Climate Change

Well said, butty, on all counts.

Bagitha ...I know you don't have a television ...but try to catch last night's programme on BBC2 "Orbit" on i-player ...I'm sure you'll enjoy it.

Quote of the Week:

"Scientifically it is sheer absurdity to think we can get a nice climate by turning a CO2 adjustment knob." Klaus-Eckar Puls, German physicist and meteorologist who supported the IPCC until he conducted his own investigation.

[wooden spoon]

Oh, I love that quote, Bags!

In fact, the paragraph in its entirety is perfect.

I am not a scientist, and neither are most people - we are in their hands.
As long as there are arguments on both sides, we do not know what to believe. They change their minds; and unless we undertake lengthy scientific training, we will not be in a position to make a judgement.

But.......I am disturbed by how the whole eco thing has become the new Original Sin - I hate to see children in schools being made to feel guilty about their every action in the modern world (OK - a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift). Our local school has the whole eco guilt message plugged endlessly and it bears a remarkable resemblance to the religious indoctrination that filled my school days.

And.....I do believe passionately that we should care for our world, conserve our resources and search for other sources of energy. However, it is very trying to see how I diligently recycle, use the heating with care etc. while others are profligate. I never fly - it is a wasteful method of transport - and that is one of the biggest users of energy - we need to get our heads round the idea we cannot go where we want when we want.

You have to laugh because if you didn't you'd cry. A paper was "peer reviewed" (aye, right!), published, shown to be bad science, and pulled out of publication. Embarassment-tastic. The paper said Australia had been warmer during the last sixty years than ever before in the last thousand. Apart from the obvious comment of "so what? What's a thousand years out of four and a half billion?" just take a look at what this haha 'scientific' paper was based on:

"The certainty of Australia being 0.09 of a degree cooler 1000 years ago comes down to observations from a batch of trees in Tasmania and New Zealand. (If we can calculate the regional temperature so accurately that way, why do we bother with a network of 100 thermometers? We could pop a max-min gauge next to those trees and “interpolate” the rest, No?)
Why not skip the thermometers and just go with the trees? They’re accurate to one hundredth of a degree across a continent and sea."

People believe this stuff and then say sceptics are crazy. Yeesh.

Link to essay by Jo Nova here

The main-stream media is not reporting that the paper has been 'de-published'.

Of course not! There's more mileage in keeping the myth alive.

"Klaus-Eckar Puls, German physicist and meteorologist who supported the IPCC until he conducted his own investigation."

And you really think his own little investigation has more credibility than the projections of the whole of the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Control?

Anyone seriously wanting to know about global warming should go and look on our own Met Office website.

Ha ha!!

I don't know what that means Anagram. Sorry.

I assumed you were joking - obviously not.

[shrug]

Oh I hate that grin. It doesn't say it at all! grrrrr

Surely they've had time to find a better one.

It's horrible. Looks like a jack o lantern.

Ha! Ha! indeed, nag The met office can't even predict the weather for a few months and they expect us to believe what they say about the climate weather far into the future. [shakes head despairingly]

Met Office Computer Models are Rubbish

The met office gets it right. It's how the press interprets it that is at fault.

Our weather forecasting in this country is the best in the world.

Jings I agree with you, even though I know you are very biased!

This is straight from the Met Office. No press interpretation anywhere near it. My underlining. If they have "got it right", that wettest April in a hundred years is nothing to what we're going to get , which must be why everyone is moaning about the rain down south. (Yes, I do feel sorry for the people who are suffering floods).

No offence, jings; they may be the best in the world. Doesn't make 'em right. I don't actually mind when the forecasts we are given (by the MO or the media) are wrong. It is Britain after all. Renowned for crazy, changeable, unreliable weather. Anyway, time will tell whether June is even wetter than April this year. How are we doing so far?

If you read the following paragraph carefully, you will see how, wisely, they are hedging their bets. It is well phrased. They cannot say with certainty what the weather will be like weeks ahead. Neither can they, or anyone else, say with certainty what the climate (which is not the same thing as weather) will be like in twenty, fifty or a hundred years time.

"Predicting month to month variations in rainfall at long-lead times remains very difficult. However there are hints from some computer model forecasts that as we move through May and on into June the jet stream over the North Atlantic may tend to edge southwards, which, if it happened, would probably lead to an increase in rainfall across the UK. Such a sequence would bear some resemblance to the evolution seen last year - note on the right of Figure P3 how May and June in 2011 (grey symbols) were markedly wetter than April (pink symbol). It is mainly for this reason that _April could well be the driest of the 3 months this year_"

www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/p/i/A3-layout-precip-AMJ.pdf

You forgot to underline 'probably' Bags!

Bags I wonder if Jo Nova is a good friend of Donna Laframboise?

Jo Nova ( Wikipedia ) does have a science degree. She is an acknowledged sceptic and appears to have connections to the Heartland Institute (U.S.A.) the latter well known for its collusion with Philip Morris questioning the links of secondhand smoking to health risks!

Bags you draw our attention to the views of known sceptics, just as I would credit the views of those who do believe that global warming is occurring. Long may we continue to argue/discuss/debate.

Bags, what are you actually commenting on there? It's very clearly phrased. The met office freely admit that no one can accurately forecast the weather more than a week or two ahead. They don't do clever phrasing. Just honest.

And, anyway. I could have told you that we would get all this wet weather sooner or later. I've been saying it all along. The water had to be waiting somewhere.

No one asked me!

( for the totally humourless)

This may have nothing to do with the Met Office, but someone may know the answers anyway so it's worth asking: Who said we were officially in a drought in the south? Who imposed the hose-pipe ban – the water companies or government? If the latter, who advises them?

I'm simply seeking information here. I know there has been some talk of having less drastic words than 'drought' to use next time the water levels are low.

Sorry if those questions seem unrelated to the topic; they aren't unrelated in my mind.