Readers of WUWT and millions of climate skeptics have read this article before, and in fact it is likely one of the most cited articles ever that illustrates the chutzpah and sheer hubris on display from a climate scientist who was so certain he could predict the future with certainty. Dr. David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit who famously said:
From the Independent’s most cited article: Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past by Charles Onians:
However, the warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia,within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”.
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
It seems however, that after over 15 years, the Independent has removed that article, and the URL now comes up like this:
Here is what it originally looked like:
Fortunately, I have preserved the entire article as a PDF for posterity:
Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past – The Independent (PDF)
One wonders about the timing, whether it is related to the upcoming COP21 climate confab in Paris, or if it was simply some blunder, oversight, or archive purge on the part of The Independent.
Note: I owe a hat tip to a WUWT reader, whose email/comment seems to be lost in the firehose of communications I get daily. If you are reading, leave a note in comments and I’ll correct this. The reader was Cole Pritchard, who sent the info to my phone via IM, Thanks Cole.
Update: It gets curiouser, searching on The Independent website using their search engine for the phrase “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past” yields only one result for that exact string – a story lambasting the original article that contained the phrase.
Published in the year 2000, I thought maybe the story was just too old, and the Independent simply removed the story to save archive space, or maybe this had to do with some site redesign and the URL simply got broken. Yet when I remove the quote marks to search for the phrase in general, and not exactly, other stories back as far as 1994 about global warming and snow appear:
It seems clear now that the removal was deliberate.
Probably after NASA photographs of the icecaps showed once again, that it’s just not happening.
I have a slight OT question about the sea ice. Having seen the spread of the last couple of years for Arctic Ice was the 1979 to 1985 period anomalously high? Are we looking at the wrong end of the telescope?
Yes.
Read the 1974 CIA report: “A Study of Climatological Research as it Pertains to Intelligence Problems”
That time period was cold enough that governments were concerned about the food supply and the implications
We may already be in a cooling phase. When doing the work for my article Proof: recent temperature trends are not abnormal there was no evidence for any abnormality in the climate except on a 50-60 year time-scale. This could still be random variation, or it could be a cycle. Since then I’ve seen a couple of indications of a 60 year cycle in data and a strong relationship between AMO and glaciers (again on a 60 year cycle). If true, then the peak of the cycle should have occurred around 2010 and if so, we may see a sharp cooling trend after the El Nino ends (next year).
However, added to that is the sunspot cycle. I’m convinced there’s a connection, but not convinced by some of the wilder claims about the extent of the connection. However, that would suggest cooling as well. Rising CO2, now looks like a very insignificant part of climate and I’m beginning to think changes in forestry and land use are a greater impact even than CO2. These however suggest warming. So, I wouldn’t bet my house on cooling, but if anyone wanted to bet a Mid winter swim in the Forth in Scotland – I might go for it.
Well HOORAY! So good to see you post, Gail Combs. Just good to know “our” Gail is still out there, still wielding that flashing, bright, sword for truth.
Well, well. That made my day. #(:))
Yes.
The start year, 1979, was close to the greatest extent of the past century, if not the highest. Might possibly have been higher in 1915-19, but by 1922 the Arctic was melting noticeably.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/plots/icecover/icecover_current_new.png
Found on the WUWT Sea Ice Page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
In case anyone reading this might find this bit of sea ice basics helpful:
Professor Ole Humlum
(here: http://climate4you.com/ (if this link goes to Home and not to Sea Ice page, click on Sea Ice on left menu, then click on “Arctic Sea Ice Area and Thickness” — Latest update to site: November 11, 2015)
Great to hear from you Gail Combs.
Note to Anthony & Moderators & everyone else – the “wayback machine” (or “web archive”) can also be used to resurrect pages and even see when they were modified. The Independent snow prediction article is here, for example: http://web.archive.org/web/20150723090103/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html It’s a very handy way to prove beyond doubt not only that a page existed, but exactly what it’s content was at what time frame.
The site shows every single day the page was crawled and archived over years – just click on the “capture” timeline for the year you’re interested in, and a calendar will pop up showing every time it was captured during that year… then click on whichever day you want and the page as it was on that day will come up.
The ability to predict the future for certain, brings with it the necessary information to circumvent the possibility of that future event happening.
Ergo it cannot be possible to predict the future for certain.
g
“A” does not imply “B”. Consider an ELE-level asteroid detected on a collision course with Earth a year out. We know exactly what’s going to happen and can’t do anything about it.
NOthing to see here…move along, move along.
No more snow? Tell it to the folks in Boston!
Gotta love the fact that you can see the snowpile in Boston on the latest Google imagery update which was done in June.
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.346354,-71.0315357,236m/data=!3m1!1e3
I have the wayback machine address somewhere, saved on a previous post.
