Readers may recall my story from last night about the Met office and their spectacular failure of a forecast for April. See Met Office April Forecast: “…drought impacts in the coming months are virtually inevitable.”.
Today I got confirmation of the PR being foisted on the UK public surrounding that forecast, and I don’t think even Josh could outdo this one, it is one for the books.
This is British humor at its absolute finest (FAIL added by AW):
Photo by Delemere Lafferty with a h/t to commenter RichieP
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Humour seems to be the key to success in life. This site has humour in abundance, yet the subject of climate is still taken very seriously. I have found most AGW sites, the Oil Drum, the Nazi party, Bill Maher, etc. are all devoid of humour. Never take yourself too seriously.
I suppose I’ll have to say it, but you can’t help getting the feeling that God is on our side …
Pointman
Easily solved. From now on instead of calling it drought, it will be referred to as “wetness change.”
It’s been droughting heavily in April and it looks like May will be more of the same.
I wonder when or if the hosepipe ban be lifted. In a few days time ground frosts are supposenly making a comeback… in May. That’s pretty unique no matter what the Met might say.
I’ve been getting updates from my daughter in Hull, and she says what others have mentioned, that due to the terrible drought, the ground is so hard that all the water is running off instead of soaking in. The people are looking out their windows and laughing. Yeah. Sure. 🙂
Len says: “The British that won the Battle of Britain were brave patriots…”
That they were. Wait. The British won? What makes you think that? Isn’t the UK ruled from German-occupied Belgium?
AllanJ said “..I believe some of the forecasters I dealt with were the same ones who briefed pilots during WWII..”
My late Grandfather worked for the Met Office in Africa in WWII and post war in Germany attached to the RAF. At that time the MetO was fully integrated into the RAF and later becaame a division of the minsitry of defence. While the MoD is the political and procurement arm of Defence the MetO was at the time purely Operational in it’s aims – e.g. briefing Eisenhower regularly before D-Day. Like many private companies, gov depts want prestige and rewards – you don’t get many of those working with the masses civilian or military, which in my view is one of the many reasons most gov depts become political rather concentrate on the worthy but dull – being the civil servants they were meant to be.
mike seward says:
May 1, 2012 at 11:45 am
Here’s what I was told by a New Zealander. It’s POME, and it stands for Poor Old Mother England. It refers to the poor b@stards who miss England, or consider it superior, and wish they were there. It’s more likely Kiwis are POMEs, a lot of them trying too hard to be British to distinguish themselves from Aussies. Except they have this special fondness for ovines. Ah, yes, 10 million people and 30 million sheep. Now that’s heaven.
Here’s what a discussion from the Guardian had to say:
Why are British people called poms?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-59927,00.html
The false etymology as an acronym of “Prisoner Of Mother England” only works for Australia, and ignores the term’s common usage in NZ and South Africa. It makes much more sense for the colonials to refer the homesick Brits or haughty colonials as POMEs -> poms. Of course, you get pommy, if you pronounce the final ‘E’.
When a Brit was elsewhere, he’d reasonably miss home, and (at least at one time) he might very well have looked down on the locals. Calling him and locals who pretended to be more British ‘poms’ would have been a great way to describe both. It makes sense to me, but doesn’t make it so.
Look, there is an element of truth in the hard ground/runoff thing. We had the same comments made when the 7 year drought across much of Australia began to break in 2009. But, it is very location specific – forests take up heavy rain better than bare ground, the topography matters, and anyway, the water may or may not run off into a storage facility. Generalisations are worse than useless in this regard.
Far more to the point are the common factors between the UK and Australian droughts – that no significant storage has been built for the last 30 years because of the convergence of interest between greenies and governments that would rather throw bread at the punters than fund the capacity to grow grain.
Water conservation has been used as an excuse to put up prices, introduce restrictions and reduce drought resilience. Apparently, there is a finite amount of water in the world, and we need to use it as little as possible so that there will be some left for our grandchildren …
After decades of people paying “water rates” up to the late ’70’s to the Nationalised water system. The Governments took all the money but never reinvested. Everything Nationalised was run down, all profits were taxed and everything turned to shit.
