loafer

No-one logical could believe that the rise in CO2 is anything other than as a result of man, the industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuels.Surely the issue is over the degree of impact, not cause?

I agree with this.When it comes to facts and data, of course, people who believe in a certain viewpoint post when the live data backs up their position and go quiet when it doesn't and that applies to both sides of the arguement.More annoying still are posters who look forward at what disasters or recoveries might happen in an almost excited tone because it validates their opinion, when the eventual outcome is often very different.

I personally think this is over the top and that most scientists who make mistakes or develop mistaken hypotheses are doing it for the right reasons, but this is quite funny... http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/seanthomas/100222487/when-it-comes-to-climate-change-we-have-to-trust-our-scientists-because-they-know-lots-of-big-scary-words/ Whither the weather? As you may have heard, a conference of national forecasters assembled this week in Exeter: to discuss the future of the British climate, following the spate of harsher than expected winters, and unusually wet summers, since 2007. Already, commentators are asking if global warming is to blame. In particular, some are wondering if the direction of the Jet Stream is being altered by Arctic ice melt. Others are speculating that natural variations, such as the “Atlantic multi-decadal oscillationâ€, might be responsible for recent evolutions. However, most of this reportage has been second-hand. Unprecedentedly, I had direct access to the meteorologists concerned, as I was in Exeter in spirit form, and I managed to speak to the principal actors. First, I asked Stephen Belcher, the head of the Met Office Hadley Centre, whether the recent extended winter was related to global warming. Shaking his famous “ghost stickâ€, and fingering his trademark necklace of sharks’ teeth and mammoth bones, the loin-clothed Belcher blew smoke into a conch, and replied, “Here come de heap big warmy. Bigtime warmy warmy. Is big big hot. Plenty big warm burny hot. Hot! Hot hot! But now not hot. Not hot now. De hot come go, come go. Now Is Coldy Coldy. Is ice. Hot den cold. Frreeeezy ice til hot again. Den de rain. It faaaalllll. Make pasty.†Startled by this sobering analysis, I moved on to Professor Rowan Sutton, Climate Director of NCAS at the University of Reading. Professor Sutton said that many scientists are, as of this moment, examining the complex patterns in the North Atlantic, and trying to work out whether the current run of inclement European winters will persist. When pressed on the particular outlook for the British Isles. Professor Sutton shook his head, moaned eerily unto the heavens, and stuffed his fingers into the entrails of a recently disembowelled chicken, bought fresh from Waitrose in Teignmouth. Hurling the still-beating heart of the chicken into a shallow copper salver, Professor Sutton inhaled the aroma of burning incense, then told the Telegraph: “The seven towers of Agamemnon tremble. Much is the discord in the latitude of Gemini. When, when cry the sirens of doom and love. Speckly showers on Tuesday.†It’s a pretty stark analysis, and not without merit. There are plenty of climate change scientists who are equally forthright on the possibilities of change, or no change, and of more hot, or less hot, or of rain, or no rain, or of Britain turning into the Sahara by next weekend, or instead becoming a freezing cold Frostyworld ruled by a strange, glistening ice-queen – crucially, it all depends on the time of day you ask them, and whether or not they had asparagus the day before. So who are we to believe? For a final word, I turned to the greatest climate change scientist of all, Dr David Viner, one-time senior research scientist at the climatic research unit of the University of East Anglia, who predicted in 2000 that, within a few years, winter snowfall would become "a very rare and exciting event". However, he was trapped under a glacier in Stockport, so was unable to comment at the time the Telegraph went to press.

No-one ever posts videos of non-calving glaciers, do they? Mind you, they wouldn't be very exciting.

The anomalies are compared to an historic period, rather than the period in which they occurred. If you look, the anomalies themselves are relatively consistent, i.e. the temperature was largely flat.

Stewfox I also tried to make a point about the irrationality of the statistical approach of some members who post regularly on this forum, but it is futile. It ended up with some posts being removed by mods but that simply leaves one side of the conversation, so I fear you are wasting your time. Kind regards, Loafer

http://phys.org/news/2013-03-discovery-scientists-fuel-co2-atmosphere.html New discovery may allow scientists to make fuel from CO2 in the atmosphere "Basically, what we have done is create a microorganism that does with carbon dioxide exactly what plants do—absorb it and generate something useful," said Michael Adams, member of UGA's Bioenergy Systems Research Institute, Georgia Power professor of biotechnology and Distinguished Research Professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences.

