UPDATE: BBC and Reuters is reporting (h/t to reader FergalR) that:
‘Transport Secretary Philip Hammond said he had asked the government’s chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a “step change” in weather patterns due to climate change and whether it needed to spend more money on winter preparations.’
Maybe they’ll have a look at Met Office climate models and CRU with a real investigation.
Record grit reserves in Lincolnshire ‘60% gone’
More than half the grit stocks held by Lincolnshire County Council have already been used, officials have said.
Despite starting the winter with 31,600 tonnes – 8,000 more than usual – the council said it had already used about 60% due to persistent low temperatures.
It had spread almost as much salt this year as it did for the whole of the 2007-08 winter.
The council said the next delivery was not due until mid-January so resources would be used carefully.
Councillor William Webb, Executive Member for Highways and Transport, promised to keep main routes open.
He said: “We’ll keep on gritting whenever it’s needed – be that 1pm on Christmas Day or Midnight on New Year’s Eve – whilst ensuring that appropriate quantities are being spread and salt isn’t wasted.
“We greatly value the assistance of farmers, contractors and even private individuals in supporting our tireless efforts to ensure safety for motorists and pedestrians.”
The authority covers 1,869 miles (3,008km) of Lincolnshire’s main routes, including all A and B roads.
While the amount of snow seen at the beginning of the month is not forecast for the next few days, temperatures as low as -7C (19.4F) are expected to be widespread.
Related – On December 2nd, this BBC story said:
Road salt is ‘disappearing fast’, Welsh councils warn
At the London Evening Standard, it seems at least one official is confident though, or maybe he’s “hiding the decline” of grit:
Today Boris Johnson promised Londoners the capital was prepared for anything that the elements could throw at it. He said: “Even if it snows 24 hours a day, morning, noon and night for two weeks, which has never happened before, we have enough grit for our roads.
…
Forecasters said the second big blast of the winter could last until Christmas and warned London to brace itself for “the main event” tomorrow.
It takes “true grit” to make such predictions in the face of nature.
“Fred Pearce reported on the Cancun conference for New Scientist magazine.”
Fred Pearce doesn’t live on the same planet as most of us. Where to start with this drivel? The only reason corporations want to ‘save the planet’ is because they see government subsidies and rigged markets which they are adept at exploiting. China loves AGW baloney because they have learned to game the system. Applying basic economic decision tools, they have made a major industry out of creating HFC 23, then destroying it. If anyone seriously believes that wealth is created by digging holes and filling them in, I suggest reading one of the many excellent discussions of Bastiat’s ‘Broken window fallacy.’ Google it.
In the meantime, China has threatened to release the HFC 23 – 18,000 times more potent than co2 – into the atmosphere if the UN doesn’t come up with the protection money. Sitting here in subzero England, I say – yes, please do.
What’s the most expensive?: That business halts for a while when the country gets buried in snow, or to have the resources at hand at all times to deal with snow even during winters with no snow at all?
I’ve driven to work for many years and only once have I been late due to weather, about one hour late, after 50cm of snow fell overnight. And that was because I had to clear away the thigh deep snow in front of my own garage, not because the roads were inaccessible. But this is Norway. It’s expensive to have that much resources to keep roads open, but much of the country would have to shut down for half a year otherwise. For other countries it’s cheaper to lose a business day once a while than to be able to keep the roads driveable at all times.
One of the things to remember is that English roads are not designed to be ploughed; this takes long range planning. Here in Ottawa, Canada, the road allowance for housing estates, is 6 chains (66 feet); I did say long range planning. You need 30 feet for cars to travel on, and this leaves 15 feet on either side of the road to dump snow. If you want a fence for your front yard, it has to be 15 feet from the road. This sort of situation hardly exists in the UK.
Richard 111 2:21:
“All that salt will eventually end up in the sea.”
Although some of our road salt in the UK comes from a salt mine in Cheshire, a lot of it is shipped from Australia, where it is taken from the sea. Dave.
@ur momisugly Patrick Davis December 19, 2010 at 2:47 am
Indeed it is called “grit” and yes, I understand they put salt in it. Details I do no know. I think the point I was trying to make is that the solution to the mess by most is to spread “grit”; but when it’s done on lots of snow without previously using shovels or snow plows, we just get a mess. There is also an apparently strategy (and state of mind) that there is no point trying to do any plowing until *after* the snow stops. Citizens and government seem to have that attitude. Big mistake.