You name it. dirty electric generators, rackety rail, leaky water, militant coal miners, British Leyland cars, Expensive but crap steel nobody wanted. It was almost endless. Politicians should of been impaled at traitors gate.
Every year the UK had water shortages with no exception. A National disgrace! Now the cretins in power have added to the national populace en masse from abroad but there are no new rains to pay for it.
Maggie Thatcher fixed the pipes so she could sell off the water works to private companies. Well, the private companies are now doing what the old Governments did. Taking the money and fixing nothing.
My garden is like the Somme. Where’s my Global warming?
There is dry ice and wet ice: that bus add is about (PC) wet rain , not dry rain. Since ~2010 any extreme weather was considered more proof of CAGW. From today onwards any weather event becomes automatic proof of CAGW.
/sarc off
CS says:
May 1, 2012 at 12:08 pm
Don’t choke on your laugh, CS, but the universally recognized panacea for drought is always rain. Not another electricity-intensive algorithm-without-clouds model run by some “weather” bureau computer. Rain! You know–the stuff that’s coming down in drops. Very abundant drops. In the UK.
Dought is not a “Climate” term, CS. It’s lack of rain. So speaking of “misinformed”…. (even stunning).
The best way to predict British weather is not by a Terra flop computer running of some political wish list but by a scarily accurate terror flop abacus:-
It’s an abacus with one bead on it. You tip it one way — Rain!
Tip it the other way — No rain!
It’s never been wrong yet.
To me this is just further evidence that our would-be tyrants see less and less point in trying to hide their true (deceptive) nature. Too many people are now wise to the lies, the deceit, the endless propaganda, the theft of money and freedoms. But how will this all play-out? There’s an air of desperation about from the propagandists… I don’t like their chances: people are getting angry – and they know who the culprits are…
Eduardo Ferreyra says:
May 1, 2012 at 1:08 pm
“Why do the Brits announce droughts on buses?”
Because Brits are used to do the weirdest things -they still keep an expensive and useless Royal House.
—————————————————————————————————————————
Pathetic comment, clearly Eduardo has no clue what he is babbling on about, the British Royal Family are extremely popular with the citizens of the UK, they also bring vast amounts of money into the economy and they each perform on average 250+ official engagements every single year, in the Queens case over 300+ which is not bad for someone who is aged 85, tell me Eduardo what have you done in your life that comes close to matching the achievements of the British Royal Family?
“I don’t like their chances: people are getting angry – and they know who the culprits are…”
Quite.
But, along with an ocean of water descending, the UK has an unarmed population.
Fortunately we have the impartial police service to protect us…oh wait…they are being privatised as I type.
Oh well, the armed forces are there…ahhhh…..no aircraft carriers, and no aircraft for the ones being built, so we’re going to use French aircraft and pilots ?
Army….fighting too many wars abroad, gotta keep them busy somehow.
Oh well, it’s nearly holiday time….let’s try the fighting for freedom stuff later shall we ?
The reservoirs were full even before the rain – March figures for Thames water at 97% full. Rain came in April. The rivers were low, but they aren’t now. It’s criminal that Britain should bandy the word ‘drought’ about when it is nothing like a real drought.
http://www.thameswater.co.uk/cps/rde/xchg/prod/hs.xsl/12826.htm
The bus picture is a great sight gag. We have had the wettest April for a century, allegedly, but there is still a drought, allegedly. This is the official line, so that when we don’t heed the instructions to economise on water use, and it gets a bit short, we can be blamed, not the authorities or utility providers (that’s the Thames Water logo on the left of the bus poster).
I think the difficulty of re-wetting dry soils may be overstated, but try watering a dried-out houseplant in peat compost to see this effect. What is real is the volume of water which will be retained in soil until it reaches field capacity. After that, once the soil reaches saturation, and precipition exceeds infiltration – run-off goes to surface drainage. We live in a small island, with nowhere further from the sea than about 80 miles. So fresh water doesn’t have far to go to get lost.
UK reservoirs may be full-ish but its aquifers are depleted. Until water tables at boreholes are back to normality I guess water use restrictions will stay.
