Richard North from the EU Referendum writes of a curious juxtaposition of forecasts, then and now. I thought it worth sharing here since it highlights the chutzpah with which CRU botched their forecast in March of 2000. At least they didn’t claim that UK snowfall was in a “death spiral”.
From The Independent on 20 March 2000 we got the headline: “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
Then, from the Telegraph online today we get: “Snow and ice to hit Britain at New Year.”
The mercury is set to drop to 28°F (-3°C) in most of England and Wales on Thursday night, New Year’s Eve, and 17°F (-8°C) in Scotland, with widespread snow showers also predicted. New Year’s Day will also be chilly, with the northern half of Britain’s struggling to get above freezing during the day, while London will do well to reach 39°F (4°C)
The forecast follows a spell of snow, sleet and ice which has gripped Britain for more than a week but relented in most parts over recent days.
It is so good to see in The Independent that the CRU is living up to its justly acquired reputation for accuracy.
I’ll also point out that this “very rare and exciting event” happened in London last year also.
Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate – first October Snow in over 70 years
Above: London 10/29/2008
They should have forecast a decline in cold deaths, but the little that are known are significant: http://ecotretas.blogspot.com/2009/12/december-2009-cold-death-toll.html
And if one talks about excess winter mortality in the UK, it even gets worse: last year was the one with the biggest excess winter mortality in the last 9 years. Let’s see what will happen this year: http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=574
Ecotretas
Yep, Winter ice to be replaced by Summer ice 😉
DaveE.
In keeping with the logic on display in the CRU files, the obvious conclusion is that there is something wrong with your measured snow data. When measured data and climate model projections disagree, the most likely suspect is the data. In fact, the ONLY suspect is the measured data because the science of the model is “settled”. Your snow data clearly needs to be “adjusted” and the boys and girls at the CRU are just the folks trained to do it.
CH
Even though it has only been ten years since the Independent article was written we see some of the same lines being used again today. “Eight of the 10 hottest years on record occurred in the Nineties.” Sound familiar? Except now they talk about the Noughties!
Those people are nothing if they aren’t consistent. They just keep repeating the same old line only changing the dates to make it seem more relevant.
I think I’ll see if I can find out whether or not the Fenland Indoor Speed Skating Club have had any outdoor meets lately. Somehow I figure that they may be some of the people who are really enjoying this latest blast of global warming!
Met Office Press Release 25 February 2009
Coldest winter for a decade
Mild weather is expected to see out what remains of winter. Despite this, it is expected to be the coldest UK winter since 1995/96, according to provisional Met Office figures.
……………….
Peter Stott, Climate Scientist at the Met Office, said: “Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future.
One of the IPCC 2001 reports told under ‘Global Climate Projections’:
“Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. ”
and also:
“It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate.”
Next weekend, another special heat wave will hit the East Coast.
Ecotretas (00:12:09) :
That is not a controlled study. There will probably be more cold related deaths this winter just based on the economy, not the weather.
Man, we have to refocus our energy.
Snow or no snow for today is weather. Snow or no snow over a period of years is weather pattern variability. The fact that London is not known as the Aspen of Britain is called climate. Whether it is two degrees warmer or colder in London’s climate, will not turn it into the Sahara Desert or Aspen.
Such knicker twisting!
Met Office
Helping you meet climate change head on
18 June 2009
UK Climate Projections New climate projections underline the need to prepare the UK for a warmer future and to take action now to limit the severity of change, Environment Secretary Hilary Benn announced today.
The UK Climate Projections 2009 (UKCP09) confirm that the UK is likely to see hotter, drier summers and warmer, wetter winters coupled with more frequent extreme weather such as flooding, heatwaves and droughts.
Yes, it’s been cold in the UK for a few weeks, but here in my part at least we’ve seen very little snow. We have had a freezing rain event of some note (for us) but this winter is far from some white Armageddon.
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right. Over time snow will be seen as being more and more exceptional – for weather enthusiasts in the UK this spell of weather this is indeed an exciting and unusual event, pointing out that reality. Of course it wil still snow in the mountains, and Scotland but in lowland England much less so.
Piers Corbyn is the only one to get it right. No model on a super computer, just physics and common-sense.
Save millions: scrap the Met Office, Hadley Centre and CRU.
Almost Certainly – What does that mean?
Met Office
5 March 2008
A significant drop in global average temperature in January 2008 has led to speculation that the Earth is experiencing a period of sustained cooling.
A brief look at the graph depicting January global average temperatures reveals large variability in our climate year-on-year, but with an underlying rise over the longer term almost certainly caused by man-made emissions of greenhouse gases.
The fact is we can’t explain the amount of snow that we’re reciveing. And it’s a travasty that we can’t…
Pamela Gray (00:42:55) :
Thumbs up for you Pamela.
I predict that the CRU will loose more and more of its credibility.
It will become a very rare and exciting event when the CRU’s predictions will actually come true.
There is something odd about Met Office-CRU files (recently released); most of UK records for the most of locations are truncated. I looked through many of them, only one with continuous record from pre 1900 to date is Lerwick in Shetland Islands. Places like Oxford, Cambridge, Royal Obs. Edinburgh, York, Plymouth etc have incomplete records.
In some files complete records 2000-2009 have been obliterated by -99.
Oh, come on! Dr. Viner also said “Heavy snow will return occasionally”.
So, literally, – at the end – he said something about the frequency of snowfall in GB. I guess we have to wait for next year or somme more years to falsify him.
@ Ecotretas:
“… but when it does we will be unprepared.” is the continuation of the above cited sentence. So – what does the death toll tell us?
I don’t recall where I saw the cartoon, but I’m sure UK residents will identify with the illustration of those stuck in traffic due to heavy snow. The caption a simple pep rally cheer of: What do we want? – Global warming – when do we want it? – NOW!!!
Peter Hearnden (00:45:04) :
In a word. Codswallop!
I’m not old enough to remember personally but I know enough older folk that do remember the ’30s & ’40s to know that a similar pattern was followed then.
These older folk remark on the similarity of the last 15 or so years to those times & that the current weather seems to mark the cooling of the late ’40s.
I believe their anecdotal evidence more than the mannipulated data from CRU.
Changed my nick to find if it’s that or my email that’s flagged by the spam-filter.
DaveE
We have a number of joke organisations and businesses over here in England, and the Independent newspaper is one of them – complete rubbish.
somebody please dig up Monbiot crying the end of Winters when he spotted some flowers in February in 2005 or so
Why do you think that Anthony keeps posting G. P. Bear goes to Washington? Can he not tell by the lack of comments that nobody is interested? That and the river thing post kind of tells me that some people may get posted if their donations are sufficient enough. Just saying.
Reply: That is one of the silliest suggestions I have ever heard and you should be embarrassed for having made it. ~ charles the moderator.
Oldgifford, except that since 1979 we HAVEN’T seen hotter, drier summers and wetter winters! We’ve seen the REVERSE! http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/CR_data/Monthly/EWP_seasonal1.gif It doesn’t matter how many times Stott says it, his own data shows he’s wrong.
“this “very rare and exciting event” happened in London last year also.”
As well as earlier this year in February
“South-east England has the worst snow it has seen for 18 years…”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7864395.stm
Pics:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7864521.stm
oldgifford (00:48:12) :
“Almost Certainly – What does that mean?”
Means absolutely nothing. Just weasel words like could, possible, perhaps…etc.
The sort of thing one tends to say when one doesn’t have a clue – probably.
Average global climate change is just a man-made abstract construct, which has some meaning when looking at the history of events, but because of deterministic chaos, no value when looking more than a few days forward.
Climate/weather are only experienced by an observer locally in the current split-second of time we call now.
Many of these people who issue these forecasts tickle me in an odd sort of way. I have imagined them on a roller coaster at an amusement park. The ride begins to rise and they become afraid because they believe it will continue to rise forever, they will run out of oxygen and die, and somehow it is all their own fault. It must be horrible to live such a life. And then the roller coaster turns downward and they forget all about what happened when it was rising. Now the coast must surely plummet forever and again, it is all their own fault. If only they had driven a different car to the park, maybe they would not be condemned to burn up deep in the Earth’s mantle. But then the ride begins to rise again, and the drop is forgotten and it is back to everlasting increases in altitude.
When you have a population that has a collective memory span of about two weeks when it comes to what is in the news, this is the sort of thing that happens. And I would not be surprised if in the future, the old news is scrubbed from the archives when it no longer applies to the current reality.
“Piers Corbyn is the only one to get it right.” Well, yes according Piers that’s right… According to everyone else, those who monitor the ‘accuracy’ of his forecasts, he’s just a fine self publicist and arm waver.
“No model on a super computer, just physics and common-sense.” slight problem, Philip, he’s usually gets it wrong – or rather his language is so over the top what with his ‘catastropic floods’ here and ‘record’ everything else there every month, it’s obvious he’s mostly wrong and just shouting.
“Save millions: scrap the Met Office, Hadley Centre and CRU.” Work for Piers do you you 😉
Off topic, perhaps for a new thread:
Science@NASA :Colliding Auroras Produce Explosions of Light
Colliding Auroras Produce Explosions of Light
A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA’s THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights.
“Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time,” says space scientist Larry Lyons of UCLA, a leading member of the team that made the discovery.
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/17dec_whenaurorascollide.htm?list1350813
movie:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/images/whenaurorascollide/asi_movie_29feb09_big.gif
Joe Romm over at CP is melting down:
“JR: Thanks. I don’t understand what the Politico is doing, really. Why can’t they just do a straight story? The truth is plenty interesting, even if not black and white.”
Strange things are happening as people are learning the real truth. Progressive truth is starting to disintegrate before their eyes.
ked5 (01:00:29) :
You mean this ?
Must be my email that’s flagged & I’m not changing it LOL
DaveE.
I like one of the comments at the bottom of the 20 March 2000 article from alexcj38.
“Hello? Charles Onians in 2000? Don’t ask me to explain but I’m posting this back to you via a time warp from December 2009. Yes, the future! You probably won’t believe me and will think I’m mad or joking, but get this. Britain is suffering its second extremely cold winter in a row – we have enough snow, ice, frost and freezing fog to cobble dogs with (whatever that means.) Far from being “a very rare and exciting event”, snowfall has become a major hazard in this country twice this past year – and we haven’t even got to February 2010 yet. Also (again you will probably think I’m joking) but the CRU has just become a liability to climate science – leaked e-mails and files have revealed a web of deceit and manipulation that threatens to undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming itself. I urge you to pull this article immediately, as it will become a laughing stock in years to come. Charles? Hello? Hello? … Rats, I’m probably too late.”
Mal
In the aftermath of Climategate, the CRU is one institute that has been rendered a complete laughing stock by a few sophomoric “scientists”.
And if Joe Bastardi is right, then the CRU is going to once again look incompetent.
http://www.accuweather.com/world-bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
CRU: Clueless Research Unit
Anyone compiling a list of failed AGW predictions? AGW scare storys often have time parameters of 10,15,20 years. Since they started making runaway warming claims back in the 1980s, many of these failed predictions are ready for havesting. Time to look through all the AGW articles from the ’80s and early ’90s.
Way to call em out, Anthony!
Time the Met Office manned up and admitted that factoring AGW into its models have trashed their credibility and useability of forecasts recently. Since the summer of 2007 every single seasonal forecast has been badly busted, a record that would be incredibly impressive if they were seeking to do so.
Politics has infested every part of the weather and climate bureaucracies in the UK, and AGW religionists keep popping up in key roles.
Meanwhile I look outside my window in one of England’s largest cities, and see we still have ice/snow cover from way before Christmas. 13 days and counting of consecutive snowcover! The roads and pavements are like ice rinks, and councils on the back of Met Office mild forecasts did not stockpile enough grit or salt.
They said this winter would be milder than average thanks to their AGW models, and yet we’re over 2c below average.
They should hang their heads in shame.
I have to say that in the 1970s, which in the US had some of the coldest years of the century, we only had snow three times in NW London.
1970 just before Christmas.
1975 or so, 1 overnight fall in May.
1979 – a major pre-Christmas fall, with very low winter temperatures.
It wasn’t very frequent then either.
The eighties saw more – notably 1981, 1984/5, 1985/6, 1986/7.
The nineties? 1991 certainly, 1997, but not much more.
I might be helpful for someone to actually DOCUMENT the snowfalls in London since, say, 1950 to see whether anything has really changed.
You want Monbiot in all his glory ?
Here he is, spilling the beans: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/dec/14/climate-change-battle-redefine-humanity
Couldn’t be plainer !
Peter Hearnden (01:26:57) :
Thanks for proving your Ad hominem’s against Piers Corbyn with zero proof. It really shows your true self.
Never mind Snow and ice in the new year. We’ve had it on the ground for well over a week already. I can’t remember snow staying on the ground for so long before Christmas in my lifetime in Northern England.
meemoe_uk (01:44:48)
Try this for starters:
http://www.ihatethemedia.com/earth-day-predictions-of-1970-the-reason-you-should-not-believe-earth-day-predictions-of-2009
I bet the Warm Mongers simply can’t stand look at that page!
‘Gtrip’ please do feel free to post the independent analysis of PC’s forecasts you have. Presumably you can thus prove the claims PC makes?
Oh, and btw, I’m only telling it how it is. PC’s forecasts a littered with over the top language.
Dear Peter Hearnden:
where I live in the UK (low-lying north-east England), we have had persistent, ground-covering snow now for nearly two weeks (if it’s still there tomorrow, it will have reached 14 consecutive days). Now if you’re down in the south of the country thinking “So what, it’s cold up north?” I can tell you that this is very, very unusual. When it got to 7 consecutive days snow cover (nearly a week ago now), I emailed the Met Office to ask them when the last time was that this had happened in December (no reply yet but hey, it’s Christmas). Because whilst I can remember a week or so’s snow cover happening occasionally (I think the last time was perhaps January 1986), this has generally been in the depths of winter, In January or February. I can’t ever remember a week’s snow cover early in the winter in December. And now it’s persisted for nearly two weeks and counting. That’s nearly half of December snow-bound for us. In an El Nino year. Only weeks after the Met Office forecast an 80% chance of an average or warmer than usual winter. And this follows on from last year when we had snow in October and then heavy snow falls throughout the winter (though generally not persistent). But that’s fine because acccording to you, the fact that it’s perishing cold actually proves that it’s getting warmer and warmer. Nice one.
