In the land of the morons - by Richard... Thursday, December 23, 2010

In the land of the morons - by Richard... Thursday, December 23, 2010

Snowfall, ice, Arctic-level cold and all the rest have caused major disruption to the UK infrastructure in the last few weeks, not least because our gilded civil servants have been looking in the wrong direction. And they still are.

Thus we learn from a report published today by Defra that the UK's infrastructure will "struggle to cope with climate change". "Floods, rising temperatures and higher sea levels threaten the UK's road, rail, water and energy networks between 2030 and 2100," it says.

Consumers will have to learn they cannot expect cheap heating and lighting and to go where or when they want as floods, rising temperatures and higher sea levels threaten the UK's road, rail, water and energy networks, it says.

Dear God. The country is grinding to a halt NOW, and they are still prattling about global warming in the period 2030 to 2100? These people are truly off their trolleys. They are seriously mentally ill.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

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Snigger - by Richard...

David Cameron is insincere and not to be trusted while George Osborne has no experience of how ordinary people live", Lib-Dem ministers have claimed. Took them long enough to find out, didn't it?

The Daily Mail picks up the story as well. The same Lib-Dims, however, believe that Justice Secretary Ken Clarke is "all right", which might be regarded more as evidence of derangement than a character reference.

Overall though, are we seeing evidence of thieves falling out, in which case could there be the happy prospect of a Cleggeron collapse in the New Year? And was this what Euroslime Dave meant by "new politics"? With no ideological differences, it all comes down to personalities?

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Playing for high stakes - by Richard... Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Weather in any one winter is virtually independent (statistically speaking) of weather in preceding winters. And, despite there having been three severe winters in a row, there is only a 1:20 chance of there being a severe winter next year or in any subsequent year. In other words, bad winters cannot be considered an annual event.

This is the view of the Met Office, passed to the Quarmby Review which has been charged with auditing its own recommendations on improving the transport system's "resilience" to severe winters. The audit was commissioned by transport secretary Philip Hammond on 2 December, and carried out by David Quarmby, chairman of the RAC Foundation and a former chairman of the Strategic Rail Authority, with his team.

Furthermore, says the Met Office to Quarmby, the incidence of severe winters is slowly declining due to global warming, although one important effect of global warming is that more snow is possible when severe weather events do occur.

To an extent, this is a "get out of jail free" card for the politicians – if they care to take it. Quarmby is part buying into the Met Office, effectively agreeing that severe winters are random, unpredictable events. But there are also caveats.

Even if severe winter weather has a low probability of occurrence, and there appears to be no evidence to support "clustering" of severe winters, Quarmby says that the government "should recognise that there are opportunities for additional resources to be committed to winter resilience in England". Then it is Hammond who accepts that benefits can arise - but there is also the risk of limited or no value when winters are average or mild.

The bizarre issue here is that the Met Office seems to want it both ways. It tells us that it can predict global warming – that it knows, for instance, what the climate is going to be like in 60 years time. But it will not allow clustering. And therein is a problem. If there is only a 1:20 chance of a severe winter, what are the chances of three 1:20 events happening in succession?

Interestingly, last year – at the height of the winter cold - the Great Moonbat opined that the ability to distinguish trends from complex random events "is one of the traits that separates humans from the rest of the animal kingdom". It is also, he said, the basis of all science; detecting patterns, distinguishing between signal and noise, and the means by which the laws of physics, chemistry and biology are determined.

Referring to those who sought to draw conclusions from the run of bad weather, he complained that we were being asked "to commit ourselves to the wilful stupidity of extrapolating a long-term trend from a single event." Even then, though, we had had two such events. Now, when we get three such events in a row, we are not allowed to see a pattern or a trend.

Each warm winter is evidence of global warming. Together they comprise a trend. Three cold winters in a row, are simply the coincidence of random events. The difference, of course, is that a warm event confirms expectations, three cold ones confound them.

For the moment, the Met Office is holding the line, but for how long? There is a one in twenty chance that next year is as bad as this one … maybe. But what are the chances of four bad winters in a row? Whatever the odds, the stakes are even higher.

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Snow not an "optional extra" - by Richard... Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Following the closure of Brussels airport, we get from England Expects the delicious detail that EU commission Vice-President Siim Kallas, responsible for transport, recently commended the airport for its commitment to reducing future carbon emissions.

At a ceremony held in the departure hall of the airport, Kallas presented Mr Arnaud Feist, CEO of Brussels Airport, with a certificate marking its progress under an industry-led carbon accreditation scheme. He larded Mr Arnaud with plaudits, telling him that, "Sustainability is not an 'optional extra' in transport policy. It has to come as standard."

Now Kallas seem to be taking the view that keeping the airport free of ice and snow isn't an optional extra either. Stuck in Brussels and unable to get away for Christmas, he is now telling airport operators - including Arnaud Feist – that they must "get serious about planning for this kind of severe weather conditions."

We have seen in recent years that snow in Western Europe is not such an exceptional circumstance, says Kallas. Better preparedness, in line with what is done in Northern Europe, is not an optional extra, he adds.

You have to laugh.

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FFS - by Richard...

I got taken to task for suggesting that the UK had become a third world country. Is there really any doubt now?

Thousands of rail passengers are being urged to re-schedule their journeys after a power failure caused havoc on the East Coast mainline. Trains between London's Kings Cross station and Peterborough ground to halt as an overhead line was brought down. Engineers heading to repair the problem at Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, were hampered by icy roads.

The operator, East Coast, is advising all passengers who have arrived at King's Cross to go home and restart their journeys tomorrow. And what if they live in Yorkshire and are trying to get home ... what then? Breweries and the inability to organise liquid-fuelled celebrations come to mind. The country is being run by morons and idiots.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARNING FRED