Guest post by Steven Goddard
National Trust image by Rob Collins
The UK National Trust is warning of a 2-4C rise in summer temperatures by the end of the century. They envision English gardens full of palm trees, Bougainvillea and tropical fruit, as seen above.
The apple orchards have been replaced with orange groves, the turf covered over with gravel and the summer borders replanted with cacti. They may look like scenes from a Portugese holiday, but these images could be the future of the traditional English garden, plant experts claimed yesterday. The striking images are part of a National Trust campaign to highlight how gardens will look if global warming brings Mediterranean weather to Britain in the next few decades.
And Met Office Climate models expect most of the northern hemisphere to turn red hot, particularly the Arctic which they expect to warm up by more than 16C in the next ninety years.
In the real UK (the one that exists outside the Met Office Supercomputers) the last three summers have all been complete washouts, the last two winters have been bitter cold, and over the last eighty years, summertime temperatures have risen only 0.5C.
Graph generated from Met Office UK temperature data
Most of the observed 0.5C rise has likely been due to UHI effects, as the UK population has increased by 50% since 1930. Many people in England would prefer to see the tropical paradise which the National Trust promises, but in the meantime they will just have to live with the usual UK rain. However, it is commendable that the National Trust employs top notch artists with an active imagination.
Summer of 2007 in Polesworth, Warwickshire
These studies by the Met Office and National Trust lead me to the inevitable scientific question – what are these people thinking with these forecasts?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
While the UK National Trust is getting ready to plant palm trees, Florida seems to have a different problem – cold killing Manatees:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/03/23/1543436/431-manatee-deaths-documented.html
Florida is losing it’s long held primacy in providing oranges and other citrus crops because of four major freezes:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/vtnk61j0lu41m37t/
I guess we can start buying oranges from the new UK citrus groves.
When I was 12, I remember seeing a palm tree on the beach in Ullapool, Scotland at 57N.
http://www.ullapool.camusnagaul.com/localinfo.htm
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=57.932914,-4.9407215&z=9&t=h&hl=en
[REPLY – Wow! That is one hell of a predicate nominative! ~ Evan]
In English man! 😉
I don’t proofread on blogs, I do enough of it elsewhere, so I get sloppy. I assume you mean the sentence about the model?
Wren (19:56:13) :
Cornwall County, which is in England’s West Country, already has palm trees.
————
Not only palm trees but, because of its unusual weather, (UNRELATED TO AGW) there grows “…20,000 exotic plants from 80 countries…” at Abbey Gardens.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/destinations/england/article6820161.ece
The Daily Mail appear to have pulled the comments section – it indicates 69 comments but none appear. Embarrassing?
Tom in Texas (20:12:03) :
I remember 1989 in Houston when a long ice storm appeared to kill all the palm trees in Houston, but they mostly grew back the next summer.
Archonix (20:08:39) :
@ur momisugly Wren (19:56:13) :
There are palm trees on the Isle of Arran too. That’s a fair bit further north than Cornwall.
===
I have been to Cornwall, but not Arran.
Steve Goddard (20:27:54) :
When I was 12, I remember seeing a palm tree on the beach in Ullapool, Scotland at 57N.
—-
Must be the UHI. ;O)
Jimbo (20:16:28) :
Wren (19:56:13) :
Cornwall County, which is in England’s West Country, already has palm trees.
—-
Isn’t that old news? They have been there for a long time now I thought.
“Promoted in the 1920s as the ‘English Riviera’, St Ives enjoys a climate of unusually mild temperatures due to the influence of the Gulf Stream.”
http://www.urban75.org/photos/stives/si043.html
====
Of course it’s old news unless you didn’t know it. I bet lots of Americans don’t know a small part of England has palm trees.
So?
If the winter is per met office more wintery by an equal 2-4 minus, it all adds up to nil, zip, and friggin zilch.
Personally, if I happened to be the UK National Trust, I’d think I’d be more worried about having my numbers straight when the ever so pesky eurocrats comes calling to check the numbers concerning funds already received.
Wren (19:56:13) :
Cornwall County, which is in England’s West Country, already has palm trees.