Met Office records show average days of snowfall here:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/averages/ukmapavge.html#
You can see the average for 1961-1990 and also 1971-2000. There is a noticeable difference.
tallbloke (02:02:58) :
You’re just not old enough mate 😉
DaveE.
checked out the Fen skaters and it looks like they had a return to outdoor skating back in January this year for the first time since 1997.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/cambridgeshire/7821847.stm
http://www.gileslandscapes.co.uk/club-messages.aspx
The pictures in the second item sure look nice. I hope for their sake that they are enjoying similar conditions now.
In the meantime on the other side of the globe here in N.Z. El Nino is putting on his worst face with strong, persistent westerlies. This why our latitude is known as, ‘The Roaring 40’s.’ After reading Capt Cook’s notes from his first voyage here it must have been a bad El Nino back in 1769 with the strong winds he encountered through the Oct-Jan period that year. I’m surprised that he came back twice more after that. I don’t recommend visiting here during an El Nino spring/summer. It didn’t put Capt Cook off though so I guess that they bred them tough in old Whitby town.
I’m sure that by the summer this cold spell will have been “statistically smoothed” and will not appear in any records any more.
This is what the Met office said last february -that snow was a rare event ne’er to be repeated in the UK. That goes against what independent forecasters said in October, who, looking at the historical trend, predicted snow for the uk on the basis that harsh winters in the tend to occur in clusters, regardless of whether we’re in a cooling or a warming trend. (Much like summers – which tend to be cool in the uk over the past several years, yet blisteringly hot during the cooling trend of the 70’s)
30,000,000 hits and still counting. Well done Anthony!!
This is _obviously_ an attack by snowmen that were paid by Big Oil!
gtrip (01:15:34) :
Reply: That is one of the silliest suggestions I have ever heard and you should be embarrassed for having made it. ~ charles the moderator.
Silly? Maybe. But not denied.
I dig Anthony’s purpose regarding his website. But life is short and things change. That is all I was saying.
And just a side note Charles: If I offered you one billion dollars to say that man made carbon dioxide is killing the planet…would you do say it?
Reply: I am familiar with the “we know what kind woman you are we are just negotiating for price” story so you can skip your line of inquiry/side note. I will deny your allegations for Anthony. You are wrong. You are mistaken. And Anthony doesn’t issue denials while he is sleeping. After your blatantly racist post I removed yesterday and these rather offensive, unsubstantiated, and false allegations against Anthony today you may soon find yourself on a permanent timeout. ~ ctm
REPLY: For the record, Bill Steigerwald, a long time columnist with the Pittsburgh Tribune, has never sent me a dime. Neither has Willis Eschenbach. These articles were chosen because they are well written and have merit. Steigerwald’s article is an experiment to see how a satirical serial story will be received. Once started, the experiment needs to complete to the end. I recall that the TV show ‘Seinfeld’ wasn’t that popular the first year, but started booming the second year, because it took audiences that long to “get it”. I agree with Charles, your suggestion pegs the silly meter. – Anthony
3 X 10^7.
WUWT.
Q: Does anything in the following list not fit?
CRU
Hansen
High priest
Mann
NCDC
Chicken entrails
Hadley Centre
Science
Witch doctor
GISS
NOAA
A: Science
For those who can’t detect irony, contempt, or a rhetorical question, they’re all included in the preceding.
Now, from reading that piece in The Independent of 20 March 2000, I get this sense of déjà vu all over again. Ah yes. It’s that time of year again, when impressive Sunday newspaper supplements come out with lengthy articles from all the ‘experts’ who will issue forecasts of society’s future ~ manners of transport, technology, etc. And all their forecasts are useless because their crystal balls are nothing more than mirrors reflecting their past or personal prejudices. I actually found the Sunday funnies to be more intelligent … and honest.
And when the Hudson and Thames Rivers both freeze over, it will be described as further proof of climate change. Those ‘experts’ haven’t got a clue as to what the climate will be like in fifty years, just like no one ever foresaw in 1959 that in fifty years there would be a problem with teen drivers having wrecks while talking on a telephone the size of a deck of cards and also using that same device to type out messages (what kind of typewriter is that thing?) and to read documents from a thing called the internet.
So, here’s my climate forecast for the year 2059: It will be changing.
gtrip (01:15:34) :
Why do you think that Anthony keeps posting G. P. Bear goes to Washington?
Because it’s funny.
I’ll take “AGW Hysteria in 2005” for $100, please, Alex…
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right. Over time snow will be seen as being more and more exceptional
A prediction about as useful as “the sun will rise tomorrow”.
We know the earth has been warming in the long haul. The issue isn’t whether it has been warming, but what is causing it. Copenhagen isn’t based on the world warming, but on the “fact” that CO2 is causing it to do so disastrously.
The Met made a specific medium term prediction. It was wrong. No amount of special pleading will make it right. Sorry. You can’t weasel out by pretending it was right “in essence”. It has to be actually right to be a good prediction.
That the earth continues to slowly warm is not, in itself, proof of AGW. Hell, it isn’t even necessarily a bad thing.
Werner Weber (00:37:03) :
One of the IPCC 2001 reports told under ‘Global Climate Projections’:
“Cold episodes are projected to decrease significantly in a future warmer climate. ”
and also:
“It is very likely that heat waves will be more intense, more frequent and longer lasting in a future warmer climate.”
Next weekend, another special heat wave will hit the East Coast.
Well, to paraphrase Monty Python’s Flying Circus, it is rather “stating the bleedin obvious!” One does not need to be a rocket scientist, or even a climate scientist to make a claim like that, surely? We are in an interglacial, the last one 125,000 years ago was warmer than today, (IPCC SPM AR4 so it’s official) & as I understand it, so was the one before that. So surely that doesn’t take computer models or scientists to make a suggestion that we shouldn’t be surprised that the planet could warm up a little more before the next ice age cometh? After all we could be on borrowed time! Having been using the holidays to catch up yet again on epsiodes of BBC’s wonderful Earth Story hosted by Aubery Manning, in which beneficial Carbon Dioxide is mentioned in every other sentence, one cannot help but wonder what all the fuss is about from a scientific perspective, but what a difference when you insert the political perspective! True the good programme is on a digital channel at mid-day & unlikely to be watched by the majority, it is too dull & not enough rip-roaring action is going on & tales of who’s sleeping with who & have they had falsies inserted, or is their horoscope similar to yours, far more important than the history of the planet I dare say!
Oh, & hasn’t the good Dr Puchauri been a busy boy over the last few years, building his millions & his empire using the IPCC to do it with his Big-Oil connections deeper than Exon’s ever has been? Visit EU Referendum for an overview. Looks to me like he has been using a few “useful idiots” of his own.
For me, Piers Corbyn may be self-promoting, but if he doesn’t do it who precisely will? We’re all in the same boat there. His forecasts do seem to have a reasonable degree of accuracy, certainly in the long-term department, but then again it may depend upon who is setting the parameters for accuracy & long-term! So far he’s doing better than the Met Office, & that surely hurts the official channels. What he does say tho sounds like rational common sense, something that left the BBC, the MSM, & these shores manny years ago. It must be so frustrating that with £Ms of taxpayers’ dosh being spent on hardwear & softwear & they still get it wrong over long-term, & even short-term forecasts. No mention of snow & ice was made by the Met Office more than a few days before it happened, no change there then. Yes it’s time for the privatisation of the Met Office & the BBC to be put on the political agenda at once. BTW, the “long-term average” of 1961-1990 temperature is utterly derisible in terms of Earth Story & climate.
Peter Hearnden (01:26:57) :
I take it you don’t like it that Piers Corbyn gets it right far more often than the Met Office on all timescales from a week onwards.
As for your question “Work for Piers do you you”. Well the answer is no. In fact I haven’t seen him for about 40 years, when we both graduated in physics from Imperial College. And he was far brighter than me; one of those in the very top-flight.
Furthermore, it was seeing him in “The Great Global Warming Swindle” that made me start questioning the AGW propaganda; and that led me to realise it was a scientific fraud and a scam.
‘Stephen’ oh, yes, it is unusual (these days…) to see 14 days snow cover where you are. That, surely, is the point? And, yes, this is weather not climate. If we saw a trend towards more snowy winters (which would take decades to be established) you know what? I wouldn’t, for a second, question it was happening.
Anyway, here, on Dartmoor, Devon, we’ve had a few days with a cm or so of snow on the ground and quite a bit of frost but Dec 1981 this isn’t – and it’s nothing like as cold as Feb 85. Today it’s pouring with rain and cold. That’s weather for you.
LIke a few others in different parts of the UK, here in Edinburgh, I can’t remember a fortnight of snow and ice lying on the ground before. My street is still barely passable as the heavy snow of last week has frozen in place. The temperature here has hovered between zero and -9 for the last 10 days, there have been snow flurries on about 5 of these days, and as I type, it is snowing again.
The fact is we can’t explain anything we’re reciveing. And it’s a travasty that we can’t…
I’ve just emailed this letter to the Daily Telegraph:
As we wait for the next blast of Arctic weather it’s obvious that
once again the Met Office has got it spectacularly wrong. But their
mistakes have a clear pattern: their mistaken predictions are always
for warm weather and never for cold. Maybe it’s not surprising, as the
head of the Met Office is a prominent environmentalist.
In March 2000 the Independent printed a report headed: “Snowfalls
are now just a thing of the past”. A quote: “According to Dr David
Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU)
of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall
will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
As one who – like most people in the UK and US – believe that
climate change is natural, I rest my case.
“Peter Hearnden (00:45:04) :
Yes, it’s been cold in the UK for a few weeks, but here in my part at least we’ve seen very little snow. We have had a freezing rain event of some note (for us) but this winter is far from some white Armageddon.
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right. Over time snow will be seen as being more and more exceptional – for weather enthusiasts in the UK this spell of weather this is indeed an exciting and unusual event, pointing out that reality. Of course it wil still snow in the mountains, and Scotland but in lowland England much less so.”
I think you are too young to remember the 1960’s – 1970’s period. I don’t recall living in Scotland then nor in the “mountains” and I can assure you the “weather” was cold. It snowed, it froze, there was ice on pavements and roads (Not salted) and “Jack Frost” visited many times, so many in fact it was a feature of the schooling at the time.
“Peter Hearnden”,
It has been unusual to see 14 days of consecutive snowcover in northern England since the end of the Little Ice Age. We’ve not been above 3c for two weeks, whole suburbs are housebound due to the failure of councils to do their job properly (backed up by the egotists at the Met Office who still trust their AGW models and so issued their ridiculous mild winter forecast).
Peter Hearnden (02:43:23) :
Anyway, here, on Dartmoor, Devon, we’ve had a few days with a cm or so of snow on the ground and quite a bit of frost but Dec 1981 this isn’t – and it’s nothing like as cold as Feb 85. Today it’s pouring with rain and cold. That’s weather for you.”
Mostly moist and sometimes windy. No surprise there.
Philip “I take it you don’t like it that Piers Corbyn gets it right far more often than the Met Office on all timescales from a week onwards.” Erm, no, what I don’t get is that you, the physicist graduate, present not an iota of evidence to back up those words – though the irony of that isn’t lost on me.
Present some evidence, some verificaion of his forecasts, and I’ll take notice, otherwise I’m afraid you’re just arm waving.
Peter Hearnden
You clearlydo not know your subject(s). I suggest you go away for a little while and read the life and times of Piers C; Like the fact that he built his business on gambling against his own forecasts and that the arbitrators of his bets were the MetOff. I suggest you also might choose to disclose your locality. Might I suggest coastal, SW england perhaps. A little more thought and a little les BS would give you a lot more credibilty. Take a break!!
Reply: … After your blatantly racist post I removed yesterday and these rather offensive, unsubstantiated, and false allegations against Anthony today you may soon find yourself on a permanent timeout. ~ ctm
I am not a racist. A culturist would be a better term. You need to zip up your pants because your PC is showing. You sound like the “actor” in Crichton’s book. [snip]
Reply: I seriously have better things to do than waste my time debating what is PC and what is not with you. It being 3 am here it is time for me to go to bed. You are a guest here, please behave appropriately or leave. ~ ctm.
Sorry peter I posted before the last one appeared but that doesn’t change what I said. I friends in your area and I know exactly what the weather is generally like. I suggest that you look up the records for the SW going back to the LIA. It will give you a better idea of what you can expect in terms of climate. I love this debate about climate and weather. Climate is quoted by daily temps and yearly temps as well as other elements of the weather. So exactly when do these daily/annual measurements of weather automatically turn into climate and how will you know when the climate has justed started on a downward trend as opposed to turning down for a ‘short period’ of time and how will you know when the climate has turned up ‘for a long period of time’. Oh and yes I know the planet has warmed since the last ice age and I know it will cool before the next one.
Stephen Richards, again, please lets see the evidence. I’m not, I’m afraid, covinced by uncorroborated assertions – with jibes or not.
Btw, I said where I live. Where are you?
Peter Hearnden (02:43:23) :
The point Peter, is that if you took the time to talk to people that lived through the ’30s & ’40s, you’d find that the current conditions are NOT unusual, even in the last century.
DaveE.
Peter Hearnden (02:43:23) :
“Today it’s pouring with rain and cold.”
Exactly as Piers and co foretold at the start of December. How do I know? Because I, like many others, subscribe to and rely upon his forecasts.
If he was even moderately inaccurate we would stop paying. Forthwith.
Well, we are certainly feeling the effects of global warming over here… right now it is -13C.
I live ~30km south of Oslo, Norway, close to the Oslo fjord and at 150m elevation. Consider the following official temperature forecast for my location for the first few days if 2010 (scroll down a bit to see the graph)
http://www.yr.no/place/Norway/Buskerud/R%C3%B8yken/L%C3%B8v%C3%A5s/long.html
Looks like the temperature will be hovering around -20C for a while…., it must be global warming. “Normal” temperature would be about -4C.
