millennia

Well, woke up to an unexpected deluge this morning - forecast said the worst would miss Harrogate but the 12cm outside begs to differ!!! Moved up from Gloucestershire last month and snow not been off the ground since - although I believe they will be buried tonight . Great to see a proper winter for a change but I get the feeling this will wear a little thin with everybody if this keeps up - remember the worst last year didn't come until February, when Gloucs ran out of grit and we were snowed in for 5 days! While I know weather isn't climate it would help matters of the warm doomsayers would shut the F up for 10 minutes while we dig ouselves out

Why do we keep hearing this line about "stolen goods" as if the method of transfer to the wider public somehow negates the contents? Were the mails forged? Apparently not. Therefore the hacking is irrelevant to the discussion on their contents. Anyway we were doing quite well with this post and seem to be slipping off topic - as per - so I will desist forthwith....

That would be a warm beer then

To be quite honest, as soon as the Govt started using it as a reason to raise taxes! That was just a natural sceptic reaction (but it has not failed me so far ), but it then lead me to want to investigate the claims as I have had an interest in weather and climate for over 20 years. I too have plumbed the depths of the IPCC tomes and found them incredibly political, again raising my suspicions as to motive. I suppose I have always been of the opinion that if there really was an imminent, asteroid-on-collision-course-with-Earth, type climate disaster that was avoidable then something would have been done about it without recourse to public debate. To allow it to be bandied around the Internet like it has just reinforces my feeling that it is just a theory, and like all theories will either stand scrutiny (if allowed, CRU!!!) or implode in on itself. I continue to be ready to receive that irrefutible evidence that man produced CO2 really does have more than a negligible effect on the temperature of the Earth, but while findings such as estimations that a cap and trade bill on the Waxman-Markey line successfully implemented across the entire planet would only reduce temperatures by 0.2C in 100 years abound, then I believe more and more that evidence will never be found. It will likely turn out to be a very complex interaction of natural forces with a mix of minor human influences such as land use changes and, yes, quite possibly human CO2 output - just in a minor influencing role. I am now becoming more concerned with the direction our policy makers are heading, rather than the science (which I'm confident will work itself out in good time), especially as we have already saddled our future generations with unbelievable amounts of debt to fund our previous profligate lifestyles. The kind of suggestions in play regarding our way forward are more about power broking and making yet more money (like we haven't learned a bloody thing) than saving the planet, and will not make the environmental picture any better while at the same time making our financial outlook even worse. If all of the £7 trillion spent on global warming in the last 20 years had been invested in alternative energy development based on a scientific way forward beyond fossil fuels, without the scaremongering political crap, we'd probably be there now and have a few better run hospitals and <irony> scools </irony> from the change! SO in an effort to be involved with something at least on a different level to just sitting around reading blogs and hurling abuse at the latest biased reports from the BBC I have become a member of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (www.thegwpf.org, for those that don't know ). I hope it won't turn out to be just another right wing sceptic politiking organisation, and it's base position of not denying climate change but disussing the actions we take is a good starting point, but I already note alarmists lining up to pooh-pooh it before it heaves itself off the runway so what influence it will ever bring to bear is another discussion entirely.

I think I can do no more than post the link to this blog entry. Sometimes it really can be a good idea to step back and ask "are we over complicating this?" http://www.masterres...te-models-cold/

Heavy wet snow - starting to accumulate on car but not road - temp 1.2 - dp 0.6

What is your height there then?

I have 1.4/0.8 but I reckon your uppers are more important....

Maybe because I'm further north - lower upper air temp - can't explain Bristol snow though. Wet snow came in when wind suddenly shifted from ESE to ENE, still has a LONG way to go before it sticks

Precip type radar useless - we had 9cm of snow from a constant sleet reading last week - now deep in the rainbelt lamppost watching shows the white stuff

Hi There! 17:45 in Nailsworth, sleet / wet snow at 100m ASL - temp 1.6 dp 1

I for one was heartened to see this article as Richard Black has been a front runner in the climate alarmism stakes. This is not the first article of his to introduce some balance, maybe has been sat on from on high recently?

