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Climate sceptics seize on Scotland’s coldest winter
December and January were the coldest months on record, and the rest of Britain suffered too
Scotland, which has spent much of the last two months under a blanket of snow, is suffering its coldest winter since records began, according to the Met Office. The news is likely to be jumped upon by those who question the science behind the scientific 'consensus' that global warming is a reality.
The average temperatures in January and December were the coldest in Scotland since 1914 - the year that data was first logged.
The rest of the UK has suffered as well: a spectacular satellite image showed the entire British mainland covered in snow and ice during January and.
The Met Office revealed that Northern Ireland experienced its coldest December and January since the early 1960s and it has not been colder in England and Wales since the winter of 1981/2.
Scotland has borne the brunt of the freezing weather since the cold snap began in mid-December. The average minimum overnight temperature north of the border in January is zero - but last month it regularly dipped below -5C.
The Highland village of Altnaharra experienced the coldest temperature of the period, when the mercury dropped to -22.3C in January. The same village endured the UK's record low in December 1995, when the temperature fell to -27.3C.
The news is likely to be jumped on by those who disagree with the theory of global warming.
The science of climate change has come under fire since the Copenhagen summit after the 'Climategate' scandal broke and scientists at the University of East Anglia were accused of manipulating data on global warming.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also had to apologise for claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear within 25 years.
However, most scientists still maintain that climate change is happening and that mankind is to blame. ·
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Suzann, the money is being funnelled to Al Gore. This is far better than any Ponzi scheme. This makes Bernie Madoff look like a two-bit hoodlum.
Do you have a theory why 'Global Warming' and 'Climate Change' are being shoved down our throats? During the Vietnam War America got on an 'Ecology' kick to distract and redirect activity. I wonder if there isn't a monetary element; creating some agency, dumping millions of dollars into it, (and not being too careful about the accounting) so that money can be funnelled elsewhere..(or used to pay off Party Biggies)
John Tidswell and lollylu - much of what you say are anecdotes. Sorry, we don't need anecdotes, we need robust scientific evidence. Why can you produce any? Don't suggest models - models aren't evidence! The fact that things change proves nothing - things have been changing for millennia. What you need to demonstrate is that humans are doing something that can be distinguished from natural changes with statistical significance. Do you really think changes wouldn't happen if man wasn't around? Get real - the evidence of history and geology screams out that these things happen quite apart from man. 1600 years ago North Africa was the bread basket of the Roman Empire, and a few centuries later it became desert. That wasn't anthropogenic, was it? All we ask for is a little evidence - not much to ask is it?
By the way, we are not destroying the earth by liberating carbon dioxide. Increased CO2 helps plants grow faster and better, and provides more food for us and the animals. With an increasing world population it is wonderful that CO2 is increasing. I'd prefer it to increase a lot more because it is wonderfully beneficial to life on this planet.
Well said Suzann Dodd and Kevin McGrane. But let us not fail to hammer the verbal trickery at hand here. Who has ever denied 'climate change'? Anyone with a three-digit IQ? Climate changes on its time base (decades, centuries, millienia), just as weather changes on its time (minutes, hours, days). No one ever denied it. We don't need to deny that we denied it, let us not let dishonesty in dishonest arguments go uncommented.
Peter Simmons "The author is wrong in one respect, climate change isn't a theory, it's a scientific fact". It's a fact that climate has changed, yes. Looked at over a few thousand years we are now in a warmer period - but not warmer than the MWP, or the Roman warm period, or the Holocene warm period...But what ISN'T an established fact, Peter, is Anthropogenic Global Warming, or Anthropogenic Climate Change. There's not a scrap of evidence, so they shouldn't really even be called theories - perhaps tentative hypotheses. However, since, as hypotheses, they have been comprehensively falsified, to the extent that falsification is possible because the warmistas conjecture unscientific hypotheses that are untestable, the whole scam is becoming discredited - and not a moment too soon.
If a sick person has an occasional good day does that prove s/he's not sick? If an empty glass occasionally gets filled does that prove that the glass wasn't empty? Use your eyes, your ears, your intelligence. The climate IS changing, the planet is getting warmer all the time, and though there are occasional and widely scattered bursts of cold in general the Earth is responding to its assault by man by re-claiming some of the resources that the warmth of spring itself has given. Rivers are drying up; species are dying for lack of habitat and food, and a myriad of other factors confirm what thinking people already know. We are destroying our lifeline, the ground on which we walk and the air in which we move. Let's not ever forget that example, that teaching for the children of the world.
Once again the climate change believers resort to abuse. Sorry but that is a sign that you know you are wrong. Belief in climate change as a "scientific fact" is unscientific, but then it is the new religion. Lord Lawson is right, we need a proper objective investigation unburdened by dogma.
When I was studying geology in the 1970s; the prediction was that we were due for another "Ice Age" as they tended to occur between 10k and 12k years.
More recently, of course, the thought has gone the other way, into 'Global Warming', and other scientists are claiming it is a 'man made' process...
(This was the reason for the 'mini-ice age' between the mid 1600s and late 1800s...Man made...)