My backup of the graph
http://arnholm.org/wuwt/weather/forecast_jan2010.gif
We also got ~35cm of “white stuff” overnight between the 24-25 December so the snowblower I gave myself for Christmas was well received, and put to use at once 🙂
Usually, the months with most snow is January/February/March…
I was born in the UK, but have lived in Canada for over 50 yeras. We know all about keeping a modern transportation system going in winter. Two things to note on this subject. First it costs a lot of money. Second, a lot of the money must be spent up front; if one is not ready for winter by the equinox, it is already too late. With the UK government officially supporting AWG, it is going to be very difficult for local governments to get enough funds so as to be ready for significant snowfalls in the UK. Precisely what this means, if and when a 21st century countrry has a degraded transportation system for significant periods of time, I have no idea.
I think there’s one important point regarding the UK weather/climate. This current cold and snowy weather is not an isolated event, but rather part of a trend lasting some years.
There’s no question that, since the 1960’s, the UK climate became noticeably warmer, and some time around the nineties there was no snow at all. This warming may have been linked to global warming, but it may also be linked to the cleaner air we enjoy since the Clean Air Acts back in the fifties or sixties. Whatever the cause, it made life considerably more pleasant. But it probably wouldn’t last.
My general impression is that the UK climate has been getting colder since the early noughties. The last real heat wave was around 2003. We’ve had several cold summers. We’ve had significant snow every year for maybe the last six years. The snow appears to be getting heavier and it’s staying longer due to the freezing conditions.
Although it’s just my personal impression and it’s certainly not scientific, this cooling in the UK climate corresponds fairly well with the global temperature, which has been slowly falling for the last few years.
I certainly don’t want a warmer world. But a cooling world may eventually destroy this great delusion. It will force the climate scientists to confront a horrifying possibility: that, for whatever reasons, they have got it spectacularly wrong.
Chris
Bob (02:48:28) :
“Like a few others in different parts of the UK, here in Edinburgh, I can’t remember a fortnight of snow and ice lying on the ground before.”
Bob, as a local to Edinburgh, perhaps you could ring your local Edinburgh Royal Observatory and enquire why they stop recording temperatures from 1990
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/reference/03/031607
or why records from the other Edinburgh/Turnhouse were obliterated from year 2000.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/science/monitoring/reference/03/031600
I would presume as a resident of Scotland it is your right to know.
Fears that cold weather can take lives in southern Norway.
Link (norwegian)
http://www.dagbladet.no/2009/12/29/nyheter/ver/kulde/9695957/
Health authorities (Folkehelseinstituttet) fear that life may be lost during the cold weather that is expected in southern Norway the next few weeks. Temperatures around 20 degrees below zero (Celsius) are expected in the entire southern Norway over the next three weeks.
– We can see from the statistics of death when there has been significant cold. We see an excess mortality from lung inflammation, and some will freeze to death when it gets cold, said Dr. Karin Rønning at the Folkehelseinstituttet to VG.
There is a change in climate!!
Im reffering to the debate climate.Only two weeks ago there where anger and high voices.Now its more “fun” and sarcastic, the great global swindle is allready exposed.The swetness of victory is at hand.I usually dont support to rubb it the face on the looser.But in this case am more than happy to make an exeption.
All the political correkt forces went “allin” on the profecy from IPCC.Well they lost all credability.Easy come easy go!!! They will try to govern the people like “buissness as usual”.But things have change!! They went into a corner and we are many that wont let them leave it.
Wheather bureaus became minarets of a new religion.How many now doesnt trust anything relatet to climate anymore?? 50? 100? 500 million? and counting.
Hahaha…these CRU folks would help themselves by keeping their mouths shut. They lose credibility with every communique.
England was having very warm winters during the late 1990s and early 2000s, and many people (including myself) believed that it was a trend. Since then, all thinking people have come to understand that climate is cyclical rather than linear.
Pity this weakens the public support for moral and ethical change…
but that’s what happens when hitching a moral vision to a science hypothesis.
The problem is deeper. Even if the current weather was “consistent” with climate scenarios, I mean, even if we were actually in a freakishly warm winter, all that the NGOs, The United Nations, The State of the World Forum, the Optimum Population Trust, and so on… all that they would be achieving is beating people into behavior change out of fear of consequences.
To be sure, beating people into change can work—there are famous Zen Masters who “broke the arm of the student” and induced spontaneous enlightenment at just the right moment… but then it takes a Master to get the timing exquisitely right. Most students just suffer abuse for years and don’t change, get nothing from it.
If the weather was currently freakishly warm, and AGW hypothesis/theory/reality was currently receiving wide public validation, all that that would be achieving from a moral and ethical dimension, is scaring people into behaving differently. From an ethical dimension, that is no change at all.
Consider, does instigating severe punishments against criminals, merely dissuade criminals from carrying out criminal behavior, or does the existence of harsh punishments actually force criminals to search their hearts and motivate them to radically change themselves and become, in their heart of hearts, honest people sensitive to not harming others?
As we’ve known for decades in liberal and left leaning thinking, punishment does not reform people, and the threat of bad consequences does not change men’s hearts. So why take this approach with humanity and the environment? Why try to change people using a message of dire consequences? Tell me, what’s the difference with capital punishment?
Surely, what many desire is that humans, individually, in their hearts, become sensitive and caring towards humans across national boundaries, and across ecosystems. What is desired is a new more ethical human. A new ethics of global mutuality and interdependency.
The core issue, now and forever more, will be the ethical dimension of humanity and how that develops. And can I just say, this has nothing to do with any science hypothesis (nor theory, nor reality.)
It is entirely an ethical issue. If you want people to change, teach ethics, not science. Science theories come and go. There is nothing self-evidently true about AGW—like any science theory, it could be disproved one day, there are always unknown unknowns. It also only holds for scenarios far beyond the time scales of short term weather cycles. It will be 50 to 100 years before AGW can show its really-real reality. That means this generation doesn’t have to face the consequences, and the next generation might also get away with ignoring the consequences. Remember, this is the very human nature that we are so worried about changing. This is like instituting a death penalty for murder, with sentence to be carried out in not this incarnation, not in the next incarnation, but the incarnation after that. We will hang you, in two lifetimes! So don’t do it!
By separating “environmentalist” from “climate change”, you can separate ethics from science, which gives you two things: it allows you to find greater depth of honesty in ethics, and greater clarity of objectivity in science.
Pierce Corbyn is interesting.
Lets focus on this onwards;
From the beginning of time there has been people trying to tell us what the wheather will be like. Regarding Pierce, what fascinates me is that he is mentioning cosmic rays. Thats something new in this occupation, isnt it?
Therefore its interesting, dont you think? I think so.
Is his hit-rate above or below 50% ? I dont know. But he got it right this time, and he got it right regarding Copenhagen too. Well, a couple of days late, perhaps.
I find it hilarious funny that he got a hit on Copenhagen. It was sooo funny when that journalist was complaining about the cold.
Sun – CO2 1:0
hehe
OT – but weather-related, and a bit surprising given the source.
http://www.thelocal.de/national/20091229-24233.html
“Exactly as Piers and co foretold at the start of December. How do I know? Because I, like many others, subscribe to and rely upon his forecasts.
If he was even moderately inaccurate we would stop paying. Forthwith.”
And I don’t subscribe to his forecasts – not that that proves anything either.
Again, lets see some assessment, some analysis not ‘he’s right because I say he is’.
If your predictions cover all possibilities, your predictions will never fail!
It’s a old trick commonly used by pseudoscientists.
With kind regards,
Oliver K. Manuel
Former NASA PI for Apollo
Peter Hearnden: That’s very rich, asking me for evidence. I have been asking the government, through bodies such as DECC, and its NGOs, such as the Met Office, to provide me evidence for AGW. Have I received any evidence from them? No, of course not, because there is no such evidence. All they have is computer projections and computer models are not scientific evidence. They are evidence of the computer programmers’ abilities to write computer code.
Perhaps you would be kind enough to provide me with some evidence.
As Stephen Richards has pointed out, Piers Corbyn’s record is based on being able to sell his forecasts. And you can’t do that if you repeatedly get it wrong. On the other hand, the Met Office gets millions from us taxpayers regardless. In fact, the worse it’s forecasts, the more money it claims it needs to have bigger and faster computers and to develop better models. There is no doubt the Met Office is not fit for purpose at the moment.
One of the best long term [ 2000 years plus ] historical weather sites I have come across which uses information gleaned from a very wide variety of historical writings and range of data and proxy sources is the UK’s own “Booty Meteorological Information Source”.
http://booty.org.uk/booty.weather/metindex.htm
I believe the originator of this excellent weather and historical site is or was a meteorologist.
When you read the weather /climate history of the UK on this site, it really brings home to one just how changeable and variable the weather and climate really are when looked at in the long term historical sense and the realisation just what an impact weather and climate has had, not just on the UK but on the history and the destiny of whole human race.
Stephen and Peter
It is a mistake to believe the UK has ever had consistently cold winters (other than during the depths of the LIA)-we are on a predominantly westerly airstream and temperatures rise and fall according to its frequency.
The last very cold (snowy) winter was 1962/63 which was the coldest in turn since 1683. We have this delusion of freezing winters largely because of the writing of Dickens who romanticised the season despite living through the two warmest winters in the CET record since 1660
As Pepys said in January 1660/61:
“It is strange what weather we have had all this winter; no cold at all; but the ways are dusty, and the flyes fly up and down, and the rose-bushes are full of leaves, such a time of the year as was never known in this world before here.”
This is what a farmer from Buchan in North East Scotland, one of the snowiest parts of lowland Britain, wrote in the agricultural section of his local newspaper during the exceptionally mild winter of 1933/34.
“1934 has opened true to the modern tradition of open, snowless winters. The long ago winters are no precedent for our modern samples. During the last decade, during several Januarys the lark has heralded spring up in the lift from the middle to the end of the month. Not full fledged songs but preliminary bars in an effort to adapt to our climatic change”
It then goes on to say
“It is unwise to assume that the modern winters have displaced the old indefinitely”
and also
“Our modern winters have induced an altered agricultural regime”
I suspect Peters Dartmoor records ( I live very close to him-Happy New Year Peter) show the same warming effect at intervals-indeed he will not be far from the Bronze age dwellings at Grimpound and Medieval ones of Hound Tor which had to be abandoned as the climate cooled.
The cyclical nature of climate should not be ignored and can be clearly seen here in these old records;
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Tonyb
The UEA/CRU finally get it right!
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_OoGClTz0_Lo/SxBOXaKVfQI/AAAAAAAAAyo/xmtxdOAXCOc/s400/cru+pear+shaped.png
“Chris Wright (03:32:10) :
There’s no question that, since the 1960’s, the UK climate became noticeably warmer, and some time around the nineties there was no snow at all.”
I am sorry Chris, the 1970’s in the UK were not warm, apart from the 1976 “heatwave”. Every other year in that decade was cold, in particular 1979.
Peter Hearnden (04:02:31) :
“Again, lets see some assessment, some analysis not ‘he’s” wrong “because I say he is’.”
Market driven economics. If you pay, one time, for a product that is shoddy you ask for a refund. If you pay continuously for a faulty product you are a fekkin eejit.
Farmers, supermarkets and insurers would not continue to pay Piers if he was accurate merely 50% of the time as the Met Office hover around that point and they distribute their forecasts free of charge.
We all agree, when purchasing the forecasts, not to divulge the contents.
If you hold a hypothesis regarding his accuracy the onus is on you to present evidence in its support, not upon us to disprove it – much like the case of the sickly thin stream of AGW spew.
Stefan (03:48:42) :
Consider, does instigating severe punishments against criminals, merely dissuade criminals from carrying out criminal behavior, or does the existence of harsh punishments actually force criminals to search their hearts and motivate them to radically change themselves and become, in their heart of hearts, honest people sensitive to not harming others?
When, in past times in Britain, people were hanged for sheep stealing, many people were hanged.
Peter Hearnden
I believe you were the first here to question the accuracy of Corbyn’s forecasts, We are still waiting for you to provide facts to back up that claim
You know the old tale of the three blind men who argued over whether they’d encountered a wall, a rope, or a tree? The point is they each had a partial/different perspective. So here is my question: how long will global warming last? What will the temperature be in 1000 years if we don’t reduce CO2 emissions? 5000?
Snow blankets London for Global Warming debate – first October Snow in over 70 years
You might say that the forces IPCC and AGWists claim to understand have it in for them, that the hand of Nature itself is taking pleasure in rubbing thier noses in it. It isn’t just Gore, he just happens to have an affinity for stepping in it and dragging it around.
Philip Bratby “That’s very rich…”
We’re talking about Piers (someone you brought into the discussion) , we can talk other things if you like but that would just distract us form the reality that no matter how many times people ask for verification, for some analysis, for something, anything, to back up Piers’s claims we never get anything in reply but assertion.
I expect that to continue but go on surprise me 🙂
If you want to know how to use weasel words in a forecast, this post from an hour ago can help you:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/comment-page-2/
Look at their ever-widening “confidence interval” in the graph! Now these are the prophets!
DavidE (02:14:24) :
tallbloke (02:02:58) :
Never mind Snow and ice in the new year. We’ve had it on the ground for well over a week already. I can’t remember snow staying on the ground for so long before Christmas in my lifetime in Northern England.
You’re just not old enough mate 😉
Which neck of the woods are you from Dave? I’m 45, how about you?
“ Dave Johnson (04:41:33) :
Peter Hearnden
I believe you were the first here to question the accuracy of Corbyn’s forecasts, We are still waiting for you to provide facts to back up that claim”
You mean as the one asking questions here I have to defend the one I question? That’s a novel suggestion :))
Sprry, all I ask is for something better than assertion that Piers is the meteorological superman some here seem to think. I don’t see that as toooo much to ask?
Peter Hearnden:
Hopefully the BS you spout – in defending yours and the Meto’s Warming Agenda – will soon freeze over soon – just like the frozen stuff your Pigs are currently walking over on your pig farm in Devon…. (Despite being on the end of the Gulf Stream – that won’t save you from your Hog-Talk either) ;-|
gtrip (00:42:13) :
Ecotretas (00:12:09) :
That is not a controlled study. There will probably be more cold related deaths this winter just based on the economy, not the weather.
How do you do a controlled study on excess cold-related deaths?