Hello again everybody. Thought I'd drop by and check out how the "discussion" is going, especially as I don't have to wade through 80+ pages of comments now there is a new discussion thread! Seems as though there has been a bit of an advance from the last time I looked, which had just spiralled into a circular "yes it is", "no it isn't" batting back and forth, but there still seems to be a reluctance to acknowledge the increasing dissention of scientists with regard to the dogmatic presentation of CO2 as an AGW driver, as per the latest Minority Report (good film that ) on the subject http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fus...5d-6e2d71db52d9. What interests me is the increasing use of acronyms like ENSO, PDO, AMO, etc. being batted back and forth by both sides and yet go back a few years and these were notably absent from many discussions. Why? Because this is very new in terms of human scientific knowledge and yet as discoveries continue to be made on what drives Earth's climate everybody seems dead sure we know enough to take trillion dollar decisions on the future of humanity. We STILL know more about the Moon than we do about the deep oceans and the reason why these fantastic climate models can only find CO2 as a cause of the last 30 years of warming is because we don't know everything that can drive the climate, this is because the science is too young to have directly measured or even discovered all the factors. We are still arguing over whether the MWP existed, and have no direct measurements of that time - only proxies of very dubious value - so to make such certain predictions using such a young science is so very dangerous. An observation from history - the absolute certainty that the Sun revolved around the Earth took a long time to be defeated by the likes of Copernicus and subsequently Galileo, and yet hundreds if not thousands of years before these people the heliocentric view of the solar system had already been calculated. We as a species have a history of learning and forgetting because of the inconsistency of recording information, and only recently have we had the means to quickly disseminate and store information around the world. In many cases this is a first experience for science and it has a lot of learning and even relearning to do, and all the time must fight the vested interests of others not at all interested in science from all viewpoints. I honestly believe this is a subject that will never be settled, but as the years go by the climate will swing one way, then the other, and eventually modern science will observe and record directly the extremes of variation our forefathers had discovered and forgotten again. Then, perhaps, we will be in a position to make decisions in advance. Today we are not ready.

I take your point - but still maitain it will never happen. Al Gore made $100 million preaching doom and nobody can convince me that if there wasn't money, fame and power (watch for a Al to make a Mandelson type comback with Obama in the White House) in it he'd give two figs for the environment. The day he gives it all away to environmental charities, and works for free to spread the word I will truly start to take notice. And that, TWS, is why your noble sentiments will most likely remain in media such as this forum rather than become a blueprint for our future. Noble people do not rule the world......

Yes resources are finite and therefore we are going to run out. However there is another 50 years of oil in offshore locations that are banned from being exploited (rightly or wrongly, I'm not trying to start a debate over oil covered seals here) and about 400 years of coal reserves - albeit creating ever greater damage as it becomes harder to extract. So actually the problem isn't yet resources but is still environmental if you are to convice anybody to change. Trouble is the politicians are starting to rapidly get cold feet as they desperately try to keep their economies afloat and themselves in jobs, so another front has now opened in the Climate Wars. The warmers now have to fight the skeptics and macroeconomics. Best of luck with that one. The only silver lining will be a substantial reduction of consumption in the next few years - it will be interesting to see if CO2 starts to drop and then it won't be long before the cooling trend we are currently in is attached to the economic contraction as "proof" that less consupmtion equals lower temperatures - never mind the cooling predating the crunch. Ah the waters are about to get a lot muddier.....

I think there is still a lack of understanding just what a financial hole we are all in. All this talk about spending billions on grandiose engineering projects with no known benefit when we can't even mortgage a bloody semi is about as pie in the sky as you can get. Heads out of the sand, this global recession will take years to work through and all we can afford to do is react and adapt to changes that actually happen - that is the cheaper option and that is what will be done in the end despite all the political posturing out there. Predicting what it would cost to stop something we don't even know will happen, and to what magnitude, is 99.999% less likely than predicting how much the Olympics will cost when they are bid for - or any other engineering project on the drawing board come to that. There is not enough spare cash in the world for a packet of maltesers, never mind an Arctic dam, we are in debt up to our back knackers and it will take decades to just pay that off - if we ever do. This isn't an environmental problem anymore, it is an economic one and the goal posts are not even on the same pitch.

First of all depends where you start. From an Ice Age we experience "runaway" warming to where we are today. We see maximums and minimums in a pretty tight band (by Venus standards) which are readjustments of equilibria and therefore runaway nothing. Second, how rapid do you think the changes are in switches between Ice Ages and Inter-glacials? None of these sterilised the Earth yet and we have absolutely NO evidence of that kind of rapid temperature change happening now. And finally.... sci-reality oceanic poisoning? Where? We are still at one of the lowest CO2 concentrations in Earth's history. Where do you think all the life that made the white cliffs of Dover came from at a time when atmospheric CO2 was 3000ppm? It amazes me how these scientists make observations with no reference to millions of years of evidence that they are talking complete BS.

