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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The only difference between the article referenced in this thread and science fiction is that SF writers know they are writing fiction, and the authors of this piece of work are pretending they are writing non-fiction.
These people clearly don’t understand the hydrological cycle surrounding that spit of land. And that is the central issue of every climatologist who states something about CO2, methane or anything else they think will overpower some kind of “normal” Earth temperature through greenhouse gas action.
By the way John, I like my martini so dry it doesn’t even look like there is liquid in the glass. I also like them bitter. And with a green olive AND pickled onion on the little spear. Dry, very dry, very bitter, and very very cold. Yum.
This forecast of warming Britain spells economic disaster!
Where will an already bankrupt government find the money for the pensions of the elderly that don’t die of the cold each winter?
At least it’s not a problem this year: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4142031/Cold-snap-could-kill-a-dozen-pensioners-every-hour.html
Being a UK resident, I am reminded of what I used to say a few years ago: “Global warming is supposed to give us the climate of the South of France and raise sea level so that my house is on the beach. And they say this is bad?”!
[Unfortunately, I’ve since moved house.)
Gary Pearse (07:46:36) :otes.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.
=====
Gary, I’m skeptical of people who say they are skeptics but aren’t even handed.
John Whitman (20:17:45) :
a) put ice in towel and crack with hammer
b) put ice in chilled cocktail shaker
c) put in one cap (cap from vermouth bottle) full of vermouth in shaker
NOTE: forget Winston Churchill on the vermouth issue
d) shake, drain off all vermouth from shaker and throw it away
e) pour in 3 to 4 shots of chilled Plymouth Gin
Why so heavy with the vermouth? Don’t you like gin?
27
03
2010
Steve Goddard (06:23:41) :
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 ….
======
Steve, you seem to think “catastrophe” means something far far worse than it actually means, and that catastrophes are too rare to be of any concern. A catastrophe can be relatively minor thing( the Titanic sinking, and the ExxonValdez oil spill) or something more consequential(Chernobyl, and New Orleans). Whether a person regards something as catastrophic or not, can depend on how it affects him. For example, you may not think one-forth of homeowners being underwater on their mortgages is catastrophic, but many of those homeowners may.
But the Met press release wasn’t talking about an impending catastrophe anyway. I don’t understand why you think a press release about warming that may occur after most readers are dead is designed to scare readers. It could cause readers to think about how warming will affect future generation. But scare them? Nah!
How does one live centrally? Oh, you mean you live in central England.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catastrophe
Main Entry: ca·tas·tro·phe
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈtas-trə-(ˌ)fē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek katastrophē, from katastrephein to overturn, from kata- + strephein to turn
Date: 1540
1 : the final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy
2 : a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin
3 a : a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth b : a violent usually destructive natural event (as a supernova)
4 : utter failure : fiasco
Wren (09:52:49) :
Gary Pearse (07:46:36) :otes.htm
Gary, I’m skeptical of people who say they are skeptics but aren’t even handed.
=====
Woops! That sounds like I’m skeptical of people who don’t have hands. I meant to say even-handed.
Steve Goddard (10:49:37) :
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/catastrophe
Main Entry: ca·tas·tro·phe
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈtas-trə-(ˌ)fē\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek katastrophē, from katastrephein to overturn, from kata- + strephein to turn
Date: 1540
1 : the final event of the dramatic action especially of a tragedy
2 : a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin
3 a : a violent and sudden change in a feature of the earth b : a violent usually destructive natural event (as a supernova)
4 : utter failure : fiasco
=====
2. a momentous tragic event ranging from extreme misfortune to utter overthrow or ruin
Like I said.
They are probably being paid by the government to spout this propaganda. See this press release, where the NT was one of the beneficiaries:
http://www.defra.gov.uk/News/2009/090623c.htm
by the Ministry in question, DEFRA – otherwise known as the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Activities.
EURefendum does a valiant job trying to keep up with this kind of nonsense.
It would take more than 2 degrees temperature rise to grow oranges here. And if we did, that would be bad… how? Vineyards in the Pennines, sunflowers in Sussex… there are thousands of British people who go to the South of France every summer because it is so pleasant.
Urban heat island effect was first noticed 200 years ago. Anybody who has lived in or near an urban area and pays attention to the weather has discovered UHI for themselves. Hansen and Jones have zero credibility so citing UHI studies by them will only persuade the true believers.
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.ht
Oranges die if the temperature gets below about -2C. Given that the UK got down below -20C this year, it seems like the climate would have warm a lot more than four degrees.
Temperatures in Florida average over 20C, compared to less than 10C in England.
As I recall downtown Dublin, Ireland had several palm trees that had been there for decades. These trees certainly provide some evidence of a mild climate. Does anyone know if those trees are still alive and well?
