London Mayor, Boris Johnson, writes in The Telegraph:
From: The weather prophets should be chucked in the deep end
For more than 20 years now, we have been told that this country was going to get hotter and hotter and hotter, and that global warming was going to change our climate in a fundamental way. Do you remember that? We were told that Britain was going to have short, wet winters and long, roasting summers. It was going to be like 1976 all over again, with streakers at Lord’s and your Mr Whippy melting before you could even lick it, and Hyde Park scorched into a mini Kalahari.
They said we were never going to have snow again, and that we should prepare for southern England to turn gradually into a Mediterranean world. There were going to be olive groves in the Weald of Kent, and the whole place was going to be so generally broiling in summer that no one would be able to move between noon and 4pm, after which people would come out to play boules and sip pastis, to the whine of a mandolin, in the dusty square that had once been a village green.
The prophecy sounds so attractive. What was the downside to this transformation?
Oh, if only.
This isn’t the first time he’s expressed this, he quoted Piers Corbyn during the winter as the basis for thinking things are going cold in the near future (before the MET Office prediction was revised).
they might orchestrate a scandal to oust him for this
Nice one, Boris.
Perhaps they take out one of those “green” loans, and get the pool insulated, tee hee.
Better still, there must be an entrepreneur who can make a device that allows the pool to be rapidly heated to sauna temperatures with fossil fuels, by hooking it up to the Chelsea-tractor in the driveway.
could he have a word with his boss, Cameron, and get him to lay off the Koolaid?? otherwise we’ll be carpeted in windmills, in 2014 the red eco-loons will get back in and that’ll be that for Brittania.
Well, don’t worry, world, Barack is on the case and has a plan to stop the warming and avert the crisis!
Lucky world!
/ or not
AleaJactaEst, we’re already carpeted in turbines. Britain has more turbines than the rest of the world put together! A fact that shocked me.
Being a mandolinist of note, I would chafe slightly at the unfavorable light impugned by his Lordship. Only slightly, though.
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley at 11:21 am:
“AleaJactaEst, we’re already carpeted in turbines. Britain has more turbines than the rest of the world put together! A fact that shocked me.”
They aren’t “Turbines”, they are Wind Mills.
Boris is the smartest of smart cookies and, make no mistake, he is going to be Prime Minister soon.
He is ever so gradually putting water between his image and the phrase ‘global warming’.
Boris is a highly significant influence on the chattering classes so this is obviously a good thing but by crikey it’s painfully slow to watch.
At this conversion rate it will be another 5 years before BoJo is clearly a ‘skeptic’.
Welllllll….I sure am happy for the searing heat and 3 feet of wet “drought” in my front yard. Glad the oceans stopped rising. Why can’t these “people” be charged with crimes against humanity?
Oh.And anybody wondering about the flooding in Calgary(and Devon,Edmonton,Rocky,Lethbridge,etc). I guess the history books do not go back to 1895. Who woulda thunk weather history started last week?!?!
The bottom line for the Met is that all their chanting and rattle-shaking over global warming / climate change has contributed absolutey nothing to their accuracy at forecasting the weather – which is what true Brits *really* want to know about.
Granted this is a UK politician, he’s a lot more reasonable on this topic, and some others, than the run of UK politicians. A glimmer of hope for the Motherland?
The climate is changing so fast our children’s children won’t know the warmth of a summer day.
/sarc
How Huffpo sees it: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/26/britain-climate-change-risks-study_n_1233133.html
How the Grauniad sees it: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2010/jan/06/cold-snap-climate-sceptics
How the blogosphere sees it: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2013/03/global-warming-bites-britain-in-the-arse-freezing-weather-kills-thousands-of-pensioners/
I see a class action: aggrieved English pool-owners against the global warming prophets and the erroneous meteorologists who have, frankly, been taking the piscine.
Good old Boris.
I hope not – people are already complaining about the lack of warming and return to the dank chill of their youth. As bad as the climate is according to the alarmongers the weather has been pretty good. Maybe when people realize all their wasted billion$ will only bring back year-around moss they’ll rethink the problem.