The current BBC forecast marks a departure from the blando repetition of MET office CRU inspired gibberish, and ends with a franker than usual admission of uncertainty:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/weather/forecast/10209
Published at 09:00 on 28th December
All times are GMT (Europe/London, GMT+0000)
(Next update at 09:00 on 4th Jan 2010)
Written by Rob McElwee
Summary
Cold with more snow.
This winter looks like going down as one of the more memorable “proper winters”. The wind this coming month is anywhere from southeasterly to northerly – all cold at this time of the year.
All parts of the UK can expect more snow at some time alongside below average daytime temperatures and hard night frosts.
Monday 28 December 2009 to Sunday 3 January 2010
Rain, wind, snow and ice.
A low pressure area in Biscay pumps moisture into the cold air over us now. The result is a significant snow risk. At the moment, the most likely areas to be affected are Wales and mid to north England midweek, then southeast Britain for the New Year.
At first, southern Britain will be mild, wet and windy – rain rather than snow. Northern Britain will remain cold, icy and at first fog-prone.
A little more snow is possible in Scotland and northeast England, especially on Wednesday and Thursday in the northeasterly wind.
Sunshine is in short supply with possible exception of northwest mainland Scotland.
Monday 4 January 2010 to Sunday 10 January 2010
Northerly wind all week.
Below average daytime temperatures, moderate to severe night frosts.
A reasonable breeze should prevent persistent fog and allow daytime sunshine; With the exception of those areas exposed to the windblown showers there should be above average sunshine.
The windblown showers are likely to all be of snow and concentrated in northern Scotland. You can also expect a fair few in eastern England, including East Anglia.
Monday 11 January 2010 to Sunday 24 January 2010
Cold east or southeasterly wind.
Temperatures will continue to be below average both day and night.
Snow and sleet showers will be concentrated in eastern England, especially the northeast.
Western Britain looks sunnier and drier than elsewhere because of the wind’s direction. Northern Ireland maintains its average.
Next week
In my memory, February has always brought the coldest and snowiest weather. My memory may be deceiving me but if not…
Monthly forecasting
The weather beyond about a week ahead stretches even the most experienced weather forecaster. Complex numerical weather forecast models from the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF) are run many times for the month (and season) ahead to build up a picture of the likelihood of different weather types affecting the UK.
On this graph DJF are (dec.jan.feb) UK winter temperature (11year moving average)
http://www.vukcevic.co.uk/CET.gif
Here is a weather forecast for the UK made on the 24th November for the month of December at http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=longrange;sess=
December
The first month of Winter is expected to see a continuation of the wet weather with rainfall totals widely forecast to be above the average for the time of year. Temperatures are also forecast to be above average in many parts, although with parts of the country will be closer to seasonal average.
How did it turn out? RUBBISH. More snow in December than we have had for years just about everywhere. A lot colder than average too.
Just imagine what would it have happened without Climate-Gate at Copenhagen. These CRU guys were in the lying business many years ago. Too many “tricks”…
Scouse Pete:
I have to say it’s never much fun to be attacked by someone sniping from the cover of anonymity. Someone who has clearly done some some (out of date actually) background on me because I’ve been open about who I am. My bad.
You could address what’s being debated you know…
Here is my prediction for this winter posted in another thread last August.
Spot on so far (and I called last winter correctly too) but let’s see what Jan & Feb bring:
Winter2009/2010 for UK
by Stephen Wilde » Sun Aug 02, 2009 10:58 am
I hate trying to predict because everything could change tomorrow but on the basis of the present setup here goes:
The jets are still well south of us and if that persists into autumn and winter then of course there will be greater influence from cold high pressure over Europe and Greenland.
The matter of precipitation amounts depends on where the main battleground is between cold and warm air. No two years are the same and last winter was unusual. The cold spells were very immobile. Large chunks of cold air were dumped on us for weeks at a time with little movement and relatively little snow despite a couple of notable falls.
For the coming winter I think that, instead, we will get more occasions when the battleground is over southern UK or northern France and Germany with more snow over wider areas than we have had for many years. However so much depends on day to day variability of the precise positions of all the weather systems that I realise I am a bit out on a limb there. Nevertheless I think it a higher likelihood than for many years past.
I’m also unsure what the balance will be between northerly and easterly flows which give very different weather types. The chance of a return to prolonged south westerlies is low but it could happen depending on the synoptic situation over USA.
Last winter also showed a change from the previous two winters when cold plunges over the USA distorted the jets and gave us persistent warm wet south westerlies so we did not then share in the general slow cooling trend.
I think that the overall global trend is still moving towards a colder regime but only slowly. The position of the jets in both hemispheres still indicates overall cooling. We seem to be getting increasing cold weather reports in winter in both hemispheres despite the current absence of a strong La Nina so the effect of the previous one seems to be persisting.
Meanwhile ENSO is less negative than it was but the anticipated EL Nino seems to be stuttering. I would say that overall the rate of cooling in the air will slow down a bit thanks to the extra energy flow into the air from the less negative ENSO but remember that if the sun is weak it will not fully replace the energy lost from ocean to air via the warmer SSTs so there remains a general background loss of energy for the system as a whole.
So, (gulp!) UK coming winter cooler than recently and likely to further reduce the warming trend of the 1975 to 2000 period. Not necessarily back down to the longer term average but well on the way with an outside chance of a memorable winter.
More snow than we have been used to but generally drier than average in the north and wetter than average in the south.
Stefan:
The best projections are (AIUI) that AGW will last for longer than centuries given that it’s likely that CO2 cons will take that long to return to equlibrium. See work by Dr David Archer for more.
Interestingly, I just did and published a calculation for Prague showing that 1.5 °C of warming would only lower the number of snowy days roughly by one quarter of the current number.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-would-15-c-of-warming-mean-in.html
After 100 years of hard work, the change would be barely noticeable. It would be even more undetectable at places which already have substantial amount of snowy days – just a few percent.
A further quote from the Independent article mentioned above: “Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. “We’re really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time,” he said.”
Leon Brozyna (02:27:50–that handy list missing science.
THAT was funny.
As to the main story at hand. 70 YEARS? A generation and one-half (give or take a few years) where snow has not hit in October? Wow.
And quotations about the end of snow in Britain (it just got turned back into Narnia) from none other than CRU?
Too good. Too good.
But isn’t the response that gooly-gee wilkers this is what is EXPECTED from a warmer world. More water vapor due to increased evaporation (and you get your heaviest snow near the freezing point of H20 due to how the weather patterns flow–i.e., snow in Antarctica is really rather rare) and you’ll get more snow?
Claude Harvey (00:35:25) :
Another funny….
It must have only snowed, what, three microns, then?
If we are to assume that weather forecasting is the ouput of computers and that the Met Office models used are clearly defective at short range, why on earth are we apparently accepting their long range outputs ? Even the Telegraph has a correspondent Geoffrey Lean who doesn’t seem to understand that point. The media have been thoroughly duped and should be ashamed of themselves.
gtrip (01:15:34) :
First question:
Each post is another chapter in a story.
Each chapter is mildly interesting, entertaining, and funny. (Personally,
I think it’s kind of low on the mild side, but at least they aren’t as
clueless as some commenters I reply to.)
Second question:
Everyone is waiting for the final chapter.
USENET denizens learned a long time ago that the best way to get responses is to post something not quite right or post “flamebait”. (My apologies to all for falling for the second, congratulations to all for resisting temptation so well. The Climategate poster thread at JoAnne Nova’s blog has been all but destroyed by a troll and respondents.)
Some of the best posts just don’t lend themselves to replies. I posted an account about the The Great Escape of The Martian Festival on sci.astro one April First (the subtitle is “A Pretty Realistic & Informative Look Focused On Olympic Leaps”) expecting to trigger an awesome dialog. It got one response. I did it again a year or two later. One response, but from a different fellow. No one noticed, or at least commented on, an error where I used Earth’s density to four places because I couldn’t find Deimos’ actual density.
Actually, your question is ambiguous – the number of comments is not a good measure of interest in a post, so indeed, Anthony can’t gauge interest by the lack of comments.
tallbloke (04:59:39) :
I’m from the North-East & I won’t see 50 again. 🙁
DaveE.
Funny thing in all of this: I don’t see the daily forecasts with percentages thrown in any more. Like we used to get with 10% rain, 50% rain, etc.
What I see most of the time now is flip-flopped 7-10 day forecasts.
If on Friday you see M-rain T-rain W-showers T-clear F-rain
on Saturday you will see M-showers T-clear W-clear T-clear F-clear
on Sunday you will see M-rain T-rain W-showers T-clear F-rain
Snowfall in the UK to become a “very rare and exciting event”?
Snowfall in the UK always was a rare event. Even when it’s common, it only happens during about three months of the year. And usually, in the south of the country, it only happens for a maximum of a few weeks. That’s ‘rare’ in my book – you don’t get snow in spring, autumn or summer….
And snow is always exciting for the children. So I can’t see that the Independent is wrong – on the other hand I can’t see that the Independent has said very much…
I live in the South of England, just outside London, and I can verify that Peter Hearnden is talking absolute rubbish.
So far this year, we’ve had snow and ice covering our pavements (our local council only clears the roads, not the pavements) for nearly 4 weeks (including the cold Jan/Feb 09 and Dec 09). This has certainly not been a “rare and exciting event” where I live.
But then, Hearnden is the type to big up (for example) the 2006 European heatwave but then dismiss the excepional cold we’ve had recently because it fits his preconceived (and quite unscientific) views.
UK days of snow averaged over 2 time periods
1961 to 1990
and
1971 to 2000
animated gif
http://img690.imageshack.us/img690/9668/daysofsnowlyinguk.gif
The history of british winters 1616 to 2008
http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=other;type=winthist;sess=
oldgifford (00:36:39) :
Whew! Your name scared me for a second. I thought it said oldgirlfriend. I braced for some old arguments to get started up. False alarm. 😉
If you look real quick, you’ll see that 49 states have widespread frost.
http://www.findlocalweather.com/weather_maps/temperature_north_america.html
“Ric Werme (05:33:55) :
gtrip (01:15:34) :
Why do you think that Anthony keeps posting G. P. Bear goes to Washington? Can he not tell by the lack of comments that nobody is interested?”
This begs the question why does climateprogress post anything at all?
kwik (03:56:14) :
Pierce Corbyn is interesting.
I agree and on the freeze frame of the youface interweb video he looks like the mad professor.
What more could anyone want from a weather forecaster?
Didn’t the Romans grow grapes for wine in the UK? Didn’t the Vikings grow crops in Greenland?
Huh, couldn’t have—it was colder back then than now.
/sarc off
“But then, Hearnden is the type to big up (for example) the 2006 European heatwave but then dismiss the excepional cold we’ve had recently because it fits his preconceived (and quite unscientific) views.”
You can find Hearnden (he sometimes posts as Devonian) at most of the places weather gets discussed. He is a rabid warmist, uniformly resorts to appeals to authority, and never admits when he is wrong. For a scam like AGW to succeed, you need a number of useful idiots like him to go around as evangelists.
We’ve been robbed of a most simple pleasure, talking about the weather.
The climate scientists and politicians have taken something basic to our human nature and poisoned it with their foolish predictions. What convinced people it’s possible to see into the future? Youth? Lack of real world experience? Not enough reading, too much internet? “You fool! This very night…”
Through the eons I’m sure weather has been the number one casual topic. We love it. It’s an ice breaker in every situation, something safe to discuss, and shared by all. It involves the elderly, who always have the most wonderful and strange weather stories to tell. Weather is one of the lovely mysteries of being human and living on earth.
Now the minute the topic comes up with a stranger, it’s an immediate political clue, an unsafe subject. Pandora’s Box. It’s risky, connected to politics, eco agendas, religion, money, all the things we generally don’t broach in polite company. How much meat you eat, where it comes from, your car, your light bulbs, water bottles, how many kids you have, all have some ominous “undertoad” of political affiliation and your belief or doubt about an unpredictable future. Poisonous yeast in the very dough of our lives.
Harder and harder even to say “hello”……as “how’s the weather?” naturally follows.
I hope someday we can sit on our porches with our neighbors and just talk about the weather, once again.
It’s been nearly 200 years since the UK had consistently snowy winters. For a big snow event persistent high pressure located in Northern Scandanavia advects polar and sub-artic air across the North Sea. This is a pretty strong fetch with gale force winds picking up copious amounts of “warmer” moist sea air, which in turn is forced upslope as it hits the east coast line of the UK. A mixture of speed convergence and mechanical lifting and very cold air aloft create intesne snow showers that move westward. This is the exact same thing that occurs in the Great Lakes Snow Belt of the US. Before this episode is over, the UK could get between 1 and 2 feet of snow (with plenty of drifting). The frigid air of course is cold enough to freeze the Thames and shallow creeks and ponds. This regime of snowy winters is well recorded in both paintings and literature of the past.
Luckily for the UK, it has a maritime climate, and these surges of frigid polar air masses do not last that long. I believe the prevalence of “white winters” in the UK died off with the passing of the Dalton Minimum.
They never give up do they. Send them off to Oz and have them give the MET a brain. You are resuming the weather patterns that existed after the last AMO peak. Lots of cold and snow comes in from the east. Those who do not learn the mistakes made in history repeat them.
grow crops in Greenland
Not sure about grapes in Britain. That’s rather far north, and even with moderated temps due to the North Sea, too much cloud cover, I’d think. Grapes like full sun and warm days.
But as to Greenland, I think the very name was actually cooked up by the Vikings as a slick sales gimmick to attract other settlers. It was always cold and never green so far as I’ve been able to find.
Pamela Gray (00:42:55) :
No, the plural of weather IS IN FACT CLIMATE.
And as to the Knicker twisting; I think this is all in good fun. Your side has been making asinine statements for long enough now that some of them are proving to be false.
Your side has made it’s bed, now is the time to contemplate lying in it.
Another prime example was Mann’s office in Manhatten; should be underwater by now, according to his predictions ( I think I’m getting that right, be sure to let me know if I’ve got the man or the location wrong). Of course the scaremongering works, for a while. But the best part is when it becomes common knowledge that it is in fact only for effect.
Your side’s credibility fades by the day. Soon the science will catch up and prove you for the charlatans you’ve become. The good news is that at that time, the science will reinvest itself, and useful knowledge will thereby be obtained.
‘Spence_uk’, thanks for those kind words.
