UK

This thread is for discussion of British aspects of global warming.

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131 Thoughts on “UK

  1. THREAD on 24/10/2010 at 6:46 pm said:

    Snow falls in Yorkshire – In October!

    Snow fell as far south as Yorkshire as drivers were stranded in cars following blizzards in Scotland as winter came early to Britain.

    Published: 7:26PM BST 20 Oct 2010

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/10/2010 at 10:34 am said:

      Andy says:
      October 27, 2010 at 10:19 am

      Frozen Britain braves coldest October night for 17 years

      Parts of Britain have suffered their coldest October night for 17 years, with temperatures plummeting to -6.6C, reports the Daily Telegraph

    • Richard C (NZ) on 10/12/2010 at 10:16 am said:

      The central England Temperature (CET) from the 1st-7th of December is -1.9, making this the coldest opening week of December since 1772

      Joe Bastardi European Blog

      POSTED: 3:29 p.m. December 9, 2010

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/11/2010 at 11:54 am said:

      Snow Might Cover 90% of U.K. by End of November With Six Inches in London

      Nov 24, 2010

      Snow is forecast to cover as much as 90 percent of the U.K. by Nov. 29 with six inches in London as cold weather approaches, according to weather forecasts.

      There may be as much as six inches (15 centimeters) of snow in southeast England, northeast England and much of Scotland, British Weather Services, which sells forecasts to businesses including energy companies, said in an e-mail.

      “We expect the country to be whitened out,” Jim Dale, a senior meteorologist at British Weather Services in High Wycombe, England, said by telephone. “There’s a good chance we could be waking up to large volumes of snow.” Snowfall is also forecast across the rest of Europe, particularly across the Alps and Scandinavia, he said.

      Weather forecasters use models which can predict trends in weather. The models can change. The U.K.’s Met Office issued a heavy snow warning on its website at 11:30 a.m local time. Cold weather can spur demand for natural gas, used to heat more than half of the country’s homes and businesses.

      Snow is going to come “progressively as we get to the end of this week and into next,” Dale said. “On current trends, we can’t see an end to this until mid-December.”

    • Richard C (NZ) on 25/11/2010 at 5:04 pm said:

      Heavy snow to blanket Britain as bitter cold weather heralds arrival of winter

      24 Nov 2010

      More than eight inches of snow are set to blanket parts of Britain as the bitter cold snap triggered the first Cold Weather Payments of the winter.

      Temperatures were due to plummet well below zero as freezing winds swept the country amid warnings “treacherous” roads remain not gritted after salt supplies failed to be delivered.

      Forecasters, who said it was the earliest significant snowfall since 1993, warned no part of Britain was “going to be immune” from snow over the coming days.

      [Snip]

      The Mercury was set to plummet to -9C (18.8F) in northern Scotland while temperatures will fall to about -4C (24.8F) in many other parts as easterly winds hit the country from Scandinavia and Russia.

      The country will be as cold as Iceland for the rest of the week as day temperatures struggle to reach 2C or 3C, which is about eight degrees lower average.

      The freezing temperatures triggered the first Cold Weather Payments of the winter with almost 80,000 households set to receive £25 each over the coming days to help cover the cost of heating their homes.

      Cold Weather Payments are made when average temperatures are recorded or forecast to be 32F (0C) or lower for seven consecutive days. Around 11.9 million such payments worth £297 million were made to households last winter

      Councils warned that some local authorities remained unprepared for the blast of cold weather because they were still waiting on delivery of thousands of tonnes of salt.

      Continues…….

    • Richard C (NZ) on 30/11/2010 at 11:55 am said:

      UK record low temperatures – Google Search

  2. THREAD on 25/10/2010 at 11:32 am said:

    Biased BBC (B-BBC)

    Richard North Blog

  3. THREAD on 25/10/2010 at 3:33 pm said:

    Hottest Year Ever : UK’s Barbecue Summer

  4. THREAD on 28/10/2010 at 6:15 pm said:

    Climate sceptics launch campaign to overturn green targets

    Climate sceptics, including a number of high profileTory backbenchers, are launching a campaign to overturn the Coalition’s green targets.

    By Louise Gray, 27 Oct 2010, Telegraph UK

    The ten challenges sceptics have asked ‘supporters of the hypothesis of dangerous human-caused climate change’ to prove:

    1. Variations in global climate in the last hundred years are significantly outside the natural range experienced in previous centuries.

    2. Humanity’s emissions of carbon dioxide and other ‘greenhouse gases’ (GHG) are having a dangerous impact on global climate.

    3. Computer-based models can meaningfully replicate the impact of all of the natural factors that may significantly influence climate.

    4. Sea levels are rising dangerously at a rate that has accelerated with increasing human GHG emissions, thereby threatening small islands and coastal communities.

    5. The incidences of malaria and other infectious diseases are now increasing due to recent climate changes;

    6. Human society and natural ecosystems cannot adapt to foreseeable climate change as they have done in the past.

    7. Worldwide glacier retreat, and sea ice melting in polar regions, is unusual and related to increases in human GHG emissions.

    8. Polar bears and other Arctic and Antarctic wildlife are unable to adapt to anticipated local climate change effects, independent of the causes of those changes.

    9. Hurricanes, other tropical cyclones and associated extreme weather events are increasing in severity and frequency.

    10. Data recorded by ground-based stations are a reliable indicator of global surface temperature trends.

  5. Richard C (NZ) on 30/10/2010 at 9:18 pm said:

    Climate Fools Day in the UK Parliament a Success

    October 28, 2010 The Hockey Schtick

    email received from analytical chemist Hans Schreuder reporting the Climate Fools Day meeting in the UK Parliament was a great success. Perhaps a US version will occur in the US House of Representatives following the Nov. 2nd midterm elections.

    The Climate Fools Day in London meeting was superb.

    Will write a proper report on the event yet, when various video clips have been posted.

    Attached two pics from the event. The room was nearly fully booked.

    Lots of good contacts and a call for a monthly meeting at Parliament and for MPs to attend.

    Wind energy in particular was demolished as the greatest waste of time and money. The momentum is building now.

    Kind regards,
    Hans Schreuder
    http://www.ilovemycarbondioxide.com/

  6. Richard C (NZ) on 31/10/2010 at 8:48 am said:

    Andy says:
    October 30, 2010 at 9:09 pm

    Without the Hot Air

    Sustainable Energy – without the hot air
    Prof David J.C. MacKay

    http://www.withouthotair.com

    “The Freakonomics of conservation, climate and energy.”

  7. Richard C (NZ) on 03/11/2010 at 12:32 pm said:

    Insurance that kills

    10:10 threatened to kill people, but Piers points out that their incompetence already does.

    http://joannenova.com.au/2010/11/insurance-that-kills/#more-11085

    ACTUALLY THE CO2-CLIMATE CHANGE LOBBY DOES KILL PEOPLE

    From Piers Corbyn

  8. Richard C (NZ) on 27/11/2010 at 9:36 am said:

    Met Office says 2010 ‘among hottest on record’

    26 November 2010, Roger Harrabin, BBC

    [Snip]

    Climate sceptics say that until now, warming has plateaued over the last decade. The Met Office agrees that the rate of warming has slowed – but it maintains that is due to natural variability, not because man-made warming has stopped.

    [Snip]

    “The long-term warming trend is 0.16C,” she says. “In the last 10 years the rate decreased to between 0.05 and 0.13.

    “There are a number of things that are affecting short-term temperatures. A lot of the heat could be distributed to the deep oceans and we don’t know what’s going on there.”

    ‘No proof’

    There is a question over how many times the Met Office has forecast a record previously. Dr Pope said they had not done so from her recollection.

    But a Met Office press release shows a forecast that 2007 would probably beat 1998. And a BBC report implies that they made the same prediction for the other El Nino year of 2003.

    Sceptics say this could prove the third time they have been wrong.

    But it is impossible to be wrong with a probabilistic forecast unless the forecast is 100%. It would certainly have eased pressure on the Met Office, though, if their 2010 forecast had been seen to be spectacularly accurate.

    Professor John Christy, a climate sceptic from the University of Alabama in Hunstville, said global temperature had plunged in the past two weeks, so 2010 was likely to remain in second place.

    He challenged the Met Office conviction that greenhouse gases were to blame for the warmth.

    “The cause of the warmth is speculation. There are numerous feedbacks at work (many of which are poorly modelled if at all), and it seems to me unimaginative to conclude that greenhouse gases are the dominant cause,” he said.

    “There is no proof of such a cause in classical scientific sense – so we end up with a lot of opinions on the matter. Evidence is strong that centuries in the past 10,000 years were warmer than today without influences from human-related greenhouse gases.”

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/11/2010 at 9:47 am said:

      World May Record Warmest Year as U.K. Meteorological Office Adjusts Data

      Nov 27, 2010 Bloomberg

      The decadal rate for the 2000s may be 0.03 degrees higher once adjustments have been made to compensate for an increase in the use of buoys to take sea temperature measurements, Pope said. The buoys measure sea temperatures as being slightly lower than ships, which were used more in the past, according to Matthew Palmer, an ocean scientist at the Met Office.

      [So, adjust and splice – Et Voila! – global warming]

    • Richard C (NZ) on 06/12/2010 at 3:09 pm said:

      What happened to the ‘warmest year on record’: The truth is global warming has halted

      MailOnline
      Last updated at 4:17 PM on 5th December 2010

      A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, ‘is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record’ – a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.

      World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: ‘Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far – 1998.’

      Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits – an ambition that was not to be met.

      Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.

      Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.

      Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.

      But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications – not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.

      Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, is really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.

      Continues…………

  9. val majkus on 27/11/2010 at 9:51 am said:

    I wonder if the Met works with raw or adjusted data; oh silly me!

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-11-26/world-may-record-warmest-year-as-u-k-meteorological-office-adjusts-data.html

    Cooking The Books At The Met Office
    World temperatures in 2010 may be the warmest on record, the U.K. Met Office said, as it plans to calibrate a decade of data to account for newer sensors.

    The average temperature for the year through October shows 2010 will be one of the two warmest years in a series that goes back to 1850, said Vicky Pope, head of climate science at the Met Office. Scientists at the agency are preparing to revise data since 2000 to adjust for a new method that masked some of the rising temperature trend, she said.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/11/2010 at 10:16 am said:

      “I wonder if the Met works with raw or adjusted data”

      They “calibrate” and “revise” data – apparently. This seems to be a process of adjustment and splicing of disparate datasets.

      It’s getting ridiculous:-

      Micheal Mann’s hockey stick adjust and splice,
      UK Met, ship – ARGO adjust and splice
      Land record adjust and splice

      Law Dome – Mauna Loa GCM spin-up splice

      Adjust, splice, revise, calibrate………… and so it goes on

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/11/2010 at 10:32 am said:

      “Scientists at the agency are preparing to revise data since 2000 to adjust for a new method that masked some of the rising temperature trend”

      They are running out of ways to extract warming from the records.