For dp:
Unfortunately what you think is sarcasm is very possibly true. While the fools prance about hollowing about agw, the very real climate change worry is ICE, and more ice, and still more ice.
Very good comment otherwise.
BTW: How are wineyards doing which had been established all over the south of Britain over the past 15 years?
Last years’s harvest must have yielded a spectacular vinegar – and this year’s is well on it’s way to even surpass that quality, me thinks.
Q: Will disillusioned british wineyard-owners be eligible for financial compensation by the Met Office for their less-than-sparkling long-term weather-forecasts…?
The Ghost Of Big Jim Cooley says:
June 24, 2013 at 11:21 am
AleaJactaEst, we’re already carpeted in turbines. Britain has more turbines than the rest of the world put together! A fact that shocked me.
————————————————————-
Britannia insula est.
Until the next ice age, when the ruins of North Sea windmills will stand quaintly upon the uplands of a resurgent Doggerland.
stacase says:
June 24, 2013 at 11:28 am
“They aren’t “Turbines”, they are Wind Mills.”
It say’s “2 new 2MW turbines” right there on Vestas’ main page. But hey, what do they know.
Here’s Boris from his Oxford days – as a member of the (notorious) Bullingdon Club:
http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2013/05/28/article-2331891-0649E9FB0000044D-415_634x497.jpg
See if you can spot David Cameron (Boris is obvious with his blonde hair).
I like that image. These are our true lords and masters and we are so lucky, here in the UK, to have them running the country and looking after our best interests. NOT.
Having said that, I like what Boris is reported as saying here – a lot – and I do think he’s a funny, articulate and likeable fellow. I’m just saying he’s very much part of the establishment as well, so watch out!
Probably off-topic but worth mentioning:
I’ve been noticing in Russian news and on Russian web sites about a huge June snowstorm in China. Google search gives several articles on this subject on English-language Chinese sites, and one short video on AOL (http://on.aol.com/video/summer-snow-falls-in-northwest-china-517829742) but no articles on Western English-language sites.
Careful guys…I admire dear old Boris for his views on warming, I really do, but here’s a word about Boris in days gone by…. [whisper it]…he was once a warm-monger…]
http://toryaardvark.com/2013/06/24/the-new-face-of-climate-change-a-stick-man/
Ha ha.
That article was pure local politics, but cute.
Per Alexander Feht, there is a lot of news that doesn’t make it to the BBC – and even European news sites. Google News for ‘MOL Comfort’, a 8000 teu container ship, which broke her back last week, in pirate infested waters, for example.
Boris – well, he projects himself well.
He’s actually proven to be quite a good Mayor of London [not the Lord Mayor – that’s the Dick Whittington one, for the City of London, the Square Mile].
And London weather – I’m sitting here, indoors, in late June, with a fleece on, my honeysuckle has got aphids, and it’ll be 6 degrees tonight.
Probably not a frost.
Auto
Boris for POTUS.
Yes it’s possible, his birth certificate checks out!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson
And I believe he ‘earned’ 3 pounds a word for what we have all been saying here for years. Who do we apply to for our payments?
I thought Boris did rather well as a guest on Top Gear, available on YouTube
The snowstorm in China (Bayanbulak) happened in an area above 8,000′ so may not be unexpected. What is unexpected is precip of any kind as there has been a drought and desertification there. The snow level here in the Seattle area is 9,500′ right now and we’re a marine environment. It is snowing on Mt. Rainier at 8’000′ as I write this: http://www.atmos.washington.edu/data/rainier_report.html
An older article on efforts to reverse the desertification process in the Bayanbulak area – looks familiar. http://www.china.org.cn/environment/news/2008-09/09/content_16420787.htm
My point, I guess, is to look beyond headlines.
Justthinkin, I found a document at the University of Calgary discussing flooding after 2005. In it, the history of the landowners in the flooded areas is recounted. They did NOT want the city to declare their property (all of it flooded this week) as being dangerous because it would have affected their property values.
