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?
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Please, please, please, please bring it on, we live centrally in England but have a holiday home on the coast in Cornwall. Regions in Cornwall have their own micro climates due to the nature of the coastline but if you suggested an increase of a degree or two across the board to any of the Kernow locals they would jump at the chance. Due to the death of industry and fishing in the UK the main source of employment in Cornwall is tourism, hotter temperatures = more visitors = more jobs. Now thats the way to get rid of the country’s financial deficit.
Well, I live only 60 km from the mediterranian sea, and believing the warmists in the past, I planted olive trees. They resisted a few years but the last two cold winters were too much for them. They froze!
Wren (19:56:13) :
Said;
“Cornwall County, which is in England’s West Country, already has palm trees”
I live in Devon, adjacent to Cornwall and have 20 palm trees in my garden. Many areas in the South-particularly on the coast do. The South West has long had a temperate climate due to the Gulf stream and this extends right up the West coast. (in truth the palm trees grown here are pretty hardy)
The first palm trees were imported to the UK several hundred years ago by our many famous botanists.
One of them was Hooker, whose has many plants named after him and another was Banks, who similarly has plants with his suffix. Banks was of course President of the Royal Society in 1817 when the Arctic melted (again). I wrote about it here.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/20/historic-variation-in-arctic-ice/#more-8688
One of these days I’ll get round to writing about the great arctic melting in the 1920’s and 30’s.
Of our ten hottest summers 5 are still prior to 1950 despite bias due to UHI and changes in sites.
Do stop getting excited Wren and read up your history
tonyb
I do wonder whether the people who make these predictions ever get out much.
Seeds of my doubt over warming forecasts #1:
Some years back, I noticed, at the Malvern Garden Show (one of the biggest annual shows in the country), there was a stand from the local water company, filled with pamphlets about converting to low-water gardens due to the increasing temperature and dryness of the UK summer. Why I noticed the stand was that for several years running, you had to negotiate a sea of mud to get to it. Then one year, for some reason, the stand wasn’t there. Haven’t seen it since.
Seed #2
About ten years or so back, there was a forecast that due to warming, farmers would soon be able to grow maize and wine grapes in the Midlands. Which was news to me, having been out one day ten years or so earlier and seen a field of maize growing over head height. And there’s a fruit farm a few miles down the road from Malvern that’s been growing grapes for years….
And it still goes on. A recent forecast stated that warming meant that farmers will be able to grow exotic crops such as Kiwi fruit.
Here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/7146440/Kiwis-and-peaches-to-be-grown-in-England-due-to-climate-change.html
You’ll notice it persists in the notion that grapes can hardly be grown in England, even 140 miles or so further south than already existing farms I know of, and that the Kiwi can’t grow here. Which is nonsense, the Chinese gooseberry, actinidia chinensis, to give the Kiwi its pre-branding real name, is perfectly hardy here. It’s grown on a large scale in New Zealand, which has a climate pretty much like the UK.
As for the desirability of Britain becoming warmer and dryer, I remember walking to work on cold, rainy miserable February morning around 1999, and thinking “the sooner we get this dump [Earth] terraformed, the better”
Wren,
This is particularly for you, but will also be interesting to those unaware of the mild (until the last few years) climate of the English Riviera winter in the English South West.
This fabulous Pathe News reel from 1932 shows it was considered warm enough in 1932 to promote as a sensible (!) alternative to the French version. Enjoy!
http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=2788
Tonyb
Re. palm trees on the Isle of Arran: for verification rent the movie “Wicker Man”, 1973. Not only palm trees, but the Old Religion, nekkid ladies, and barbecued police sergeant too. Al Gore forgot to include all that in his distinctly inferior flick.
Great, I will look forward to a bit of extra warmth for the old age.
Sounds lovely. Where do I sign up?
“R. de Haan (18:39:45) :
“what are these people thinking with these forecasts?”
Pig Farmer P Hearnden (10:34:56) : http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/24/the-uk-met-office-appears-to-have-disappeared-their-winter-forecast/”
I didn’t write that post someone else did – using my name 🙁
It’s pretty sad that this place lets people post under the name of others….
@Al Gore’s Holy Hologram
“…Believe it or not but here’s a true fact, London’s population today is half a million lower than it was in 1934 despite all the new immigrants and the increase in size of the city….”
Without checking, if this is true, I suspect that this is just an artifact caused by boundary changes. At the beginning of the century many people lived in slums in the centre of major cities, such as New York and London – by the 50s and 60s the mass of the population had been moved out to estates in the suburbs, and (apart from the entertainment quarters) the centres of big towns started to become surprisingly deserted at night time….
I though the Met Office had abandoned long-range forecasts? They said 3-month forecasts had too much uncertainty in them, but obviously their super-computers can handle 90 years with no difficulty. “Believe me – I’m a climate scientist”.
I’m all for this “global warming” stuff – it’ll do wonders for the tourist trade in Britain. People will flock here to bathe in the cool 35C summer days, from baking France and Spain and Morocco. On second thoughts, I’ll go with the new “Ice-age” scenario, it’ll keep all those chattering masses out of our little “heaven-on-earth”. Now where’s my ski wax?
If you want to see tropical Scotland, try this:
http://www.greatbritishgardens.co.uk/inverewe_garden.htm
“The Gardens are in a remote part of the country and were designed by scratch by Sir Osgood Mackenzie. It has to be one of the U.K’s most beautiful botanical attractions.”
http://www.ullapool.co.uk/inverewe.html
“There are giant yuccas, phormiums and plenty of other exotic species, from all over the world. Rhododendrons from the Himalayas, eucalypts from Tasmania, Oleria from New Zealand and other plants from Chile and South Africa.”
