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.
“whether the country was experiencing a “step change” in weather patterns due to climate change ” I thought it was just weather, and besides more extreme cold weather was expected due to climate change! (sarc)
Unless its a heatwave, flood, drought, forest fire, dead animal somewhere – then it is definetly climate change…
[Robt] , If you add cheese to your grit , you could probably substitute it for stucco .
KevB said
What needs to happen in the UK is for ratepayers and taxpayers to stop giving the state money until they start doing the jobs we pay them to do, rather than trying to force us into living our lives according to some utopian vision.
I couldnt agree more— well said buddy
“If the salt runs out, urine has some salt in it.”
Are you suggesting that this be applied to the roads, or to the politicians who failed to stockpile enough salt?
Best,
Frank
Annei says: December 19, 2010 at 4:00 am
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?
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Annei. The AGW conjecture (I won’t give it the dignity of calling it a theory) is akin to the miasma notions of the middle ages, IMHO. The miasmatic theory of disease remained popular in the Middle Ages. As late as the 1850s, miasma was used to explain the spread of cholera in London. The disease was said to be preventable by cleansing and scouring of the body and items. Dr. William Farr, the assistant commissioner for the 1851 London census, was an important supporter of the miasma theory. He believed that cholera was transmitted by air, and that there was a deadly concentration of miasmata near the River Thames’ banks.
We have our modern day equivalents of Dr. Farr today – all quite wedded to the notion that co2 is the cause of the warming of the late 80’s and 90’s. Unfortunately there is lots of money (through taxes) to be made by adhering to this nonsense. I think it will take a lot of ‘cooling’ to cool their ardour for this belief.
Douglas
This year was the coldest for nearly quarter of the century (since 1986).
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-D.htm
The quote from Philip Hammond is slightly inaccurate. What I think he said was ‘as a result of something like climate change’, which is significantly more correct than blaming it specifically on something we are supposed to have done.
Being Australian will you pardon my ignorance in matters concerning salt and grit on roads, but does the government provide for the area around the UEA were there obviously was not going to be any predicted snowfall by 2010?
vukcevic says: December 19, 2010 at 5:09 am
Don’t complain. Just move your fridge magnet, it may help.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/MF-PV.htm
Hmmm. Butterfly effect?
FergalR says: December 19, 2010 at 7:17 am
Minister Hammond gave a interview just now:
“
then we will have to sit down collectively and decide how to rerioritise(sic) our investment in the transport infrastructure to focus it towards winter resilience.”
——————————————————————————–
WTF does he have to talk like this? Can’t he speak in plain English?
Douglas
anybody from Chicago remember why Jayne Bryne lost her re election bid? hehe
Phillip Bratby says:
December 19, 2010 at 2:21 am
Grumbler. I was wondering about the olive farm near Ottery. I haven’t heard anything about it for over a year now.
I am certain that I heard or read ( may have been the Daily Telegraph in the arch idiot Geoffrey Lean’s witterings) in the past two weeks that the guy with the peach farm, olive grove, etc., had gone into liquidation. I remember the warm glow of satisfaction that it gave me at the time! Never did suffer fools gladly.
Steven Mosher says: December 19, 2010 at 11:34 am
anybody from Chicago remember why Jayne Bryne lost her re election bid? hehe
Wasn’t it because she wanted to convert Chicago’s downtown business airport, Meigs Field, into tennis courts? <sarc>Thank goodness we threw her out and saved the airport.</sarc>
To Philip Bratby, TonyB & other chums in Devon:
Here’s the local paper: http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/news/Weather-disrupts-workers-commute/article-3019928-detail/article.html
I lived & worked in Devon in the early 1990’s, so I know Exeter, Budleigh-Salterton, and other towns/areas very well! Lovely area, I feel so sorry for all you folks!!
“MartinGAtkins says:
December 19, 2010 at 5:18 am
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.”
And did you see the projected output for Monday? 104MW!!!! I can’t be bothered to work out the exact percentage as no calculator handy but it’s less than 5% of capacity. Just what you need in this extreme cold when demand rockets up.
I imagine that Old sparky in Private Eye is Christopher Booker. My copy hasn’t arrived as the postman has given up but I am always eager for it to appear.
By the way, where I live, the council is experimenting with adding sugar to the salt, to make it stick to the road and last longer. No doubt it will stick to the underside of my car for longer and aid corrosion.
When you hear what Hammond said, it was “due to climate change, or something”. Those last two words, which are very telling, have been omitted by the press – funny old thing.
The graph noted below is a graph taken from a paper called Predictions of Global Mean Temperatures & IPCC Projections by Girma Orssengo and was previously posted on WUWT . It is a mathematical model or over-fit empirical model based on curve fitting for the GLOBAL YEARLY MEAN TEMPERATURE ANOMALY[GMTA]. Although it is not based on any measurable parameters, physics, energy mechanisms or physical realities underlying the equation ,it is still an informative graph to some degree. It is based actual empirical data[hadcrut3] since 1980. There is no guarantee that any future projection of this graph will actually materialize[ neither do the current computer models] however, it may still be useful. It is like the “poor man’s “global temperature model and indicates the following;
* There exists a repetitive 60 year climate cycle of 30 years of warming followed by 30 years of cooling.
