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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Is the thought of a Mediterranean climate supposed to be horrifying to Britains? Let’s commission a poll and find out! 😀
It might be a horrifying thought for UK travel agents and hotel operators in Greece and Spain, but I submit that the average bloke would be quite ok with a little climate change !
@Peter Hearnden (02:12:46),
‘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….’
Good thing you’re not named John Smith then?
Or enlighten us please as to how you think that a piece of software should decide that 2 text strings ‘Peter Hearnden’ and ‘P Hearnden’ are, or are not, the ‘same’.
I think you’d be on firmer ground if you complained about the content?
Have these people completely lost their marbles? What is going on inside their heads?
Wren (00:04:00) :
Patrick Davis (21:33:17) :
…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.
====
In this thread, someone attributed those palm trees in England to global warming? I don’t think so.
Give it a rest, Wren. Patrick made a generalized statement about alarmists, not a specific rip at any poster here.
re: palm trees
There are many varieties of plants called palm trees. Some can withstand cold temperatures. My suggestion is to speak of coconut palms. They do not like temperatures under 40F and will die if exposed to temps under freezing. When any northern areas become warm enough to support coconut palms, that’s when I will believe in climate change. FWIW, this winter my coconut palms died and I live along the Gulf of Mexico in south central west Florida!!!!!!!!!!
Wren (00:27:16) :
You referenced the only map I included in this article.
Emissions have been at the high end, so the Met Office’s high end temperature prediction is the appropriate one to look at. That map is also the only map they included in their Sept. 28 press release.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/news/latest/four-degrees.html
The point of that press release was to scare people into believing that there is going to be a catastrophe, unless we do what they say. The standard Orwellian technique of modern government.
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) — President Obama joined other world leaders Tuesday in calling for immediate and substantive steps to combat climate change, saying failure to act now would bring “irreversible catastrophe.”
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/09/22/obama.climate.change/index.html
Companies developing genetically modified crops risk creating the biggest environmental disaster “of all time”, Prince Charles has warned.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7557644.stm
(UPI) – Congress must take steps to prevent a economic crisis from becoming a catastrophe, Sen. Barack Obama said Wednesday. Congressional members and Americans have concerns about the $700 billion bailout of market systems, Obama said during a rally at La Crosse, Wis., “But it is clear that this is what we must do right now to prevent a crisis from turning into a catastrophe,” he added.
http://www.southfloridastormaid.com/script2/print.php?page=/cc-common/political/article.html&article_id=4333959&feed_id=104707
Doctors warn of swine flu ‘catastrophe’
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article6728888.ece
blah, blah, blah ….
Major snowfall forecast for almost the entire UK and Ireland
http://www.snow-forecast.com/maps/static/europe/next3to6days/snow
Most of the native trees in New Zealand can also be found in similar lattitudes in sub-tropical Argentina, a link with the era when Gondawandaland existed.
Since very early voyages of exploration, the explorers tended to return to their home ports with a fascinating array of flora, many of which responed surprisingly well to their new environment. Much of New Zealand, where the climate is similar to Southern England, is suitable for large-scale viticulture, citrus growing, etc. Cordyline Australus seems to be incredibly hardy and will grow in a wide range of climates and lattitudes. One of the healthiest examples I have seen in England grows in a prominent place in the Moat Garden at Windsor Castle, but many fine examples feature in gardens across suburban London..
Speaking of steamy-minded AGW spokesmen:
“The outspoken chairman of the U.N.’s climate change body is to adopt a neutral advisory role and has agreed to stop making statements demanding new taxes and other radical policies on cutting emissions.
In an interview with the Times of London, Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, apologized for his organization’s handling of complaints about errors in its report.
He also apologized for describing as “voodoo science” an Indian Government report which challenged the IPCC’s claims about the rapid melting of Himalayan glaciers.
But Dr Pachauri, 70, rejected calls for his resignation and insisted he would remain as chairman until after publication of the IPCC’s next report in 2014.
He claimed he had the support of all the world’s governments and denied that, by remaining in post, he was undermining the IPCC’s chances of regaining credibility with the public.”
Atta boy, Choo-choo, you just stay right where you are. Nothing like a nefariously bad P.R. face to help the cause along.
‘merikuns ragging on the British about AGW? I must have missed the part about Gore being an Essex boy. Plenty of blame to go around here, to all developed nations.
So they predict a new Medieval Warm Period ?
You guys in the Northeastern parts of Canada be prepared: The Vikings are coming !!!
OT, but maybe worth another thread, also from England comes this little gem – Earth ‘entering new age of geological time’
I guess the Anthropocene will only last until the next glaciaction, so we should be making hay while the CO2 shines.
I’ve been looking at long running records from the UK Met Office station data.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/stationdata/
I chose Armagh, Durham, Oxford, Sheffield and Stornaway and selected 1883 as a start date common to each. I’m assuming for this that the data is accurate enough. The different stations show some interesting features of their location and the general trend in the UK.
The annual average for each station gives the well recognised N shaped curve of a warming into the 30s and 40s and then a cooling for the 50s 60s and 70s and a warming to the mid to late 90s and then a levelling off. Armagh is a reasonable proxy for the average.
The most interesting features appear when the individual months and stations are considered.
All of the records show the least amount of warming during the winter months Dec, Jan and Feb and when I compare the average of years 1900-1954 to 1955-2009 for Stornaway there is no warming at all.
The annual pattern for temperature growth for all the stations is an M shape, with a varying drop in the temperature growth for the summer months. Stornaway shows no warming for June at all, while the summer dip for the cities is much less pronounced. The UK stations have shown most warming during the last century during the autumn, closely followed by the spring. October is the month contributing most to the annual temperature rise over the last century, followed by March.