I’m in upland Devon, but we don’t get the same weather as you in London, where it has, by all accounts, been as you report. What I say about our winter so far is what has happened: quite a bit of frost so far, very little snow.
As to winter 09/10 being as cold as summer 06 was warm, time will tell.
Have we ever figured out what the difference between “partly cloudy” and “partly sunny” is? My favorite forcast is “50% chance of rain”.
Keep in mind that when a weatherperson gives a forecast for bad weather and it doesn’t happen, nobody cares. When the are wrong the other way, the person becomes a bum. Isn’t it time for the bumation of the Met Office?
Did’nt Ancient British Warriors, sometimes wear nothing more than woad? As far north as Scotland, too? ….Obviously, much hardier than todays warriors then. Unconcerned about the need for protection in combat too? Could it be, there was some advantage, in it? ….When its blooming hot?
How would it feel, day to day, for the prognosticators who have bet reputations on AGW? Seems you’d be in a blue funk more often than not.
The best supercomputer ever made rests on the shoulders of men, this is so because it is connected to a fantastic cosmic web, any other external devices are but childish toys.
Wakeupmuggy
I agree but then I would because I can still do that with my neighbours. I live in a largish farming community in SW France where the average age is probably well into the 60’s. They have a wonderfully fresh way of viewing all this global warming rubbish. ” I’ve seen it all before”, or “its for tax purposes only” or “what do they know, I make my living with the weather”.
I have to say that there is a little interpretation here because french doesn’t translate readily to english particularly the local dialects.
tpf – that pretty graphic of snow days in the Uk for 61-90 vs 71-00 is, while pretty, spectacularly useless.
The terrible winter of 63 distorts the difference between the 2 pics so much as to make any long term comparison impossible – in the south, we probably had a much snow in 63 as we did in the next 20 years! I remember it, we had snowdrifts in the garden from when it started (Xmas) till March…
Now if the pics showed say 65-95 vs 75-05, they would be much more likely to show something interesting
What the UK Met Office does with their predictions sounds a lot like the stochastic estimates I used to run that compared different mining projects–you could get an idea of the comparable merit between two or more projects, but you could not ascertain with any degree of accuracy what a particular project would actually do for return-on-investment (ROI), net present value (NPV), or total profit.
So it isn’t surprising their forecasts are off (all computer models require certain assumptions and if those doing the assuming have a particular agenda, you’ll see that reflected in the results–every time.)
He is in meltdown. Meltdown Mann is also there. One of the tactics is to spread more intensive forecasts for 2020 and 2050. we can’t refute them.
Yeah, but that would be that there rotten snow and ice;-)
“Bob Kutz (06:35:36) :
[..]Your side’s credibility fades by the day.”
Bob i think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Pamela is one of the most knowledgeable persons round here – i sure as hell can’t follow her arguments about jet streams and the atlantic oscillation…
TonyB, did you notice the major difference between the “Little Ice Age Thermometers – Manhatten readings and very strange ones foe the UK?
The October 2008 snowfall was remarkable, not least for the delicious irony of its fallingon London while Parliament was debating the Climate Change Bill.
That was, however, far from the most significant snowfall last winter. On February 1st 2009 six inches of snow fell on London overnight – the heaviest snowfall for 18 years.
crosspatch (01:25:58) :
It is just the same old refrain “we’re all gonna dieeee!!!” which of course is absolutely correct.
The only problem is that the people making the “forecasts” think that they can clearly see the future, they can’t, eventually it will whack them upside the head and then they’ll understand.
Re DirkH If you want to know how to use weasel words in a forecast, this post from an hour ago can help you:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/12/updates-to-model-data-comparisons/comment-page-2/
Look at their ever-widening “confidence interval” in the graph! Now these are the prophets!
If you read the text you will find the following lines.
“We can break it down a little more clearly. The trend in the annual mean HadCRUT3v data from 1998-2009 (assuming the year-to-date is a good estimate of the eventual value) is 0.06+/-0.14 ºC/dec (note this is positive!)”.
Is it me but I thought 0.06 +/-0.14 gives a range of -0.08 to +0.2 in other words no positive trend !
“The degree of one’s emotion varies inversely with one’s knowledge of the facts — the less you know the hotter you get.”
~Bertrand Russell
A word to the not-so-wise…
@Peter Hearnden
OK, so your perspective is say, 50 to 10,000 years in the future.
My next question is, what should the Victorians have done differently?
And what should pre-agricultural man have done differently?
We are taking a 50 to 10,000 year perspective, long term climate trends that will, and have, affected the climate, and what man should do, and should have done, on those time scales.
Peter Hearnden (00:45:04) :
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right.
BROADLY right?
30 years of consistently missed predictions from alarmists say otherwise. One gets better science from fortune tellers. How many decades has Vanatu been “about to” disappear under the waves? In 2008 Dr. Hansen predicted a 75 meter rise “within decades”.
When our country could drown
Yet according to satellites there hasn’t been a sea rise since 2005, and before that sea rise was proceeding at the same rate it has since the mid 19th century (New York Harbor measurements)… about 3.2 cm/yr or so.
Even if the Earth reverted to an iceball, with glaciers encasing the equator, alarmists would continue to shout that we’re all “about to” die of heat stroke. No evidence is sufficient to shake their irrational faith.
Until CRU and the Met Office begin to consistently evince such scientific traits as transparency, replicability, falsifiability, and independent verification, they’ll be scorned by those who value truth over being one of the herd.
2009 is not a year on which University of East Anglia shall look back with undiluted pleasure. In the words of one Elizabeth II, it has turned out to be their Annus Horribilis.
@ Wakefield Tolbert
Try this link re plants in Greenland
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a794412628&db=all
and this one
http://www.nabohome.org/publications/fieldreports/Greenland2008Field%20ReportKS05-23-09.pdf
Does anyone know of a site presenting the recent snowcover for Europe. There is a few for NA but the one I went to last year for Europe seems to be gone.
PS, while on the subject of MWP, why is the claim that this was a localised event still being made? Or more to the point why is this claim allowed to go unchallenged?
Peter Hearnden (00:45:04) :
I think Dr Viner and the article is (like all the science) broadly right.
BROADLY right?
The alarmists have been consistently predicting an ever more elusive disaster for 30 years. The seas have risen only at the incremental, steady rate they have have for centuries. The poles haven’t melted. Islands have not submerged. Snow hasn’t ceased. Some glaciers have sublimated, some have grown. We’d have better luck using fortune tellers.
Until the Met Office and CRU begin to evince scientific traits such as transparency, replicability, falsifiability and independent verification, they will be rightly scorned by those who value truth more than mooing with the herd.
“David Corcoran (07:15:08) :
[…]
Yet according to satellites there hasn’t been a sea rise since 2005, and before that sea rise was proceeding at the same rate it has since the mid 19th century (New York Harbor measurements)… about 3.2 cm/yr or so.”
According to the presentation by Jasper Kirkby the long term mean is 1.7 mm/yr.
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=slides&confId=52576
see Slide 20
Peter, I seem to remember from years back on ClimateAudit that you were always up for some banter, I hope I haven’t misjudged that.
I have made no predictive claim about the temperature of the 09/10 winter as you state; my commentary was on the number of sleet/snow days in 2009. This is relevant to the discussion as this was a specific claim made by the Independent article above. I can assure you I’ve personally witnessed rather more than the 0.7 days average quoted in that article, but that is anecdotal.
I had a look on the met office web site but unfortunately they seemed to stop updating this statistic available as a gridded download in 2000, making it difficult to verify the explicit claims made by the scientist above. The metric is still monitored; I found an article on Scotland in which someone plots these data for a region up to 2006. Interestingly, the article observed no trend in the number of days of sleet/snow up to 2006; but they did detect a downward trend in number of days of snow lying. This is just one region in Scotland though; why no data for England?
Strangely, the downward trending data has been updated by the met office to much more recent times. Funny how people seem to find more time to update data which confirms their own preconceived opinions. If you have any better luck in locating the data, I’d be most grateful for some pointers.
rbateman (05:45:10) :
“Funny thing in all of this: I don’t see the daily forecasts with percentages thrown in any more. Like we used to get with 10% rain, 50% rain, etc.”
You can always try here (enter your zip code)
http://www.weather.com/outlook/travel/businesstraveler/tenday/USCA1027?from=36hr_topnav_business
As a geologist, my perspective is on the order of thousands of years as far as climate is concerned (I view these minor 20- to 30-year perturbations as mere noise in the overall scheme of things). So since we’re talking about the future, I can tell you what will happen: We’re going to have another glacial epoch. It is unavoidable.
We’re at the end of this current interglacial, as the following graphs indicate:
http://www.daviesand.com/Choices/Precautionary_Planning/New_Data/
Generally, interglacials last about 10,000 years, and we’re at least 10,500 years into this one–up to 12,800 years by some accounts. So the timing is a bit uncertain, but we’re at least 500 years overdue. And the switch from interglacial to glacial only takes a few years; some evidence shows it happens within 4 months.
I don’t know whether it will happen next year, in 10 years, 100 years, or 1,000 years, but it will happen. And there isn’t anything we can do to stop it. It’s just climate.
And it will be devastating.
“Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
grow crops in Greenland
[…]
But as to Greenland, I think the very name was actually cooked up by the Vikings as a slick sales gimmick to attract other settlers. It was always cold and never green so far as I’ve been able to find.”
For some reason they didn’t like fish and did agriculture yet still managed to survive for quite a while. You could try to get the book “Collapse” by Jared Diamond:
2005 Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New York: Viking Books. ISBN 1-586-63863-7
It discusses 5 examples of collapsing societies, one of them being the Greenland Vikings.
I think I know what happened to my stock portfolio. CRU went into the business of stock market forecasting and came up with this doozy in 2006:
“Stocks have reached what looks to be a permanently high plateau.”
Yeah, thanks guys.
Thanks Charles, sorry for posting twice… I wasn’t sure my earlier comment “took”. Please delete the duplicate.
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
Wine was widely grown in England during the MWP, have a look in the Domesday Book for example, there are a number of vineyards mentioned. Most english vineyards were in the southwest, but some were as far north as Yorkshire.
And yes, barley was grown on southern Greenland during the MWP, though it was only marginally profitable. This is mentioned in historical sources, e. g. Konungs Skuggsjá (13th Century). Barley was grown on a much larger scale at the same time in Iceland, even inland at a considerable altitude (at Skálholt for example). This is also mentioned in historical sources, and has been confirmed by palynology (pollen analysis). The inland farmlands were abandoned in the fourteenth century and coastal fields about a century later. No grain was grown subsequently on Iceland until the (exceptionally warm) 1930’s.
If warmer weather increases water vapor, which increases snow, which increases snow cover, which increases albedo (the whiteness of the earth), which increases reflection of sunlight, doesn’t that make it cooler? Isn’t this the run away albedo effect that causes glaciers to build and cause an ice age? That’s what I learned in grade school in the 60’s.
The warmists argument that warming causes snow doesn’t hold water because more snow causes more cooling.
And thus, because of the Met Office and CRU, Britain has been unprepared for bad weather and it has cost the economy.
A C Osborn (07:00:28) : Said
“TonyB, did you notice the major difference between the “Little Ice Age Thermometers – Manhatten readings and very strange ones foe the UK?”
I wrote an article on the Manhattan temperatures-what do you mean the ‘very strange ones for the UK?’
tonyb
Perhaps we have indeed prevented an ice age by relentlessly plowing and salting our roads and parking lots.
Peter Hearnden
We could all argue forever and go round in circles. Physics, climatology and any other ology woun’t mean a thing except for what is happenning with the weather and climate over the coming years. You are probably “alarmed” that things seem to be chilling out; why should you be? You should be happy upon news of ANY cooling event because it would mean that AGW is wrong and we are not all going to fry.
Read this:
“Modellers have an inbuilt bias towards forced climate change because the causes and effect are clear.”
General circulation modelling of Holocene climate variability, by
Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, Drew Shindell, Ron Miller, and David Rind,
published in Quaternary Science Review in 2004.
http://www.meteo.psu.edu/~mann/shared/articles/Schmidtetal-QSR04.pdf
CO2 is a well mixed gas throughout the atmosphere [IPCC]
NASA now says no it’s “lumpy”
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196
Is there a logical explanation for publication of stuff like this ? “New quantitative evidence of extreme warmth in the Pliocene Arctic ” from here http://micropress.org/stratigraphy/
Surely the exposure of the fiddle with data by CRU and its fellow criminals puts paid to all the guff about 3.5* higher temps. as forecast by the IPCC?
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
The Romans grew grapes for wine in the UK. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
The Vikings grew crops in Greenland. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
You cannot grow grapes in the UK and crops in Greenland now because it is colder on earth now than it was in those times.
Greenland was green. The Vikings were there for ~400 years. You say they were tricked into going there by being told it was green there. What would be even sillier than that would be to say they decided to stay there for 400 years after they found out it really wasn’t green.
BTW, I didn’t say ALL of Greenland was green.
Ashtoreth (06:44:20) :
The met office graphic is for 30 year averages. I exceptional year will not make significant difference. The exceptional years are all part of the climate anyway so should the not be included?
Correction:
“You should be happy upon news of ANY long term, consistent cooling events because it would mean that AGW is wrong and we are not all going to fry.”
Mack (07:17:16) :
Nice!
Pollen and macrofossils have been determined in samples from the Norse midden and from a peat section one km away, covering the periods A.D. 1000-1200 and the past two millennia, resp.
Henry chance (06:50:47) :
Meltdown Mann is also there.
HAHAHA, best yet. Meltdown Mann, just loaded. sCrutape Letters, Climategate….Goracle…
Pay no attention to the Mann behind the Carbon Curtain.
“Looks like plant food to me”. Audrey Jr. Little Shop of Horrors.
hmmmm.
Does MWP-deniers really exist? Seems like it.
Photon, the statement was partly in jest based on what’s been passed around on the Net as the counter to the “denier” crowd, with the final back-up being that this was a localized warming due to shifting ocean currents. And yes I’m also aware that those darling little fuzzy-wuzzy polar bears (apparently) survived periods where the ice extent was much less than today.
But it’s still curious. I mean, REALLY, Greenland today is colder than a brass….well…somthing….
