From the Mail Online: (h/t to Richard North of EUReferendum)
But the forecast is the bigger worry, not the lame-o self help from the local government:
Council chiefs have sparked outrage after proposing residents dig themselves out of the snow as Britain braces itself for another winter of Arctic conditions.
As long-range forecasts suggest the country will be hit by blizzards and temperatures plummeting to -20c, bosses at Camden Council prepared to hand out spades.
But their solution to the bitter weather has been slammed by those who remember the headache of last year’s gritting crisis which brought widespread disruption and left people trapped in their homes.
The north London council’s proposal involves a ‘self-help’ scheme in which people can ring and request a shovel.
The authority plans to give out more than 2,000 spades to community centres and groups, shopkeepers and families to help clear clogged-up roads and pavements.
Eleanor Botwright, director of Castlehaven Community Centre, said: ‘It is not quite dig your own grave but it is a double-edged sword.
The coming winter is worrying many in Britain, and it seems that such “shovel ready” programs really don’t help that worry.
The MetOffice might lift spirits if they forecast a BBQ Christmas.
Dr. Lurtz
Gulf stream varies greatly from 100cm/sec along Florida coast to less then 20 cm/sec (as low as 5cm/sec) to the SE of Iceland, it also varies with seasons.
I can’t remember an autumn when someone didn’t predict a savage winter to come. It’s the same every year.
Like the joke about the American Indian:
Heap big snow come.
How do you know?
White man he chop heap big heap wood….
OK, you clear off your sidewalk, then what. Are things so bad in the UK the government has to pass out shovels. Or does it have to make sense.
Hello vukcevic,
If I understand the Tinsley and Yu’s paper, changes to GCR intensity and relative pattern of GCR intensity (The GCR intensity is greatest at the pole.) affects winter storms and wind patterns. The geomagnetic field intensity and pattern therefore affects wind patterns indirectly rather than directly.
(My original interest was abrupt climate change.) During the Heinrich events (6000 to 8000 year repeating events) which correlate in time with geomagnetic excursions, there is an increase in polar winds by a factor of around 10 to 20 times. (This is known as there is a massive increase in sea salt deposited on the Greenland ice sheet during the events. The Greenland ice cores show multiple minor and major increases in sea salt the forcing event comes in a small, medium, large, and super large.) This is not an geomagnetic excursion however GCR has rapidly increased due to very weak cycle 24 and coincidentally the geomagnetic pole is rapidly moving toward Russia and the geomagnetic field intensity has been and continues decrease. (Non polar portion of the geomagnetic field is increasing.)
If I remember correctly there were hurricane strength winter storms in North America during previous deep solar minimums.
President Carter declares national state of emergency due winter storms.
http://www.shmoop.com/news/2010/02/18/6-worst-winter-storms-history/
http://www.utdallas.edu/nsm/physics/pdf/Atmos_060302.pdf
Atmospheric Ionization and Clouds as Links Between Solar Activity and Climate by “Brian Tinsley and Fangqun Yu”
“In a winter cyclone the primary driver of the dynamics is the baroclinic instability in the winter circulation, with the storm extracting vorticity from the latitudinal shear in the circulation, and converting it to the vorticity of the cyclone. The effective diabatic heating associated with precipitation and reduced cooling of entrained air amounts to an increase in potential vorticity and uplift in the air mass, and is likely to concentrate the vorticity near the cyclone center. In addition, by enhancing the feedback processes inherent in the baroclinic instability, it can increase the overall vorticity of the cyclone…
It has been demonstrated analytically by van Delden [1989] and from numerical storm simulations by Zimmerman et al. [1989] and Mallet et al. (1999) that a positive feedback exists between the storm dynamical configuration and the diabatic processes. Thus precipitation changes explain the many reported examples of correlations of the vorticity area index (VAI) with GCR flux change and Jz reviewed by Tinsley [2000]. …
These correlated decadal variations were postulated by Tinsley and Deen [1991] to be due to increased cyclogenesis in the western north Atlantic responding to increased cosmic ray flux and cloud responses at solar minimum relative to those at solar maximum, in accordance with the general scenario that we have now described in more detail above.”
