Roads closed, no petrol? How will Phil Jones get to work? – Anthony
Now the Army moves in to clear away snow in coldest December for 100 years as fuel runs out at petrol stations in Scotland and East Anglia
Last updated at 2:17 PM on 9th December 2010
- Overnight lows of -15C in Scotland and -13C in England
- Experts say cold snap is ‘once in a lifetime’
- Slight thaw this weekend but a return to snow predicted for next week
The Army was called in today to help clear away ice and snow as Britain headed towards its coldest December for 100 years.
As temperatures plunged to -15c (5f) David Cameron ordered the military to step in and help the UK’s beleaguered local councils.
The Prime Minister also revealed Cobra-style emergency meetings of senior officials and Ministers had been held to discuss the Government’s response to the big freeze.
Edinburgh City Council was the first local authority to ask for help. Officials have held talks with the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish government to allow soldiers to remove built up snow and ice from roads and pavements.
ARMY ON CALL TO CLEAR SNOW CHAOS
A mini avalanche slides from an office roof in Edinburgh yesterday.
Thursday December 9,2010
By Nathan Rao
THE ARMY was called in to keep Britain moving yesterday as large parts of the country struggled with freezing temperatures, compacted snow and treacherous ice.
David Cameron revealed the Government was holding crisis meetings as the prolonged cold spell crippled much of the UK.
The country is bracing itself for another cold blast after a few days of milder conditions.
Hundreds of motorists spent the night stranded in their cars in the north of England. It came after 500 motorists were stuck on the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow when a ferocious snowstorm struck earlier in the week.
Yesterday, there was no let-up in Scotland as temperatures continued to plunge into the double minuses and residents reported the heavy snow had compacted into thick sheets of ice.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Related:
Home Improvements: How to keep warm this winter
The great man-made global warming debate is entering an interesting phase, as early snow blankets much of Britain. If this winter is anything like as cold and long as last year’s, my postbag will soon be bulging with cries for help.
ENERGY BILLS ‘WILL HIT £2,500 A YEAR’
HOUSEHOLD energy bills could double to £2,500 a year in an “unstoppable” rise driven by the £200 billion fight against climate change, a market expert warned yesterday.
Meanwhile, brush fires rage in Israel, and despite some claims in Monsters and Critics…
Israeli’s worst-ever fire linked to global warming, expert says
‘This fire had a a strength we’ve never seen before. We have to link it to global warming,’ Yisrael Tauber, a forest manager for the Israeli Jewish National Fund land conservation organization said.
…that this was related to global warming, the truth turned out to be a case of negligence compounded by arson.
From the Jerusalem Post
Two teenage brothers from Usfiya were under arrest on Saturday on suspicion of negligent conduct during a family outing on Thursday in the Carmel Mountains that police said was likely responsible for the Carmel inferno.
…
Meanwhile, police and firefighters had to contend with sporadic fires that erupted far from the main Carmel fire zone, leading investigators to conclude that arsonists were attempting to “hitch a ride” on the Carmel disaster.
We see the same sort of news stories in the USA every fire season. Some rent seeking nimrod from an NGO proclaims the forest/brush fire to be caused by “global warming”, but the truth turns out to be far different.
Did the models predict this. I forgot models predict 50, 100 years and so on after all those who made and used the models are dead and forgotten.
I seem to recall that brush fires in Israel were a fairly regular occurrence. This was several decades ago and global warming was not blamed then. Is it grant application season again?
As for the UK, it’s ironic that the conservative government is still pushing the AGW agenda.
In the following article, UK’s Network Rail apparently sends their de-icing trains to maintenance in the winter. Unbelievable. It’s either incompetence or a cunning plot…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337151/UK-snow-chaos-Rail-bosses-sent-vital-icing-trains-servicing-big-freeze.html
Weather happens!
“Coldest December in 100 years.”
Perfectly CONsistent with “global warming”. /sarc
Yeah, but the batteries run down a lot faster in double minus centigrade degree temperatures, that substantially reduces the range. I still get 60+ mpg from my little diesel car.
However it is in these trying driving conditions that I really wish I had a massive thirsty 4X4.
Global Warming Goes Back to Court
http://volokh.com/2010/12/06/global-warming-goes-back-to-court/
This morning the Supreme Court accepted certiorari in American Electric Power v. Connecticut, a case in which several states and environmental groups alleged that greenhouse gas emissions from several large utilities constitute actionable contributions to the public nuisance of global warming. This case has potentially broad implications for continuing climate change litigation in federal courts where plaintiffs have raised common law claims, but it unlikely to be as consequential as Massachusetts v. EPA.
When we come out on the other side of this winter, there will be very few left who still think the world is warming.
It will be one of the coldest winters on record.
They got what they sought to: be Green…Greenland 🙂
Temperatures “plunged” into the “double minuses?”
“Winter” is causing the prime minister to call in the guard?
It’s funny when people decry global warming, the ominous looming future threat of slightly warmer temperatures, then get to experience the damage a little global cooling can do in an extremely short period of time.
Same situation here in Norway.
