Trying it on - by Richard... Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Trying it on - by Richard... Tuesday, December 28, 2010

The blizzard in New York has been quick to attract a warmist disclaimer, delivered by Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm. Says Cohen, "The reality is, we're freezing not in spite of climate change but because of it".

However, a guest post in WUWT quickly debunks this desperate warmist canard , pointing out that this is just another east coast blizzard, the current weather not being in any way different from the past.

To illustrate the point, the author, John Goetz, calls in aid the 1888 storm in New York which, according to contemporary records and subsequent comparisons (this one with the storm in 1920), was the greatest of them all.

This was the storm of 11-14 March, which would simply be known as the Blizzard of '88. Its heavy, drifting snows isolated four major American cities — Washington, Philadelphia, New York and Boston — for several days, dealing the latter two particularly devastating blows.

The storm's impact closed commerce in these cities for days, downed thousands of telegraph and telephone poles, and grounded two hundred ships. The death toll was estimated at more than 400, with around 100 of those being sailors, and 200 of the dead succumbed in New York City. Property losses reached $25 million ($562 million in 2007 dollars). Snow measured from 40-50 inches and drifted to over 50 feet in some places, burying houses and railroad trains.

The point made by Goetz is, quite simply, if this was clearly unrelated to global warming, how can we possibly assume that this current storm has anything to do with it.

But perhaps as good a point is the fact that, towards the end of the 19th Century, severe blizzards seem to have been relatively rare. The nearest comparison with the blizzard of '88 was the 1872 storm, 16 years earlier. Thus, when there was another serious blizzard in 1894, the New York Times noted on 27 February:

Pessimistic old gentlemen who have been entertaining grave fears for the "old- fashioned Winters we used to have" should have been very much cheered up yesterday. There was Winter enough to suit everybody.

And so it was again yesterday, when there was "winter enough to suit everybody". The "pessimistic old gentlemen", however, have transmuted into warmist zealots, and they are not suited. Way back to last century, though, it was only three years later, in January 1897 that a monster storm delivered snow to a depth of 34 inches.

If that was not global warming either, then why should we now be freezing because of it?

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What is it for? - by Richard... Monday, December 27, 2010

This is the question they (the media) really don't want you to ask. It rather ties in with the first of my two pieces from J B Priestley, so the link below goes to that comment thread, which is generating some interesting discussion.

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Scorchio - by Richard...

A script for Julia Slingo ... although it doesn't always have to be this way.

Meanwhile, from the salvaging national pride department, the photograph in the article here is of a 1950s Swedish snow-clearing train ... borrowed from the transport museum and put back to work.

We are not alone ... although that is hardly any compensation for this tale of woe from Subrosa: "My local council has reduced snow clearing equipment from 16 machines to 2 over the past 12 years".

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Of suits and spades - by Richard...

More often part of the problem than the solution, Ofgem is turning round to accuse electricity network companies of putting customers at an "unacceptable" risk of power cuts as they try to maintain Britain's ageing pylons and wires.

Having had Christmas rather spoiled by a six-hour power cut, with lunch reduced to cold turkey (pre-cooked, with no power to reheat it) and mashed potato, we would be the last to dispute this. The village is now reminiscent of a World War I battlefield – holes have sprung up all over the place as the electricity company searched for the faults (one pictured this morning after a recent fall of global warming).

This is the second time this month we have had an extended power cut and now Ofgem has sent a letter to all operators, including Scottish Power, Scottish & Southern, CE Electric and E.ON, threatening to fine operators if they do not improve their services.

In its report, The Daily Telegraph talks of a "worrying sign for investors", because Ofgem is threatening to impose penalties which will have "a proportionate impact on shareholder returns". At the receiving end of the "service", though, is not exactly how we see it – more a question of feeding the ravening beast, while getting less and less in return.

Strongly adding to the "piss-off factor" is the difficulty of actually reporting faults. Attempts to communicate with the utility are referred to a call centre, which elicit denials that there is problem, or a procession of lies, as we are told of mythical timescales for remedies that never materialise. In the end, we talked to the workmen who were just as pissed off as we were, getting instructions from their own call centres, with little sense or coherence.

At the heart of the problem is a service and repair system that has been cut to the bone. While the "suits" on bonuses proliferate, there were two men with spades covering the whole of Bradford, a medium-sized city, throughout the Christmas period. And we were the lucky ones. Some of our neighbours did not get their power back until the next day.

Then, of course, we had another happy little event. With the power cut and then restored, every burglar alarm in the district (installed because of the famous inability of West Yorkshire Met to deal with the burglary problem) went off – a cacophony of wailing and warbling that lasted on and off into the night.

Anyhow, back to Ofgem, which is warning the network companies that they must be quicker about reporting any breaches of their engineering obligations while they work to keep the network in a good state. "We want to raise our concern that the approach being adopted by some distribution network operators to assess their compliance may be exposing customers to unacceptable levels of risk regarding security of supply," writes Rachel Fletcher, Ofgem's distribution partner.

"It is not acceptable to expose customers to significant levels of risk for a prolonged period of time and without having a plan agreed with Ofgem in place to rectify the matter," she says.

We are not sure what exactly that means, other than, at the current rate of progress, all we are seeing is holes in the ground proliferate, while service deteriorates and charges continuously increase. Ofgem should care less about our happy Christmas. But while it may have been a celebration of the birth of Christ, we have to admit that our thoughts on Saturday were (and still are) at the other end of the life spectrum.

Meanwhile, Gerald Warner is extracting his own brand of micturition, the New York Times is being pessimistic, reporting that the next year "offers little cheer for those battling climate change," the Haggis-eaters are turning to the Kermits for salvation and Dellers is on the track of the missing snow.

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It's over? - by Richard...

The National Trust – so often at the forefront of the warmist claque - has now decided that we are seeing a return to traditional seasons. And the wildlife is benefitting.

Says Matthew Oates, the National Trust's nature conservation advisor: "We have had a long run of mild winters which dramatically seem to have ended. It just goes to show that you can never get bored by the English climate. It is always changing and always of interest."

So global warming has ended then?

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