The Earth has been warmer and colder than it is today. It is a 'living' entity which does get warmer and does get colder. Humans have very little to do with it.
The misunderstanding is amazing.
The heat from the sun in the infra red part of the spectrum is short wave because it comes from a very hot body (the sun). It hit the earth and warms it. The warm earth radiates infra red radiation but of a longer wavelength, (because the earth is much cooler than the sun) and these wavelengths are able to make the molecular bonds in carbon dioxide and water vapour vibrate faster (pretty much like a microwave works).
This causes more energy in the atmosphere.
More energy, more evaporation from the oceans, more energy absorbed, even more energy in the atmosphere.
Most of the energy goes to causing more violent atmospheric conditions, greater extremes of weather.
If you were to study the gale frequency around the British Isles then you will find a gradual increase over the last 25 years.
I think that if you study weather patterns you would agree that winds are increasing, cold is getting colder, warm is getting warmer, extremes are getting more extreme, droughts are getting
droughtier ?? The ice caps will absorb a lot of this energy and will eventually melt, the sceptics can bury their heads, but unless we can reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere the atmosphere will become increasingly energetic. Sadly we call this global warming,it's the wrong name.
More extreme weather has always been forecast, including colder winters. Don't forget that Edinburgh's latitude is ten degrees more northerly than Montreal, and the beneficial environmental factors that give us our usually temperate climate could be victims of climate change.
Such a pity the left have tried to conflate environmental concerns with their larger agenda, as the whole matter of climate change seems to have polarised along political lines, when actually it is something for which there are technological solutions ie completing the development of lovely, clean, near limitless Nuclear Fusion.
The author is wrong in one respect, climate change isn't a theory, it's a scientific fact, though he's right that the deranged sceptic horde will attempt to use this cold weather as 'proof' that climate change is a conspiracy by tens of thousands of scientists and all world governments. This is because they conflate weather and climate repeatedly, since their little brains can't comprehend the difference. Cold air coming down from the arctic is what causes the UK to have cold weather, this is unconnected to the climate of the planet over hundreds of years. The planet is warming, has been for decades and the last decade was the hott3est on record. This small blip, and it IS winter after all, anyone thinking we were going to be sunbathing all year round clearly hasn't understood anything. That some estimates of glacier shrinkage may be out by a few years or even decades in no way affects the science of global warming, estimates are just that, and prone to revision as data becomes available. And on a global scale 25 years is nothing, though for the sceptics this scientific certainty won't penetrate as they are as obsessed as religious cultists and as incapable of either thinking logically or listening to those who know what they're talking about. So the parade of ignorance won't diminish yet. Come on morons, let's see what spurious unscientific twaddle you have to offer now.
Oh dear: QUOTE: "The news is likely to be jumped on by those who disagree with the theory of global warming." Do we need one cold winter to prove our case? Not that this hurts our case, it helps, but one warm summer, like one cold winter proves nothing. And it is a global theory - so Scotland alone braving the Arctic conditions proves nothing.
QUOTE: "The science of climate change has come under fire since the Copenhagen summit after the 'Climategate' scandal". Well, no. It has been debated since the mid-1970s, when the BBC put out a GLOBAL COOLING science special, produced by the well-know ex-editor of New Scientist, Nigel Calder. He included one brief clip of the climate cooling doubter Bert Bolen, a Swedish scientist, who floated the daft theory that the planet might be warmed by manmade atmospheric CO2, a known greenhouse gas. Calder was severly criticized by the scientific establishment for including the silliness of this lone maverick. See the DVD 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' for his story on this.
QUOTE: "The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has also had to apologise for claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear within 25 years." If it apologised for its existence that would be convincing. Many top scientists, including Paul Reiter, an expert on malaria and the mosquito, and Peter Stott, a British biogeographer, have strongly criticised the IPCC for its political machinations and agenda - it just uses the scientists for whatever carbontaxology and global governance agenda it has. Again, don't believe me, see the DVD 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'.
The phraseology dodge of changing from 'global warming' to 'climate change' is a tell-tale sign of political fudge. We have had a credible theory of the ice ages for two centuries now (you can Wikipedia for a good article). We know, we know, we know, that climate changes. Everybody knows. But we also know that manmade or natural CO2 does not account for ice ages and the warm interglacials. If you want a modern theory on that, check out Svensmarks' theory of cloud formation regulating the sunlight reaching the earth's surface, due to the interaction
of cosmic rays and the sun's magnetic field (magnetosphere). Try the documentary DVD 'The Cloud Mystery (google it), or the book 'The Chilling Stars' (2nd edition).
The politicians want to put our taxes up, take credit for saving the planet, and tell us how to run our lives - that is what all this pseudo-science manmade global warming boils down to. It is the word 'global' that really attracts them - the eco-freaks and the control freaks want global control, so anything they can use as a stick to beat us, will be used to beat us.
before you even start Pete, we've heard it all before but you go ahead, get on your soap box, wave your arms about, SHOUT and succesfully alienate another group of reasonable people who will then start looking for reasons not to believe you, why, some of them might even look for ways to 'wind you up', heaven forbid.