      All of these trends in the metrics depend entirely on the initial pivot point selected so what is really masked is warm/cool phase change – they just have not got a clue.

      If they would just place intermediate trends on the data the picture emerges but that’s not the warmist way of course.

  10. Richard C (NZ) on 30/11/2010 at 12:42 pm said:

    Cancun climate change summit: scientists call for rationing in developed world

    By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 7:30AM GMT 29 Nov 2010 Telegraph UK

    In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of worlds most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.

    [Snip]

    In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.

    [Snip]

    But Dr Myles Allen, of Oxford Universitys Department of Physics, said this might not be enough. He said that if emissions do not come down quick enough even a slight change in temperature will be too rapid for ecosystems to keep up. Also by measuring emissions relative to a particular baseline, rather than putting a limit on the total amount that can ever be pumped into the atmosphere, there is a danger that the limit is exceeded.

    [Snip]

    Other papers published on 4C and beyond in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A warned of rising sea levels, droughts in river basins and mass migrations.

  11. Richard C (NZ) on 07/12/2010 at 9:55 am said:

    BRITAIN IS FREEZING TO DEATH

    Sunday December 5,2010 – Express UK

    MIDDLE class families are among millions of Britons who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, as elderly ride on buses all day to stay in the warm.

    After a week of snow and freezing temperatures a shocking picture has emerged of the bleak months ahead for 5.5 million households.

    Pensioners, who are among those most ­vulnerable to the cold, are resorting to ­extraordinary measures to keep warm.

    Many have been using their free travel ­passes to spend the day riding on buses while others are seeking refuge from the cold in libraries and shopping centres.

    Dot Gibson, spokeswoman for pressure group the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “Now that we have one of the coldest winters, older people are going to have to make the unenviable decision whether or not to put the heating on. The Government should guarantee that they won’t cut the winter fuel allowance.”

    The death toll from the big freeze rose to seven yesterday. They included two men who were killed in a crash on the M62 in Humberside and two teenage girls who died when their car collided with a Royal Mail van in Cumbria.

    The winter death toll is set to rise steeply as official figures show that nine elderly people died every hour because of cold-related illnesses last year. The number of deaths linked to cold over the four months of last ­winter reached nearly 28,000.

    Charities claim this country has the highest winter death rate in northern Europe, worse than colder nations such as Finland and Sweden.

    About half of the people forced to spend over 10 per cent of their income on energy bills – the official definition of fuel poverty – are aged over 60.

    But working families also face a tough time meeting the cost of keeping the central heating turned on as fuel prices continue to rise.

    Ann Robinson, director of ­consumer policy at price ­comparison service uswitch.com, said: “Middle-class households are now in fuel poverty.”

    ­National Energy Action estimates that 5.5 million households will have plunged into fuel poverty by early next year due to price rises.

    This is up 400,000 on the group’s last estimate and represents 21 per cent of the UK’s 26 million households.

    The last official figures, for 2008, showed there were 4.5 million fuel-poor households in the UK. On Friday, British Gas will raise prices for eight million customers. Millions more customers of Scottish & Southern Energy and ­ScottishPower have already been hit by price rises.

    Last winter 70 per cent of household were forced to cut down or ration their energy use because of cost.

    Uswitch’s Ms Robinson, who advised Tony Blair’s government on energy policy, warned: “Winter price hikes will simply force even more people down this route.”

    Energy minister Greg Barker admitted last week that the system to deal with fuel poverty was “completely broken” and said he was “very worried” by the NEA figures.

    Charity Age UK estimates that nearly a third of pensioners have resorted to extreme measures to keep warm. The National Pensioners’ Convention has described the situation as “Dickensian”.

    Widow Rita Young, from Thorny, near Peterborough was struggling to stay warm last week. Mrs Young, 75, said: “I’ve worked all my life. It doesn’t feel fair.

    “People my age don’t want to put hats and scarves on in their homes, but there’s nothing we can do about it. I sit in a blanket put on a hat and sometimes go to bed at 7.30 in the evening.”

    Last week Lillian Jenkinson, 80, and William Wilson, 84, were found dead in the gardens of their homes 70 miles apart in Cumbria. Both are thought to have lain ­undetected in sub-zero temperatures for hours.

    On Thursday a driver who stopped to help a stranded motorist in the Yorkshire Dales was killed when he was struck by another vehicle.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 25/12/2010 at 1:53 pm said:

      Britain’s big freeze death toll hits 300 every day

      Dec 25 2010 – METRO UK

      Nearly 300 more people a day died when freezing temperatures hit at the start of this month, new figures show.

      A total of 11,193 deaths were registered in England and Wales bet­ween December 3 and 10, the Office for National Statistics has revealed.

      This is a 21 per cent rise on the previous week, which works out at 282 extra deaths every day.

      It has also emerged flu rates have more than doubled in the past week with children the worst-hit.

      Continues…….

  12. Andy on 11/12/2010 at 10:09 am said:

    Carbon capture coal firm Powerfuel calls in administrators

    Powerfuel £635m short of money required for CCS scheme

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/dec/09/powerfuel-clean-coal-ccs-firm-administrators

    Yet another “green” initiative bites the dust.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 11/12/2010 at 10:18 am said:

      But the madness continues

      “The government in October finally committed £1bn for the UK’s first CCS demonstration plant, likely to be developed by ScottishPower. It says it remains committed to putting levies on consumer bills to fund up to three more projects but it is not clear when the funds will be made available.”

      All the plants need is scrubbers – the carbon’s no problem.

  13. Andy on 16/12/2010 at 12:37 pm said:

    Even The Guardian is reporting that the UK may suffer its coldest winter since 1963.

    The weather maps look horrendous, cold air coming straight off the North Pole.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/dec/15/uk-fears-worst-winter-weather-1963

    • Richard C (NZ) on 16/12/2010 at 1:13 pm said:

      An interesting development – from the Guardian no less. There is still objectivity there from time to time,

      The photo of cycling/walking on the frozen river wont go down well in some quarters and I see the Met Office is still holding out for warmth in January, ‘too early to warn of another 1963″ apparently.

      But a “national summit of government leaders’?

      Maybe some realisation setting in.

    • Andy on 16/12/2010 at 3:51 pm said:

      On top of this in today’s Mail

      Energy bills could double to pay for green power as ministers plan minimum carbon price

      Proponents of the scheme insist the carbon ‘floor price’ is meant to reflect pollution caused by fossil fuels, and will encourage investors to pour their money into ‘green’ energy instead.
      But experts warned it could lead to a doubling of energy bills, hitting the poor and elderly the hardest.

      There was a separate warning yesterday that winter energy bills are already at a record high of £630 for the average family after most suppliers hiked prices.

      Website Energyhelpline.com said families have been hit by a combination of higher tariffs and plunging temperatures

      http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339040/Energy-bills-double-pay-green-power-ministers-plan-minimum-carbon-price.html

  14. Andy on 17/12/2010 at 12:43 pm said:

    £500 on electricity bills to pay for green energy
    Electricity bills will have to rise by up to £500 a year to pay for a new generation of environmentally friendly power stations, it emerged.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/8205123/500-on-electricity-bills-to-pay-for-green-energy.html

    Scroll down to the comments. How long can this madness last?

    • Richard C (NZ) on 19/12/2010 at 1:19 pm said:

      Christopher Booker: Chris Huhne has a blueprint for a green, cold, dark Britain

      Saturday, December 18th 2010, 2:31 PM EST – Climate Realists

      The government’s new energy policy will lead to widespread power cuts and economic disaster,

      As much of the northern hemisphere last week froze under the snows of the fourth unusually cold winter in a row, our ministers, led by David Cameron and Chris Huhne, the Climate Change Secretary, laid out a blueprint that promises to inflict on Britain a social and economic catastrophe unique in the world. They chose this moment to announce what Mr Huhne called “a seismic shift” in Britain’s energy policy, the purpose of which, according to Mr Cameron, is to replace our “clapped-out” electricity supplies by making Britain “the greenest economy in the world”.

      The chief driving force of the policy is the EU’s requirement that, within 10 years, 30 per cent of our electricity must come from renewables, mainly through thousands more wind turbines. This would be so expensive that the Government accepts it could only be made economical by massively rigging the market against any form of electricity derived from fossil fuels, such as the coal and gas which were last week supplying more than 80 per cent of our electricity. By a complex new system of regulations, including what in effect will be a tax of £27 a ton on CO2 emissions, the Government thus hopes to make renewables “competitive” with conventional power.

      In addition, it will in effect make it impossible to replace the coal-fired power stations that will be forced to close in the next few years under an EU directive, while proposing a hidden subsidy to any new nuclear power stations. (Although, since the EU does not count carbon-free nuclear power as “renewable”, this may well fall foul of its ban on state aid.) All this, Mr Huhne assures us, might lead to a modest rise of £160 a year in the average household energy bill, but in the long run it will make electricity cheaper than if he had not intervened.

      So riddled with wishful thinking and contradictions are these proposals that one scarcely knows where to begin. For a start, even if we could hope to build enough windmills to provide, say, 25 per cent of our electricity (10 times the current proportion), this would require not the 10,000 turbines the Government talks of, but more like 25,000, costing well over £200 billion, plus another £100 billion to connect them up to the grid.

      At least the Government admits for the first time that the wind doesn’t always blow; so it proposes a Capacity Mechanism to subsidise the building of dozens of gas-fired power stations, to be kept running all the time, emitting CO2, just to provide instant back-up for when the wind drops. More than once on these recent cold, windless days, the contribution of wind to our electricity needs has been as low as 0.1 per cent – so the back-up to all those turbines will cost billions more, doing much to negate any CO2 savings from the turbines when they work. It does not take long to estimate that the capital cost of Mr Huhne’s new energy policy could well be more than £300 billion over 10 years, or £30 billion a year. Since the total wholesale cost of the electricity we used last year was only around £19 billion, this alone would be well on the way to tripling our bills by 2020.

      When Mr Cameron talks of wanting to replace our “clapped-out” power supplies, what he should have had in mind was the need to meet the terrifying shortfall due in a few years’ time when we lose those older nuclear and coal-fired power stations which currently suppply 40 per cent of our needs. In a sane world, the Government would be planning to get that infrastructure replaced as a matter of the highest national priority, at a cost of around £100 billion. Instead, it puts forward an incoherent farrago of uncosted policies which, even if they could be put into practice, would cost three times as much, paid for by all of us through our already soaring energy bills. They include no practical proposals to meet that fast-looming energy gap, without which, within five years, we face the prospect of wholesale power cuts, bringing much of Britain’s economy to a halt.

      No other country in the world has an energy policy so utterly mad and unworkable. Yet all our major political parties are equally locked into the same self-deceiving bubble of unreality. Any final hope that we might be saved from this absurdly unnecessary disaster seemed last week to vanish, even as the ice and the snow closed in.