Many of the months fail to show the well known N shaped curve at all and some look like step changes but not always during the same year.
Stornaway is probably the most free from UHI due to it’s small island location, even though it is based at an airport and upwind of a growing town. Oxford, central England, is the most urbanised and the fastest growing city. Despite being the most northerly station, Stornaway shows the least warming and Oxford, at the lowest latitude shows the most.
From these observations several questions arise.
1) Why is it warming more in the autumn and spring than the summer and winter?
2) Why isn’t there an increased warming signal in the north compared to the south?
The stench of desperation by the warmmongers is really and I mean really, irritating my allergies.
And Met Office Climate models expect most of the northern hemisphere to turn red hot
I agree about that it is going to become RED, but COMMUNIST RED. It has almost already.
This crescendo of hysteria that is desperately being pumped out by the die hards –
tropical England, another fruitless Catlin “survey”(“The conditions we’re experiencing are unlike anything I’ve seen in any of the nineteen expeditions I’ve previously been on,” ), Bengal Island succumbs to Global Warming, flowers are losing their scents, Psychology professors theory that brains of sceptic conservative big oil flunkies are hot wired for denial,…..
Is the evaporating tail of the CAGW comet.
Wren, Jose, other “non sceptics” are not going to change their minds, even if attacked by polar bears in New York. These “tropical England” stories are being told to give these people faith and hope at least until they have all died off. I see there is already a small group in the scare organizations that are planting the seeds of a turnaround and they and their organizations will be the new guard, scaring the world that a new ice age is coming as has been the pattern since the 19th century (every 40 years or so the story flips). Sorry for not linking all this – chose posts from this month for most of it. But here is a few re flip flops:
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2006/10/newsweek_eats_c.html
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
Wren, Jose, isn’t it interesting to muse that you and all non sceptics would have bought into these reversals holus bolus if your were around in those periods, whereas, we – the mob identified as big oil and coal conservatives who have hot wired brains to be sceptical would have been right each time.
The Met Office is wrong. Apparently they are not smart enough to notice. They also can’t get their heads around how WUWT and other educated readers learn how wrong The Met Office is.
Like Joe Romm (The Blind One) says It is the narrative. No Blind one, Their facts and forecasts are wrong. Improving the story telling style will not change a single fact.
….Though, thinking it well, the United Kingdom, formerly known as “the Empire” has became a TROPICAL BANANA REPUBLIC
Anticlimactic (19:10:34) : “The Met Office forecast of an up to 16C rise is interesting. As most of the scary monsters of AGW have now been shown to be non-existent they now feel the need to invent a REALLY, REALLY scary monster! As with most exagerations it eventually becomes totally preposterous and unbelievable.”
The MET projections where made in Sept 2009.
Anticlimactic (19:10:34) : “I think enough is enough. I would like to see all knowledgeable skeptics banding together to focus on this claim. To have the Met Office’s justification and data published. To analyse it in detail and publish the results. To continue week after week, month after month, to never let it go until it has been totally discredited.”
You don’t even know how to check the date of what you are reading. Maybe, just maybe, the people how have studied climatology, who know something about math and physics are more likely to know what is going on than someone who can’t time time.
So expect the 16° Arctic temperature rise to be found in next IPCC report, as peer-reviewed science.
But wait a minute … there will be an hour of lights-off organized byWWF.
Maybe this will reduce the rise significantly. Poor Brits then, apples, no oranges.
Perhaps this is case of deep reverse psychology…the British have always been envious of places with tropical climates (hence the reason they colonized so many!). So Met Office is just reflecting the deep seated unconscious hopes of the English…they will finally get their tropical empire…albeit right at home.
On a more serious note (only slightly), from the renderings, why would the Brits not be welcoming global warming with open arms? Doesn’t seem to be a good use of public funds to pay an artist for this work of complete speculation…
“ Chuckles (05:42:19) :
@Peter Hearnden (02:12:46),
‘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….’
Good thing you’re not named John Smith then?
Or enlighten us please as to how you think that a piece of software should decide that 2 text strings ‘Peter Hearnden’ and ‘P Hearnden’ are, or are not, the ’same’.
I think you’d be on firmer ground if you complained about the content?”
This place has mods. The in question post is a pack of lies about me posted by someone impersonating me. How anyone can defend that beats me.
[Reply: The poster “P. Hearnden” you and others referred to has a different email address, and did not claim to be you. It is not an uncommon name. ~dbs, mod.]
@ur momisugly DirkH (03:27:26) :
“jose (23:08:25) :
Dave F: It’s hiding in the oceans. ”
…Find out more for only 9.90$!
Yes, I wonder if sales of climate papers are falling off, so papers behind paywalls are thrown around in the comments section of blogs. No need to synthesize the argument, help out a starving artist. You know, rough economic conditions and all. 😉
Of course, the argument goes that the oceans are harboring all this energy, which is just waiting for some as yet unknown mechanism to release 16C of doom on the world. Where in the oceans? Why, in the deep ocean, of course, where no one can see it. That is why no one has found it yet.
Interesting that you got this data from http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/seriesstatistics/uktemp.txt, yet on this site it’s considered restricted:
http://badc.nerc.ac.uk/data/cet/
Would be nice to see the full range of temps, not just the means. The mean temp is quite meaningless unless one can see HOW the mean is derived becuase what I’m seeing in Canada, with Envrionment Canada’s data free to anyone to pick up on line, shows summers cooling, winters warming, which is causing the average of the means to increase. I’m now putting this all on line.
http://cdnsurfacetemps.blogspot.com
Richard Wakefield (08:40:44) :
The Met Office UK data set is probably not the same as the CET (Central England Temperature) data set.