Calgary’s Bow River peak flow on Friday was 1458 M3/sec, which is definitely high and is almost double the 2005 peak at 791 M3/sec. However, I don’t see them mentioning 1932’s 1520 M3/sec or 1929’s 1320 M3/sec. So, in fact, Friday’s peak was not the “worst flood ever”, as is being claimed everywhere I look, it was exceeded in 1932 and almost matched in 1929. And, just to put that in better perspective, the Glenmore Reservoir had just been built in 1932 and was being filled, so that flow rate completely excludes the Elbow’s input, which was zero.
(Calgary has two rivers, the Bow and the Elbow, which join downtown. For reasons not entirely clear to me, the zoo is on an island right where the two rivers join, almost guaranteeing the eventuality of catastrophic flooding at some point. The Elbow is dammed and the resulting reservoir is the city’s main water supply, the Bow is dammed several miles out of town at Ghost Lake, which provides some flow control.)
So much is wrong with the narrative in Calgary, and mentioning it right now is going to be seen as heartless as people are still shoveling muck out of their basements and, unfortunately in some areas, main floors. However, like 90% of Calgarians my home is far away from the rivers and on high ground.
Calgary’s Saddledome, home of the NHL Flames, is deeply flooded and very damaged. However, during the time it was being built there was quite a fuss being made by many people about how stupid its location is. The thing is right beside a river that floods almost yearly, and it’s below river level. In the end, objections were simply ignored, and the ugly thing was built where they wanted it anyway.
Every area of the city currently flooded has done so before, and will again unless the city embarks on the program they should have years ago to prevent it.
The creek in Canmore that turned “from a trickle to a raging torrent”, washing away homes, has always been a major floodway for snowmelt flash floods. They built an entirely new development there, apparently ignoring the warnings of residents who KNEW that creek floods from time to time. The main part of the town was relatively unaffected. Highway 1 (Transcanada highway) being washed away there has happened several times in the last few years, the area is called “Dead Man’s Flats”, and it is a floodplain. The highway gets washed away, they rebuild it.
The “completely devastated” town of High River is an even more horrible story. The very name of the town should tell you what to expect. They flood yearly, and always have. Because it’s now considered a “bedroom community”, just 20 miles south of Calgary, there have been large residential developments there. I and most others here who have watched the floods over the years know that the new neighborhoods were built in areas that have flooded regularly in the past, but they used to be farmland. I can’t blame the victims, they bought their beautiful homes after being assured they were built high enough to not flood. I do, however, blame the town and the developers for the disaster. It was, sadly, inevitable.
Over the years there have been changes to riverbanks and neglect of flood control measures, since the area hasn’t been exposed to the catastrophic floods experienced in the late 20s and early 30s. Somehow people got into the mindset that the past was over and floods wouldn’t be as bad anymore. All you have to do now is check the news to see how wrong they were.
Meanwhile, everywhere I go I’m seeing people blame it all on “climate change”, and frankly it enrages me. This is not a “change”, it’s a repeat of past weather patterns. We’ve had 80 years to prepare for the inevitable. “We” failed to do that.
Never mind Boris, I was amazed to see the BBC airing “The Secret Life of the Sun” last night, and including a good few minutes at the end devoted to Livingston of Penn’s work showing the decline in sunspots. Penn got a good long interview, and we had pictures of the frozen Thames shown, and pronouncements that Europe could get colder, I was quite amazed.
The first comment on The Telegraph thread after Boris’s article is priceless. It begins:
“The reason our local weather has been so foul lately is due to GLOBAL warming.”
He’s not the only one saying this. There has been a noticeable cooling of the gung ho climate alarmism in the past 3 years, although a Guardian editorial this morning was a notable exception!
It’s hard not to be more skeptical, given the run of cold winters since 2009 and the run of fairly damp squib summers since about 2005. People aren’t idiots and, whilst they can be fooled by a plausible idiot when the politician is unknown, they have a very low tolerance of lunatics, which in British terms includes scaremongering without due cause. After all, we’ve had the bird flu, Y2K, Iraq WMD etc etc which have proven to be rubbish, so there’s a much lower threshold for disbelieving public pronouncements now.