      Source Link: telegraph.co.uk

  15. Andy on 18/12/2010 at 6:08 pm said:

    Arctic freeze to last another month as AA warns of ‘worst driving conditions imaginable’ for Christmas getaways

    The Big Freeze will hold us in its grip for at least another month, forecasters warn.

    Arctic conditions are expected to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond.

    With temperatures expected to fall to -15c (5f), the Met Office said this is ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest December since records began in 1910.

    Yesterday’s snowfall was largely in the South and West, and in Wales while the South was braced last night for another 10in of snow accompanied by treacherous ice.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1339632/Big-freeze-Arctic-conditions-month-AA-warns-dangerous-driving-conditions.html

  16. Richard C (NZ) on 24/12/2010 at 9:55 am said:

    Heathrow management under fire after week of chaos

    8:00 AM Thursday Dec 23, 2010 – NZH

    [Snip]

    Airports on Europe’s northern fringe are models of cold-weather resilience. Scandinavian airports stay open in bitter cold and waist-deep snow. Authorities in Sweden say they can clear a runway in 6 to 10 minutes, compared to 25 at Heathrow.

    Reijo Tasanen of Finavia, which runs Finland’s 25 airports, said preparedness is the key.

    “We are ready. We brief the staff on weather conditions, we work overtime if necessary and simply put, we have enough equipment – we have to,” Tasanen said.

    That doesn’t come cheap. Canada’s biggest airport, in Toronto, spends almost $15 million a year dealing with winter. Heathrow won’t give a comparable figure but said it has 6 million pounds ($9 million) worth of snow-clearing equipment and is spending 500,000 pounds ($770,000) this year upgrading and maintaining it.

    Heathrow faces a choice: invest tens of millions in snow-clearing equipment, or gamble that this year’s wintry weather was a one-off event.

    “BAA has to make a decision for the future: do we throw more equipment at it?” said David Learmount of Flight Global magazine. “Then what happens if they never get any snow for the next 10 years? What will their shareholders say when they put the prices up to airlines and the airlines pass that on to passengers? It’s a difficult decision.”
    ——————————————————————————————————————–
    One-off event?

    If they take the advise of the UK Met Office, they will be certain to make the wrong decision – better not to in that case.

  17. Andy on 24/12/2010 at 9:16 pm said:

    In private, the best-informed analysts now agree that Britain’s environmental policies have put the country on track to have the world’s most expensive electricity. This is mainly because our competitors are almost certain to choose cheaper routes to emissions reductions, such as natural gas, or to shun emissions reductions altogether. The Coalition’s own Annual Energy Statement for 2010 concedes that by the year 2020, nearly one third of the average domestic electricity bill will consist of green energy charges imposed by law (£160 out of £512, or 31 per cent). Business will be hit even harder, with environmental charges for the average medium-sized non-domestic user accounting for £404,000 out of £1.224 million, or 33 per cent.

    http://www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/3639/full

    • Richard C (NZ) on 24/12/2010 at 11:01 pm said:

      Where do all the UK subsidies come from?

      If some 30 per cent of UK electricity were renewable in 2020, this would require an ongoing annual subsidy of upwards of £6bn(assuming an average subsidy of 5p per unit).

      The lifetime cost of the Feed-in Tariff scheme is £8.6bn, while its benefits, including climate change benefits, amount to only £420m (technically, the Net Present Value is negative £8.2bn). Government’s figures for the revised Renewables Obligation needed to meet the 2020 targets shows that costs exceed benefits by £33bn. The emissions savings fail the government’s own cost-effectiveness tests.

      I have to highlight this stuff – it defies belief.

      Spain’s experience is even worse. In a May 2010 document, the country’s Ministry for Industry showed that businesses were paying 17 per cent more for electricity than their European competitors, largely as a result of subsidies to renewables, which were €5bn in 2009.

      Moreover, because Spanish energy companies do not recover the full cost of renewable generation from consumers, but accumulate government debt instead, one company alone, Endesa, was owed €8.3bn by the state at the end of September 2010. The total “tariff deficit”, as it is called, amounted to around €16.5bn in 2010, and according to the ministry, will increase by a further €2bn in 2011 in spite of efforts to rein in subsidies. Whether Spain has fared any better than Germany in its attempt to create a self-sustaining green or low-carbon economy is also open to doubt. A study by Gabriel Calzada Alvarez of Madrid’s Universidad Rey Juan Carlos has estimated that the market distortions needed to create one green job destroyed two jobs in other sectors. Since 2000, each green-sector job has cost €570,000, with wind-industry jobs costing €1m. The details here are debatable, but they are consonant with German experience, and do not bode well for Britain.

      We know Spain’s stuffed – why’s Britain following? Crazy.

      Mind you, I’ve been looking at NZ ETS market distortions – also crazy.

  18. Andy on 26/12/2010 at 2:03 pm said:

    The Hijack of the Met

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/hijack-of-met.html

    North and Booker on the Green Hijack of the UK Met Office

    • Richard C (NZ) on 26/12/2010 at 2:35 pm said:

      Andy, i can’t link to the Booker article “The green hijack of the Met office is crippling Britain”. Is it not in print yet or something? Not in Google or Bing or UK Telegraph.

      The EU Referendum article is definitely bookmarked though.

    • Works for me, Richard.
      http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/hijack-of-met.html
      The heading is just: “The hijack of the Met.”

    • Richard C (NZ) on 26/12/2010 at 2:44 pm said:

      No that’s North writing on Booker’s article. If you click on the image of the article you can see it but not read it and I don’t know where to access it.

      It might be only in newspaper form at this stage and will go online later – no point giving it away before it goes on the stands.

    • Ah yes. I beg your pardon.

    • Andy on 26/12/2010 at 3:11 pm said:

      Worthy of note is the data on wind output during the cold snap. sometimes reaching zero percent for the entire country.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 26/12/2010 at 4:14 pm said:

      The wind maps showed the wind bringing the cold down from the Arctic, but once the cold system is in place there’s no wind and they have to stoke coal.

      My (limited) understanding is that wind occurs at the interface between high and low pressure systems but at the centre of either there’s no wind.

      Not much of an alternative when it’s not there are the time it’s needed most.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/12/2010 at 7:43 pm said:

      UK Generation by Fuel Type last 24 hours (when I looked)

      COAL 39.1%

      CCGT 34.2%

      NUCLEAR 21.5%

      WIND 1.9%

      PS 0.9%

      NPSHYD 0.3%

      http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/bsp_home.htm

    • Richard C (NZ) on 28/12/2010 at 7:04 pm said:

      The green hijack of the Met Office is crippling Britain

      By Christopher Booker 8:00AM GMT 26 Dec 2010 – The Telegraph

      The Met Office’s commitment to warmist orthodoxy means it drastically underestimates the chances of a big freeze, says Christopher Booker

      By far the biggest story of recent days, of course, has been the astonishing chaos inflicted, to a greater or lesser extent, on all of our lives by the fact that we are not only enjoying what is predicted to be the coldest December since records began in 1659, but also the harshest of three freezing winters in a row. We all know the disaster stories – thousands of motorists trapped for hours on paralysed motorways, days of misery at Heathrow, rail passengers marooned in unheated carriages for up to 17 hours. But central to all this – as the cry goes up: “Why wasn’t Britain better prepared?” – has been the bizarre role of the Met Office.

      Continues…………

  19. Andy on 05/01/2011 at 10:03 am said:

    A potentially big story is brewing that the UK Met Office knew about the cold winter in October, but withheld the information from the public

    http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/04/bbc-spins-that-met-office-got-winter-right-just-kept-it-secret-from-public/

  20. Andy on 27/01/2011 at 10:54 am said:

    Climate change means we will be skiing in Yorkshire rather than sunbathing under palm trees, experts warn

    We are more likely to be skiing in Yorkshire than basking under palm trees, a leading climate change expert has warned as global warming will actually lead to Britain getting colder.

    Dr Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Survey, said that while the planet as a whole will get much warmer, this country will see temperatures plunge as the ocean currents and weather patterns around the world change.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/8281655/Climate-change-means-we-will-be-skiing-in-Yorkshire-rather-than-sunbathing-under-palm-trees-experts-warn.html

    Yet, 10 years ago, we were told that snow “would be a rare and exciting event” in Britain.

    “Kids just won’t know what snow is”

    http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2011/01/experts-warn.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 27/01/2011 at 12:18 pm said:

      I notice that GR has taken Don Easterbrook to task over grape vineyards in Britain at present (and rightly so, DE was incorrect, Britain is producing wine at present)

      They have also planted kiwifruit vines but I wonder whether it is a long-term proposition now that the climate in Britain seems to have taken a dive. I know kiwifruit require a certain amount of cold but not extreme cold or frost. The NZ South Island grape vineyards seem to cope OK but I don’t think they have anywhere near the cold as in Britain now.

  21. Richard C (NZ) on 30/01/2011 at 8:11 pm said:

    I’ve just crunched three articles at Climate Realists, the first is the Met Office data manipulation for the “2010 – a near record year” press release, the second is blatant BBC misrepresentation of AGW sceptics in the Horizon “Science Under Attack” programme and the third is the Met Office/Roger Harrabin (BBC) untruth stemming from the Met Office Oct 2010 winter weather forecast to the British government.

    Manipulation, misrepresentation and untruth, what an indictment on these institutions and personnel.

    See:-

    Christopher Booker: Is Met Office again playing games with its weather data?

    http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7123

    Christopher Booker: How BBC warmists abuse the science

    http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7122

    BREAKING: The Met Office Winter Forecast Lie Is Finally Nailed: Updated

    http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=7114

    All on one weekend !

  22. Andy on 24/04/2011 at 12:44 pm said:

    Lobbyists who cleared ‘Climategate’ academics funded by taxpayers and the BBC
    A shadowy lobby group which pushes the case that global warming is a real threat is being funded by the taxpayer and assisted by the BBC

    h/t Bishop Hill

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2011/4/23/digging-into-the-globe.html

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8469883/Lobbyists-who-cleared-Climategate-academics-funded-by-taxpayers-and-the-BBC.html

  23. Richard C (NZ) on 10/05/2011 at 7:10 am said:

    Climate change ‘could disrupt wi-fi and hit power supply’

    Climate change will disrupt wi-fi connections, cause regular power failures and lead railway lines to buckle unless Britain spends billions of pounds, Caroline Spelman, the Environment Secretary has warned.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/road-and-rail-transport/8502620/Climate-change-could-disrupt-wi-fi-and-hit-power-supply.html

  24. Richard C (NZ) on 21/05/2011 at 7:47 pm said:

    Tata cuts 1500 UK jobs over ‘double whammy’ of carbon targets

    * From: The Times
    * May 21, 2011 11:14AM

    TATA, the Indian steel giant, has blamed the UK government’s environmental policies as it cut 1500 jobs in one of Britain’s poorest regions.

