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
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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.