Serious droughts – like the 1930’s drought in the US – are prolonged periods of reduced rainfall. They are typically interrupted by spells of rain, but that does not mean the drought is over.
In the UK much of the water supply comes from boreholes, and it is claimed that this source of water is still suffering from two years of reduced rainfall.
So it is credible that there is still a drought.
However, it is obvious that the government and the ecological movement were keen to find a drought. When drought was declared in East Anglia, a small area comparable in size and population to the State of Connecticut, many of us Brits – being no more stupid than anyone else – saw it as part of the Climate Change industry. That is confirmed by pronouncements from the Environmental Agency here: on BBC Radio the other day we were told that we must “preserve water for future generations!”
This is out of the same stable as the wheeze (Brit for “trick” or “scam”) of declaring a species “extinct” in some limited area.
We can’t blame Europe/Brussels for this. On Climate Change the UK is the daftest of the whole bunch – but no dafter that the US with its EPA definition of CO2 as a pollutant, for example. Our government and its agencies are often stupid, sometimes self-serving, sometimes Politically Correct, but that is true the world over. We would elect a better government if there was one on offer. Unforunately we have a choice, realistically speaking, between Conservative and Labour, recently described by the leader of an even less attractive minority party here as “two cheeks of the same arse.” (That’s Brit for “ass”.) No doubt many Americans feel the same about the forthcoming Romney-Obama contest.
Two real reasons we have a drought:-
1] The population of this small rock, which already had problems collecting enough water, has increased by a further 5% over the last 10 years, and is now growing exponentially with unchecked immigration. No plan on how we are to provide water to all when the population is expected to reach 120million over the next 50 years.
2] The floods of 10 years ago encouraged greater flood prevention measures in order to compensate for what was seen as permanent climate change due to AGW. These flood prevention measures cause the flow of water in rivers to be faster, allowing rainwater to drain quicker to the sea. This means that when it does rain – the water no longer has time to seep into the aquifers. Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear oh dear. Cure the regular flooding and by design you cause water shortages during dry periods.
Re
John says:
@ur momisugly May 1, 2012 at 11:51 pm
Well, I’m now largely out of touch with Britain and I can’t know how the story ends. But I am sure that force of number will have a lot to do with the outcome, and when it comes to arms, people can be surprisngly industrious, inventive and cooperative. Particularly when push comes to shove. And even more so when they have a common enemy.
“Joseph says:
May 1, 2012 at 11:29 pm”
Thats right. She is so busy she pays tax now. Bravo! Not bad for a bunch of, former, Germans, some of which changed names in WWI. And most of the Crown Jewels are Russian. So much for the British Royal Family.
There are also UK schemes to slow the progression of flood waters to urban areas by creating or re-creating flood reserves on farmland – as on the Tone catchment in Somerset. The system of water control on low lying areas like the Somerset Levels, by means of large ditches and level boards, was already so effective that in the wet autumn of 2001 no towns were flooded, although Taunton was within one inch of partial evacuation. I had a bag packed and was ready to leave Highbridge for the Mendips – but it wasn’t necessary. At Christmas, there were still flooded, unharvested maize fields near Yeovil.
“Ryan says:
May 2, 2012 at 2:13 am”
There is another reason for water issues in the UK, and in particular the south/south east and Thames area. Thames Water was bought (AU$20bil) by Macquarie Bank, an Australian bank often refered to as the “Millionare Maker”. This bank is famous for asset stripping, using companies to borrow large sums of money to pay massive bonuses to shareholders and directors and the like etc, and then leaving that debt to be serviced by customers. Don’t mention infrastructure, maintenance, catchment and supply that just gets in the way of their profits.
Hide the de-rain!
“Why do the Brits announce droughts on buses?”
It’s part of a campaign by the water company to encourage water conservation, there are posters up in the tube (subway) as well. Ironically, last week the Bakerloo line was shut for a day after water ingress caused a roof collapse that partially blocked the tunnel.
A lot of the stuff comingfrom the water co’s and politicoes isn’t necessarily stupidity. It’s being done to protect the “water is scarce” meme that underpins the policy of driving domestic users from fixed charges to metered supplies so that profits can be maximised.
Always follow the money………