    The company, which took much of the former British Steel business five years ago, will axe 8 per cent of its British workforce. Its Scunthorpe plant is to close with the loss of 1200 jobs. A further 300 jobs will go in Teesside.

    Unions described the cuts as a “devastating blow” to the region, which is already home to some of Britain’s worst unemployment blackspots.

    Karl-Ulrich Kohler, Tata Steel’s head of Europe, blamed the cuts on the decline of the construction industry, but added that new EU environmental laws and planned British legislation had compounded the company’s problems.

    “Europe’s steel industry is in danger of being made uncompetitive in the world market because of European taxes on UK emissions,” said Dr Kohler.

    “But here in Britain we are facing a double whammy of carbon targets.”

    Under the coalition deal, the government plans to bring in the toughest carbon emissions targets in the world by 2027. The EU has already said that member states must slash emissions, but Britain will go farther and cut them by 80 per cent by 2050.

    Continues…….

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/news/tata-cuts-1500-uk-jobs-over-double-whammy-of-carbon-targets/story-e6frg90o-1226060096233
    —————————————————————————————————————————-
    Note that this is in the Business section of the Australian. OZ steel (and the unions) will be taking notes.

  25. Richard C (NZ) on 14/06/2011 at 8:13 pm said:

    Lessons in climate change ‘should go’ says schools adviser who tells them to remove pseudo-science

    14th June 2011 – MailOnline

    Climate change propaganda could be cut from the classroom, as a government adviser demands pseudo-science is removed from the national curriculum.

    Tim Oates, who is leading an overhaul of school syllabuses for five- to 16-year-olds, has signalled the end of ‘climate wash’ in schools.

    He is calling for a return of ‘science in science’ and for children to be taught facts, not fads.

    And he accused Labour of replacing traditional physics, chemistry and biology with ‘topical issues’ such as global warming.

    At present, seven-year-olds are taught that the world is overheating, and told this will cause floods and kill polar bears.

    [Snip]

    However, climate scientists have accused the anti-green lobby of influencing education.

    Bob Ward, of the Grantham research institute for climate change and the environment, said the removal of climate change from the curriculum may not be in pupils’ best interests.

    He added: ‘Certain politicians feel that they don’t like the concept of climate change. I hope this isn’t a sign of a political agenda being exercised.’

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2002890/Pseudo-science-climate-change-lessons-says-schools-adviser.html#ixzz1PEpEPlEI

  26. Andy on 21/07/2011 at 9:01 pm said:

    BBC, Prof Steve Jones and the push for censorship

    The BBC have made a decision to push the sceptics further out into the fringe

    Autonomous Mind sums it up
    http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/07/20/bbc-prof-steve-jones-and-the-push-for-censorship/

    Guardian article here:
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/jul/20/bbc-climate-change-science-coverage

  27. Andy on 24/07/2011 at 12:03 pm said:

    Booker on the BBC decision to be even more biased:

    “Steve Jones tells the BBC: don’t give ‘denialists’ so much air-time

    In his report for the BBC Trust, Steve Jones actually attacks the BBC for having too little global-warming bias.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/globalwarming/8656765/Steve-Jones-tells-the-BBC-dont-give-denialists-so-much-air-time.html

  28. Mike Jowsey on 03/08/2011 at 5:06 am said:

    UK House of Commons: Science and Technology Committee – Eighth Report
    Peer review in scientific publications
    Paragraph 10:

    The report begins in chapter two with an overview of the peer-review process in publishing, including common criticisms and new innovations in publishing. Chapter three explores the roles of the editors, authors and reviewers. Chapter four examines the challenges involved in reviewing data associated with submitted work and storing it after publication. Chapter five looks at the growing area of review and commentary after publication. Finally, chapter six explores public debate and trust in science. It also assesses the role of peer review in preventing fraud and misconduct, as well as the broader ways in which research integrity is overseen in the UK.

    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201012/cmselect/cmsctech/856/85602.htm

  29. Mike Jowsey on 09/08/2011 at 11:08 pm said:

    http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/blog/?p=479

    Is the BBC trying to rehabilitate Phil Jones?
    Posted by TonyN on 22/07/2011 at 9:15 pm

    Last month, the BBC’s Richard Black posted a story that looks very much like an attempt to rehabilitate Phil Jones, the University of East Anglia scientist at the centre of the Climategate scandal. The report’s rather surprising headline was Global warming since 1995 ‘now significant’, and looking at the context of this claim is quite revealing.

    Conclusion:

    There are two points here. Black acknowledges that Jones and his colleagues were criticised for not involving professional statisticians in their work, which of course depends heavily on statistical analysis. Therefore isn’t it rather strange that the BBC should be prepared to give Jones’ claim about a statistically significant rise in temperature when this research has apparently not even been peer reviewed let alone signed off by a professional statistician. And is it really fair-minded to say that nothing has emerged since Climategate to challenge the mainstream on global warming as exemplified by the IPCC? The window that the Climategate emails has provided on the characters, ethics, state of mind, competence and behaviour of top climate scientists should be enough to make anyone cautious about what they are telling the rest of us.

  30. Andy on 07/10/2011 at 6:54 am said:

    Flagship UK carbon capture project ‘close to collapse’

    Scottish Power expected to pull out of government-promoted scheme to build a £1bn prototype CCS plant at Longannet


    A £1bn flagship government project for fighting climate change – the construction of a prototype carbon capture and storage (CCS) project at Longannet in Scotland – is on the verge of collapse, it emerged on Thursday.

    Talks between the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) and Scottish Power have run into deep trouble and the electricity supplier is expected to pull the plug on the government-promoted scheme, which hoped to bury carbon emissions from the coal power station in the North Sea.

    The potential demise of the scheme comes amid growing fears among renewable power enthusiasts that David Cameron and George Osborne want to scale back the “green” agenda on the grounds that low-carbon energy schemes such as CCS and offshore wind cost too much at a time of austerity. Osborne told the Conservative party conference in Manchester that if he had his way the UK would cut “carbon emissions no slower but also no faster than our fellow countries in Europe”.

    Scottish Power, and its partners Shell and the National Grid, have just completed a detailed study of the CCS scheme and have deep concerns about its commercial viability without heavier public backing.

    Decc had promised £1bn of public money but the developers are understood to be arguing that they cannot proceed without more money to trial the scheme, close to the Firth of Forth.

    Both sides insist “talks are ongoing” but well-placed industry and political sources say the process is “pretty much over” and a statement to that effect could be expected shortly.

    Jeff Chapman, the chief executive of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, said the collapse of the Longannet scheme would be a “severe disappointment” for the wider hopes of the sector.

    “Everybody knows the negotiations have been very difficult, so to that extent it’s quite possible [the talks] don’t come to a conclusion – although there are other projects coming through the system hopefully.”

    A senior Conservative backbencher with deep knowledge of the energy sector told the Guardian he expected the CCS deal to collapse within weeks. He said the underlying blame lay with the Labour government, which had dithered for so long in awarding the CCS demo contract that bidders dropped out until only one was left, leaving the government in an impossible negotiating position.

    A Decc spokesman said Longannet was only one CCS project and the government still planned to choose by the end of the year another three that could be eligible for European Union funding.

    In May, the department submitted seven UK CCS projects for European funding – including Longannet – but the Fife scheme was by far the most advanced and spearheaded the drive to develop this new technology in Britain.

    Ministers have repeatedly stressed the importance of CCS as a way of keeping coal and potentially other fossil-fuel burning power stations in operation without undermining moves to cut CO2.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/06/carbon-capture-project-longannet-collapse

    • Richard C (NZ) on 07/10/2011 at 8:51 am said:

      Austerity has its benefits – the largesse gets trimmed.

      I see the BBC is to cut 20% of its £3.5 bn budget. Still leaves £2.8 bn from which to allocate to climate change propaganda.

      I wonder though, that the inability to facilitate CCS poses an even greater threat to coal power and UK energy security?

    • Andy on 07/10/2011 at 9:16 am said:

      I don’t think CCS was ever a viable proposition. It was just designed to make coal ridiculously expensive.

      I think NZ is still putting money into CCS research but nothing like the scale of the UK project.

  31. Andy on 10/10/2011 at 12:10 pm said:

    Rural idyll threatened by ‘monstrous’ plan for wind farms

    From his farmhouse in mid Wales Jonathan Wilkinson looks out across a glorious stretch of the Vyrnwy valley, rolling hills and acres of woodland rich in wildlife.

    But it is a view that could soon be lost forever

    The valley and the hills are under threat from huge wind turbines and electricity pylons that will stretch for miles in both directions in the biggest concentration of onshore wind farms in England and Wales.

    The proposed scheme will extend across up to 42 miles of unspoilt Welsh and English countryside. It will include 800 turbines up to 600ft tall – some visible from the Snowdonia national park – a network of electricity pylons, and a substation spread over 28 acres.

    Areas under threat include the Severne valley in Powys, the Vyrnwy valley in Montgomeryshire and parts of Shropshire.

    Mid-Wales will be the worst-hit but many other areas to the north and south face a rash of wind farm development under the Government’s plans to encourage an expansion of renewable energy.

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/greenpolitics/planning/8815567/Rural-idyll-threatened-by-monstrous-plan-for-wind-farms.html

  32. Richard C (NZ) on 11/10/2011 at 9:37 am said:

    BRITAIN FACES A MINI ‘ICE AGE’

    BRITAIN is set to suffer a mini ice age that could last for decades and bring with it a series of bitterly cold winters.

    And it could all begin within weeks as experts said last night that the mercury may soon plunge below the record -20C endured last year.

    Scientists say the anticipated cold blast will be due to the return of a disruptive weather pattern called La Nina. Latest evidence shows La Nina, linked to extreme winter weather in America and with a knock-on effect on Britain, is in force and will gradually strengthen as the year ends.

    The climate phenomenon, characterised by unusually cold ocean temperatures in the Pacific, was linked to our icy winter last year – one of the coldest on record.

    And it coincides with research from the Met Office indicating the nation could be facing a repeat of the “little ice age” that gripped the country 300 years ago, causing decades of harsh winters.

    The prediction, to be published in Nature magazine, is based on observations of a slight fall in the sun’s emissions of ultraviolet radiation, which may, over a long period, trigger Arctic conditions for many years.

    >>>>>>>>

    http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/276516/Britain-faces-a-mini-ice-age-

    Interesting development and a change of tune from the UK Met Office.
    ******************************************************************************************************
    Cold U.K. winters from low solar activity

    Various media such as BBC, Reuters, Australia’s ABC, The Daily Mail, The Independent, and others admit that the solar activity has an impact on the weather. [See links]

    In particular, cold British winters in recent years mostly boil down to the lower solar activity we have experienced. More precisely, the fluctuations of the ultraviolet radiation are stronger than people used to think and a lower amount of the UV radiation influences the weather.

