[Cooling Down]

I may be missing the point again but is what we remember of previous winters in each of our own little bits of the world really relevant. I’m in my late forties (though look much, much younger) and I remember playing in the snows of ’63 and travelling in February of that year from Scotland down to the Northeast of England through miles and miles of frighteningly deep snow, but I doubt if I can base my opinion of climate change on that experience.

There very probably are climate cycles that effect changes in chemical composition and temperature of the atmosphere over time. But I doubt if we’re talking about twenty years here, or fifty, or a hundred, or even a thousand years in the frequency of the events associated with them.

If I’m right, whether any of us felt colder last Christmas than this Christmas is hardly relevant to climatic change, or shifts in the ocean currents. Although such discussion does remain interesting in any general conversation about the weather.

[Sharp Rise In Co2 Levels]

I don’t know whether CO2 levels were twelve times higher at the start of the last ice age (however you define that,) than they are now, is a fact.

I don’t know whether current CO2 levels being at they’re highest for one million or thirty million years is a fact.

I am pretty sure there’s nobody around to confirm either fact from first hand experience, so either proposition is purely based on interpolation and is therefore open to challenge.

And I’m damn sure nobody looking for today’s big headline is going to bother explaining the qualitative, quantitative, or contextual background to his or her revelation, far less explain an alternative proposition.

[New Bbc Graphics]

. . . Still think they should change the angle, I don't want to see Iceland on the UK weather map.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

You must be much taller than me. I can't see Iceland. I can't see anything north of Manchester.

[Snow/wintry Precipitation Reports: January 17th]

My first post - I'm not a technical weather wizard but can report sighting of a snowman, 75cm tall, chubby, with red, white & blue scarf on south side of Glasgow at 20.30hrs. Hope this is useful.