative with this in that I didn’t choose reports from newspapers claiming decades when the UK’s most prominent climate centre is being more cautious in its reporting.
The claim is an outright lie
Once again, this is not an outright lie. What are you basing your claim on?

United Kingdom Coldest snap in 20 years brings chaos to Britain 06/02/09 13:05 CET
http://euronews.net/en/article/06/02/2009/coldest-snap-in-20-years-brings-chaos-to-britain/

It makes no difference if the UK winter was the coldest in 13, 20 or 30 years. We won’t know for a few weeks and it has absolutely no bearing on the conclusions of the article. Those who feel the need to distract with irrelevant drivel are not doing a service to anyone. Read again.
1. Britain can’t rely on global warming to stay warm in the winter.
2. Britain can’t rely on solar power to stay warm in the winter. There just isn’t enough sun (which is why it is cold in the winter.)
3. Britain can’t rely on wind power to stay warm in the winter. During the coldest weather the winds were calm (which is one reason why the air temperatures were so low.)
4. Britain can’t rely on Russian natural gas to stay warm. The gas supply was cut off for weeks due to politics.

Phil’s Dad (06:13:17) :
I may have misunderstood where you are coming from. I may have got off on the wrong foot. The reason I did is because of your use of the word “weather” in reference to what is happening recently in the UK. My apologies.
You may not be aware but the word “weather” has been used by those on one side of this issue every time an event in weather anywhere in the world isn’t aligned with “global warming”. For example, the record cold in the US four weeks ago, where record cold temperatures were broken by 6 degrees (F) in some cities is called “weather” by them. Another example, the record heat (which, apparently, isn’t a record (thanks Steve)) in Australia with the terrible fires is “climate” and not “weather” for them.
So when you used the word “weather” it set off a red flag for me–a premature red flag, as it turns out.
Please consider that manmade carbon may not need to be reduced at all. I absolutely agree that pollution should always be reduced. But co2 is not a pollutant.
Also, new trees don’t need to be planted anywhere in the world to absorb “excess” co2 man is producing. Existing plant life is more than capable of using up any co2 man could possibly produce–and would thrive for doing so.
By the way, THANK YOU for caring what is happening in Africa!

I follow the heating-degree days for the U.S., primarily because it is readily available and posted weekly from NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
From those data, thus far the winter 08-09 has been 4.6 percent colder than last year, and 1.9 percent warmer than the long-term normal, which is 1971-2000 I believe.
But the cold / warm is not evenly distributed, as the southwest states are warmer (California is about 10 percent warmer than normal), and the midwest states are colder. Even Alaska is colder than normal by 3.6 percent, and 9.8 percent colder than last winter.
Regarding windmills:
U.K. has a relatively small land mass, and has the inherent problem with windmills – a large area is needed so that the wind is blowing somewhere all the time. Wave power systems do work, as can be found from the eere website. They are still expensive, though. It might be better in the U.K. to investigate power from ocean currents; these are slow but very powerful. Ocean currents appear to have very little care about air temperature or wind speeds.
California windmills do indeed generate power, on average about 5 to 6 hours per day. Data is available from the California Energy Commission website.
For those who advocate nuclear power, one might first want to consider the price per kwh for such power. Recent cost studies and published cost estimates show construction costs of $7 to $8 billion U.S. per 1,000 MW. Plus, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission yesterday announced that it has increased the design strength required for new nuclear plants, such that the plant can withstand an impact from a large commercial aircraft. And not just the containment dome, but also the reactor cooling system, and the spent fuel storage area. This change likely will increase construction costs by 10 to 20 percent, perhaps much more if the cooling tower is required to withstand such an impact. The required price for nuclear-generated power from a new plant is now approximately $0.28 to $0.35 per kwh. That level of price can be absorbed over a large population if nuclear power is a small fraction of the total power. It gets expensive in a hurry over small populations and large fractions of the total power.
Finally, I attended our monthly meeting of chemical engineers last night, and the subject of global warming came up. No surprise! To a man, and there were roughly 20 there, every one declared the AGW due to CO2 and the other Kyoto Protocol gases to be a complete fabrication. These are not idiots, but highly educated and intelligent men with decades of experience. The level of data acquisition, manipulation, modeling, conclusions drawn, and other such maneuvering in the AGW world are well-known to them and are dismissed as rubbish. They used rather more colorful language.
As Dr. Pierre Latour showed in his recent letters to Hydrocarbon Processing, there is no way CO2 can be the cause of either warming or cooling. None. These are the men who design, run, and operate the refineries and chemical plants that make modern life possible. If there were betting odds on the IPCC or the chemical engineers being right, my money would be on the chemical engineers.

Roger Sowell (19:32:30) :
“As Dr. Pierre Latour showed in his recent letters to Hydrocarbon Processing, there is no way CO2 can be the cause of either warming or cooling. None.”
This is astonishing!

Steven Goddard (08:52:25) :

Your graph of UK January temperatures was carefully cherry picked.

Please don’t accuse me of doing anything so amateurish. All my graphs start at the time that satellite data became available, for comparative reasons.
If a particular time span was being discussed then I would have posted the relevant graph.

Paul S (10:54:50) :
This pretty much confirms what the Met Office were saying, coolest in 13 years.
Yea, 1997 came in just .05 cooler at 2.5.
http://hadobs.metoffice.com/hadcet/cetml1659on.dat

Robert Wood (18:09:45) :
Coal is 100% organic.
Coal is 100% natural.
Coal is 100% good.

Fine, BUT: is the best use of this to burn it? What if the 23rd century world totally agrees with you, but at the same time regrets that the best thing the 21st century world could think of for this wonderful stuff was to BURN it? The same goes for oil and gas. Just a thought.

Roger Sowell
Re: John Finn: re a link to Dr. Latour’s letters in Hydrocarbon Processing
Thanks.