Wednesday, 22 December 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.

COMMENT THREAD


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.

COMMENT THREAD


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


The foolish Moonbat, along with his colleagues is plumbing new depths of stupidity, insisting in the loathsome Guardian that the "unusually cold winters" are caused by global warming.

It is not that he does not have a case (even if it is not very good). What makes him so deservedly look the fool it that he, alongside the climate establishment, has spent the last decade or more trying to convince us that milder winters are a sure sign of global warming. Now, in the manner of Winston Smith, Moonbat seems to believe that he can rewrite history and we will not notice.

The problem for him is that the global warming industry has been so unequivocal in its certainty that milder winters were a sign of climate change. On 4 June 1999, for instance, Science Daily was reporting on a Nature paper, stating that a team of scientists from Columbia University had shown that warm winters in the northern hemisphere "likely can be explained by the action of upper-atmosphere winds that are closely linked to global warming".


With no room left for doubt, its headline for the Science Daily story was: "Warm Winters Result From Greenhouse Effect, Columbia Scientists Find, Using NASA Model". If warming trends continue, said Drew Shindell, associate research scientist at Columbia's Center for Climate Systems Research and lead author of the report, northern regions of Europe and Asia and, to a lesser extent, North America, can expect winters that are both warmer and wetter, with increased rain and snow.

"Based on this research, it's quite likely that the warmer winters over the continents are indeed a result of the increasing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere," Dr. Shindell said. "This research offers both a plausible physical mechanism for how this takes place, and reproduces the observed trends both qualitatively and even quantitatively."

Doubtless, this inspired the great granddaddy of the British end of the "winter meme" - that highly revered scientist Dr David Viner, of the Climatic Research Unit in East Anglia. It was he in March 2000 who famously told The Independent that snowfalls were now "just a thing of the past". Within a few years, he said, winter snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

On 14 February 2005, he was joined by the old fool himself, when Moonbat wrote in The Guardian, telling us:
It is now mid-February, and already I have sown eleven species of vegetable. I know, though the seed packets tell me otherwise, that they will flourish. Everything in this country - daffodils, primroses, almond trees, bumblebees, nesting birds - is a month ahead of schedule. And it feels wonderful. Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are - unless the Gulf Stream stops - unlikely to recur. Our summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us.
In March of 2006, however, the certainty took a bit of a knocking when late snow and Arctic winds had the Mirror asking, "Why has Britain's weather gone so daffy?" – with the inevitable question: "So what's happened to global warming?"

There to shore up the crumbling edifice though was the one and only Dr Viner. He told the paper that complaints about the cold were rocketing because we've become used to the warm weather, thanks to global warming". "It's a cold winter compared to the last 10 years, but in the long term it's still warmer than average.

"We have short-term memories and know the winter climate is warming up," said Viner. Compared to the 60s, 70s and early 80s, when the temperatures regularly hit minus 10 and even minus 15, this is a fairly average winter. "And even the amount of snow has been really trivial in comparison."

The great scientist was supported by Barry Gromett from the Met Office. We were due a freezing winter, he explained, because we actually get one at least every 10 years.

"When you get colder winters, like this one, dominated by winds from the east, they tend to begin early and end later, with an overhang well into spring," Grommett asserted. As you wrap up warm to beat the chill and turn up the central heating an extra notch or two, he so very confidently told us, "don't worry - it will probably be another 10 years before the weather throws us another curve ball".


The following winter, the Met Office was back in its comfort zone so that, by 27 February 2007, it was happily reporting the "second warmest" winter on record. One of its meteorologists, Wayne Elliott, declared that it was, "a good measure of changes to the climate." Talking to the BBC, he said that the winter had not only been warmer, but also wetter than average.

This matched the sort of conditions that the UK was expected to experience as a result of climate change, Elliott said. "It is consistent with the climate change message. It is exactly what we expect winters to be like - warmer and wetter, and dryer and hotter summers."


Then, after the famously mild winter of 2007/8, the Daily Express was headlining "Why winter no longer exists", a story about the winter just past. Winter had "gone for ever" and we should officially bring spring forward instead, was the message conveyed - according to Dr Nigel Taylor, curator of Kew Gardens.

"Over the last 12 months there has been no winter," Taylor said. "Last year was extraordinary. Spring was in January, April was summer, the summer was cool, then it was warmer and sunny in autumn". This was, of course, down to "climate change" and thus did Taylor confidently add: "Like most scientists, I'm fairly convinced that climate change is down to man's reckless use of fossil fuels and destruction of natural habitats".

So convinced by now that they were on a winner, by 25 September 2008, the Met Office wasequally confidently asserting that: "Trend of mild winters continues". The coming winter was to be milder than average. It was also likely that the coming winter would also be drier.