I spent several winters in Norway.
In autumn they put poles on either side of the roads. The snow falls, the ploughs clear a path between the poles. You drive on several inches/feet of compressed snow keeping the nearest pole on the right hand side.
Never saw any salt being put down. (Might be different in large urban areas)
We had about a foot of snow here in our part of the Cotswolds…..very pretty, all this Global Warming! It reminds me of the winters of ’47 and ’63, not to mention ’87. The thermometer just outside the back door was reading -6 not long ago.
I’m sick to the back teeth with the way the warmists now interpret every type of weather we receive as due to global warming, alias climate change, alias global climate disruption. Whatever do they think the planet’s climate has been doing for all of its existence?
I do believe we should not be polluting and wasteful; there is a lot of room for improvement in mankind’s behaviour; especially in regard to clearing forests. I believe that the planet’s climate has far larger influences from natural occurences than from anything we do. I also think there is far more to fear from cooling than from a smidgeon of warming.
We are not alone in waiting for more heating oil deliveries. Our level has dropped at a rate we have never seen before while living here, despite trying to be careful in our use. Thank goodness we have a little stove in the sitting room and some coal (anthracite) to fuel it! We deliberately chose a flat top one in case we need to cook on it, as our cooking stove is an electric one (no gas where we are). We also keep plenty of candles and have a little camping gas stove for emergencies, and some stores of dry and tinned food.
So Transport secretary Philip Hammond wants to have a good old panic.
With the low winter temperatures for no less than two years running, it has to be all down to climate change.
Perhaps we could do with a minister who reacts a little less like a hysterical end-of-the-world evangelist and more like someone who is being confronted by a natural phenomena.
Just to help him out, that natural phenomena is called:
A Cold Winter.
p.s. hat tip to Jockdownsouth and JohnM for the wind-power links
A couple of miles inland from the coast in Merseyside, a fairly mild place temperature-wise, I spent yesterday and some of this morning digging my way through 9 inches of white, frozen global warming. At the nearby Met Office station in Crosby, a record low of -17C was recorded overnight.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-12031709
Admittedly the records only go back to 1983, so this must be an example of weather, not climate. Despite that, even the most dense politician must surely be asking the obvious question. Perhaps our Transport Secretary has spotted that the global warming game is up.
“Irish winter says:
December 19, 2010 at 3:17 am”
Where in Ireland? I lived in southern Ireland, Waterford, in the late 1970’s, it was always wet, ultra fine drizzle, permiates everything, not experienced that in any other country (So far).
Verity Jones says:
December 19, 2010 at 3:45 am
“For school closures, blame the “safety nazis” and “who can I sue?” culture. My daughter’s school closed becasue they did not have the manpower to clear all the path of snow and were concerned about the risk of children falling.”
Make that the risk of children tipping over. The climate system has hundreds of tipping points. Hundreds of them (i read it in an interview with the late Dr. Schneider).
And we might be passing one of them right now without even noticing (except for the ones that tip over).
I always wonder about the size of the caverns they create while extracting this salt (this is Winsford, Cheshire, UK). There seems to be a lot of cavern, and not much pillar. A collapse would cause quite an earthquake.
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2010/11/29/article-1334068-0C440417000005DC-795_634x395.jpg
Salt is also mined in Northern Ireland. According to a BBC video clip here it is even exported to the US.
Patrick Davis says:
December 19, 2010 at 3:05 am
‘I drove 4×4′s in the UK practically all my driving life’
Up until Feb this year I had an Astra VXR, fantastic car, 240bhp low profile 19″ alloys, designed for the race track not for the state of UK roads now. Snow ice and potholes finalised the desicion to trade it in for a Grand Cherokee at a reasonable price. If you look at the adverts in the locals for 2nd hand 4*4’s you will see the trend is rapidly increasing.
The UK government will realise the neccessity for the average citizen to have the ability to get to work by the time I retire. I have had many a fraught moment over the past couple of weeks watching the green cyclists still trying to prove their point during the comute into work, not only putting their own lives at risk but risking those of other road users as well in adverse weather conditions.
There is a saying here ‘some people would bite their noses off to spite their face’.
“asked the government’s chief scientific adviser to assess whether the country was experiencing a “step change” in weather patterns due to climate change”
Depends on what is meant by ‘Climate Change’, as the AGW’ers stole the term and have made it the eyes of most people an alternate name for ‘global warming’ or AGW.
