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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Reminds me of Noel Coward’s song “Mad dogs and englishmen go out in the midday sun”
You know what I am skeptical of Wren? The 12C of warming. If you believe that 12C of warming for Midwestern US is about correct, tell me why. Also, please explain why this hasn’t occurred yet, and we are not even close to this track. No, it is not in the oceans. If it were, then Pinatubo would not have caused ~.5C of cooling, only to have the world return to ~.5C of warming, or ‘Pre-Pinatubo levels’. And you cannot blame future warming on the oceans when NASA is blaming the lack of significant warming on the oceans. That is trying to have your cake and eat it too, besides just plain wrong.
Remember, doubling CO2 is calculated to contribute 1.2C. What would magnify that tenfold?
Wow, living in a tropical environment surrounded by an abundance of flora and fauna…
What a scary thought !
/sarcasm
JimH (14:20:40) :
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.
Jim-
I’ve read more than once that it isn’t the Gulf Stream that keeps the UK and W Europe mild, but the air. The article used the term “maritime climate” and compared it with a similar phenomenonon on the W coast of North America. The claim was that the climae would remain mild even if the GS stopped.
IanM
””””’Veronica (England) (11:03:02) : – 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.””””
Veronica,
It would be good for the consumers of oranges if they were grown in England because it got warmer.
BUT, the current major world orange producers in Florida and California wouldn’t appreciate it at all.
That’s capitalism.
John
“Bill Tuttle (05:57:56) :
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.”
Thanks Bill, it was a deliberate move on my part not to point fingers in this thread however, the main point in my post stands. Seems some are a little too paranoid.
Ian L. McQueen (18:31:43) :
There is no question that the Gulf Stream keeps England warm. The west coast of England tends to be much warmer than the east coast, because the water is warmer due to the Gulf Stream.
Temperatures in Greenland have been dropping at a rate of 1.5C / century since 1930.
https://spreadsheets.google.com/oimg?key=0AnKz9p_7fMvBdHVFMkJCV3NXekxaRlhJZ2RoeXVkSkE&oid=1&v=1269749620352
At that rate, how long will it take to warm 16C – as the Met Office predicts?
Palm trees?…..I have Cordlyne or similar in my garden, one of them a very well established tree.
It died this winter due to the cold.
How the blazes are we expected to believe anything this organization says???
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/7479776/National-Trust-allotment-hailed-by-Monty-Don-falls-into-disrepair.html
Its simply a cunning plot to try to get me back to the UK from here I now live in Cyprus.
Interestingly, I still tie up my boat to the same mooring ring in a harbour that I used as a teenager in the 60’s. Not exactly science but no sign of predicted sea rise. Maybe the Island is sinking, It is near some fault lines!
Nope, the National Trust can keep their fantasies, I will stick with the real thing 🙂
Several gardens similar to that in the picture exist in Cornwall, England, where we have a warm and wet climate.
Wild palm trees grow here (one has sprung up in my back yard) in the extreme SW of England.
So, the garden in the picture is not far-fetched. With the exception of the out-door orange trees, we have several gardens that look like that. Indeed, Trebah Gardens is about 5 miles from my home and looks very similar to that picture.
The National Trust owns several similar gardens in Cornwall.
So, a claim that England will have such gardens is a statement of ‘no change’, and dispute of the claim could be used against those who make the dispute in future.
But a claim of such gardens in the North of England would be a very different matter.
Richard