    Those layperson’s articles boil down to the following paper in Nature Geoscience:

    Solar forcing of winter climate variability in the Northern Hemisphere (abstract linked)

    written by Sarah Ineson and six co-authors. The paper admits that weaker westerly winds occurred on years with a weaker solar activity, something that can’t be reproduced by the carbon-dioxide-led climate models. When the influence of the ultraviolet rays on the stratosphere is taken into account and the impact on the winds in the troposphere is calculated from it, we learn that the reduced solar activity does lead to this chilly result.

    Richard Black of BBC writes that the authors “emphasize” that this finding can have no consequences for “global warming”, something that appears at the end of the Nature abstract as well. Wow. It’s pretty impressive what preposterous propositions zealous and biased people are ready to write down in their effort to defend the indefensible (including their indefensible grants).

    There exists absolutely no reason why such effects – which can lead to freezing winters at various places including the U.K. – would exactly average out once we calculate their impact on the global mean temperature and its changes within decades etc. One may hypothetically see a cancellation at one time scale but it won’t extend to other timescales.

    [Snip the rest but well worth reading, see teasers]

    “Even if the heat is “just” being redistributed from one place to another, it’s extremely important where the heat actually is if you want to know something about the Earth’s future ability to accumulate heat”

    “….the actual weather in Great Britain is more important than some abstract and partly ill-defined global mean temperature”

    >>>>>>>>.

    http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/10/cold-uk-winters-from-low-solar-activity.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 11/10/2011 at 10:12 am said:

      The Sun And The Winter Of 2011

      10 October 2011 Dr. David Whitehouse

      I’ve said it before. If you are not confused about the Sun’s role in global and regional climate variations, you haven’t been paying attention.

      The latest manifestation of the Sun-climate debate takes place in the pages of Nature Geoscience (paywall), here and here. The UK Met Office also issued a press release on the subject a few days ago.

      The conclusion is that the Sun’s low activity, in particular its low ultraviolet (UV) output, is influencing the stratosphere in such a way as to produce unusually cold winters in parts of Europe, including the UK.

      […]

      The problem with this “confirmation” was demonstrated rather dramatically the very next year.

      In October 2009 the Met Office predicted a mild winter because of El Nino. Temperatures in December would be above average, they said. In reality December temperatures were a whopping 1.1 degrees below the recent average.

      The Sun’s Influence This Coming Winter

      There are other problems with the Met Office’s latest research.

      Firstly, it refers to 2008-2010 when the Sun’s activity was low, and the UK experienced three severe winters in succession. The problem is that the activity of the Sun as we enter the UK 2011 winter is not the same as it was in the past few years.

      Solar activity is back to what it was in 2004-5, and we didn’t experience severe winters in those years, see here, and here, and here.

      So, if anything, the logic behind this particular piece of research points towards the Winter of 2011 being a mild one!

      I don’t believe that this latest research increases the probability of a severe UK winter this year. It will be interesting to see what happens.

      UV Or Not UV

      The other problem concerns recent, highly publicised, research by Joanna Haigh of Imperial College London, a co-author on the current Nature Geoscience paper.

      Her work rests on the fairly recent observations that show that solar UV and optical radiation vary in anti-phase – although the figures are not totally rock solid, it seems that when solar optical radiation is low the UV is high and that UV varies to a greater degree than previously suspected. This led to headlines all over the world that when the sun goes through a decrease of activity, such as the slide towards solar minimum, it might actually be warming the earth.

      So, on the one hand we have research that suggests that during the last solar minimum, 2008 – 10, low solar UV resulted in cold European winters. On the other hand we have research that suggests that during the same solar minimum enhanced UV may have actually provided a warming effect!

      But what does this tell us about the forthcoming winter? Will it be mild or severe?

      Place You Bets

      We in the UK have had three very severe winters, 2008, 2009 and 2010. The big question is, is it a coincidence?

      The Met Office is in a quandary. It has to advise the UK government on winter preparations. Politically it can’t afford to get it wrong again this year. Despite what it said in retrospect last year’s predictions were a disaster.

      […]

      >>>>>>>>>>

      http://www.thegwpf.org/the-observatory/4063-the-sun-and-the-winter-of-2011.html

  33. Andy on 13/10/2011 at 6:41 am said:

    A quarter of all UK families could be in fuel poverty by 2015

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2048122/Green-taxes-force-fuel-poverty.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/10/2011 at 7:29 am said:

      UK Fuel Poverty Solved!

      by Roger Pielke, Jr

      Last week I noted the projected increase in “fuel poverty” in the United Kingdom and speculated that such a trend might have political consequences. The UK coalition government and their creative policy analysts have come up with a solution for this difficult situation — they are proposing to redefine “fuel poverty” in a manner that shows it to be decreasing, not increasing (see figure above from the FT).

      Voila, problem solved!

      http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/10/uk-fuel-poverty-solved.html

  34. Richard C (NZ) on 20/10/2011 at 6:42 pm said:

    Britain scrambles to avoid future blackouts

    If the promise of wind was real, the UK wouldn’t need to spend £5 billion on new undersea cables linking it to more reliable power from European nations like nuclear-powered France:

    The Government plans to spend more than £5billion laying 11 undersea power cables to allow Britain to import electricity from neighbouring countries and prevent blackouts in the next decade. The giant cables would provide up to 10GW of electricity, enough to power 2.4 million homes a year. Ministers are said to be alarmed at Britain’s likely energy shortfall, made worse by the fact the country has less capacity to import power than any other in Europe.

    http://climatechangedispatch.com/home/9496-britain-scrambles-to-avoid-future-blackouts

    With Germany already importing from France (and others) and Britain planning to, France sure seems to be on to something (that’s if they have a surplus to supply what’s needed if it really gets cold).

  35. Richard C (NZ) on 31/10/2011 at 6:28 pm said:

    Britain’s solar energy boom is built on unsustainable foundations

    By Greg Barker, UK minister for energy and climate change

    The government is proposing measures to reform the feed-in tariff scheme and ensure the industry has a long-term future

    […]

    It’s easy to see why solar is so attractive: it’s simple, accessible, reliable and fits discreetly into homes and communities. It’s a vital component of our decentralised local energy revolution. But however convinced we may be of the long-term potential of solar, we have to face up to the economic reality that every other sector of the economy is challenged by. The green economy does not exist in a bubble.

    The huge subsidised returns for people investing in solar photovoltaic panels – funded from everybody’s energy bills – have now broken double figures and cannot continue. The good news is that the costs of the technology have plunged – by at least 30% – since the scheme started in April 2010. A home installation can now cost around £9,000 or less. A similar installation would have set you back an extra £4,000 less than two years ago.

    With installed capacity nearly three times that projected by the last government when it launched the scheme 18 months ago, it all means that solar is burning through its budget at an unsustainable rate. The generous pot of £867m secured for the feed-in tariff scheme by the coalition last year will be completely devoured if we don’t act now.

    >>>>>>>>>>

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/oct/31/britain-solar-energy-unsustainable-foundations

    • Richard C (NZ) on 31/10/2011 at 6:51 pm said:

      Solar subsidies to be cut by more than half

      Government documents prematurely published online reveal feed-in tariff cut will double the payback period for householders

      Solar subsidies will be dramatically cut by more than half, according to government documents that were prematurely published online and quickly taken down.

      The cut will almost double the payback period for householders, the document revealed, meaning someone installing £10-12,000 solar panels will only be in credit after 18 years rather than the current 10. The rate will be reduced from 43.3p per kilowatt hour of solar electricity to just 21p, the document revealed, cutting returns from around 7% to 4%.

      >>>>>>>>>

      http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/28/solar-subsidies-cut-half

  36. Andy on 05/12/2011 at 11:51 am said:

    Here are two video’s from a meeting headed by Prof. Em. Philip Stott which totally tears down the IPCC, the UK policies on CO2 Emissions and the renewable energy policies and totally ridicules the fiction of peak oil (great job performed by Matt Ridley)

    Each speaker covers a specialized subject and has 15 minutes to make his or hers case and what a splendid job each of them performed.

    THE CLIMATE CHANGE ACT RECONSIDERED

    Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6c5LUq5jLQ

    Part 2: http://youtu.be/vswg5wnVVr4

  37. Richard C (NZ) on 13/12/2011 at 10:20 pm said:

    Seen at WUWT:-

    Spen commented on Kyoto – in the past for Canada.

    It has just been announced that the last UK aluminium smelter is to close because of unstainable energy cost increases. These include costs arising from the UK Climate Change Act (the most expensive piece of UK legislation ever passed), subsidies to renewable energy producers and EU and UK carbon taxes.
    Net results – loss of jobs, increase in trade imbalance as all aluminium will now be imported, loss of tax receipts. Although the UK carbon footprint will be reduced, the carbon dioxide will simply be produced elsewhere..
    Well done Canada for avoiding this economic madness.
    PS Can you give the UK a special deal on aluminium.

  38. Richard C (NZ) on 03/02/2012 at 4:11 pm said:

    One person dying every five minutes in Britain due to cold weather

    Britain reels from a winter death rate twice as high as some of the world’s coldest countries, according to the Department of Health’s Chief Medical Officer.

    Professor Dame Sally Davies said the average increase in winter deaths in England and Wales is 1,560 per week compared to non-winter months, with a “substantial” increase on top of that total expected due to extreme cold this week.

    http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2012/02/in-davos-climate-change-is-dead-and.html

  39. Ron on 19/02/2012 at 11:00 am said:

    “Nearly £1.5 billion has been spent tackling man-made climate change by Government department responsible for fighting poverty abroad”
    “… funding available for projects now 45 times higher than four years ago. The department now also employs 66 specialist climate and environmental advisers. ”
    “… encouraging Indian farmers to use manual foot pumps to draw water from underground for their fields rather than using diesel powered pumps … ”
    etc etc
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/9090830/Foreign-aid-cash-spent-tackling-climate-change.html

  40. Andy on 13/11/2012 at 8:53 pm said:

    Maurizio Morabito has obtained the details of the BBC climate 28. It had been published by the International Broadcasting Trust.

    Greenpeace, Tearfund, Television for the Environment (one of the companies involved in the BBC free programming scandal), Stop Climate Chaos, Npower Renewables, E3G, and dear old Mike Hulme from UEA. Just the group you’d want guiding climate change coverage

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2012/11/12/bbc-climate-28-revealed.html

    All this on the back of the latest BBC scandals.

    Huge

  41. Andy on 14/11/2012 at 7:39 pm said:

    More on 28 gate:

    Melanie Phillips
    http://melaniephillips.com/the-real-bbc-scandal#.UKLOEkRVolQ.facebook

    And Richard North has more to add. This kind of stuff is right up his alley as he unearthed the Amazongate scandal
    http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83332

    • Mike Jowsey on 15/11/2012 at 12:08 pm said:

      Bloody good links Andy, thanks. The update at the bottom of Melanie’s excellent piece is a response from the BBC. It is the only one I have seen so far. Typical corporatees proclaiming the virtuous impartiality of the Beeb and a “Nothing to see here folks…. move along” approach.