Of course us ‘deniers’ always ‘knew’ that Climate Change (original meaning) happens, and that the climate was likely to change to cold again on its own. This it seems is what has happened, and we can only hope that the “chief scientific adviser” is smart enough to see this.
Ian Walsh (Torquay Devon)
Patrick Davis – In County Kildare
I look out of the window and it looks white. Thankfully, most of the snow is gone after 2 weeks. However the temperature was minus 8 degrees last night and is just above zero degree right now. It’s now the third week and most of the time it was freezing cold. Schools had to close 2 weeks ago for a few days.
It all started in the winter of 2007 that Ireland experienced colder temperature and a lot of snow.
On Friday, Cardiff was in the path of the snow. We got 10 inches, measured by me in the back yard, with a ruler. No wind. Cars and people stayed at home, so yesterday the snow had not been compacted to ice and it was fun going to the park with the dog.
Sadly, I hadn’t reckoned with the effort required to wade through 10 inches of snow piled up on the playing fields!
There was no wind, but some soft, low mist over the snow before sunrise. The snow load was too heavy for a huge branch on one of the pines. It came crashing down with a loud noise and a huge cloud of snow. It scared the dog …
There was some melt due to the bright sunshine – now there are icicles on some of the roofs.
Overnight and today it has become noticeably colder. The snow has become compacted, so going out has become treacherous. There is a very pale sun peeping through the white sky.
Oh – and there is still no wind here …
I’m grateful that I’ve learned during my childhood and youth how to cope with a house cold due to restricted heating. With the UK government plans for ‘new energy’, adding another cool £500 to the already high utility bills, I wouldn’t know how to pay them when winters like these last two become normal again.
Mind – two White Christmasses in succession should make the kids happy!
When the salt runs out, urine has some salt in it.
🙂
Re: Jim Cripwell says: December 19, 2010 at 3:49 am
A lot of English roads were barely designed for cars. We’ve also spent the last few years trying to calm traffic and prevent speeding by installing thousands of speed cushions, speed bumps and artificial chicanes which also make ploughing more problematic. Plus much of the work that used to be done by the councils is outsourced to private contractors who naturally want to minimise their costs and maximise profits.
2-3 inches of global warming condensate for me in urban Berkshire though and an overnight low of -4C from my garden wall. I must be in the mild bit of the UK’s winter.
Don’t complain.
Just move your fridge magnet, it may help.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MF-PV.htm
The high priests of the global warming elite are so far away from reality and humbleness that we shall only receive more disasters as their way of thinking that humans are able to dictate climate on earth is an insult to mother nature and sound reasonable thinking . After nearly all pagan gods were abolished in our society , they erected a new one , the climate god , controllable by humans through a novel priesthood accepting zero critical attitudes . Should mother nature react stronger and throw us all into poverty as happened to previous fake-religions and older civilisations ? Where is the difference between stupidity and falseness ?
Jockdownsouth says:
“Current generation By Fuel Type”. As at 09:30 UK time on Sunday it shows wind 0.6% current (no pun!) and 0.8% for the last 24 hours.
Generation Forecast:- 276 MW
Total Metered Capacity:- 2430 MW
A pathetic 11.36% efficiency.
>>Joe
>>When the salt runs out, urine has some salt in it.
That is what is used at all airports, because sodium salt corrodes aircraft (it is the urea that deices). They used to use refined cow piss, but they now tend to use synthetic urea.
Mind where you step….
.
Joe Lalonde says:
December 19, 2010 at 4:55 am
‘When the salt runs out, urine has some salt in it.’
And such pretty colours 🙂
JohnM says: December 19, 2010 at 1:21 am
His Times quote from Nigel Lawson is well worth spelling out. How knee-jerk paid-up warmists slay commonsense.
George Orwell would salute this. But although we are in a period of depression regarding UK political integrity, business sense, and commonsense, Orwell himself wrote 1984 about his experiences in – 1948.
Yes, thanks to global warming you poor shivering Poms are buying our salt from Western Australia:
http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/business/8284349/uk-traffic-flow-to-depend-on-pilbara-salt/
We have plenty, and according to the article the local industry doesn’t have much chance of increasing output. Not only do we extract it from seawater, there are significant land based deposits, courtesy of the inland sea that used to cover much of central Australia.
See, founding colonies in the old days was a good move after all!