*There could be two cooling cycles before we reach 2100 which may dwarf and over-ride any greenhouse gas warming
*It is probably more useful and accurate in the short term [next 10-30 years]
*We have peaked on the previous warm cycle and seem to be headed for possible cooling for the next several decades to about 2030
*The just past warm period is similar to other past warm periods that seem to occur naturally
*It seems to be validated by actual observation of measurable data that the planet is actually cooling while IPPC have predicted the opposite
* notice the big dip in temperatures in the 1940’sand 1950’s when the curve last went negative after a warming peak[ like we just had?]
My advise to the Transportation Secretary – cut back your expensive green energy projects, keep you fossil fuel power plants running until they have to be replaced due to age [but convert to clean coal] and with savings buy UK proper snow and ice clearing equipment for the roads,cities ,airports and railroads . Just think how much money has been lost to date for not having them for the 4 past winters now and there is a high probabilty that more of this weather is coming for the next several decades.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/predictions-of-gmt.pdf
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/image2.jpg
Thanks ‘George’ and ‘Jock’ for the energy links. I can access bmreports (Neta) but the tables and graphs say ‘no info. available’. Is it my Mac. or are they too embarrassed to show the figures.
Regards from snowy Wales.
For those asking about how the UK’s wind farms have been performing in the last few weeks, on Dec 6th 2010 at 5.30pm, when GB demand reached 59.7GW, the max output from all the GB windfarms was a paultry 193 MW. On Dec 7th, iirc the peak at 5.30pm was 59.9GW and the total wind contribution was c. 126MW.
(These at least show consistency – the peak demand in winter 2009-10 (29th December) was 57GW, and the total contribution from windmills at this time was 147MW). Brownouts and blackouts are now only a few years away, and millions are already in serious fuel poverty, at least in part due to having to fund the very generous ROC subsidies to the renewable companies and landowners.
The total installed capacity for UK windfarms is now about 4.2GW, but I notice NETA suggests the maximum available output is about 3GW. I assume the missing GW is due to there always being 1/4 of the windmills shutdown for essential maintenance/ repair. Also worth noting that the maximum GB grid demand forecast for winter 2010-11 was 55GW, which has already been exceeded more than a few times.
As for the maximum output from wind in recent weeks, I haven’t been checking regularly, but the most I have seen them manage is about 400MW.
As for the farmer who went into liquidation after planting olive trees in Devon, well the same fate has struck the hotelier on the south-side of Loch Tay (Ardeonaig), who planted 400 or so vines, as he was hoping to start make Scottish wine in a few years time. Not sure how cold it was in Ardeonaig last winter, but temperatures here got to -20C, and there were reports of -22C nor far away in Glen Lyon and -24C in Rannoch. So far this winter we have had a few -16C s.
Oh, like in Norway, we also use poles to mark high level roads in Scotland so that the ploughs know where they are.
I mentioned it before, summer snow in Australia. Well, surprise surprise, its been reported in the Australian MSM.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/summer-snow-falls-at-perisher-20101220-192bg.html
Patrick Davis says:
December 19, 2010 at 3:53 pm
I mentioned it before, summer snow in Australia. Well, surprise surprise, its been reported in the Australian MSM.
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/summer-snow-falls-at-perisher-20101220-192bg.html
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Patrick, this is unusual but certainly not unknown. It has happened at least once before in the last 15 or so years that I know of – and that was bang on Christmas.
I live a couple of hours drive away from there (Canberra), and light snow has been reported around the region here as well. Not good for farmers, whose summer crops are not keen on snow.
Ralph says:
December 19, 2010 at 4:14 am with link to photo
“ the caverns they create while extracting this salt …”
In the USA there are numerous salt mines from NE Ohio on to the SW toward the middle of the country. This is a clue to the seas that once occupied the region. I’ve not been in a salt mine (only a zinc and silver mine in Idaho and so the structure is different). Movies I have seen of a salt mine near Cleveland, OH that goes out under Lake Erie show a grid of about 33 meters wide and leaving pillars of the same – so you have a square pillar.
In the St. Louis region they use old mines as warehousing and a few tourist attractions. Links:
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discovery/35563-howstuffworks-show-episode-9-salt-storage-video.htm
Visit one:
http://www.undergroundmuseum.org/index.php
old44.
UEA has had snow in the past – I was there in the late 80’s. Fond memories of ‘controlled’ slides in an old 1L (well 998cc) Mini Metro…
BTW if you want to see ‘pro’ sliding – get a taxi in Stockholm in mid winter…
Kate
Thank you for that very well written report on the Cancum conference, from the viewpoint of the true believer.
You put the case very well.
There is only one small problem with your analysis.
That’s the bit about the economics of switching from old style energy generation and vehicle propulsion, to less economic alternatives.
Certain companies are jumping into this with their ears back because they expect to get a good return on their investment, before the scales fall from the eyes of the politicans providing the essential subsidies and restrictions on more economic industries.
To me, that’s a very big gamble, as the scientific evidence supporting the rather strange idea that CO2 is causing “catastropic dangerous global climate disruption” (there I hope I have that right) is now being shown to have little or no basis in reality.
I’m not much of a gambler.
I’m in the process of reviewing my investment portfolio with a view of selling shares in companies that are wasting their capital on foolish dreams.
how’s your investment portfolio going these days?
What about catastropic future potential losses from the collapse of uneconomic investments?
Do you remember the DOT COM bubble?
Time to get practical.
Mike Lockwood interview on Channel 4 News – Sun affects Jet Stream.
http://bcove.me/nfvx2rjo