Hubris, though, is invariably followed by nemesis and on 28 October 2008, as the idiot MPs in Westminster were voting though the Climate Change Bill, it was snowing outside, the first time we had seen snow in London in October in living memory. God laughed.


But the warmists' pain was only just beginning. That winter was savage, not just in the UK but worldwide. This, of course, did not shake the Moonbat's religious zeal. Come the New Year, on 9 January 2009, in the grip of the viciously cold winter, he was telling us how he had spent the last two evenings skating.


For all the exhilaration, though, the experience was "shaded with sadness". Said Monbiot: "all of us knew that this time might be our last. It is many winters since most of the lakes in England and Wales have frozen hard enough to support a skating party; with every year the chances of another one recede. The fuss this country has made about the current cold snap reminds us how rare such events have become".

The man continued, telling us that the thought that he might never skate outdoors again "feels like a bereavement". Thus, he told us: "I pray for another cold snap, even though I know it will bring all the nincompoops in Britain out of their holes, yapping about a new ice age."

If Moonbat was thinking this might be the last severe winter for a while – or even "our last", that same month of February 2009 he was joined by the Met Office which noted that the cold weather had been "in contrast to the run of very mild winter temperatures that have been recorded over recent years".

Natural variability of climate, it said, "means that the UK will continue to see spells of colder weather at times. Although, if it had not been for the general warming already observed in global temperatures, this winter may well have been even colder".

This was in a press release, a further part of which found its way into The Daily Telegraph on 23 March 2009. This had Peter Stott, a climate scientist at the Met Office, saying: "Despite the cold winter this year, the trend to milder and wetter winters is expected to continue, with snow and frost becoming less of a feature in the future".

He continued, saying: "The famously cold winter of 1962/63 is now expected to occur about once every 1,000 years or more, compared with approximately every 100 to 200 years before 1850."


During the 2009/10 winter, however, heavy snowfall and unusually low temperatures in the United States started making the headlines, especially when Washington DC ground to a halt. When this started to drive a new wave of climate scepticism, a new term began to emerge: "disruptive climate change". Climate change was now being linked to "heavy precipitation", which included intense snowstorms.

Now, with this winter even worse than last, Moonbat has got his opportunity for more skating - and he is now relying on the "climate disruption" gambit. But no wonder he is struggling. After being assailed with the idea for more than a decade that climate change and mild winters are linked, for the public now to accept that "climate change" also causes cold winters is a step too far.

Moonbat's credibility is gurgling down the plughole while WUWT is dragging his reputation through the Australian snows. As the windmills grind to as halt in the anticyclonic calm, all we can hear is the rising volume of sniggering as the Bat insists that black is white, warmer means colder.

UPDATE: Quote of the week on WUWT. Thank you Anthony.

COMMENT THREAD


I said it was going to be a game changer and there is no reason to change my mind. Dellers takes on the Met Office, backed up by Autonomous Mind, their efforts setting the seal on the demise of its credibility as an institution.

With the Tories set on building their high-speed train set, it is fascinating to see transport secretary Hammond dragged back from his grandiose dreams to the squalor of the current situation. Heathrow looks more like a third world refugee camp than a modern, first world airport and, for the first time, there is serious talk about heads rolling.

Tired and edgy, Hammond is having to defend the indefensible and so is the BBC. Its News 24 programme did a lengthy special on the crisis, and managed to do so without once mentioning global warming. But that is the issue on everyone's mind. Tectonic plates are grinding together and the upheaval is only just beginning.

On the other front, Huhne's wet dream about wind power is looking more and more absurd. At the time of writing, electricity generation reports had coal-fired power stations taking a thrashing, delivering 43 percent of available power, with wind contributing a farcical 0.1 percent, a trivial 44MW out of an installed, metered capacity of 2,430MW. The man's ideas about wind taking up the slack are totally unrealistic. Actually, they are barking mad.

Like watching a train wreck in slow motion, though, it is evident that the political classes and the Tories in particular have no real idea or understanding of what is about to hit them. They are still locked into the old paradigm where they think the political parties set the agenda and the rest of us take our lead from it.

That, if anything, has been the biggest change in British politics since the Cleggerons assumed office but not power. Fewer people than ever before – including this blogger and others - give the proverbial tinker's cuss about the preoccupations of the political classes. When Moore wrote of the growing divide between "Us" and "Them", he could not have been more correct.

In part, what is going to do for them is the very issue that the political classes are currently trying to ignore – the utter shambles in the transport system which is very seriously inconveniencing people and causing very great hardship. Patience is stretching to breaking point as people realise that this is a man-made – or politician-made - crisis, not a natural disaster. People frustrated in their travel plans, and condemned to a miserable Christmas, are not going to forget quickly, or forgive easily.