I am surprised they did not command the subjects to FIRST dig out the public welfare council housing and only then allow them to clear their own privately owned homes.
After all, the pitiful helpless clients of the state should come first.
William says:
……………..
That is all fine as long as you believe that the GCR counts are OK, but I don’t think they are.
The red line on this graph
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-Mc.htm
is the inverted 10Be count McCracken 2007
Fig. 2. The estimated annual average heliospheric magnetic field strength near Earth, 1428–2005, based on the inter-calibrated cosmic ray record.
It closely matches CETs, but it is suppose to show strength of the sun’s magnetic field. It does that only in the last few decades, since space measurements are taken. The rest shows how heavily the GCR count is affected by the weather and other terrestrial conditions (volcanoes etc).
Now take a look at period around 1800, it is not at all like sunspot record.
This is my version of recalculating GCR:
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/SSN-Mc.htm
which at least looks something like sunspot record of the period.
What’s the problem with digging yourself out of the snow? And since when is it the government’s job to provide a friggin’ shovel? Wow, what a bunch of entitlement-minded, crybaby wussies the Brits have become. No wonder developed democracies/republic are failing spectacularly across the world.
As for the elderly/disabled who cannot do it themselves, shouldn’t the younger folks of the neighborhood be helping? I know I shoveled out my elderly neighbor’s driveway and sidewalk routinely when I was a kid. And I’m a girl. No, wasn’t paid for it, unless you consider the cup of hot cocoa, homemade cookies and appreciation of an old lady “wages”. Just did it because it’s the right thing to do (plus, she made the best cookies ever). My uncle also took his home-made snowplow around and did driveways when it snowed, as did many of the people in my home town.
That was back when we lived in communities and neighbors helped neighbors, I guess.
Piers Corbyn says:
October 8, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Citizens,
Actually, the people of the UK are subjects…
Please be clear that the long range forecasts there quoted are spin without credibility or track record of success and should be ignored absolutely. We, WeatherAction have issued no forecast and await a sponsor to enable the public to know.
Perhaps some readers will invite politicians in Government or Councils to purchase our winter forecast or sponsor it for public consumption and enable everyone to know whether or when and where shovels might be needed.
Well hopefully not appearing too mercenary – how much?
RE: azcIII says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:53 pm
I wasn’t so altruistic. I headed out early after a storm and knocked on people’s doors. I didn’t ask a price; I just shoveled the walk and took what was offered. Of course, one figured out pretty quickly which people paid well and which people were the cheapskates. That was one reason one headed out early: One wanted to hit the better paying people before some other kid-with-a-shovel did their walk.
After around four hours of ruthless, cut-throat capitalism I headed home, peering through the snow-covered bushes to see how far my older brother had gotten with our own driveway. The trick was to arrive just before he finished, and help him for fifteen or twenty minutes, and walk into the house with him. That enabled me to create the illusion I’d helped him out with our long drive, and to bask in my mother’s approval.
After a nice lunch I’d head back out with the shovel to a nearby pond, and work with other boys to create a hockey rink. There were no indoor computer games, and obesity didn’t seem to be much of a problem among kids of that decade. (1960’s)
About thirty years later there was a boy who shoveled the walkway to our local Town Office, and also the Grade School. He was a ruthless cut-throat capitalist, and reminded my of myself when I was a boy, but he ran into problems I never ran into. The grade school stopped using him because the janitors got angry about “losing work,” and the Town Office stopped using him because their insurance company stated he was too high a risk.
It made me feel a bit sad that a kid couldn’t even make extra money shoveling walks, but now it is twenty years later, and perhaps things are coming around full cycle, with the government handing the shovels back to the people, who might well hand the shovel back to the kids.
Now, if we could just get the insurance companies to realize exercise is good for kids, and obesity is the risk, they might even let children go outside after it snows.
azcIII says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:53 pm
What’s the problem with digging yourself out of the snow? And since when is it the government’s job to provide a friggin’ shovel? Wow, what a bunch of entitlement-minded, crybaby wussies the Brits have become. No wonder developed democracies/republic are failing spectacularly across the world.