    • Andy on 16/11/2012 at 4:38 am said:

      more from Dellers

      How many of you reading this were abused by Jimmy Savile? Few if any, I would hazard. And while I don’t wish to play down the misery wrought over four or more decades by that loathsome perve, the BBC scandal I’m about to describe has resulted in damage, pain and destruction far more widespread than anything Savile managed.

      It may have affected you, for example, if: you’ve had your view ruined and your property value trashed by a wind farm; you’re one of the 2,700 people killed in Britain last year by fuel poverty; you can’t get a job; you’ve lost your job; you’re skint; your kids can’t sleep because they’re so worried about the pets that are going to be drowned by the carbon monster; you’ve ever wondered why occasionally — even once would be nice — the BBC doesn’t make a programme about ‘climate change’ which isn’t relentlessly alarmist.

      http://www.spectator.co.uk/columnists/james-delingpole/8758121/heres-a-bbc-scandal-that-should-really-make-you-disgusted/

  42. UK Climate Madness: Two billion pounds just pissed up the wall:

    Britain yesterday pledged almost £2 billion in “climate aid” to help finance foreign projects including wind turbines in Africa and greener cattle farming in Colombia.

    Each household will contribute £70 to schemes to tackle climate change in developing countries before March 2015, under plans championed by Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary.

    Conservative MPs were furious last night at the scale of the bill, which was unveiled as George Osborne prepares to announce a series of tax rises and spending cuts in today’s Autumn Statement.

    Lord Lawson of Blaby, a former Chancellor, also criticised the “appalling waste of money” at a time when household budgets are already squeezed.

    Senior Conservatives were also dismayed at the timing of the announcement, but Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, hailed the cash as “fantastic news”.

    http://www.australianclimatemadness.com/2012/12/uk-climate-madness-two-billion-pounds-just-pissed-up-the-wall/

    The question, is, of course, who are they going to have to borrow this 2 billion from?

  43. ray on 30/12/2012 at 5:45 pm said:

    another excellent article by Christopher Booker. Let’s hope there is a swift return to sanity.

    “[…] 2012 has been the year when long-dominant belief systems and fondly held illusions have been conspicuously falling apart, portending a time of agonising reappraisal when familiar certainties give way to greater realism and painful rethinking. […]”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9770705/Europe-wind-warming…-were-slowly-waking-up-to-reality.html

  44. Now Britain is bracing itself for more cold weather with temps of -15 forecast

    http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/69399/daily_express_wednesday_9th_january_2013.html

  45. Richard C (NZ) on 22/01/2013 at 10:09 am said:

    Boris Johnson:-

    “When the solar acne diminishes, it seems that the Earth gets colder. No one contests that when the planet palpably cooled from 1645 to 1715 — the Maunder minimum, which saw the freezing of the Thames — there was a diminution of solar activity. The same point is made about the so-called Dalton minimum, from 1790 to 1830. And it is the view of Piers Corbyn that we are now seeing exactly the same phenomenon today.

    Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter. “There is every indication that we are at the beginning of a mini ice age,” he says. “The general decline in solar activity is lower than Nasa’s lowest prediction of five years ago. That could be very bad news for our climate. We are in for a prolonged cold period. Indeed, we could have 30 years of general cooling.”

    Now I am not for a second saying that I am convinced Piers is right; and to all those scientists and environmentalists who will go wild with indignation on the publication of this article, I say, relax.”

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9814618/Its-snowing-and-it-really-feels-like-the-start-of-a-mini-ice-age.html

    The expected “indignation on the publication of this article” here:-

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2013/jan/21/boris-johnson-snow-climate-change

    • Richard C (NZ) on 22/01/2013 at 12:36 pm said:

      For the record, the SkS response including the continued (and highly uncertain) use of PMOD, complete ignorance of accumulation theory (think Rawls, Stockwell), and solar-ocean-atmosphere thermal lag:-

      http://www.skepticalscience.com/open-letter-mayor-boris-johnson.html

      Note the opposing posited reasons for NH (and UK in Particular) winter cold:-

      Corbyn (via Boris),

      “Lower solar activity means – broadly speaking – that there is less agitation of the warm currents of air from the tropical to the temperate zones, so that a place like Britain can expect to be colder and damper in summer, and colder and snowier in winter”

      NOAA/Francis and Vavrus (2012) (via SkS),

      “…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the human-caused decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”

      Take your pick.

    • “…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the human-caused decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”

      is the same statement as

      “…some research has suggested that changing atmospheric patterns due to the decline in Arctic sea ice could be responsible”

      The attribution in the Arctic sea ice loss is irrelevant to the scientific discussion. Unless, of course, you are an activist.

  46. Richard C (NZ) on 01/02/2013 at 8:42 pm said:

    Climate Change Plan For Yorkshire & Humber

    By Paul Homewood

    In 2008, the UK government asked every region to set up their own Climate Change Plans. The one for Yorkshire was funded by a series of quangos, themselves publically funded such as Yorkshire Forward, and the Regional Assembly. It seems that Friends of The Earth also got themselves involved.

    The purpose of the plan was to “set a strategic direction for managing and combating climate change in the Yorkshire and Humber region”.

    […]

    But let’s take a look at what climate changes they were predicting for the region, and compare that with what has actually happened since.

    Annual Temperatures

    CLAIM – Increase of 1.8C – 1.9C

    FACT – Annual average between 2008-2012 was 0.58C lower than 2003-2007, and only 0.11C higher than the 1981-2010 baseline.

    Summer Temperatures

    CLAIM – Increase of 2.1C – 2.5C

    FACT – Summer temperatures between 2008-2012 averaged 0.67C lower than 2003-2007, and 0.02C lower than 1981-2010.

    Extreme Hot Temperatures

    CLAIM – Extreme hot temperatures up 2.8C to 3.2C

    FACT – Absolutely no upward trend in either the number of hot days, or their severity. There have been no days at all over 30.0C in Sheffield since 2006.

    Annual Rainfall

    CLAIM – Annual rainfall down by 6%.

    FACT – Up by 10% on 1981-2010.

    Winter Rainfall

    CLAIM – Winter rainfall up 12 to 17%

    FACT – Effectively no trend since 1981. Three of the last four years are below the mean.

    Summer Rainfall

    CLAIM – Summer rainfall down 22 to 26%

    FACT – Up 33%

    Winter Snowfall

    CLAIM – Snowfall down by 54 to 68%

    FACT – No trend in air frost days since 1990. (The Met Office do not keep snowfall statistics). As with most of the UK, heavy snowfall has occurred in every winter since 2007.

    Sea Levels

    CLAIM – Sea level increase of 0.35M by 2050.

    FACT – No acceleration of rate of rise since the early 20thC. From the start of the record in 1896, sea levels at North Shields have risen 231mm, a rate of 19.7mm/decade. Between 2001 and 2011, the rise was 5mm. (No figures are available yet for 2012).

    Furthermore, the land in the North East of England is sinking by about 0.8mm/year, as a result of isostatic rebound. This accounts for most of the increase seen in the last century.

    Conclusions

    “Whatever may happen to the climate as we approach 2050, it is clear that the scientists and their models have no earthly idea about it.”

    http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2013/01/31/climate-change-plan-for-yorkshire-humber/#more-2462

  47. Andy on 10/03/2013 at 9:19 am said:

    Interesting thread at Bishop Hill on the Oxford Union debate with Myles Allen, Richard Lindzen Mark Lynas and David Rose

    Many well known scientists in the comments

    http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/3/9/lindzen-at-the-oxford-union.html

  48. Andy on 10/03/2013 at 9:25 am said:

    Bookers Mail column describes the Eco madness of switching Drax from coal to wood chip burning, requiring 4600 square miles of forest to be felled in the USA and shipped to the UK.

    Also, friends of the earth are against this policy, even though it fits withing the sustainable energy directives of the eu.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips–wont-help-planet-jot.html

    • Richard C (NZ) on 10/03/2013 at 9:59 am said:

      Didn’t see your reference to Booker’s article Andy. I just did same below.

      Greenpeace think it’s a REALLY good idea for Fonterra.

  49. Richard C (NZ) on 10/03/2013 at 9:54 am said:

    SATURDAY ESSAY: Eco madness and how our future is going up in smoke as we pay billions to switch from burning coal to wood chips at Britain’s biggest power station

    By Christopher Booker

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2290444/Madness-How-pay-billions-electricity-bills-Britains-biggest-power-station-switch-coal-wood-chips–wont-help-planet-jot.html#ixzz2N57PdTis

    “As from next month, Drax will embark on a £700 million switch away from burning coal for which it was designed, in order to convert its six colossal boilers to burn millions of tons a year of wood chips instead.

    Most of these chips will come from trees felled in forests covering a staggering 4,600 square miles in the USA, from where they will be shipped 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to Britain.”

    + + +

    “This month sees the closure of several of our remaining major coal-fired power stations. Plants such as Kingsnorth in Kent, Didcot A in Oxfordshire and Cockenzie in Scotland (capable of generating nearly 6,000 megawatts a year — a seventh of our average needs) will stop production as a result of an EU anti-pollution directive. This means that, to keep Britain’s lights lit, we’ll soon be more dependent than ever on expensive gas-fired power stations.”

    + + +

    “The fact that Drax, our largest and most efficient power station, is having to go through these ridiculous contortions to stay in business is a perfect symbol of the catastrophic mess our politicians of all parties have got us into — all in the name of trying to save the planet by cutting down our emissions of carbon dioxide further and faster than any other country in the world.

    Germany, which already has five times as many wind turbines as Britain, is now desperately building 20 new coal-fired stations in the hope of keeping its lights on. The first, opened last September, is already generating 2,200 megawatts; nearly as much as the average output of all of Britain’s wind farms combined.

    China, already the world’s largest CO2 emitter, is planning to build 363 more coal-fired power stations, without any heed of the vast amount of emissions they’ll produce.

    India is ready to build 455 new coal-fired power stations to fuel an economy growing so fast that it could soon overtake our own.

    If these countries deigned to notice what we are up to in Britain, where this week we lost yet another of our handful of remaining coal mines, they might find it difficult to stifle a disbelieving smile.”

    # # #

    Apparently, according to Greenpeace, Fonterra should be following suit in NZ.

  50. Andy on 12/03/2013 at 12:27 pm said:

    Former energy secretary Chris Huhne and his wife both jailed for 8 months

    http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/chris-huhne-vicky-pryce-jailed-1757261

  51. Richard C (NZ) on 15/03/2013 at 8:50 am said:

    The ice fields of GUERNSEY! Record-breaking cold spell sees 8ft-high snowdrifts on usually mild holiday island

    Temperatures dropped to -8.7C in some parts of Britain

    These incredible pictures show that even the warmest corner of the UK has fallen victim to this week’s unseasonably cold weather.