Interestingly, the Canadian Globe and Mail can see that this is a political issue, even if it hasn't put the whole story together. But the political establishment here seems blind to the implications. It is so locked into its own self-referential bubble that it has lost the ability to discern what is important to ordinary people.

However much the denizens of the bubble try to ignore it, though, it isn't going to go away. You can hear the grinding as the plates move up against each other. Those who are deaf to the signals - who do not understand that we are witnessing a major political event - will be so surprised when their little worlds start to shatter. But there will be many of us who, like this winter cold, saw it coming. And the winter has hardly begun.

COMMENT THREAD


"Take 'em to the Arctic and make 'em tread water", say the Oxford-based Sea Green Singers in their hate song – performed in a public building somewhere in England to the tune of "what shall we do with the drunken sailor?" This is sung when they are not offering "alternative" carols for the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.

I think we would readily acknowledge that we take a fairly robust line on this blog, but this is in a different league. After the warmist merriment at blowing up children, we now have a largely female choir advocating murder in the event that "climate sceptics", as they sing, "don't shut up".

It is difficult to tell who are sicker – these deranged women and their rejection of free speech, or the people who apparently allowed them to perform in public. Nevertheless, some readers might still like to e-mail Mike Cox, who leads the singers, and wish him a happy Christmas.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING THREAD


Reuters first intimated that something was wrong, reporting that Brussels airport had said on its twitter feed that it could not guarantee de-icing of planes after 14:00 hrs GMT on Monday due to a shortage of de-icer caused by transport problems in France.

Then we had the Financial Times confirm that the airport had shut down. The airport management, we are told, is blaming the shortage on "heavy usage in recent days", along with difficulties in getting delivery of more de-icing product. Roads in Belgium and northern France have been closed to heavy vehicle traffic. The French supplier of the product is reported to have been affected by the general transport chaos enveloping northern Europe.

Then the Vancouver Sun informs us, via AFP, that new stocks of de-icer will not be available until Wednesday morning. By then, of course, it is likely to have snowed some more, making it even more difficult to get the airport running.

We should not, of course, rejoice in the discomfort of others but, when it comes to Brussels, we are always willing to make the exception. The chaos in the response to the weather is in no small measure the result of intervention by Brussels-based eurocrats – obsessed as they are with global warming. So, as they struggle to get to their homes for Christmas, it is only right and proper that they should experience some of the misery they have inflicted on others.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED

As this month proves to be the coldest December for a century, the temperature in England is set to drop to a record low.

Last night, the temperature in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, fell to -19.6°C. A combination of snow-covered ground, clear skies and the shortest day of the year could produce a sub -26°C thermometer reading tomorrow. The previous record low, -26.1°C set in Shropshire in January 1982, could be eclipsed at an inland area that does not benefit from the warming effect of the sea.

And still the warmists argue that the cold weather "may" be the result of global warming. But then, it could be a Dalton Minimum. Somebody's been using Vim on the sun - it's spotless.

COMMENT THREAD


As the chaos at Heathrow intensifies, and it transpires that only £500,000 has been spent on snow clearing kit for the season, a grovelling apology for his crap performance comes from Colin Matthews, CEO of BAA. Delivered on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he bleats, "I'm really disappointed to have disrupted so many thousands of people's Christmas plans," adding:
It's absolutely distressing and heart-breaking to have been in the terminals and confronted with individuals, each with their stories of really sad and disappointing outcomes. I couldn't be more sorry, that's the case.
Matthews then warbles, "We are going to have to crawl over the details of what's happened over the last few days as soon as we've got the time to do that." Hey ho! Another fatuous "lessons learned" in the making, a precursor to yet another mess. And will even deputy heads roll?


The point is, of course, that even the born-again climate sceptic Boris Johnson has been able to leaven his enthusiasm for warming with a bit of timely populism. Even last February Boris was writing this garbage:
Our climate is changing, with London already experiencing warmer, wetter winters, hotter, drier summers and higher incidences of more extreme weather. To preserve and enhance our quality of life and maintain our status as a leading global city, we must adapt to manage these climatic shifts, which will result in increasing risk of floods, drought and heat waves.Climate change is no distant threat ...
If Boris can change his tune, you might have expected the CEO of the UK's largest airport to have seen this crisis coming.

Nor is dealing with the snow a matter of money. Readers will recall in February, just when Boris was trilling about climate change and the "warmer, wetter winters", we reported that cash-strapped Gordon Brown was buying £60,000,000-worth of "carbon credits" for Whitehall and other government offices in the UK, as well as British Nato bases in Europe.