Oh yeah, here’s a link to the BBC Documentary featuring Livingston & Penn’s work in the last 8 minutes… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6T5TQa8MlE
According to the BBC, the sun may exert a more powerful effect on our climate than previously thought… Lol…
Max_B says:
June 24, 2013 at 1:32 pm
“Never mind Boris, I was amazed to see the BBC airing “The Secret Life of the Sun” last night,”
They’re still pushing warmiscientist conjecture, at the moment predictions of higher Monsoon variability through anthropogenic CO2.
Before they have purged themselves of Harabin there will be a new Fabian government that will turn them into a Richard Black class agitation organ again. At that time they will have to transmit their propaganda intermittently though; the UK will not be able to afford enough batteries to buffer the wind power.
I saw “The Secret Life of the Sun” last night as well, and I could hardly believe mine ears. It was the first time ever that I have heard such a report from the BBC. It could have come straight from Watts Up With That – Solar Cycles, decline in the number of sunspots, decline in the magnetic field, we have seen this before, 350 years ago, we could be in for a Grand Minimum, the last time it happened the Thames froze over……and none of the usual ‘but these are denier views’ etc. Well worth watching. Max_B has the link above.
Oh, and yes, good old Boris. He’s a clever fellow. He would stop this windmill madness if he became Prime Minister and start building coal fired power stations because if we have a Grand Minimum we’ll need them.
Here is Boris Johnson back on the 19th December 2010 slowly coming out of the closet in an article about Piers Corbyn.
“The man who repeatedly beats the Met Office at its own game” (now paywalled)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/8213058/The-man-who-repeatedly-beats-the-Met-Office-at-its-own-game.html
Now that he has been bombarded with reports of the temperature standstill he feels it’s now OK to finally come out. His thoughts at the top of this WUWT post is what most people in the UK remember reading about what winters would be like. Today they feel that the climate scientists really didn’t have a clue afterall. Enter Viner et. al..
The Thames froze over in Jan/Feb/March 1963. I drove a Mini Cooper ‘S’ onto the ice at Old Windsor and down to Runnymede and back. The Times trumpeted about a ‘New Ice Age’ that same year.
And our water company, Thames Water, spent a fortune encouraging its gardening-loving customers to grow water-efficient plants.
Boris Johnson has one of the most interesting backgrounds in UK politics. You get the idea that he is English to the core – that is the product of a good education. He was born in New York City. He is a great-grandson of Ali Kemal Bey, a liberal Turkish journalist and the Interior Minister in the government of Damat Ferid Pasha, Grand Vizier of the Ottoman Empire. His grandmother is French and he has been interviewed in French. He has described himself as a “one-man melting pot” with an ancestry comprised of Jews, Muslims and Christians.
Boris Johnson has also said that the we are ruled by the laws of physics and not the laws of economics. It is a shame that during the 80s his party led the charge away from manufacturing towards ‘service industries’, thereby removing the language of manufacturing, which is rooted in Physics, and replaced it with the language of sales and finance. It feels that science has also become a service industry, having to justify itself economically, as there are now almost no other measures other than economic.
Max_B
I stopped watching the video “The Secret Life of the Sun” at point 09:52 when they showed the path of totality passing from east to west across the sunlit face of the globe.
Here is a video showing the path Concorde took on its epic chase of the Moon shadow across the Sahara Desert on 30th June 1973 Total solar eclipse 1973-06-30 – Concorde hunted by moon shadow
Good old BBC still getting the science the wrong way round.
So sad…
Boris Johnson is probably the only honest man in British politics, he speaks his mind even if it goes against popular opinion. Who else in politics has had the b@lls to say that AGW is wrong and is simply not happening? I think he would make a fantastic PM with at least four terms of office. He thinks as an individual, not as a pawn to the politically correct society we have become!
DirkH says (June 24, 2013 at 1:48 pm)
“At that time they will have to transmit their propaganda intermittently though; the UK will not be able to afford enough batteries to buffer the wind power”.
—-
Ah, yes, back to the halcyon Winter of 1973 -74, when we turned off the single campergaz stove and tiptoed carefully upstairs by candlelight at 10:30pm, as all TV broadcasts had shutdown to “save fuel”. I dutifully followed government advice to “clean my teeth in the dark”, and (being very young) wondered why the thought of sharing a bath with someone would evoke a smirk and nudge-nudge response from nearby adults.