There's no lie about the photo it's the "human history" bit that's blx. Amundsen found the NW passage completely free of ice in 1908, who was around in Siberia to report if the same happened over there as well, and that is just a century not thousands of years. Are they saying this never happend in the MWP? Gutter journalism and not even new - it was in the Independent yesterday. Now they are even copying crap.

I wish you were too John. It is interesting to see papers start to produce stories like this, although being the Telegraph it is bound to be dismissed out of hand by the liberals (small 'l'). What I have banged on about for what seems like forever now is the danger of misrepresenting natural climate change and seriously damaging our economies when we just can't afford to make those kind of mistakes. I'm convinced a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions will not change the path of the climate globally, there are bound to be local differences and I'm not saying CO2 has no effect but definitely the mitigation proposed for this "threat" is an order of magnitude worse than even if we were to warm 4C in the next 100 years. New Orleans getting smacked again will just fuel the smoke screen, and I'm at a loss what to do about it except let it run it's course.....

It's been a long time coming..... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jh...8/31/do3105.xml

Hello everybody! Took a break of a few weeks as the circular arguements were getting me down. I thought I'd wait until the media caught on to the August melt I'd been watching and I've dropped back in exactly where I thought the discussion would be on this site. Yes, it would have taken a particularly cold summer to stop first year ice succumbing this year. The fact we DIDN'T break the record from last year when there was so much vulnerable ice should be noted. Also I see a lot of movement in the pack and it appears to me that quite a bit of multi-year ice was lost again, and at the same time more first year ice remained than I thought it would. This confirms to me that ice loss is primarily ocean current driven and not through air temperature (as ice was lost in areas with little +ve anomoly). I'm glad we didn't get a new record for no more reason than it would be a gift to alarmists who have had little to crow about this year with substantial drops in temperature of the La Nina. What has been notable in the last few weeks is the ever increasing reporting of scientists coming out on the sceptic side of the arguement, particularly those alarmed by the punitive economic measures being mooted to combat the perceived threat at a time when the world can't afford these kind of mistakes. The economic measures, particualrly those of Europe and now even America, will not affect the rich but they will kill the poor - this will be the legacy of the great global warming scam. Predictions - I see a warming off the coast of S America so a moderate El Nino could be on the cards. It will be interesting to see the affect on temperatures this Winter in correlation with PDO/AMO and SCs 23 and 24. Global warming may yet have it's swan song and with a Democrat President and Gore back in power plenty of time to wreek havoc with nasty capitalism and guarantee we never come out of this recession. So I think no great increase in ice year on year until the heat flow of ocean currents into the Arctic is reduced. In W Europe I see a warm Autumn followed by another plunge of the polar front taking storms across S England as they did this summer - get yer skis out up north! I haven't a scooby what happens after that, too much can change in the next 6 months! And finally, in answer to GWs 'first' Arctic route openings question - NO. I have before posted extracts of Amundsen's log from 1908 describing the NW passage as having "no ice as far as the eye can see" and newspaper reports from 1922 reporting huge loss of Arctic ice and an "inland sea" (sic) near the North Pole. We live in an information age and the last time this happened we didn't - this is the only 'first' we are experiencing. It has all happened before and it will happen again, and one day we will understand why. But we don't yet.

Har Har! I see your graph GW and I raise you this! http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IM...t.365.south.jpg How come the anomoly doesn't read zero here?

That pesky Earth just won't do as it's told will it CB?

Welcome from me as well Mr Dilley - good of you to make the personal effort to log on. Your answer did not cover the C14 issue that was raised and while I'm prepared to accept natural variability as some of the answer for CO2 increase in the last 30 years I'm also quite happy to accept that CO2 from fossil fuel burning is still doing the rounds in the atmosphere, and will do for decades to come. I don't see your theory accounting for the unusual short term rise in CO2 but over a longer cycle as a reaction to temperatures it makes perfect sense. Assuming CO2 lags temperature I would therefore expect we haven't seen the CO2 peak yet, global cooling or not. Don't know what certain people's objection to buying the book is, what's 10 bucks in the quest for information? Good old Al charged $30 for his masterpiece in this country!

It also happened in 1951.