So the warmer period must have been more than just slightly warming. We’re talking at least TEMPERATE climes for much of the year. Grapes are fussy plants, ya know.
But thanks for the info and the others who’ve provided the links.
meemoe_uk (01:44:48) :
“Anyone compiling a list of failed AGW predictions? AGW scare storys often have time parameters of 10,15,20 years. Since they started making runaway warming claims back in the 1980s, many of these failed predictions are ready for havesting. Time to look through all the AGW articles from the ’80s and early ’90s.”
Plenty below and please read Peter Hearnden 🙂
Failed Predictions And Forecasts
http://www.c3headlines.com/predictionsforecasts/
Global Warming Predictions Questioned By NASA Researchers!!!
http://theresilientearth.com/?q=content/global-warming-predictions-invalidated
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/sci;326/5953/716
Well, it causes more snow in temperate regions (just to play the Devil’s advocate once again for shiggles).
The poles don’t really get that much snow. But usually what falls can stay for quite a while. It snows more in Columbia SC than at the South Pole.
That has not altered the climate. Because it can’t hang around long enough for much of an effect. However, I have HEARD that if you get really BLASTED with early snow in the year (as here in the USA where half the nation is buried at the moment) then yes an albedo effect is, well, in effect, and you supposedly get a feedback lag effect of cooler temps by the time February rolls around.
I remember times even in “Hotlanta” Georgia we’d get several inches of snow a couple of times a year. That does not happen anymore. But then as from the articles above when superimposed……
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
It was much warmer in Greenland. A lot is known by studying their trash heaps and the dirt on the floors of abandoned houses. Originally they even had a few cows, but cooling switched them over to sheep and goats. I think I read that at the end they were more hunters, and spun caribou fur in with wool, in their yarn. Originally they could grow crops where it is impossible now. Towards the end their animals moved in with them, to keep the houses warmer.
One of the simplest proofs it was warmer lies in their graveyards. The graves were dug by hand. That soil is now permafrost, and you need a jackhammer to dent it.
By all means read about the Greenland Vikings. There are plenty of papers on line. They survived roughly 400 years in Greenland, and during that time they likely had far more children than Greenland could support. (And here we leave what you can prove, and enter the landscape of lore: The excess population may have headed into Hudson Bay and mingled with the Cree, or even headed further south.) (The Mandan tribe, along the shores of the Missouri River, was pretty much wiped out by small pox in the 1800’s, but apparently had many members with blue eyes.)
Grapes in England I know less about. However I recall Gavin over at Realclimate going on about how grapes are still gown in England, and how a few wineries still exist. Gavin concluded that this proves it is as warm in England now as in Roman times. What do you say to that?
Dearest Bob,
Climate is a combination of topographical parameters, GPS address, and proximity to large weather creating atmospheric systems (IE the jet stream and other such things). Weather patterns are the year to year, and decade to decade variations you get within your climate zone, which includes the extremes of your zone (it’s an agricultural term relating to planting zones and is a far older and data-backed understanding of climate than the current “climate change” thinking is). Weather is what you get today. AGW is a political entity that has used science in corrupt ways to push their agenda.
The idea that climate is an average of weather is not correct. If farmers were to use your definition of climate, they would end up in a soup line, along with you.
But all is forgiven you my son, hehehehehe.
Mack–meant to thank you also!
–W
I picked this up on an earlier thread and emailed the Independent for their comments on the last couple of UK winters.
Silence was the only reply. Presumably as one of Gordon Brown’s flatearthers my views are beneath contempt.
To give an example of why Dr Viner and Peter Hearnden are quite wrong about the science, here is a more thoughtful article published on UK snowfall by UK WeatherOnline:
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2006/12/05_pe.htm
These give decadal figures for UK snowfall back to 1890. And guess what? The “trend” that is discussed in the article in the Independent simply cannot be seen. From the article:
An examination of the snowfall statistics shows that the frequency of snow falling appears to be quite independent of mean monthly temperature.
Whoops! That pesky data getting in the way of a good story, again. Note how the article lists a decent amount of data, rather than cherry picking two points as Dr Viner did.
This is fascinating.
Because while there are some noteworthy ideological (which from our pals on the Far Left I think this is about an “ecosophy” metaphysics that hold Mamma Nature as sacrosant and anything beyond naked humans foraging for berries and tubers is evil to nature) defenses of RealClimate’s holdout on ClimateGate and “Hopenhagen” (real website, no bull) I’m getting the impression the CRU faux pas and follies are more serious than is generally admitted?
Elizabeth May claims to have read all some thousands of emails and says there’s nothing to see. As does Newsweek’s Sharon Begely. And FactCheck.org says it’s time to move on and there was nothing to see, and the El Tricko thing is just a colloquialism used to rightsize the data when you’re getting absurd feedback from bummed out thermometers, etc.
Peter Hearnden (05:00:07) :
Sprry, all I ask is for something better than assertion that Piers is the meteorological superman some here seem to think. I don’t see that as toooo much to ask?
Suggest you part with some cash to find out for yourself. You don’t seem like the sort of chap who would take our word for it if we provided an analysis, and we’re not going to hand over Piers’ forecasts for free. So if you wanna play, you gotta pay.
Call it research.
TonyB (07:43:14) :
A C Osborn (07:00:28) : Said
“TonyB, did you notice the major difference between the “Little Ice Age Thermometers – Manhatten readings and very strange ones foe the UK?”
I wrote an article on the Manhattan temperatures-what do you mean the ‘very strange ones for the UK?’
tonyb
The UK temperature readings have been averaged or adjusted in some way, there are about 1/10 the number of readings that Manhatten show.
What was your article on Manhatten?
I find it the most delicous of ironies that the very people who created the modern phrase of “Deniers” for those not believing in MMGW are now the loudest DENIERS of all.
Caleb. Thanks for the info.
My curiosity is this: What were the sea levels in those ages???!!
Greenland ice is mostly anchored to land. That’s the whole furrowed brow and fret if the whole thing melts; ya know, New Orleans and the Maldives will go underwater for good, as will NYC, and the Aussies will have to mount barbed wire and .50 cal machines gun nests to ward off uninvited guests from Malaysia and Indonesia when the low-lying areas go under as well. That sorta thing.
Jimbo, I for one am not sure, but I think Paul Ehrlich mentioned at least once that by the year 2000 we’d have to visit London or NYC by gondola rides.
Others say he dosen’t count, as he’s well….sort of a nut. He messed up quite a bit, from the price of oil to bauxite and on and on. He lost several bets with Julian Simon in this regard.
delicious of ironies even LOL
Urban heat island effect is significant an measurable. CO2 green house effect is not significant and measurable. Why isn’t the green movement, scientists and government doing something about urban heat island effect?
It is black top, air conditioners and lack of trees that is the problem. There I said it. It needed to be said.
While I’m at it, it is our beloved sun screen from tourists and motor boat oil that is killing the coral, not warming. There, now the sun screen makers will be after me too.
Concerning weather extremes as a function of temperature, cold periods = more storms, warm periods = less storms
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2009/12/27/winter-storms-update/#more-397
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) : grow crops in Greenland…Not sure about grapes in Britain. … It was always cold and never green so far as I’ve been able to find. I was told in grade school, 50’s, that the Vikings confused Iceland and Greenland, the the peculiar naming. Not so, retreating glaciers in Greenland reveal large trees that grew, and it was colonized until roughly 1400. Tony B. has covered this fairly extensively here. And we have the tax records the Romans kept for the vineyards in GB. See Mack at 07:17.
Bob Kutz (06:35:36) :…Pamela Gray (00:42:55) : You don’t come here often, do you Bob? You obviously do not grasp the gist of Pamela, nor which side of the arguement she stands on.
DirkH (06:53:53) :
It’s beem my experience in reading her posts that she (Pamela Gray) is supportive of the AGW theory and it’s agenda.
To the point; this thread is about an article from the year 2000 in which a prominent scientist at CRU indicated that snow would become very rare in the UK. The headline of the article is something along the lines that snowfall in England is a thing of the past.
Her rebuttal to this thread is that individual weather events are not climate, and in fact a weather pattern observed over a period of years is only weather variability. Her statement is a direct contradiction of the articles tenants; that weather patterns have changed due to global warming, and there will therefor no longer be snowfall in the UK. According to her statement, global warming would result in little to no change to the weather in the UK, whether she intended to say that or not.
My observation is that weather, taken in the aggregate over a period of years, is in fact climate. If we cannot agree on that single point, the AGW crowd has gone completely off the tracks insane.
As to her credibility; she certainly is well read, but then I am certain that Phil Jones and Mike Mann are well read, but I don’t lend any credence to what they say.
They are paid to say it, and know too well they will no longer be paid if they say IT no longer holds. They’ve been on the path too long to recognize that it’s leading downhill rather than up.
My opinion; (Just so we understand each other); The climate is variable. It always has been. If we study it, we may eventually reach some sort of understanding of this chaotic system. That would be a monumental achievment for mankind. IF we continue to tilt at windmills, accept what is clearly faulty (if not outright fabricated) science, we (all of mankind) are likely to get blindsided by the next ice age, or a truely warming climate that we do not understand and therefor cannot react to properly.
Put another way; what if the climate IS warming at an alarming rate, but for reasons wholly unrelated to CO2? We will spend vast sums, destroy economies, further impoverish those who need the most developmental assistance, and have gained nothing. The notion that our climate is warming entirely or even largely due to CO2 is patently false, as demonstrated by numerous articles, some of which remain unpublished without explanation as in;http://brneurosci.org/co2.html,
and http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0707/0707.1161v4.pdf, and has NEVER been proven to be true beyond simple correlation in the 20th century and some simple lab experiments involving small bottles filled with CO2 and a heat source. The computer models are hopeless, as the climategate data shows quite convincingly, and now we’re left with an agenda, rather than scientific pursuit.
Now, if Pamela wants to support such a theory, that is okay with me, but I’ll be damned if I don’t point out the self contradictions and inconsistencies that come from the statements she makes, and her side of the argument seems to live by.
Sorry to be so verbose, but your statement required a well thought out reply.
Cheers!
A C Osborn
There are daily mean average temperatures from 1660 for CET-they were complied by Gordon Manley back in the 1970’s from actual authenticated records. Various other UK locations also have long records. All long records have been homogenised to some extent or other.
There are various items that can be accessed from the articles section here;
http://climatereason.com/LittleIceAgeThermometers/
Here is the article that included Manhattan
http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/triplets-on-the-hudson-river/#comment-13064
Tonyb
Here’s another example of a “snow” prediction gone bad here in Canada. You may have heard that Vancouver (in the Colonies) is hosting the 2010 winter Olympics in February.
This 2006 snow prediction is pretty funny.
A University of Calgary researcher… doubts that Whistler will have natural snow for the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics due to global warming.
See here:
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2006/10/20/skihills-warming.html
But golly gee look what happened:
Snowiest month on record NOVEMBER 2009
See here:
http://www.whistlerblackcomb.com/weather/snowreport/index.htm
And here:
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Whistler+Blackcomb+sets+November+snow+record/2290797/story.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3a+canwest%2fF259+(Vancouver+Sun+-+News+%2f+Vancouver
Needless to say the snow could indeed melt before the Olympics in a few weeks.
Climatology is shorthand for “Climate Scientology” I wonder if I’m the first to make this connection. Will google.
Caleb (08:10:51) : Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) : (And here we leave what you can prove, and enter the landscape of lore: The excess population may have headed into Hudson Bay and mingled with the Cree, or even headed further south.) (The Mandan tribe, along the shores of the Missouri River, was pretty much wiped out by small pox in the 1800’s, but apparently had many members with blue eyes.) Fascinating, Caleb, never occurred to me where they may have gone. Barry Fell, A prof. at Harvard, a while back, has a few books on stone inscriptions, of European origin in the US, of pre-1492 times. He contends the Vikings did extensive copper trading with natives in the Michigan area, supplying the key ingredient for the Bronze Age across the pond. IIRC, he documented inscriptions as far west as the Rockies.
Like the song:
“Remember?
The good old days…when days were warmer, grass was greener…”
“Not sure about grapes in Britain. That’s rather far north, and even with moderated temps due to the North Sea, too much cloud cover, I’d think. Grapes like full sun and warm days”
One can grow grapes in many temperate climates. The key to the Medeval UK grape production was its quality. The vinters in the UK produced some of the highest quality wines in Western Europe during this period (10th to 13th Centuries). Thier wines were so good that the French barred thier importation. And as you said, high quality grapes need plenty of sun, and warm temps. One would think that the maritime climate of the UK would preclude this. All we can assume is that the UK enjoyed a period where summers were very hot and mostly dry. The winters were probably mild as well.
One last thing, anthropologists discovered that as far North as the Scottish Highlands as well as the higher elevations of Norway, cultivation of grain crops took place during the later decades of the MWP. This indicates that the warm mild climate was more than enough to compensate for the poor soil conditions.
Pingo: “…you need a number of useful idiots like him to go around as evangelists….” good to see you’re still discussing the science …
“Gavin concluded that this proves it is as warm in England now as in Roman times. What do you say to that?”
I simply consider the source.
Reading the Posters from the UK,I can see that there is a similarity between Western
Oregon and the UK in climate.My wife spent a lot of time in southern England in the 70’s and noted the resemblance. The western part of the state of Oregon has had notable cold and snow events too.Here in NE Oregon we at 3000ft.MSl haven’t had much snow _yet_ but it has been cold and dry. I lived in Port Orford back in my Aerial
Firefighting days and there was a couple that we knew that were from Cornwall.
They were impressed with climate of Port Orford too. Only problem was the fact that the old man North Pacific was the climate influence.There is nothing between you and
the Aleutians but a few ship masts…
Spence_uk: “To give an example of why Dr Viner and Peter Hearnden are quite wrong about the science, here is a more thoughtful article published on UK snowfall by UK WeatherOnline:
http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/feature/2006/12/05_pe.htm
These give decadal figures for UK snowfall back to 1890. ”
It’s a good article, well worth two reads, that much we agree on. But, I think he’s actually only talking about December’s, not snowfall as a whole?
And, after further review, I should’ve read a few more of Pam’s posts before commenting.
She is most definitely not an AGW supporter, and neither does she support the notion that there is no such thing as climate change, which means she actually seems to have an understanding similar to my own.