I’ll be back in a minute with the wayback archive.
And yes, deleting the article was completely pathetic behaviour.
The commissar vanishes, once again!!!
http://web.archive.org/web/20100209052939/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Encore the Wayback Machine! Gives ‘New Age’ meaning to ‘by the sins of your fathers’ you will be judged’.
Aw, c’mon youse guys. You know I wuz jes’ a’spookin’. Git offa my back!
No doubt Tom Bawden is involved … the berk just pushed this garbage out about ££££ billions ££££ in “subsidies for fossil fuels”.
The sooner Boris Berezofsky tires of his increasingly stupid and unhinged dead tree Chihuahua and has it put down the better.
Adding to what you said, and it’s a pet peeve of mine-is that fossil fuel companies (and thousands of other companies) by and large receive tax breaks, not subsidies- though they receive some. They’re two different things, though the media constantly uses the same term for both. A subsidy, by definition, is the government giving money to an individual or company so as to become viable. A tax break let’s you keep more of what was already yours- nobody is “giving” anything to anybody. Solar and wind receive “subsides”, which is money from the government. Fossil fuel (and you and I) receive mostly tax breaks.
I’m afraid you don’t understand – the government’s position is that ALL money is theirs by definition. ANY part they let you keep is therefore a subsidy!! This applies to more than just companies.
JL as a farmer I represent(sic) that. Much of what is called “subsidies” is depreciation allowances. In years past, you may have heard of “sinking funds” which were intended to allow a person to replace equipment as it wore out. People who use “equipment” to earn income are allowed to depreciate the equipment at rates given by government mandate on the basis that it has a declining value because of time and use. Oil companies are also allowed to depreciate their reservoirs as they are used up and their “assets” decline. That isn’t a subsidy. If you were doing a “cash” business, you would subtract the whole of your asset purchases in the year of purchase offsetting your Income, perhaps making it negative. But government doesn’t like that so they set rules for depreciation along with Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) though Tax rules and GAAP rules do not always go together resulting in two sets of income statements, one for Tax, and one for GAAP. Not usually an issue for individuals or small companies but corporations must be aware of the rules and differences.
With resource industries it can be a bit more complicated than the above, but that is the general idea.
The media and small activists generally don’t get it (or pretend they don’t) though the people running big greens most certainly do.
You are ignoring that the value they declare the property for becomes a base that the city, county, state etc. can tax them for. Kind of hard to declare that it is not worth that much when they use that for its value for there tax write off. Thus YOU pay les city, county, state property taxes.
Further, regardless of what the taxes are – YOU, the CONSUMER always pay the taxes. PERIOD. you may think they pay the taxes BUT YOU are giving them the money to pay the taxes. Why do so many people have trouble understanding that extremely simple fact.
You think yo have problems !! Here in Germany having worked until 65 years and paid taxes all my life, I find now I must pay taxes at a higher rate on my government pension,
Those tax breaks are also the same as those for any other primary resource extraction business. Whether it’s “evil oil” or “good germanium” they are the same thing.
When you go the route of these people – well, just how much is the government “subsidizing” GE by letting them take depreciation for their wind turbine manufacturing equipment? Or the wind farms depreciating those turbines once they are installed? Let’s eliminate those “subsidies” too, eh?
Reminds me of the way people used to whine about tax loop holes.
Turns out that the definition of a loop hole was “a tax deduction that I don’t qualify for”.
Wonderful, illuminating thread of comments starting with jl’s first at 5:18. As my youngest might have said fifteen years ago, WUWT readers ROCK!
NW sage is correct. In government circles ‘tax expenditures’ is a phrase for all the money that individuals keep after taxes. The going-in position is ALL of the money is theirs to start with.
If you have the URL then web.archive.org can help you out. The internet is forever. This friendly site has captured a copy of this page 107 times between 30 Dec 2009 and 5 Nov 2015. You can see them here: http://web.archive.org/web/20100209052939/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
I found a copy without much trouble at the https://archive.org/: Regretably link-rot is a pretty common phenomenon. A lot of it appears to be unintentional. And, worse, some sites aren’t archived by the internet archive site because of the robots.txt file or other issues. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_rot Overall, dead-links are so common that it’s had to ascribe any given broken link to malice.
LInk rot is, as you say, common. I have written some 15 climate articles and none of the earlier ones still have 100% of their links remaining. I suspect this is such an occurrence or just a housekeeping matter.
The original story did get a little distorted in the telling and sceptics and alarmists alike have had their own take on the matter.
Desmogblog gave their version of events here, quoting a delingpole article into the bargain.