“Happy is the country that has no electricity”, as someone didn’t say.
andrewmharding says:
June 24, 2013 at 4:13 pm
Boris Johnson is probably the only honest man in British politics, he speaks his mind even if it goes against popular opinion. Who else in politics has had the b@lls to say that AGW is wrong and is simply not happening?
===========================================
Nigel Farage
(Leader of the UK Indepence Party. Anti – EU. Will probably win the most UK seats in next year’s Euro-elections.)
Damn! Independence not Indepence
Philip Mulholland says:
June 24, 2013 at 1:10 pm
Boris for POTUS.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
YES!
He can’t be any worse than Obummer and at least his birth cert is available BEFORE he is elected or even runs….
…..
Seriously he may be the newest puppet being groomed since the CAGW/climate Change is wearing rather thin. I doubt if the elite want UKIP in office.
Wow, Obama is going to be left holding the hot potato of AGW hype.
CodeTech says:
June 24, 2013 at 1:30 pm
Excellent comment. Glad I am not the only one incensed by the rhetoric in Calgary. Premier Redford is screaming “unprecedented” at the top of her lungs.
Hey, Codetech! I’m so glad I finally “heard” your voice, here. Yes, the Alberta flooding was in the normal course of historic weather patterns, but I WAS CONCERNED ABOUT YOU. I gave you a shout out on the thread about (oh, brother, now I can’t remember the technical name LOL) the emergent (but not unprecedented) ring around the earth last week.
Glad to here you are well and never in any danger.
But, next time, callyourmotherthesecondyougethomeandletherknowyouareokay!
Your WUWT “family” cares!
*************************************************************************
Bob Tisdale, thanks for sharing [at 1:43PM today]. LOLOLOL! Yes, everyone, didn’t you hear? The United Kingdom (excluding Northern Ireland) is not just an island nation anymore. It is now a planet unto itself, or, rather, a moon, orbiting the earth.
Yeees, ol’ boy, THAT’s what the windmills (euphemistically (wishfully?) called “turbines” by Vesla (?) et. al.) are for and THAT’s why there had to be so many. Takes a lot of energy to travel through space!
It’s called: The LAPUTA Project. (Life’s a Plum pUdding Traveling by Air) — that cozy title was to get all the tea and scones crowd on board. (Boris Johnson can work this angle (with the Fantasy Science Club), per Jimbo’s intriguing bio above, by styling himself “A One-man Jam Pot.”)
Ha, ha, ha, ha, haaaaaa!
Yes. I do know the difference between being here and what I hear. LOL. Yeah. English is my first language. I do stuff like that all the time. Its just the way my brain does it’s quick-silver work — LOL.
Kitefreak says:
June 24, 2013 at 12:30 pm
I like that image. These are our true lords and masters and we are so lucky, here in the UK, to have them running the country and looking after our best interests. NOT.
So, you’d rather have Milliband, architect of the Climate Change Act, in charge, would you?
Oh dear.
It’s all bush’s fault.
Janice Moore, and David Ball… I can assure you if I was to comment everything I want to, Anthony would be forced to suspend me… lol (wouldn’t hurt to have a topic about it, hint hint)
Yeah, my house is over 100 feet above river level. I posted pictures here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.471027686311857.1073741830.100002138882495&type=1&l=37b3e56fc0
I drove past most of those areas today, none of the flooded vehicles are even wet anymore, so the river levels are down to manageable again.
Boris is first and foremost a highly skilled political operative so we should not assume he’s entirely sincere. But he is also highly influential and appears to be positively distancing himself from the AGW crowd. WUWT readers should be pretty happy.
Boris is also a wonderful writer and damned entertaining fellow in general and I for one would be happy to see him move into No 10!
CodeTech says:
June 24, 2013 at 1:30 pm
My exact sentiments. I live in Tuxedo, and made the statememt on facebook: “Man who study river no live on floodplain”. The warmista went bonkers. They wanted the disaster to be theirs.