If my attacks were overly harsh, I apologize.
David Corcoran (07:15:08) :
In 2008 Dr. Hansen predicted a 75 meter rise “within decades”.
That’s actually a lie, I can’t give you the benefit of the doubt of being mistaken since you actually linked to the reference which contradicts your statement!
Pamela Gray (08:11:02) :
“The idea that climate is an average of weather is not correct. If farmers were to use your definition of climate, they would end up in a soup line, along with you.”
Pam,
My income does indeed depend in no small part on the weather. I don’t know where the soup line is, though I know I send checks to help them out around this time every year.
As to the climate not being an average of the weather, I am certain you are wrong on that point. It is a matter of time frame and calculus, but there is certainly no way to interpret climate without considering long term averages of weather.
An arid climate certainly wouldn’t be so if it rained daily for 10 years, now would it? A temperate climate wouldn’t be so if it remained below freezing for 5 years, now would it? Just as the plural of weather is climate, the integral of climate and weather is climate change!
And again, sorry for any misunderstanding.
tallbloke (08:19:32) :
Suggest you part with some cash to find out for yourself. You don’t seem like the sort of chap who would take our word for it if we provided an analysis, and we’re not going to hand over Piers’ forecasts for free. So if you wanna play, you gotta pay.
Call it research.
What!!!!. The poor man was just asking for past predictions – Do You have to pay for those?
All that is needed is Corbyn’s predictions for WEATHER for a number of years – preferably consecutive to eliminate cherries. Is no one willing to provide that.
Free the data – free the code!!!!
Wakefield Tolbert (08:05:12) :
My sarcometer is pretty finely tuned & even I didn’t catch that one LOL
DaveE.
Pamela Gray said “The idea that climate is an average of weather is not correct.”
That statement is nuts (primarily because such a statement is useless).
Climate IS weather! It is nothing else.
Now you may push your definition to the limit (mathematically) and see the error of your ways. Say we average “weather” (made up of temperatures highs and lows, and precipitation forms and amounts (and medians, standard deviations, etc, for all these), along with cloud formations, wind speed and direction–all components that weather includes) and what do you get? Well, taken over the history of the earth for one particular location, a single useless average value.
However, when one looks at weather bracked by periods of time within which these various weather indicators are relatively consistent, then we have some useful information–such that farmers, ranchers, commuters, campers, municipalities, etc. can plan their activities more effectively (on a smaller time scale), out to predictions of the next little ice age or Big Ice Age (on a much larger time scale).
The basic component of climate is weather, in all it’s glorious detail. And climate is nothing else.
Climate isn’t dictated by the fact you’re sitting in an air-conditioned home; it isn’t dictated by how much you were just shaken by that magnitude 6.0 earthquake. And it has nothing to do with what you’re wearing.
Certain plants can be found in a tropical climate because they have certain requirements of “weather” and their kind are perpetuated in that environment.
Another set of plants can be found in a temperate climate because they also have certain requirements of “weather” and their kind are also perpetuated in that environment.
Deserts connote weather that dictates the type of plants found there, while the extreme polar climates are typified by their lack of plants.
Change the attributes of weather to another climatic regime and new life forms follow as they respond to the weather. And these life forms extend beyond plants to animals, even to us humans.
But any way you look at it, climate IS weather. All of it.
It is the culmination of all the contributing factors that cause or control the weather.
photon without a Higgs (07:46:53) :
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
The Romans grew grapes for wine in the UK. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
The Vikings grew crops in Greenland. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
You cannot grow grapes in the UK and crops in Greenland now because it is colder on earth now than it was in those times.
Grapes are now widely grown in the UK, about 350 commercial vineyards I believe. The Domesday Book in 1085 recorded about 40.
It appears to be you who is trying to rewrite history.
Peter Herdsman:
What science are you discussing then? Seems to me you’re defending the statement made by the Meto Office back in February. Quote from Peter Stott “The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850.”
Love to see you come back here and explain to me how a now 1-1000 year event may be unfolding 10 month after the Meto announced their Warmist Biased assessment of Winter 08/09:
http://www.meto.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html
Pathetic science really?
Nice to see within a short while nature comes to bit them up the backside. Justice is swift I see. ;-| Well, still to unfold, but it further proves the link between the “Hale” Cycle of the Sun in Quiet Solar conditions altering the Regional Weather Patterns across Northern Europe. But let’s see what has happened come March ;-| I won’t talk to you about UV, Ozone, Planetary Waves, Ocean Cycles, as I know you won’t understand. You never did even after 3 years of our debating these topics. The reason being, you have only one agenda (and you always have), which is not about the science in anyway, but of imposing your Warming POV on others. In all honesty, I never recall you ever engaing in any scientific debate other than posting links to RealClimate, which I always showed were flawed. Other than that, you only ever raked up personal attacks on high profile members of the sceptical community, and cried Wolf every time the ground was pulled from under you. Shame on you.
Read the 131 Pages of my Solar Thread (you know where) and then come back to me with some intelligent questions, but I doubt you’ll have any. Do you? Neither do I.
I have not seen where extrapolation of data into the future has ever worked. For a short while, perhaps, and many times only for a very short while.
As far as I am concerned, it is better weather forecasting that is needed, and that requires more and better data. There is huge room for improvement in obtaining better and more accurate temperature data, as Anthony has so well demonstrated through his review of temperature measuring stations and the shortcomings of those temperature measuring stations. Garbage in, garbage out, and it is clear that many of those temperature measuring stations are producing garbage data.
Too, from my standpoint, that is, what effects me, is the weather, not some word which can not even be defined, “climate”. Climates are all of a local nature, not a global nature. Place your house where the air flow coming off from a mountain covered with snow most of the year will flow over and around the house, and it will be colder than a house placed out of that cold air flow. Cold air can and does flow, similar to the flow of water.
Weather is what can destroy crops, or aid in crop growth. Without good crop growth, we will go hungry, or worse. From what I can see, and it is not much written about, this hasn’t been a good year for crop harvesting in large parts of the US.
So then, it seems to me, that since in the US, the continental divide runs north and south, cold arctic air can and does flow towards the Gulf of Mexico. When that cold arctic air meets the warm and humid air from the Gulf, storms are the result, whether rain or snow, and these storms can be quite serious and violent. Until we can manage to get instrumentation which can track the movement of air masses at different altitudes, and tell what the relative humidity of the air masses, and the temperature of those air masses, violent storms will continue to come to be with great surprise to weather forecasters.
We can’t ever, and never will be, able to predict the future. We can, however do a much better job, if it is worked on, determining what is going on at the present time, and thus could get better warning further ahead of time so we can be better prepared when a violent storm is about to happen.
“Local” weather, and the local part can be small or very large, is what we have to deal with on a daily basis. Local weather is what can kill or aid us.
“Global” climate . . . bogeyman made up to frighten the scientifically challenged, of those with little knowledge of history.
“Weather” . . . that which changes, sometimes rapidly, quite unpredictable, and can and does kill numbers of people in various ways,
We humans need better weather predictions, and an average and quite small change in “global temperature”, could one of those ever be determined, one way or another will have little effect on local climates and local weather.
The members of the public have been frightened significantly by what will make little or no difference in their lives, by no more than speculation, sometimes wild speculation, by people with enough scientific training to know better.
The Aspen trees are growing at a rate about 50% faster than in 1950, making a portion of the planet more green, because of the increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide. Since greenhouse operators enrich the CO2 levels to cause all of the green plants in the greenhouse to grow faster, I have to suspect that the increase in CO2 levels since 1950 have affected all green plants in the same way . . . it has been good for making the planet a greener place.
We have been wasting huge amounts of taxpayer money attempting to find what obviously can’t be determined. This money could have been put to valuable use to work on ways of better predicting short term local weather, including better placement of temperature measuring stations, to get more accurate temperature data at near surface altitudes, and it is that short term weather which will determine whether farmers’ crops will be killed by killing frosts if planted too early in the spring, or whether a farmer’s harvesting machine will sink into too wet ground and prevent the harvesting of crops. If we are going to spend large amounts of taxpayer money, let us spend it on what will be beneficial to us, and not on what will frighten the population needlessly.
P Gosselin (01:44:11) :
In the aftermath of Climategate, the CRU is one institute that has been rendered a complete laughing stock by a few sophomoric “scientists”.
Becoming more a reality every day. Bastardi sees it as nothing less than a climate war. I suggest that Met and CRU suffer now from career destroying hubris: an inability to say, “We were wrong.”
Scouse Pete,
I think you’re the first to mention Dr Stott’s statement? Anyway, yes, he said what he said but, no, we don’t know how winter 2009/10 will pan out yet.
As to the rest of your reply, I’m not sure what point there is to replying to a series of pretty unpleasant insults directed at me. Having a bad day are you?
Phil. (09:41:57) :
Grapes are now widely grown in the UK, about 350 commercial vineyards I believe. The Domesday Book in 1085 recorded about 40.
It appears to be you who is trying to rewrite history.
You can’t be this stupid.
On second thoughts, maybe you can.
The issue isn’t the number of vineyards, but their latitude.
The quickest way to a small fortune? Start with a large one and open a vineyard in Britain.
Phil. (09:41:57) :
How many of those 350 commercial vineyards are north of, let’s say Peterborough?
I doubt there are many not either under glass or in polytunnels.
During the MWP they were in York and during the Roman warm period as far north as Hadrians wall.
Also, they didn’t have the climate hardened hybrids that are now available.
DaveE.
tfp (09:26:48) :
All that is needed is Corbyn’s predictions for WEATHER for a number of years – preferably consecutive to eliminate cherries. Is no one willing to provide that.
Free the data – free the code!!!!
Have you or Mr Herdsman tried emailing Piers Corbyn and asking nicely?
Ecotretas:
And if one talks about excess winter mortality in the UK, it even gets worse: last year was the one with the biggest excess winter mortality in the last 9 years.
Don’t worry about them, they’re only “anomalies”. It’s the bad kind you really need to fear, like the advent of a North Sea Mediterrainian, complete with reggae and imported mariachi boys, etc.. “Night flowers blooming, and their sweet scent perfuming, Tropical orchids entwined in my hair” and all the rest of that hell.
I love these Anglo posts. They attract commentators adept at the Mother Tongue. I especially liked the image of pre-stuffy Brits dressed in nothing but woad (purple dye for us colonists). Then there were kilts, and now snow pants and parkas. That’s got to be a telling trend.
And I enjoy the assertions that the Viking Greenland sales pitch was nothing but a real estate scam, painting Eric the Red as an early incarnation of Algore, or perhaps Marx (Groucho) in Cocoanuts:
Buy a lot
Any piece that we’ve got
Will increase ev’ry season.
Ask us why
Ev’ry one wants to lie
In the sun; there’s a reason.
Be all that as it may, I do think it would be quite proppa to stiffen your upper lips and give that rotter Gordon B. the old heave ho.
If you’d like to see some more unsupported assertions, you can get them in an interactive format at http://www.climatewizard.org/
Now we can be presented with ‘science’ without the bother of data.
“Jimbo (07:45:21) :
[…]
CO2 is a well mixed gas throughout the atmosphere [IPCC]
NASA now says no it’s “lumpy”
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2009-196”
Actually, not THAT lumpy. See
http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/AIRS_CO2_Data/
Blue is 382 ppm, red is 390 ppm.
FWIW, NOAA is gonna ride the AGW, CO2, Global warming horse till it goes to the ground, too. They keep predicting warmer and it keeps, well, not cooperating.
I think I got this from another thread here yesterday, don’t really know. But, IMHO, this is the kind of work that NOAA and MET ought to be doing.
Global Cooling About to “Kick-in”?
An Alernative View on Climate Change
Of all the arguments about warming trends, for me, this graph (Dr. Richard Keen, UC), probably reveals the truth:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/DECADALRECORDSHALL.JPG
There are others like it, and I believe this same chart/story was posted here also.
I wrote to Dr. Keen, and (re-reading his answer now) it believe he indicates these are standing records, never exceeded. (So later records are not new highs on top of older records) He also indicated that in the event of a tie, the newer record was chosen, actually diminishing the amplitude of the oscillation of the 30s vs current. If you see this, Dr. Keen, perhaps you can clarify.
But my point is this: The entire story of a warming “climate” due to C02 occurs over a period shorter than 2 decades. We’re rapidly approaching the day when the current cooling trend is just as long. If the actual modern worldwide peak falls in the 30’s/40’s:
(from W Eschenbach story re: Dr. Wibjorn Karlen)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/29/when-results-go-bad/
…then we’ve been in a cooling trend for more than 65 years already, and there is no Anthropogenic C02 story……at all.
No surprise to many long time readers here, but many folks are new.
… so the argument that “The overall warming trend is still intact” is itself dependent on your chosen measurement period, and in any event, NOT intact for the period (Since WWII) that man has been producing ever greater qtys of C02.
Phil. (09:41:57) :
photon without a Higgs (07:46:53) :
Wakefield Tolbert (06:35:34) :
The Romans grew grapes for wine in the UK. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
The Vikings grew crops in Greenland. To say they didn’t is to revise history.
You cannot grow grapes in the UK and crops in Greenland now because it is colder on earth now than it was in those times.
Grapes are now widely grown in the UK, about 350 commercial vineyards I believe. The Domesday Book in 1085 recorded about 40.
It appears to be you who is trying to rewrite history.
Wow. That’s a good one.
Grapes are now grown in the south and midlands of England, and they are lucky to get more than 2 good years out of 5, which is why they are now talking loudly about making sparkling wine, from more acidic grapes.
The Romans grew grapes up to Hadrian’s Wall (and without modern varieties) –VINDOLANDA.
The population in 1085 was a small fraction of today’s population.
I wish I could take what you say more seriously.
“Have you or Mr Herdsman tried emailing Piers Corbyn and asking nicely?”
And what if he replies: “Why should I release my forecasts to you when you just want to find something wrong with them?”
tallbloke
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7376301.stm
There are several others like Pofessor Don Easter brook and Professor William Gray who make similar forcasts OF 20-30 years of cooler weather. Most natural cycle signs, like AMO, PDO and NAO are pointing to cooling and they typically run 20-30 years in each phase although short term fluctuations do exist especially for the NAO and AMO.
photon without a Higgs (07:46:53
You cannot grow grapes in the UK and crops in Greenland now because it is colder on earth now than it was in those times.