Worth reading
http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/04/04/climate-science-denier-james-delingpole-calls-alarmists-face-court-death-penalty-powers
However, there is a wider story here which is that regular snowfall is not a common occurrence in lowland Britain, although more common in the North of the country and East Anglia (where CRU is located) The image of snowy winters is largely an artefact of folk memories of the harsh conditions of the intermittent little ice age. Charles Dickens’ formative years were in such a cold period and some years ago I wrote a tongue in cheek article that highlighted the actual lack of snow-especially around Christmas. It is here and was entitled
“Has Charles Dickens shaped our perception of climate change?
Charles Dickens. Victorian winters. A Christmas Carol. Ice fairs on the Frozen Thames. Cold Cold Cold Cold Cold. Dickens has irrevocably moulded the climate views of generations of Anglo Saxon peoples as TV, Films and plays all promote his image of icy winters in that era. Is this view of Dickens winters correct? We take a look at his life through the prism of climate.
https://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/bah-humbug/
——- ——- ——-
So Did David Viner say something that seems to have been distorted in time? Yes, probably. Has snow been such a frequent occurrence in lowland Britain, that its demise is worthy of especial note. No. Other than during periodic harsh spells, snow events come and go and were especially lacking in modern times during the 1930’s and 1940’s
tonyb
David Viner didn’t qualify his statement at all. He didn’t say a thing about the children of “lowland Britain” not knowing what snow was. He said ………..”within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event. …….Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,”………
And even the children of “lowland Britiain” have seen snow according to the met.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/snow/snow-in-the-uk
rah
Of course most children have seen snow. My point was that it is not and has never been a frequent occurrence in Britain other than during the extreme periods of the LIA.
tonyb
“Children just aren’t going to know what a snowjob is,”
😎
(But, unfortunately, if their parents don’t teach them how to reason, they may not recognize one. Education seems to be geared more and more toward having the kids welcome them.)
Here’s the wayback machine address. I happened to notice the absence earlier in the year.
The page had become a shrine for people to comment on the idiocy of failed predictions about the weather.
People would flock to it every time that they experienced heavy snow:
http://web.archive.org/web/20150114205355/http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
Failed predictions are rapidly vanishing from internet servers.
Soon failed predictions will be a thing of the past.
Children just aren’t going to know what failed predictions are.
Ha ha – dontcha just love wayback machine. BUSTED!!!!
Way — to — go, Indefatigable Frog! #(:))
And, Anthony!
“Failed predictions are rapidly vanishing from internet servers”
If failed predictions vanish, there will not be any climate “science” left on the internet!
Climate “scientists” will be a thing of the past.
And then what would we do?
I mean, I’m not joking.
What would we all do…
for laughs?
1984 all over again.
It is basically impossible to “disappear ” something from the internet.
Once you put it out there , it will be there forever.
And will usually come back to bite you at a most inconvenient time.
Oh and Streisand Effect
Individuals, in European Law, have the ‘right to be forgotten’. This is implemented by search engines failing to return results from pages the individual wishes to be removed. The content remains but you have to know the URL to find it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
This is not what has happened in this case but many people have used this right.
The Right to be Forgotten law is well post this issue, so would not be affected by it.
You can have any information no matter how old “forgotten” as far as I understand the ruling.
“Forgotten” is perhaps not the best word; Lost or Not Found are a better description. You cannot (I don’t think) have stuff removed from the web, just that search engines are not allowed to provide links to it.
Perhaps Hitlers family should demand that “right”? Why not call it what it is. A tool for revisionism history.
A blunder is no longer a blunder after it’s been properly
adjustederased.(I hope TheWayBackMachine has been backed up!)
(I hope TheWayBackMachine has been backed up!)
The content owner can demand that the WayBack machine delete its copies. I’ve seen this done before.
We need a “Real” Wayback machine where you cannot delete embarrassing predictions. Perhaps Anthony should add a whole page with cached links.
Peter
URL’s are like temperature data, they can be adjusted. Part of the adjustment process is elimination of data.
Bear in mind that items archived in the Wayback Machine can indeed be deleted if requested by the owner.
It’s too late. This already looks like stage-managing of the “official reality”, in the Soviet style.
The best policy would have been to leave the page, as a symbol of an age of monstrous delusions.
Now, it looks like they tried to make it go away.
Independent – my arse!!!!
“Bear in mind that items archived in the Wayback Machine can indeed be deleted if requested by the owner.” So should Hillary have archived her files on the Wayback Machine? 🙂
Here’s a topical satirical page on the subject of the disappearing of inconvenient and politically embarrassing science:
http://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/nasa-announces-manned-mission-to-mercury-t17146.html
Thus, the Envirostalinist-sympathetic Independent, places itself, once again, in the classiest of company.