In November we had 60+ national monthly minimum records.
So far in December, the average is almost 10 degrees below normal.
Last winter we constantly heard that a cold winter is weather, not climate.
But this year, the cold winter has become climate!
The reason of course is this new report linking the cold weather to the melting of arctic ice. Well, we had mild winters from 2000 until 2007, even though the ice extent was about the same as the last 2 years. So to me it doesn’t make much sense.
Heads you loose, tails I win.
This winter feels no worse than a couple of winters I remember from my boyhood in the early 1980s. It has happened earlier than normal however.
As the media had been reporting a lot that Spring starting a couple of weeks earlier was a sign of global climate warming, is this winter starting about a month earlier than normal an equivalent sign of global climate cooling? Because I am a lot more worried by a significant drop in global temperatures than a significant increase.
Actually, this year we had spring start about a month late, due to the “once in a lifetime” national deluge of snow in February – March 2010. Funny that now we are experiencing the second “once in a lifetime” snows inside last 10 months!!!
I found it amusing listening to the mainstream media telling us that the early arrival of spring is a sign of global warming, and reporting it as the snows were still falling and another month of winter was to follow. It was like the alarmist media was determined to report its pre-decided narrative regardless of what was happening in reality.
Here is a tip you might find worthwhile … so I thought I would share — In SWFL we don’t have heaters, we have air-conditioners, and big expensive to use, heating coils. A discovery I recently made, your AC ducts can be a result of your freezing in your house. Yes those ducts. The ones you pay no attention to for years. They go bad, leak and the heat in your house can be lost to the AC ducts sucking the heat out and up to the roof tops. Most AC people will tell you ducts are good for about 20 years, then should be replaced. Same goes for the AC in the summer.
Our ducts were so bad, we had them all replaced by a reputable contractor, and the result inside our house was just short of amazing. A worm cozy house resulted.
So if you are freezing think ducts, you may be surprised at what you find. Your ducts can be like an open chimney to your house. You can get a licensed contractor to test your duct work for a few hundred dollars.
No I have no vested interest in ducts or AC, just passing on a finding others may find useful — We all want our energy costs to go down right?
“Experts say cold snap is ‘once in a lifetime’ ”
Yet heatwaves are forever.
@Steeptown
Nice one. I wonder how many other readers will get the reference.
Scots should check this out. Please contact Prof. James Curran with your comments:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1951784.stm
Aha. It is well known among Warmists that AGW will be accompanied by record snow, cold, and overall glacial mass increase.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8188605/Cancun-climate-change-summit-glaciers-increasing-despite-climate-change.html
Cold = weather
Hot = climate
More important even than Climategate in stopping the CAGW momentum will be the experience of real people (not modeled people) with real cold weather (not modeled weather.)
‘once in a lifetime’ event? According to Joe Bastardi, “The two-week period, last week of November and first week of December is the coldest since CET records began in 1659.” The is a least several lifetimes imho….
We in NE Oregon have had temps in the 40F area, I’ve been out in athletic shorts and
T-shirt chopping wood, (OK I’m Scot-Irish and Native American) but our turn in the
barrel is coming.
JasonF “Hundreds of motorists spent the night stranded in their cars in the north of England. It came after 500 motorists were stuck on the M8 between Edinburgh and Glasgow when a ferocious snowstorm struck earlier in the week.” That is a correct statement; there were hundreds stranded in England after those stranded in Scotland.
Jeremy says:
December 9, 2010 at 7:49 am
“cobra-style emergency meetings” ???
http://data.earthli.com/news/attachments/entry/2285/gi_joe_cobr.jpg
???
================
LOL
I too thought of GI Joes old enemies (or should I say “Action Force” which IIRC is what GI Joe was marketed as in the UK back in the 80s). And afterall Destro, Cobra Commanders scheming right hand man, was scottish. Perhaps Cobra’s Weather Dominator got out of hand! (see examples from western animation at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeatherControlMachine) 🙂
Can somebody explain to the general public, and/or policy makers, that if x(t) is purely random (i.i.d.) then the extrema of the set x(1)..x(T) will basically scale with the square root of T (with the Hurst exponent if chaotic not random).
i.e. The longer your record is the more likely you are to encounter an extreme event within it. Furthermore, if you ask the question “What is the most likely amount of time I have to wait for the next extreme event?” for a purely random process, then answer is no time at all. (Because the distribution of intervals between independent but rare events follows a gamma distribution peaked at zero.)
Gareth said: Last year’s cold winter was a once in a hundred year event as well: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11152077
This winter provides an opportunity for the scientific method to be deployed. Do we have a similar El Nino and strongly negative North Atlantic Oscillation situation? If the cold is as extreme and extensive as last year then the hypothesis is supported by real world events.
“Once in a lifetime”?
Not according to the Wikipedia: 1946-1947, 1962-1963, 1990-1991, 2009-2010
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_of_1990%E2%80%931991_in_Western_Europe
Movie from the 1990-1991 event at http://www.deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws/mediatheek/redactietips/MG_20JaarGeleden/1.921303 (in Dutch)