I am now realizing that even if it got so cold that ice sheets started to grow in Canada and Siberia, the global warmists would say “See, see, this is what climate change does! We have reached the tipping point and now all is lost.”
Wind Mills are a good gauge of how Marxist infested a country is(political/regulation class)?
You have to love Boris. The “Thinking Man’s Idiot”.
Boris was born in the USA (New York) so he can legitimately run for POTUS.
milodonharlani says:
June 24, 2013 at 12:13 pm
. . .
“Until the next ice age, when the ruins of North Sea windmills will stand quaintly upon the uplands of a resurgent Doggerland.”
That made me smile. Then I thought – they could still work. Then I thought – what about those of the floating type? Oops!
@Kitefreak June 24, 2013 at 12:30 pm:
“Having said that, I like what Boris is reported as saying here – a lot – and I do think he’s a funny, articulate and likeable fellow. I’m just saying he’s very much part of the establishment as well, so watch out!”
There is a reality in politics:
They don’t throw you under the bus until the powers that be decide you have become an albatross around their necks, one that they see no need to have around anymore.
If someone on the inside like Boris is panning global warming, it is a telling sign. Be on the lookout for more SOON – and for the pace to pick up.
I’d suggest that we follow the money – see if funding begins to dry up. That time may be coming soon. People in consistently colder-than-predicted places like the UK are exactly the ones to begin to tighten that belt.
I’m just sayin’.
Steve Garcia
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson is not an ordinary run of the mill Brit, fed up of ‘newt Livingstone’ , I voted for Boris on both occasions, and to be fair he has turn out far better mayor than I expected.
His quotes are original, funny etc…
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson
judge by yourself.
Father was a Euro MP, younger brother Jo is an MP, currently he is the head of the PM Cameron’s policy unit at No.10.
“They don’t throw you under the bus until the … they see no need to have [you] around anymore.
If someone on the inside like Boris is panning global warming, it is a telling sign. [Steve Garcia at 10:34PM 6/24/13]
Good point.
LOL, maybe Mayor Johnson will do with the Fantasy Science Club what B. Hussein Obama did with his pastor of 20 years, Jeremiah (“…, D–N America!”) Wright. “Oh, (patronizing chuckle) well, those were just some crazy scientists. We let them amuse themselves in the tower out at East Anglia. We never really believed their wild tales.”
Well said Boris. Good man to replace Cameron the global warmist.
Boris Johnson is a pro poly. He was for it before he was agen it. But, at least we can thank him for finally adjusting to reality.
Note also, the Met Office has the lowest ice extent minimum at 3.4Mkm^2 for this year out of all forecasters in the June edition. Man they do let it all hang out, I’ll give them that. Of, course this could be considered a big turn-around given they believed there would be no ice and snow by about this time. Good on you Boris!
Not unless we get the start of a “1740 event” next year.
(But, if we do–wow!)
So was I. I came to this site years ago expecting to poke holes in everyone’s arguments. It was the other way round. Then I started asking questions, very polite questions, at the warmist sites I used to go to. That’s how I discovered the fact of internet censorship. So I started reading, and reading, and reading. I’m a warmist no longer.
To: To (re: 1:03PM 6/25/13)
Too cool, To! Thanks for sharing. You made my day.
Hey Codetech- from one Albertan to another, there are studies back to 1973 that showed downtown Calgary would flood with a 70 year flood. Ouch. What would happen with a 100 or 200 year flood? In the attached document the 1973 Montreal Engineering study 70 year flood for the Bow above the Elbow was 2270 cubic metres per second? You mentioned it peaked at 1458 so things could get a LOT worse. The update says a flow of 1420 cubic metres per second could be exceeded 4.5% of the time (22 year return) and they made the 1932 flood an 85 year flood. That means we can expect more of these floods regardless of any climate change. There is a lack of references in this 2010 U of C lecture series but it is clear flooding in Calgary is an expected occurrence from an engineering and planning perspective.
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~hayashi/geog515/lectures/515_0609.pdf
Looks to me like the Mayor got it bang on. I would chuck most of those forecasters in the Thames. Lol!