The “palm” tree that is seen in Devon and Cornwall (and also some parts of SW Scotland) is actually the “Cabbage Tree” (Cordyline australis) which is endemic to New Zealand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbage_tree_%28New_Zealand%29
I guess “palm” sounds better than “cabbage” when you are trying to sell the concept of an “English Riviera”
Steve Goddard, consider pasting the paragraphs of your post into the “historical figures” Einstein at http://www.xtranormal.com and make it a YouTube post.
I think it will work well. Just change “UK” to “U K” and “4C” to “4 degrees Celsius” so the robot can read it better.
It’s the New Age battle of the imaginations.
One group sees Palm trees in the UK by 2100.
The other group sees the Earth coming to an end by Dec. 21, 2012.
Before any of that happens, Aliens will come back as in the Return of the Chariots of the Gods.
This is a good object lesson to your kids: Don’t smoke too much of that stuff, it’ll make you hallucinate SciFi into reality.
Steve Goddard (20:27:54) :
When I was 12, I remember seeing a palm tree on the beach in Ullapool, Scotland at 57N.
http://www.ullapool.camusnagaul.com/localinfo.htm
http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=57.932914,-4.9407215&z=9&t=h&hl=en
26
03
2010
Steve Goddard (20:35:40) :
Tom in Texas (20:12:03) :
I remember 1989 in Houston when a long ice storm appeared to kill all the palm trees in Houston, but they mostly grew back the next summer.
====
You sure get around.
Would it do the same thing for the US? Palm trees along Lake Michigan? Wow I’m all for it!
@ur momisugly 1DandyTroll (20:39:52) :
Personally, if I happened to be the UK National Trust, I’d think I’d be more worried about having my numbers straight when the ever so pesky eurocrats comes calling to check the numbers concerning funds already received.
They figured out how to get around that a long time ago:
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=332&filename=1056478635.txt
They just repeat the same garbage over and over and over…
Should we start calling them the “Yet Office” because they have yet to be correct about anything?
Dave F (20:00:08) :
Oswego, NY on lake Ontario doesn’t seem to have warmed much over the last 80 years.
http://cdiac.ornl.gov/cgi-bin/broker?id=306314&_PROGRAM=prog.gplot_meanclim_mon_yr2008.sas&_SERVICE=default¶m=TAVE&minyear=1930&maxyear=2008
Wren (20:44:22) :
I am getting up there a bit in years, and have lived numerous places in the UK and the US.
John Whitman (20:17:45) :
My Way – Ultimate Martini
I was with you almost all the way, though I prefer M&R Bianco to the NP. However you lost me entirely at step f) shake hard, really really hard. Any barmen who even thinks about shaking a Martini should be summarily drummed out of the guild on a rail. If it’s my Martini he will, at minimum, forfeit his tip for the night.
“And Met Office Climate models expect most of the northern hemisphere to turn red hot, particularly the Arctic which they expect to warm up by more than 16C in the next ninety years.”
=====
Mmmm …… that’s not exactly what the Met said.
Try this –
The Arctic could warm by up to 15.2 °C for a high-emissions scenario, enhanced by melting of snow and ice causing more of the Sun’s radiation to be absorbed.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/four-degrees.html
In projection terminology “could” does not equal “expect.” You wouldn’t expect all projection scenarios to turn out to be right.
The most amusing global temperature projection is the no-change extrapolation implied by the “let’s do nothing” crowd. Its’ backcast performance is a joke.
“Andy Scrase (20:40:23) :
The “palm” tree that is seen in Devon and Cornwall (and also some parts of SW Scotland) is actually the “Cabbage Tree” (Cordyline australis) which is endemic to New Zealand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbage_tree_%28New_Zealand%29
I guess “palm” sounds better than “cabbage” when you are trying to sell the concept of an “English Riviera””
Thankyou Andy for postig this little known fact about “Palm” trees in England, in particular Carnwall. It is called on as an indicator of global warming all too often by alarmists. Shame these very same alarmists don’t do proper due diligence in their fact finding before posting rubbish.
The UK National trust and Met Office resurrect the CAGW monster.
It’s Alive!!!
I left England for N.Z. 17 years ago… mainly because I was sick of the cruddy weather… and I see NO reason to return there for anything more than a holiday…