1. There are currently over 400 commercial vineyards in the UK. This is almost certainly more than during the MWP. There are 45 vineyards recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book.
2. Crops grown on Greenland include potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower and radishes.
LarryOldTimer,
I never thought of it before, but yes, climate is a local phenomena – every region is defined by its own unique climate. So how did we let the warmists sell us the “global climate” idea?
Ok, K.
Taking the bait here and waiting for something that will in all probability reveal Climate Wizard to be (Well, the NC is more ideology than science) somehat less scientific than Mr. Wizard, but not being able to pin exactly what’s going on here:
“50%: This map shows the temperature change projected by the middle model. That is, half of the models project a greater amount of change, and half of the models project less change as compared to the 1961-1990 baseline average.”
What is the basis of the 61-90 baseline, and is this verified elsewhere?
When I was a tiny in the UK in the mid 1960s we got snowy winters. When I was a student in the mid 1980s we got snowy winters. Then there seemed to be little or no snow in the south of England for about 15 years. Now we have heavy snow all the way down to the south coast (not the Aspen of England either) and we has 7.5 inches of snow in the Chilterns in Oxfordshire, that started on December 18th and is still visible on 29th. I know it is anecdotal but that’s climate, not weather. What was common became rare and is now more common again.
“The Day The Earth Stood Still” is some kind of classic for people who like to fear everything possible, especially anything Nuclear, but they don’t seem to notice some very distinct contrary things “Mr. Carpenter” said, which I just happened to hear “Mr. Carpenter” say a day ago as I passed by a tv:
When he was asked by a reporter if he was fearful concerning the [his] Spaceship, he said, ~”I’m only fearful when I hear people substitute fear for reason.”* As I recall it, he had also mentioned early on that Nuclear energy could be harnessed for good. That might even be how he got to Earth.
I’m also very doubtful when all I hear from Climate Science is the substitution of “begging the question” – simply presuming the validity that which is to be proved – for experimental and even theoretical proof. That along with the inveterate Disasterizing they do, and all of the other very special things with characterize “Climate Science”.
*The reporter quickly moved on to someone else, hoping for more a emotional response.
Predictions: Based purely on media accounts and the Hansen/Gore alarmism that fuels them, that the next decade or two will see cooling due to the well-known (?) media cycle.
In the late 1800s, the late 30s, early 40s, and since 1980 or so the alarmist media (and the “scientists” who speak to them) warned of global warming. In the early 1900s and again in the 70s the same people were warning of ice ages. We’re due for “global cooling” side of that cycle.
Of course it’s probably just coincidence that the media cycle is closely tied to the 60-70 year cycles in the climate system…
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/FireandIce.pdf
Vincent (10:28:21) :
“Have you or Mr Herdsman tried emailing Piers Corbyn and asking nicely?”
And what if he replies: “Why should I release my forecasts to you when you just want to find something wrong with them?”
What if you give it a go and find out?
piers@weatheraction.com
John Finn (10:30:08) :
1. There are currently over 400 commercial vineyards in the UK.
Amazing. It’s gone up another 50 in the last hour.
What are their latitudes? Where is the most northerly? Do you think that might be more relevant to the debate than the number?
Wow!
Circular minds can’t comprehend cyclical variations in weather but interpret it in the broad language of climatic global warming.
Surprising.
For your edification. There is a difference between climate and weather. But I won’t trouble you with the details. You may get a brain freeze.
I believe that the tendency for humans to see “trends” in climate arises from the modern way of viewing time itself.
Before the industrial revolution, time was perceived as cyclical. Seasons cycled and each year was much the same as every previous year in a lifetime, and the future would not be different from the present. Perhaps, our ancestors were also aware of shifts in climate also having a cyclical nature. However, concepts shifted after the industrial revolution, because that was a revolution in the perception of the sequence of events we call time. Not simply because adherents were enslaved to the clock, but because there became a tangible awareness that the present was different from the past and the future would be different too.
By the twentieth century, the concept of cyclical time was forgotten and replaced with the linear temporal concept known as “progress.” The passage of time could be viewed as a trend towards greater technological prowess and ensuing prosperity. Having long forgotten to think in “cyclical” time, every minor trend in the nascent science of climatology was observed and extraplolated into the future. It is no coincidence that the sudden cooling of the sixties and seventies were extrapolated into a newley emerging down trend. But the warming of the eighties and nineties has not changed this way of thinking at all – it has simply been reversed into a warming trend that has also been extrapolated into the future.
There seems no end to this fallacy of reasoning. I have no doubt that if the cooling continues for long enough, the new tipping will result in a reassessment back to the original trend. How much cooling is required to cause this flip in trend projection is impossible to say. Given the amount of vested interest and momentum in AGW, I would guess quite a lot. It would have to probably be cooler than the sixties. Then we will be back in “new ice age” scares.
It will never end because of the inability to think in cyclical time.
John Finn (10:30:08) :
1. There are currently over 400 commercial vineyards in the UK. This is almost certainly more than during the MWP. There are 45 vineyards recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book.
The NUMBER of vineyards in the UK today vs the MWP is not of significance in reference to climate. The number of vineyards is related to market size, population, market size based on population, etc.
More significant is that fact that during the MWP vineyards existed toward the north in Yorkshire. It has only been recently that vineyards could once again survive in the northern areas of the UK.
Ryedale Vineyards are the most northern … not far outside of York. They were not planted until 2006.
Just ftr, whoever said that is wrong:
Galen Haugh (07:33:10) :
A 4 month timeframe for a descent into an Ice Age suggests that there are no internal forcings, only a sigma of internal variations.
Phil. (09:24:50) :
David Corcoran (07:15:08) :
In 2008 Dr. Hansen predicted a 75 meter rise “within decades”.
That’s actually a lie, I can’t give you the benefit of the doubt of being mistaken since you actually linked to the reference which contradicts your statement!
Hmm… let’s look at that article again, shall we?
“In email correspondence with IRIN this week, Hansen said if atmospheric CO2 concentrations were not kept below at least 350 parts per million (ppm) the results could be disastrous. The current level of atmospheric CO2 is 385ppm, and could exceed 450ppm, which the world is heading for “within decades, barring prompt policy changes”.
…
“If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice – that’s a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster; a guaranteed disaster,” he told the Guardian newspaper in the UK earlier this year. ”
Let’s see, Dr. Hansen said we could exceed 450 ppm in decades, and that will cause a sea rise of 75 metres. Sure he used modifiers like “probably” and “could”, but it’s still an alarmist prediction made to stampede the public.
And this prediction contradicts the IPCC: “Hansen’s projection was in sharp contrast to the most recent forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that the global sea level would rise by between 18cm and 59cm by 2100, depending on a range of greenhouse gas emission scenarios. ”
If there’s a lie here, it’s not mine.
Clarification to my J.Peden (11:06:19) post:
second blockquote = Pamela Gray (08:11:02) :
Weather is what you get today. AGW is a political entity that has used science in corrupt ways to push their agenda. = end blockquote
Blockquotes don’t always work like I think they do.
We know from archeological evidence that the Romans did grow grapes as far north as Hadrian’s wall, we have found traces of their vineyards, the pips in the rubbish heaps and the like: as well as some written references.
Today you cannot grow grapes in England further north than about 200 miles south of Hadrian’s wall. Given that, very roughly, in England mean temperatures decline by about 1 degree K per 100 miles north it does suggest the RWP was rather warmer than today.
The decline in viniculture after the Romans left might be due to the fall in temperatures in the CDA but also perhaps due to the fact that the new settlers didn’t drink wine, they preferred beer.
Certainly despite the MWP the Normans never seem to have been interested in re-establishing the vineyards. But then they chiefly drank cider and introduced large apple orchards.
There are many similar kinds of evidence across North Western Europe, for example the altitude at which grapes were grown and indeed settlements established and abandoned over various periods of the history of the last two millenia.
Except for written records we know less about the Viking Greenland settlements for the simple reason that most of them are still buried in the permafrost: which we know because we can now detect them if not easily excavate them.
Certainly from what we can learn when the Vikings settled it Greenland was really a green and pleasant land along the coastal strip with a climate well suited to Viking agriculture. How far they penetrated into the Arctic ocean is the stuff of legend rather than record. But it is interesting just how long the idea of the Northwest passage persisted both in Scandinavia and Britain.
Kindest Regards
Allan M (10:27:42) :
Wow. That’s a good one.
Grapes are now grown in the south and midlands of England, and they are lucky to get more than 2 good years out of 5, which is why they are now talking loudly about making sparkling wine, from more acidic grapes.
There are a number of vineyards in Yorkshire. Wine produced in the MWP was of poor quality. Current vineyards are successful, profit making concerns.
The Romans grew grapes up to Hadrian’s Wall (and without modern varieties) –VINDOLANDA.
The Romans attempted to grow grapes. You can grow grapes in lots of places. Whether you’d choose the English/Scottish border by choice is another matter. But most Roman wine was imported.
We are due for the change to the Media Cooling Cycle which has the lagtime coefficient directly proportional to the severity index of the present Climate Reversal.
One has only to pick up a newspaper of the times to get a glimpse of the atmosphere surrounding an Ice Age scare. I can almost guarantee you that they will do no better of a job of keeping thier wits about them as they did the last Merry-Gore-round.
Peter, I’m glad we can agree on some things 🙂
But, I think he’s actually only talking about December’s, not snowfall as a whole?
Indeed. I thought I’d mentioned that, but re-reading my post I didn’t. But a couple of observations:
1. Even if AGW was “clever” enough to prevent snow in Jan and Feb whilst allowing it in December (c’mon, seriously?), this still means snow would not become a “rare event” in the UK as Dr Viner suggests.
2. The average number of snowy days in December 1990-1999 exceeds the quoted figure from Dr Viner for the entire years 1988-1995. Even though these are December figures only, Dr Viner has cherry picked blatantly, and that without such cherry picking, no such evidence of disappearing snowfall is found.
3. And yes, I am well aware that both sides of this debate cherry pick. That does not excuse it on any one occasion, this included.
4. How many bust predictions has the met office now made? Three Indian summers (missing), disappearing snow (all too evident)? Got any example of mid term predictions (3 months+) that have actually gone right recently? Would it be fair to say a chimp could do better?
BTW I don’t think much of Piers Corbyn’s methods either, but the reason he gets more hits than the met office is that when you introduce a bias (i.e. a slavish belief in AGW), you perform worse than random chance. By matching random chance, Piers Corbyn manages to outshine the met office repeatedly.
Only seven white Christmases in UK since 1900.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/christmas/3933091/Dreaming-of-a-white-Christmas-Blame-the-nostalgia-of-Charles-Dickens-snowy-childhood.html
7th December 1662 Samuel Pepys, and this was during a period we call the Little Ice Age
—————————
It is amazing how people over the generations when a severe winter spell strikes it is seen as what was of years ago, as though they happened frequently back then.
Here’s a Times editorial on this.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v645/zloty/times91a.jpg
P Gosselin (01:44:11) :
In the aftermath of Climategate, the CRU is one institute that has been rendered a complete laughing stock by a few sophomoric “scientists”.
And if Joe Bastardi is right, then the CRU is going to once again look incompetent.
http://www.accuweather.com/world-bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
CRU: Clueless Research Unit
Sounds more to me like CRU: Clueless Radicals Unhinged
Another observation from the 2000 article was that “We don’t really have wolves in Europe any more”. Just two years later, wolves crossed the Polish border going west for the first time in a very long time (centuries, really) and have expanded their German range ever since.
Ignorant prognostication knows no bounds.
John Finn (10:30:08) :
Unfortunately none of the vegetables you mention were cultivated in the Middle Ages (I think rhubarbs would grow on Greenland too, it does very well on Iceland).
They norse did grow flax, corn spurrey and angelica in Greenland in addition to barley.
As a matter of fact they do grow Barley on Greenland today, but despite an additional thousand years of plant breeding it won’t ripen under current conditions, so it is only used as green fodder for cattle.
John Finn (11:15:57) :
Allan M (10:27:42) :
Grapes are now widely grown in the UK, about 350 commercial vineyards I believe. The Domesday Book in 1085 recorded about 40. It appears to be you who is trying to rewrite history.
John, I believe the population of England in Roman times drank mainly Ale/mead and there were less of them than today, in 1085 40 vineyards per head of population was considerable compared to today.
Spence,
Tone noted 🙂
I think the way UK Decembers are behaving is interesting. We’ve had ‘white’ Christmases on Dartmoor several times in recent years. I sometimes wonder if winter cold gets started and then tends to be swept away come January by the slight extra warmth in the atmosphere/Atlantic/global circulation and that if the globe warm but the Atlantic has a pause what will happen. But, you don’t believe any of that anthro stuff so I’ll leave it…
I don’t think Dr Viner is cherrypicking. He spoke about trends, he might well have said more that was not quoted, I think he may very well yet be right. But, exceptions don’t make good trend busters.
We don’t know yet if the Met O have their winter forecast wrong.
Piers Corbyn. I watched the vid higher up. I’ve watched/read other forecasts of his. He never names a specific date for a weather event, but a spread of two,three, four or more days. He doubles/triples/quadruples his chance of ‘success’ when he gives such a spread of dates. Besides, pick four days of December the chance of a US mid west snowstorm must be quite high, and (looking at charts on 18th of December) you could have guessed a European cold spell with some chance of being right. In a way it’s amazing he’s not ‘right’ more….
Oh, and <i. some AGW isn’t a bias but a scientific reality. The real question (for another thread, and I’m really not about spending much time here – this blog really doesn’t welcome views like mine, debate with us and talk of IPCC’s and the rest, so people like me recognise that and these days tend to stay away) is it’s how much it is ‘fedback’.
@ Phil. (09:41:57) :
Grapes are now widely grown in the UK, about 350 commercial vineyards I believe. The Domesday Book in 1085 recorded about 40.
It appears to be you who is trying to rewrite history.
Surely you are not seriously trying to make a direct numerical comparison between the modern vineyard with its support mechanization and the vineyards of nearly a thousand years ago where all the tilling, planting and harvesting would be by manual labour? With a population of at maximum one thirtieth of the modern UK?