Government policies 1] invite everyone from abroad to enter Britain 2] build ever more houses to house these people coming into Britain 3] when temperatures start to rise from the first two the blame global warming. All this will lead to local and central government taking ever more money from the taxpayer
Steve Koch (11:05:16) : said
“Urban heat island effect was first noticed 200 years ago”
Sorry Steve, but the Romans were fully aware of UHI 2000 years ago. After the great fire Nero was petitioned to ‘build houses tall and steets narrow’ in order to minimise the effect.
Pliny noted that people moved to the country in the summer and that beech trees would no longer grow in the city. Ancient Rome attained a 1 million population and stretched for 70 miles.
tonyb
Jose: “Are you suggesting that the IPCC and the climate models are actually being too conservative? That would be an interesting post.”
I would suggest the models in their current state are nothing.
What do these models give you other than the the garbage assumptions put into them? What is their predictive value considering they have never successfully predicted anything? You can’t validate them with the data used to calibrate them. You can’t borrow from their credibility, because there isn’t any.
The climate sensitivity to CO2 can be directly measured. Richard Lindzen has done that, and successfully. I don’t have to fortitude to answer all of his critics other than to say they are full of it and anyone who is patient enough to understand it knows CO2 cannot drive temperature changes in any meaningful way.
I can’t believe the AGW movement is continuing, or that there are believers brave enough to post here. I agree with Vaclav Klaus, anyone who has been interested in these matters has know what is going on for many years.
I saw this hogwash in the Daily Telegraph a few days ago, written by Louise Gray, who else? What nonsense about UK gardens, if the temperature rises. In Victoria in southern Australia (where there were years of drought, followed by the searing dry heat and days of mid 40C temperatures, that led up to the horrifying Black Saturday firestorms), within a kilometre of the edge of the fires there are healthy fruiting apple trees; roses in heavy bloom, acers in healthy leaf and green grass, thanks to the rains they’ve had over the last few months. Of course the burnt out vegetation will take longer to regenerate, but where I once had some apple trees planted, in a place that was razed by the fires, I saw this year that the appletrees were growing out of the rootstock from below the soil; amazing.
I couldn’t find that Louise Gray article in the DT online a couple of days later; I was looking for it in order to comment on the vapid codswallop. It’s good to get the chance here!
TonyB (12:28:58) :
Climatologists tell us that Urban Heat Islands are irrelevant, and also tell us that painting roofs white will have a large effect on mitigating the non-existent UHI effect.
Wren (09:52:49) :
Gary Pearse (07:46:36) :otes.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.
=====
Gary, I’m skeptical of people who say they are skeptics but aren’t even handed
Wren, if you are sceptical of anything there may be hope for you. If I presented a scientific climate model that was so predictive (100% success so far for over a century) should it not convince anyone of the folly of throwing all their eggs into the CAGW basket (excuse the little Easter metaphor). Look again at one of the links that I gave in my earlier spiel:
http://www.lowerwolfjaw.com/agw/quotes.htm
Note in this century of climate forecasts that all the uncritical believers were wrong without exception and all the sceptics were correct in disagreeing. How’s that for support for scepticism. Read them all and note that there is often mention of a consensus or very broad agreement by world scientists and journals like Nature also published stuff on an imminent ice age looming, that within a few decades, we were all doomed.
I can tell you are a young man because if you had lived through a number of flip flops you would be a sceptic without a doubt (as I believe I detect intelligence in you). First time fooled but thereafter you look closely at whatever someone is trying to sell you – i.e. you become a sceptic. I started my life in the hot 1930s (which we have still not matched) and I lived through the following imminent ice age and then into this edition of a hot hell on earth. Let me predict that we are now turning and the next alarmists will be touting ice age again. Note in the news quotes from the past, that the biologist Ehrlich was so into the coming ice age that he predicted world corn crops failing and the world slipping into massive famine by 2000. Here is today, gathering together another gang of alarmist scientists and taking out an add in the New Y Times that the world is going to burn up. If he hasn’t died of famine or heat stroke in the next few decades, he will be back on the ice age wagon saying I told you so 50 years ago!
Could the rise in global temperatures (if they actually happened) cause the Gulf Stream to stop, thereby cooling the UK? Going by its latitude, the UK should be a lot colder, but the Gulf Stream keeps us warmer than we otherwise would be. If the ice all melted in the North, the cold water could redirect the Gulf Stream elsewhere, or destroy it. Then we’d be right in deep doodoo………..
Steve Goddard (12:53:46) : said
“TonyB (12:28:58) :
Climatologists tell us that Urban Heat Islands are irrelevant, and also tell us that painting roofs white will have a large effect on mitigating the non-existent UHI effect.”
Tell them to go to speak to Emperor Nero-He knows better 🙂
Tonyb
Tonyb