Then I wrote that, while the rest of the country shivers in the cold, with householders wondering whether they can afford their mounting heating bills – inflated by hidden "carbon taxes" to pay for the carbon emissions produced - bureaucrats in their centrally-heated government offices can keep producing "greenhouse gasses", their emissions paid-for by British taxpayers.

This is the sort thing that should have us marching on Whitehall, stringing up these morons from the nearest lamp posts. £60 million would buy about 400,000 tons of rock salt. As a sum of money, it is more than any one of us will earn in a lifetime, extorted from taxpayers and frittered away.

Yet, no one is responsible. No one is sacked. No one loses their pension. The plebs have a hard time of it, but then they are only plebs - when they've finished suffering, they can pay the bills. Boris the mouth gets a few quid on top of his bunce as Mayor for writing a balls-aching piece in theDaily Failygraph, just to give Louise Gray a break, and the paper writes a soft little whinge. Then everything in the garden is rosy for the slime.

Until the mob kills them.

COMMENT THREAD

The forum is open for new registrations, subject to the usual procedures. I'll keep it open until midnight GMT.

COMMENT THREAD


While we are set for some more serious cold, last Saturday, we saw Charles Moore remark that our politics has become more like that of a court than of a Parliament. When electors ask, "Who is our friend at court?", he says, they cannot find an answer.

The man, even from his elevated "above the line" position, is astute enough to recognise the growing divide between "Us" and "Them", although he does not have the wit to understand that Cameron is not going to be part of the solution. He is very much part of the problem.

Another one of "Them" is Nick Clegg, he of student fees fame, who we learn has just been bought at the taxpayers' expense a £300k "bombproof" armoured Jaguar XJ (pictured) to protect him from protesters.

Given the esteem with which politicians are generally held, this is probably an extremely wise decision, although Clegg will find that, eventually, he will have to come from behind the armour and the screen of state-paid gunmen. And people have long memories.

Another man who is soon going to need an armoured limousine is Philip Hammond, the largely inoffensive transport secretary, but now in the front line having to explain why the government is so unprepared for a severe winter that everyone outside the Met Office loop could see coming.

Of course, with his warmist boss and the idiot Huhne in the cabinet, this means that Hammond is hopelessly compromised. He cannot give the real reasons why the system has failed to cope. Instead, rather lamely, he tells us that the government is consulting its chief scientific officer over whether major long-term investment is required. All that does, though, is make him look shifty.

Just how severe the conditions are is illustrated by the experience of Suffolk County Council whose gritters have spread nearly as much salt since November as they used throughout last winter. The county council has used 12,000 tons on the roads since the cold weather began. Yet last year, which was bad enough, they used 14,000 tons. For this year though, their total stocks were only 18,000 tons and with no break in the weather forecast, stocks are perilously low.


Suffolk are not the only ones running out of supplies. Elsewhere, highway authorities are having tocut back on gritting to keep some stocks available for "strategic routes", allowing ministers' armoured limousines to reach their destinations.

The only way you could get your planning this wrong is if you had completely discounted the idea that this winter was going to be significantly worse than last – and that has been precisely what has been happening. These morons have been listening to the Met Office, then predictably getting it wrong.

Thus do ministers need to retreat behind their walls of armour and gunmen, to protect them from the consequences of their own mistakes and stupidity. Thereby do they increase even more the divide between "Us" and "Them". Perversely, it is us who then have to pay for their protection, and so the disaffection and the divide grows still further.

In the end, they might have found it easier and safer to have done their jobs properly - although whether any of them have the capability so to do is another question.

UPDATE: And guess what is the "most viewed" on The Independent!

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED


As news pours in of the misery experienced by the travelling public as a result of the bad weather, alongside increasing evidence of the lack of preparedness of the authorities, we can only observe that the situation is very much of chickens coming home to roost.

There can be absolutely no dispute that the billions spent on global warming dwarfs the pitiful amount of money spent on preparing for adverse winter conditions. As importantly, with the Met Office and the government looking in the wrong direction, there has been insufficient planning for the eventuality of a bad winter.

One can, however, have little sympathy with those suffering the inadequacies of our rulers and administrators. Spending on winter preparedness is essentially a political decision – which makes this a serious political issue. This is the stuff of real politics.

But in this trivial, fundamentally unserious nation of ours, people have grown up with the idea that they can opt out of politics and leave them to the professionals. Well, it has been said that you either take an interest in politics, or it will take an interest in you. I have been known to say that democracy is not a spectator sport.

Many people over the past few days and the days to come are now going to suffer not only from the politicians' neglect, but their own. Chickens are indeed coming home to roost, but from some unexpected directions as well.

COMMENT: GLOBAL WARMING FRED