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2293273/The-ice-fields-GUERNSEY-Record-breaking-cold-spell-sees-8ft-high-snowdrifts-usually-mild-holiday-island.html#ixzz2NY6g7bjt

    Danielle Stonebridge, 21, took these pictures of her father Dave, 61, waist deep in the snow.

    Miss Stonebridge said: ‘I have never seen snow like this before, my dad can remember something like this when he was around 10 years old, but there is just so much of it.

  52. Booker on Margaret Thatchers conversion to climate scepticism:

    http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83817

  53. Richard C (NZ) on 21/04/2013 at 12:07 pm said:

    John Ashton Speech to the Met Office, April 11, 2013

    “Moreover, the consequences of climate change could still be catastrophic if the climate sensitivity were zero, as the global mean smoothes out local departure.”

    http://tomnelson.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/warmist-john-ashton-lack-of-global.html

  54. Richard C (NZ) on 21/04/2013 at 12:09 pm said:

    Climate change: united in lunacy

    Richard North, 19/04/2013

    Peter Lilley took on the climate change committee, the government and the whole intellectual establishment in this country in a Westminster Hall debate yesterday, complaining that they were living “in a dream world on energy and climate change issues”.

    The debate was about last July’s report from the Energy and Climate Change Committee on “The Road to UNFCCC COP 18 and beyond”, available also on Parliament TV.

    “COP” in the jargon beloved of the Warmists, stands for Conference of the Parties, the periodic jamborees at which decisions are supposedly taken to save the planet from the dreaded scourge of global warming. To these Lilley was referring and, of course – unlike Dellers – was speaking to the deaf during this debate.

    Nevertheless, making the most of his opportunity, Lilley opened his contribution by remaking that those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad. One of the early signs of madness, he then said, “is an indulgence in compulsive displacement activity, which could not be a better description of the whole COP process”.

    More>>>>>>

    http://www.eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=83821

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/04/2013 at 12:12 pm said:

      The low carbon fairy story

      Bishop Hill, Apr 20, 2013

      It seems there were actually two debates on climate at Westminster last week. In second, on the subject of Low Carbon Cooperation with China, Lilley was again on fine form:

      Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con): Criminologists have observed that the victims of confidence tricksters are often willing—indeed, eager—to believe the story to which they fall victim. The more absurd, fantastic or fabulous the story, the more willing they are to believe it.

      This Select Committee report – Low Carbon Cooperation with China – and the government’s reply prove that Ministers and Members will willingly believe any delusion as long as it is sufficiently fabulous. It contains all the characteristics necessary for the sort of fairy tale in which one wants to believe: it has a faraway country, mysterious powers that we attribute to ourselves, and pots of gold—green gold—at the end of the rainbow.

      More>>>>>>>>

      http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/4/20/the-low-carbon-fairy-story.html

  55. Not strictly a climate topic, except that UKIP are the evil denier party of the UK

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2013/may/02/local-elections-2013-live-coverage

    Just scroll down the live coverage and look for UKIP

    South Shields by election results

    Emma Lewell-Buck (Lab) 12,493 (50.51%, -1.51%)
    Richard Elvin (UKIP) 5,988 (24.21%)
    Karen Allen (C) 2,857 (11.55%, -10.04%)
    Ahmed Khan (Ind) 1,331 (5.38%)
    Phil Brown (Ind Soc) 750 (3.03%)
    Lady Dorothy MacBeth Brookes (BNP) 711 (2.87%, -3.65%)
    Hugh Annand (Lib Dem) 352 (1.42%, -12.79%)
    Howling Laud Hope (Loony) 197 (0.80%)
    Thomas Darwood (Ind) 57 (0.23%)

    So the Lib Dems got 352 votes, half that of BNP and only a hundred or so more than the monster raving loonies

  56. I had to laugh at this screenshot of the ballot paper for the election of Prince Andrew to the Royal Society

    https://twitter.com/Jonathan__Leake/status/331345188343652358/photo/1

  57. Richard C (NZ) on 09/05/2013 at 5:11 pm said:

    Secret UN ‘ZOD’ climate deliberations: UK battles to suppress details

    Lone engineer battles climate science Omertà

    By Andrew Orlowski

    […] The case for transparency

    The IPCC is the United Nations organisation’s process for providing climate advice to policy makers. Every few years it updates this advice, which takes the form of three gigantic reports: one assessing the physical basis (called Working Group 1, or WG1); another considering the impacts (WG2); and the third the mitigation options (WG3).

    None of the groups does any original science. They’re supposed to write fair summaries of the state of the science – although you’ll notice that WG3 already plays with loaded dice: it is about “mitigation”, not “adaptation” nor “economic costs” or even “low carbon technological innovation”. Each of these groups writes three drafts in a rolling process before they’re signed off as official UN policy.

    What Holland is seeking the “zero order draft” – aka Draft No. 1 – of Working Group 1. He couldn’t care less what’s in it, but wants to establish the principle that citizens can see it. As it happens, much of this material is already all over the web. But as Judge Dhanji pointed out, that’s by-the-by.

    Holland justified his request on the twofold basis that the WG1 zero draft must, and should, be publicly available.

    The “must” is the statutory obligation of the UK as a signatory to the Aarhus Convention, or to give it its full title, the “UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters” and by signing up to EC directive 2003/4/EC (PDF) the UK has obliged all of its environmental regulations to be consistent with the Convention. (Not every EU country is a signatory, but the UK is: perhaps a case of civil servants’ Euro-enthusiasm coming back to bite them.)

    >>>>>>>>

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/08/ipcc_vs_holland_foi/

  58. Andy on 09/05/2013 at 10:28 pm said:

    Prince Charles has yet another dig at us corporate sponsored Evil Deniers

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/09/prince-charles-climate-change-sceptics

  59. Andy on 08/06/2013 at 5:07 pm said:

    An anti wimd farm article in The Guardian no less

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/u-turn-wind-turbines-planning-beauty-silent

    The Eco fascists are out in force in the comments

  60. Andy on 16/06/2013 at 5:22 pm said:

    The true cost of wind energy in the UK
    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/10122850/True-cost-of-Britains-wind-farm-industry-revealed.html

    Works out at an effective £100,000 subsidy on each job.

  61. Richard C (NZ) on 21/06/2013 at 11:16 am said:

    ‘When it comes to climate change, we have to trust our scientists, because they know lots of big scary words’

    By Sean Thomas

    [Image: Huddersfield, 2017 http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/files/2013/06/desert620_1857005b.jpg%5D

    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 oscillation”, 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 stick”, 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.

    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/

    “Hot! Hot hot!” brings to mind the words of NIWA’s Georgina Griffiths describing NZs weather a couple of years ago – “running Hot Hot”.

    • Andy on 21/06/2013 at 11:33 am said:

      Brilliant, I saw that on Bishop Hill and it is still making me laugh.
      We have big coldy coldy here in central South Island with 1.5 metres of snow on the ski fields and plenty in town to cross country ski on.

      Meanwhile, Ed Davey in the UK claims that

      “Climate change deniers are ‘crackpots”

      http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/10129372/Ed-Davey-Climate-change-deniers-are-crackpots.html

      Clearly we are off our heads, big coldy coldy

      but i did get a good practice for the “low carbon economy” yesterday, when we lost power for 8 hours, generator powered the computer and I wore my mega goose down jacket to keep warm.

    • Richard C (NZ) on 21/06/2013 at 12:31 pm said:

      >”…we lost power for 8 hours, generator powered the computer and I wore my mega goose down jacket to keep warm”

      I wondered when I saw the news clips of the Coldy Coldy around Fairlie and report of power outage. Sitting in one place for extended periods is not conducive to body warmth I find.

      Brilliantly fine but windy day in the BOP today but I’m glad I haven’t been on nightshift in the packhouse lately (I go back next month). The guys outside the actual enclosed space but under a canopy (forkies mainly) are in wind tunnels and they have to wear layers of thermals and wind protection which makes little things like going to the loo a bit of a chore. One biker guy just leaves his leathers on. The forkies that go into the coolstores (about 2 – 5 C) have special issue gear that makes them all look like big green Michelin Men.

      There’s people there at the moment standing in one place repacking cold fruit from out of the coolstores. I don’t involve myself in that needless to say. I tried it once a few years ago for only for an hour or so (repackers go 10), but couldn’t feel my fingers let alone soft fruit. I stick to the active stuff, preferably around parts of the machines where the electric motors are or moving loads by hand. Pumping up and dragging a hand forklift (Jiffy) with a one tonne pallet load on it gets the blood pumping but you’ve really got to be careful not to get cold after getting hot. Some of the younger ones discover that to their cost with lost earnings off sick (no sick leave) and I knew a repacker once that spent two weeks in hospital with bronchitis from repacking.

      Always amazes me how people seem to continue functioning relatively normally in really cold conditions, I just don’t have the physical makeup for that myself and it would be those like me that succumb first. I see some NZ guy just died in Queensland after sleeping on the porch at 1 C overnight. I suspect like most similar cases in Moscow for example, alcohol was involved.

  62. Richard C (NZ) on 22/06/2013 at 8:01 pm said:

    ‘Have weather patterns really been unusual?’

    Paul Hudson

    There’s been much in the press in recent days following the widely publicised ‘Unusual weather’ conference held at the Met Office.

    The Independent headline was similar to others in the media, advising readers to ‘Stand by for another decade of wet summers’, continuing that the UK was in the midst of a ‘rare’ weather cycle.

    This cycle, scientists announced, was the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO).

    But as it turns out, there’s nothing rare or unusual about it at all.

    The AMO was first identified by researchers nearly 20 years ago, incidentally when I had just begun my career as a forecaster at the Met Office, and describes a natural, cyclical warming and cooling of the North Atlantic Ocean over time.

    This cycle is known to affect temperatures and rainfall, and alter North American and European summer climate.

    In the UK, it leads to an increased risk of summers that are wetter than average.

    It’s also linked with changes in the frequency of Atlantic Hurricanes, and of North American droughts.

    The 1930’s and 1950’s in North America are dominated by heat records and correlate almost perfectly with a warm AMO.

    The AMO has a cycle of approximately 70 years and would mean the current warm AMO is likely to last into the next decade.

    But talk of another decade of wet summers is misleading.

    If as expected the warm AMO continues then there’s a higher risk of wet summers – but it certainly doesn’t mean every summer will be a washout.

    It’s worth remembering that one of the warmest, sunniest summers on record happened in 1959 – during the previous warm AMO cycle.

    The return to much colder winters discussed at the conference has coincided with another natural phenomena – that of low solar activity – which has been shown to be associated with weather patterns that encourage cold winters across the UK and Europe.

