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Snow threatens to ruin the bookies’ Christmas
Climate change scientists face a tough time too as sceptics exploit the UK’s Arctic conditions
As bookmakers slash the odds of snow falling in Britain on Christmas Day, retailers, local authorities and even climate change scientists have good reason to dread the incoming Arctic drifts.
Following a mild respite, the temperatures are set to plummet again on Thursday. Up to eight inches of snow is expected to fall by the weekend as 50 mph winds from the North Pole sweep the country.
A White Christmas is now a foregone conclusion, according to Jonathan Powell, a senior forecaster with Positive Weather Solutions, which specialises in long-term predictions. “It will be nightmarish – no one will escape a return of the cold weather,” he warned.
On Christmas Day, temperatures are unlikely to rise above -1c (30f) in England and -4c (25f) in the Scottish Highlands, according to Powell’s predictions.
Bookmakers have virtually halved their odds on a white Christmas following a flurry of bets. Ladbroke’s currently lists Aberdeen as favourite to see snow on Christmas Day at 5/2, with Manchester at 3/1 and London at 4/1.
“This is now the shortest price we have offered in 20 years,” said David Williams of Ladbroke’s. “Normally in mid-December you would expect 6/1.”
In Scotland, snow-blocked roads have cost the transport minister Stewart Stevenson his job and led to home deliveries for Christmas orders being suspended by the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury.
Internet retailers have started warning customers that their orders may be delayed and the Royal Mail has withdrawn its guarantee for next day Special Delivery.
Local authorities are having to face the fact that airports, train services and roads all face further shutdowns. At least the schools will be closed for the holidays this time.
The chill has even been felt as far away as Cancun, Mexico, where some UK representatives at the climate change summit were unable to fly out because their planes were snowed in at Gatwick.
Climate change sceptics have gleefully pointed to the Arctic conditions to support their conviction that temperatures are not rising. ·
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"The chill has even been felt as far away as Cancun, Mexico, where some UK representatives at the climate change summit were unable to fly out because their planes were snowed in at Gatwick."
There was not just proxy chill but real chill. Minimum temperatures for Cancun for early December were broken several days in a row as the beanfeast was going on there.
Here in England the two week period covering the last week in November and the first week in December were the coldest since records began - as far back as 1659, in the midst of the Little Ice Age. Our winters are getting colder and our summers are getting cooler. Looking back we can see that the end of the twentieth century was simply a warm episode in natural variation.
The USA had a bad time of it with snow and record low temperatures last winter. Many records have already been broken this winter, and there is likely a monster snowstorm going to hit the Northeast USA in the last week of December.
The anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is a farce. For a start, the temperature records have been so corrupted and manipulated that many records are untrustworthy. But take a look at raw data from rural locations (not contaminated by urban heating) around the world in habitable regions and there's no warming trend. While we've all been shivering, climate alarmists have been at pains to point out that some parts of northern Norway and Canada have been unseasonably warm. Well, if you lived there in mid-winter (and very few do), during your 5 weeks of darkness with bitter cold, you'd be pleased to have the temperature a little above the average for the time of year. And I'm not in the least interested in what the temperature is in non-habitable regions. If the arctic is -45 degC instead of -55 degC (a massive 10 degrees of warming!) that is of no concern to me if most of the habitable regions of the world are plunged into cold. Even if 'on average' the temperature is warmer, it's a complete irrelevance if the places where 99% of the people live are colder.
Global warming is both statistical nonsense and a statistical artifact.