(But the NT will have to pay for their (piss) artists without my assistance.)
—–
Dave F (20:18:44) :
[REPLY – Wow! That is one hell of a predicate nominative! ~ Evan]
What has it been doing to get predicate? Naughty nominative!
“jose (23:08:25) :
Dave F: It’s hiding in the oceans. ”
…Find out more for only 9.90$!
Numerous studies (Hanson, 2001; Peterson, 2003; Jones, 2008) have shown that UHI has no effect on measured surface temperature trends.
Ahhh, studies. The cure for any doubt.
Sadly a drive through any major urban environment with a thermometer will show that UHI is real. “Studies” be damned. Reality is somewhat more impressive.
I don’t live in a major city, but it is quite noticeable as I drive to work these days that the countryside is colder than home.
Daily Mail comments have reappeared, this is my fav
If the “experts” are predicting a heat-wave, the let’s look at their OTHER predictions:
# No more recessions… EVER! (we’re now fast approaching the first ever Deep Global Economic Depression
# There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (UM, really?)
# House prices always go up… ALWAYS, I TELL YOU ALWAYS!
# Summer of 2009 will be a BBQ Summer (it wasn’t)
# Winter of 2008/09 will be mild warm, and a bit rainy (it snowed like crazy)
# Winter of 2009/10 will be really mild and there won’t be much cold, let alone snow (well, they got that one wrong)
# The will never again be snow or ice in England…it’ll be so rare your children will never believe you (prediction made by Global Warming gurus in 1999)
OK, so now they are telling us that Britain will become Mediterranean?
In which case batten down the hatches, ’cause if their record is anything to go by, you;re in for an ICE AGE.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1260213/National-Trust-campaign-highlights-gardens-look-global-warming-brings-Mediterranean-weather-Britain.html#ixzz0jNAKjcQr
Wren (23:56:40) :
Hold on there! That “increasing unlikelihood” is not a “given.” It’s just wishful thinking, isn’t it?
Which of the predicted catastrophes would you suggest has not become less likely in recent years?
I missed P. Hearnden’s post re the unfortunate demise of his pigs and his resultant disillusionment with the AGW cause that he fervently espoused in many previous postings here on wuwt.
A small example of the dangers of believing any of the twaddle promulgated by the rash of second rate scientists persuing projects financed by governments seeking restrictive powers over, and financial gain from, an electorate increasingly composed of the brainwashed product of the past 40 years of our wishy washy educational system.
Had this happened at an earlier point in Peter’s genealogy, when life was hard and wrong calls naturally punished, Darwin’s theory might well have kicked in, he might not have been begot, and we would have missed his always amusing contributions to our various discussions.
Here in UK we have a Labour Party promising in it’s election manifesto to create 1M new jobs in the “high tech green economy” – a cruel deception in the face of our present levels of unemployment and economic uncertainty, but one that is increasingly being swallowed by a frightened, economically illiterate portion of the electorate, who, as we all know here, are destined to be sadly disillusioned.
All those orange trees and no fruit! More heat, more water vapour, less sunshine, no oranges. They know all about temperature and nothing about climate.
An easy way to reduce your carbon footprint, don`t visit the trust properties.
Wren, most of the ‘palm’ trees in the UK are not any variety of palm, but are Cordyline Australis which were introduced from New Zealand by Sir Joseph Banks, Capt. Cook’s botanist. They are known in NZ as ‘Cabbage Trees’ and were a stone-age source of sugars, extracted from boiling the cabbage-like ‘heads’ from which the fronds develop.
Also, roses and other English garden favourites grow extremely well in Singapore, which is way hotter and wetter than the UK..
Current climate is already mild
Cornwall has the UK’s only area of sub-tropical climate, at the extreme south-west of Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly. Palm trees are a common sight in these areas. The sub-tropical nature has resulted in a number of botanical gardens, such as Trebah and the Lost Gardens of Heligan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_Cornwall#Climate
Thank God it’s spring, now the warmists can fire up the hoaxing machines again that almost froze last winter. The upcoming Copenhagen II world takeover summit is just a few weeks away, put it on high.
Welcome after… We already have a “tropical” palm garden in south western parts of Norway: http://www.florogfjare.no/
http://i2.pinger.pl/pgr184/1da19ebb0024284d48641133/flor_og_fjare_01.JPG
http://www.turbuss-as.no/images/flor.jpg
I’m assuming the authors have never visited the North of England.
It’s wet……all the time….sometimes it snows…….but then it’s wet again.
Idiots.
Most of the observed 0.5C rise has likely been due to UHI effects, as the UK population has increased by 50% since 1930.
This is a somewhat dubious claim. I live pretty much slap bang in the middle of England in a city with a population of around 300, 000. I know exactly where our local weather station is located. It’s on the site of school in an area which has been relatively unchanged in the last 60 years. Summer temperatures at this location have risen by ~1.75 degrees since 1971 . Now if you still want to claim that UH is contributing to this trend, consider this: The city population fell by around 35,000 between 1971 and 2001 and is still well below it’s peak in the early 1970s.
In fact, while the population was rising (1950s & 1960s) temperatures were falling and while population was falling temperatures were rising.
The temperature data referred to in the post is from the Met Office and that shows an increase in summer temperatures since 1971 of ~1.2 deg but a) the data is for the UK as a whole – not just England and b) it may be already adjusted for UH. The CET record is certainly adjusted and I reckon they’ve tended to over-estimate the UH effect.
None of this necessarily means that increasing CO2 is responsible for all or any of the temperature rise. The huge reduction in industrial activity over the past 30 years could be a factor locally. However, I see no evidence that temperature records in the UK are contaminated by UH – despite the opinions of those who are commenting from thousands of miles away.