In what way...?

I guess the Metoffice warning relates to the pivot of the low around mid channel, with the large blob in Northern France (visible on Netweather Extra, not Rain Today as out of range for them), coming around overnight...interesting times...

When that steam train blasted through the snowdrift, my first thought was that would be 3 days of risk assessment first these days!

You talked it down enough...the snow probably thought you didn't want it!

The reason the models are predicting continuing snowfall is due to the pivoting system, so the area roughly over Wales will pivot around to the SE over the next few hours. It is hard to see it having much left in it by then, but don't give up hope!

Central London could get a bit lively in mid-afternoon...

I have been keeping a very close eye on the heavy part of the front, as it paused for 30 minutes about 7 miles from me, and it has now started moving again...

My wife is just as addicted as me... Kennington Kitty! She's known as Mrs Mcaskill by our friends!

Good morning. The simple answer is it keeps moving about! The problem is a warm sector moving in which is best illustrated by the Wet Bulb chart here: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=en&MENU=0000000000&CONT=ukuk&MODELL=gfs&MODELLTYP=1&BASE=-&VAR=thfr&HH=36&ZOOM=0&ARCHIV=0&RES=0&WMO=&PERIOD= at lunchtime on Monday. People with far more knowledge than me have pointed out that by then we will have had snow in the SE, so the freeze level may well come down - the marginality is no more than a degree or two and that the GFS is often too pushy in bringing in fronts from the West. As such, there is very much everything to play for...the models could easily change by 50 miles through virtually a statistical rounding error, and change the mood amongst us model watchers! The other interesting area is the convective snow coming off the North Sea on Wednesday, best shown by the thin lines on the fax chart here: http://www.weatheronline.co.uk/cgi-bin/expertcharts?LANG=en&MENU=0000000000&CONT=euro&MODELL=fronts&MODELLTYP=3&BASE=-&VAR=ukmoan&HH=84&ZOOM=0&ARCHIV=0&RES=0&WMO=&PERIOD= which brought large amounts of snow to Kent and Sussex in 2010.

That is the same as the 06Z. ETA - but it is T+42 instead of T+48, but the 06Z model - do they do the model every 12 hours and just move the output? Answering my own question, it appears weatheronline use the previous output, move it 6 hours, and then overwrite as the new output comes out - the hour blocks are a subtly different colour...

Very interesting to see what looks like convective showers coming in off the North Sea in a Kent Streamer, as well as the front coming from the West.

One which was free of ice. Or did I miss the memo changing the english language?

In all of the businesses I run or am involved in we use KPIs. We don't choose a single one, or compare to a single period, because this doesn't tell us the whole picture. I certainly understand the need for consistency, but you haven't come up with a single reason why a range of comparators wouldn't be used, which I think is very odd.

I rather expected you to come up with a good reason. As it is, it seems to be entirely arbitrary at best. Like I say, if there is no good reason, why not publish against several different measures, including longer term and more recent?

So why don't they use the 1971-2000 mean then?

I don't understand why comparing it to an 30 year period that ended more than 20 years ago is anymore sensible or understandable to the public. Like Jethro, in my view it makes the scientific debate worse, because the public becomes cynical about the statistical basis and ignores the content. Edited to add... Why don't they publish the comparison tomore than one baseline, then everyone would know where they stood?

BFTV - they chose the replacement from one of two Deputy Directors...they didn't insert JR Ewing. There has been as much contraversey around his green energy interests and potential conflicts of interest, after all. G-W - In the spirit of your post and our mutual desire to focus on science, I look forward to reading posts by you which comment positively on research which does not affirm your existing views.

Hmm. You are honestly going to suggest that we ignore the next IPCC report because it doesn't accord with your views, and selected alterative research does? It might just be worth having a think about that. When you visit the Christmas lights, do you only point at the blown bulbs?