    It goes to show that at a time when it seems that every weather event or climate pattern is linked in some way to man-made climate change, natural weather cycles like the AMO can offer a more straightforward, natural, explanation.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Have-weather-patterns-really-been-unusual

    # # #

    Heretical I would have thought – certainly not the prescribed BBC MMCC creed. But the voice of reason in every sense.

  63. Andy on 08/07/2013 at 1:21 pm said:

    “Energy, the Backup Bonaza”

    http://eureferendum.com/blogview.aspx?blogno=84095

    The UK is pushing ahead with its plan to roll out thousands more wind turbines, and to provide the backup for when the wind is not blowing, will use diesel generators

    Unbelievably insane energy policy

  64. Andy on 01/08/2013 at 4:35 pm said:

    In other news.

    Chrissie Hynde’s daughter arrested after supergluing herself to her boyfriend during protests against fracking

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2381870/Chrissie-Hyndes-daughter-arrested-supergluing-boyfriend-protests-fracking.html#ixzz2agWuhYZx

  65. Richard C (NZ) on 13/09/2013 at 11:18 am said:

    ‘Rare solar cycle has cold implications for UK climate’

    Paul Hudson

    “But despite some temporary warmer interludes, historical weather records give a good indication of the type of weather the UK could experience should current solar activity continue to mirror that which was observed during the Dalton minimum over 200 years ago.”

    “And it’s sobering to remember that the Dalton solar minimum lasted for 25 years.”

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/posts/Rare-solar-cycle-has-cold-implications-for-UK-climate

  66. Andy on 20/09/2013 at 5:15 pm said:

    The View from 22 – Ed Miliband’s last laugh, the IPCC’s latest climate change report, and Lib Dem party conference
    (podcast)

    Meanwhile, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change will be publishing their latest report next week, which appears to show that there has been no statistically significant rise over the past 16 years. Benny Peiser, of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and journalist Sunny Hundal, joined Fraser Nelson to talk about what this means for green activists and for climate change sceptics. Could it be that the 3% who don’t believe in global warming are, in fact, right?

    http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/2013/09/the-view-from-22-ed-milibands-last-laugh-the-ipccs-latest-climate-change-report-and-lib-dem-party-conference/

  67. Andy on 06/10/2013 at 8:29 am said:

    The hadCET temperature record showing a rapid cooling for the UK over the last decade or so

    http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/

  68. Richard C (NZ) on 17/11/2013 at 8:33 am said:

    Global warming in the UK:

    ‘HEAVY SNOW WARNING: Shock long range UK weather forecast for winter 2013’

    BRITAIN faces months of freezing winds and heavy snow as long-range forecasters predict a “horror winter” ahead.

    By: Nathan Rao

    http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/442873/Coldest-winter-in-modern-times-on-way-with-snow-forecast-for-Britain-starting-next-week

    James Madden, forecaster for Exacta Weather, said Britain is braced for “copious” snowfall this winter with extreme cold expected to last into the spring.

    He added that Britain faces “an incomparable scenario to anything we have experienced in modern times”.

  69. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rMYLmNT8oY
    Eat or Heat: Britons angry at energy prices amid soaring ‘winter deaths’.
    .Where’s that warming they promised us?

  70. Richard C (NZ) on 16/12/2013 at 9:06 am said:

    ‘The fatcat ecocrats exposed: Web of ‘green’ politicians, tycoons and power brokers who help each other benefit from billions raised on your bills’

    * Four of nine-person Climate Change Committee, official watchdog that dictates green energy policy, are, or were until recently, being paid by firms that benefit from committee decisions

    By David Rose

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2523726/Web-green-politicians-tycoons-power-brokers-help-benefit-billions-raised-bills.html#ixzz2na3etfCG

    • Andy on 16/12/2013 at 9:12 am said:

      Richard beat me to it.

      The parasite classes trouser our money and laugh at us, while their useful idiots shake their pom poms for “the cause”

  71. Richard C (NZ) on 13/01/2014 at 8:13 am said:

    ‘BBC’s six-year cover-up of secret ‘green propaganda’ training for top executives’

    * Pensioner forces BBC to lift veil on 2006 eco-seminar to top executives
    * Papers reveal influence of top green campaigners including Greenpeace
    * Then-head of news Helen Boaden said it impacted a ‘broad range of output’
    * Yet BBC has spent more than £20,000 in legal fees trying to keep it secret

    By David Rose

    PUBLISHED: 23:52 GMT, 11 January 2014 | UPDATED: 23:52 GMT, 11 January 2014

    “The controversial seminar was run by a body set up by the BBC’s own environment analyst Roger Harrabin and funded via a £67,000 grant from the then Labour government, which hoped to see its ‘line’ on climate change and other Third World issues promoted in BBC reporting.”

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2537886/BBCs-six-year-cover-secret-green-propaganda-training-executives.html#ixzz2qDYhDSp5

  72. Richard C (NZ) on 20/03/2014 at 7:39 pm said:

    ‘UK freezes carbon tax plan for electricity sector’ – SMH

    U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne froze a tax on carbon emissions from electricity generation starting in April 2016 as part of a 7 billion-pound (A$12.8 billion) plan to cut consumer energy bills.

    The package is aimed at boosting “British manufacturers, with benefits for families and other businesses too,” Osborne said in a speech in Parliament in London today as he delivered his annual budget. “We need to cut our energy costs.”

    Prime Minister David Cameron’s administration has come under pressure to rein in rising energy costs. Ed Miliband, the leader of the opposition Labour Party, vowed in November to freeze energy prices if he wins the next election in mid-2015, prompting the government in December to announce measures cutting green levies by 50 pounds per household a year.

    The chancellor’s announcement may boost the biggest carbon polluters, such as Drax Group Plc, which mainly burns coal in its power plant in northern England. It may weigh on utilities with a bigger proportion of renewables and nuclear power in their mix, such as Infinis Energy Plc, SSE Plc and Centrica Plc.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/business/carbon-economy/uk-freezes-carbon-tax-plan-for-electricity-sector-20140320-353iy.html#ixzz2wUGgi9tz

    Probably not what Ed had in mind.

  73. Richard C (NZ) on 16/06/2015 at 5:48 pm said:

    A UK politician who has identified the inconvenient truth:

    ‘Government Policy on Climate Change Ignores Facts That Even the IPCC Recognise’

    Written by Donna Rachel Edmunds, Breitbart London on 15 June 2015.

    David T.C. Davies, the Member of Parliament for Monmouth, has told the House of Commons that government policies on climate change, which have massively increased the cost of energy for homeowners and businesses, are based on the assumption that all the global warming that has taken place in the last two centuries is down to humans – an assumption that not even the IPCC makes. (Video after the jump)

    Addressing the Deputy Speaker and his colleagues, Mr Davies said: “No one has ever denied that carbon dioxide is a global warming gas. No one has ever denied that there is more CO2 in the atmosphere since we started industrializing. Not many people are bothering to deny the fact that there has been an increase in temperature of about 0.8°C over the past 250 years, and although it is a bit more questionable than some would have it, there is no need to question it at the moment. It follows that CO2 emissions that are man-made have had some impact on temperatures.

    “What does not follow is the argument that is so often put forward, which is that CO2 emitted by mankind has been completely responsible for the very minor increase in temperature that we have seen over the past 250 years.”

    This drew challenges from others in the debate, to which Mr Davies replied by citing the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change by highlighting “page 17, fourth paragraph down” of the IPCC’s Summary for Policymakers, which says:

    “It is extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations and other anthropogenic forcings together.”

    Mr Davies explained: “The overall increase over the past 250 years is 0.8 °C, but in the second half of the 20th century, the increase was about 0.5 °C. What the IPCC is saying in this report is that slightly over half of that is likely to have been man-made.

    “Even the IPCC is not saying that the increase in temperature is a result of man-made carbon emissions. It is saying that some of it is, and that the overall amount is well under half. On the basis of this, we are going ahead with a set of policies that have caused massive increases in energy bills for home owners and businesses.”

    More>>>>>>
    http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/watch-government-policy-on-climate-change-ignores-facts-that-even-the-ipcc-recognise.html

  74. Richard C (NZ) on 17/06/2015 at 9:44 am said:

    EXCLUSIVE: ‘We’ll All Be Dead Before Climate Change Orgs Admit They’re Wrong’ Says MP

    by Oliver Lane16 Jun 2015124

    Member of Parliament David Davies has warned of the stubborn nature of organisations like Britain’s Royal Society – the oldest grouping of eminent scientists in the world – who have admitted that they will not accept any other thinking on global warming for at least “fifty years”, even if the data shows otherwise.

    Attending a speech on climate change in the House of Lords, the Welsh Tory MP spoke about on his surreal experience meeting two men from the Royal Society whom he said had been sent to persuade him and fellow climate realists Peter Lilley MP and John Redwood MP to embrace the idea of man-made climate change. He said that representatives from the Society – often lauded as the most eminent grouping of scientists, founded in the 1600s – told him that they would not change their mind for at least fifty years, regardless of the evidence.

    After the meeting, which was chaired by Margaret Thatcher’s former Chancellor Lord Lawson, and also attended by former environment Secretary Owen Paterson MP, Davies Spoke to Breitbart London and recalled the extraordinary admission made by the Royal Society to him as they addressed members of parliament.

    Speaking of the ‘hiatus’ in global warming that has been observed since the end of the 20th century, and the doubt that it has cast on climate change modelling – points which had been discussed at length at the Global Warming Policy Foundation event – Davies remarked:

    “They had two guys whose job it was to go around and persuade everyone that we’re all trying the ruin the economy.

    “We pinned them down on this hiatus… they were arguing that yes, there might have been a hiatus, but warming might be going into the ocean, or it could be due to volcanic activity. So we asked at what point would you begin to accept there had been no warming. If there is no warming for five years, or ten years?

    “Finally they conceded they would wait fifty years.

    “We asked would that be fifty years from now, or fifty years from 1997, when the hiatus started? They said they wouldn’t change their mind for fifty years from now.

    “Effectively, we’re all going to be dead before the Royal Society admits they’ve got their facts wrong. There could be absolutely no warming every year for the next fifty years, and the Royal Society would still maintain that climate change is a major problem”.

    Breitbart London reported in March how the Royal Society had come under a blistering attack by a fellow for jeopardised both its purpose and integrity by becoming a pressure group for the climate change lobby. Professor Michael Kelly said Britain is now guilty of “leading the world in climate change hypocrisy”, and that the Royal Society had published a key document on climate change which was biased and “‘left out’ parts of the science, so the answers to many of the questions ought to be different”.

    Professor Kelly said: “Those who fail to provide balance are not giving advice, but lobbying. It is with the deepest regret that I must now state that this is the role which has been adopted by the Royal Society. And when scientists abandon neutral inquiry for lobbying, they jeopardise their purpose and integrity”.

    http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/06/16/exclusive-well-all-be-dead-before-climate-change-orgs-admit-theyre-wrong-says-mp/

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