Here’s how two of the Windmill and Solar Profiteers’ Top 10 Most Admired People did it:
“… extreme regimes” and erasing history
(youtube)
Not to be overlooked are ##’s 9 and 10 on the list, Nixon and Trudeau.
May 11, 1973 (from Nixon tapes)
“We politicians gotta stick together.”
Congratulations, Independent! YOU are part of the elite!
And then, there’s NOAA and NASA (GISS)
Data Tampering
John Coleman, KUSI News
(youtube)
Specifically: NCDC (National Climate Data Center) — from Coleman report above.
Trying to find that Modis satellite photo of all of Brittan covered in snow. Who has that?
I do:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/01/08/all-of-england-covered-by-snow/
Thanks Anthony – this prediction was 10 years before this Modis photo was taken. Has he retracted his prediction/projection? (NO).
Funny, I thought companies with a web presence want to drive more visitors to their web site.
/snark
This stuff has been going on for some time. For US centric readers, look at the (now erased except on Wayback) climate difference by state between the previous NOAA (2013) Drd964x and the ‘new, improved’ 2014 nClimDiv. The archived before and afters for three states — California, Michigan, and Maine — plus the aggregate statistics are provided as just one small part of this issue in essay When Data Isn’t in my newest ebook. There is much more referenced evidence in that essay globally, all equally damning. Sulina? de Bilt? Rutherglen? BEST station 166900 (ok, that one only in footnote 24 to make a separate methodological error point to Mosher and friends, so you all can skip it at your peril — since tracking footnotes is not blog fun).
Maybe Congress will fix the NOAA data games.
This is political hardball, not science.
Found similar in EPA study where it showed no change in heating and cooling days in last 100+ years. Data remained in the report but shrunk to where it couldn’t be read. When I tried to print the specific pages ie asked for page 54 that was the only page that could not be printed. EPA thought that historic data would support their warming crap and when I found it I printed it Quickly before they could delete it. Instead of deleting they buried it in a report where I couldn’t print a new copy. Still may be available at Dept of Energy Information but not from EPA.
Max
From the disappeared article:
Stealthily and loosely lying indeed.
Maybe they need to be reminded with a few hundred emails of that pdf of what they’ve lost / miss placed 🙂
OK – some reviewing of Google cached documents found a sitemap archive here:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Y32nLOU_10J:www.independent.co.uk/independent.co.uk/sitemap/sitemap_200003.xml.gz+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr
It is seemingly a list of articles published March 2000 (which matches filename “sitemap” “2000” “03”.xml) with urls of each.
Every link (twenty or so) I’ve tried in that list is reporting 404 Not Found, so I think it’s less Conspiracy, more like C*ck Up, given that older articles still exist.
Perhaps an email titled “Have you lost this”, please call xxxxxx
lol
I am waiting for the NOAA / NASA publication that declares water is now freezing at +2degC due to climate change, so there is still snow and ice, but it is warmer snow and ice!
“Snow” is CO2 molecules which identify as H2O molecules and truly believe they freeze at a higher temperature.
Gotta get with the times !!
Rotten ice. Tsk. Tsk. Just not like the old ice.
Well done holding the crapweasels to account!
Mods – sorry if this is a repost – original appears to have gone awry.
I have found on Google cache a collection of sitemap.xml files, broken down by year and month e.g. for March 2003:
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:7Y32nLOU_10J:www.independent.co.uk/independent.co.uk/sitemap/sitemap_200003.xml.gz+&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=fr
It appears to list urls of all the articles, including the Snowfall article in question. Every link I have tried from that list is coming up “Not found”.
Furthermore, more sitemaps can be found with this query:
site:www.independent.co.uk sitemap 1999
Now, trying August 1999 – file 199908 – all these come up, but all datestamps on the pages themselves are October 23 2011, so I reckon there’s some archiving/republication happened there.
Anyways, it’s all of March 2000 that’s missing at the moment, and January 2003, and November 2005.
So, more a bulk purge, perhaps reformatting old articles?
Edit – e.g. for March 2000 (not March 2003)
Hi Anthony,
It was I who sent you the message via facebook. Could you credit it to our page, “Climate Change Lies?”
https://www.facebook.com/ClimateChangeLIES/
Regards,
Cole
Thank you, Cole Pritchard, for bringing this to all our attention (and for Anthony for publishing based on your tip!).
Here it is on a WUWT thread:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/10/18/global-warming-blamed-for-mystery-kidney-disease/#comment-2052017
It’s like deja vu, all over again.
But, frankly we just cannot mention this enough.
Let’s keep bringing it up.
The alarmist community clearly have severe memory loss and need to be constantly reminded that they keep getting everything wrong!!! 🙂
Updated the story, thanks Cole.
Thanks Cole for putting up the good fight. No doubt your page will be censored and/or disappeared by Facebook, I fear.