You’re talking like this is the worst of it. No – this is the best of it…
RE:
Caleb says:
October 9, 2010 at 2:49 pm
You never tasted the cookies. 🙂 Cash is good too, but those cookies were to die for!
You need a snowplow, but a motorized plow will cause carbon emissions. Oh dear, what shall we do? Here’s a possible solution… http://www.cybersalt.org/cleanlaugh/images/06/bikesnowplow.htm
‘john edmondson says:
October 9, 2010 at 12:49 am
Piers Corbyn has his forecast ready for the winter. He needs a commercial sponsor to release it. Has anyone got any spare cash. Considering the previous accuracy of his forecasts, you would think Camden Council would be paying up.
It’s not far from Camden.
WeatherAction
Delta House, 175-177 Borough High Street. London, SE1 1HR’
A few suggestions:
1. Bob Diamond, Barclays – getting his folks to Canary Wharf through the winter.
2. English Premier League – contigency plans for postponements.
3. RAC/AA – they might want to plan for being inundated…….
4. Eddie Stobart – he’s got a lotta lorries to shift around the UK’s motorways.
5. Toboggan importers – how many to prepare to shift this winter?
6. Utility suppliers – planning for high systemic uses if necessary.
7. Helly Hansen/Berghaus etc – market opportunity to sell more thermals, down jackets and other forms of warm winter clothing.
Not to hard to think up a lot of them.
And this new government claims global warming as a good reason to cut winter fuel payments to pensioners.
1DandyTroll says:
October 9, 2010 at 6:06 am
“Puny little Adolf was a socialist so in essence his national socialist workers party led a socialist government. :p”
Call me cynical, but:-
Many things are done in the name of Society.
Often the choice of such words in a title just gives the lie to it.
It’s the 2nd ‘D’ in DDR (for East Germany) that always got me.
In olden times it tended to be God’s name that was invoked to make a cause unassailable, while today it’s typically something about ‘saving the planet’.
“Now, if we could just get the insurance companies to realize exercise is good for kids, and obesity is the risk, they might even let children go outside after it snows.”
Oh, dear….you are not too familiar with that other curse of British society these last few years.
Such behaviour will surely result in a very early visit from the social services people (with police support) as this is clearly child abuse.
Prison for the parents, and a foster home for the poor abused child.
“Think of the children” blah blah…
old44 says:
October 8, 2010 at 9:33 pm
What happened to the Met office “No more winters policy of 2008?”
I shall tell you.
Weather forecasts on BBC from The Met Office, used to be delivered by Qualified Meteorologists like Bill Giles, Suzanne Charlton, Michael Fish and the superlative John Kettley. These days The BBC wheel on bimbo airheads, who “wannabe a presenta”. Being the BBC, they are manner of colours genders and accents, many of whom are quite inarticulate, but that’s PC progress for you.
Yesterday, the airhead presenta, promised me a sunny 20C high. It was between 10 and 13C, and foggy all day. Usual guide is either ignore it completely or knock of at least 2C from all temperatures.
And from the “You couldn’t make it up” department, there’s talk of privatising the Met Office. Now what idiot would buy it?
This of us with brains, go to Jo for our forecast.
Can I have one of those spades? It’s been so bloody wet here SE Australia the ground has become soft enough to actually dig for the first time in 10 years. ( in my yard anyway). Hang on, belay that, it’s started raining again, can’t go outside.
@Andrew P.
“Steinar – we have spades in Scotland. And I am sure that most folk in the English countryside do also. It is just the southern townies that are incapable (they are probably too busy sourcing imported blueberries).”
Well Andrew, this southern townie has a spade and used it last winter to clear my bit of pavement during the big freeze (as did both my neighbours) despite the dire elf ‘n safety warnings. I look forward to another nice cold winter here in suburban London, if only to kill off the slugs and snails, otherwise I’d have to poison them and upset Mr Monbiot and the Eco-Guardianistas. Does anyone know if Dahlias have a big future in a colder post- global warming England?