That’s the standard disclaimer of believers in anthropogenic global warming whenever there’s a period of unusual cold: you can’t discern climate from singular weather events. And it’s true, although some AGW believers sing a different tune when the weather is unusually warm. In those cases, we’re told, the warm weather is a foretaste of what we can expect from global warming.
This increasingly (in)famous article in the UK Independent predicting milder winters is an example of the double standard. Dated March 20, 2000, the article stated:
“Britain’s winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
“Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain’s culture, as warmer winters – which scientists are attributing to global climate change – produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.
“The first two months of 2000 were virtually free of significant snowfall in much of lowland Britain, and December brought only moderate snowfall in the South-east. It is the continuation of a trend that has been increasingly visible in the past 15 years: in the south of England, for instance, from 1970 to 1995 snow and sleet fell for an average of 3.7 days, while from 1988 to 1995 the average was 0.7 days. London’s last substantial snowfall was in February 1991.”
However, 10 years after the article, Britain is enduring what may be a record-setting period of cold. From the Dec. 18, 2010 UK Daily Mail: (emphasis mine)
“Swathes of Britain skidded to a halt today as the big freeze returned – grounding flights, closing rail links and leaving traffic at a standstill.
“And tonight the nation was braced for another 10in of snow and yet more sub-zero temperatures – with no let-up in the bitterly cold weather for at least a month, forecasters have warned.
“The Arctic conditions are set to last through the Christmas and New Year bank holidays and beyond and as temperatures plummeted to -10c (14f) the Met Office said this December was ‘almost certain’ to become the coldest since records began in 1910.”
And in the UK Independent itself, we read:
Millions of Britons faced travel misery today with planes grounded, rail services cancelled and roads rendered impassable on what is traditionally the busiest weekend before Christmas.
Plunging temperatures and heavy snow saw large swathes of the country grind to a standstill, as London’s Gatwick Airport closed its runway and British Airways cancelled flights at Heathrow.
This is the third year of unexpectedly cold winters in Britain. In January, 2009, AGW uber-believer George Monbiot wrote a weather-is-not-climate column in the UK Guardian:
“The thought that I might never skate outdoors again feels like a bereavement. I pray for another cold snap, even though I know it will bring all the nincompoops in Britain out of their holes, yapping about a new ice age.”
In January, 2010, Monbiot recycled the same column:
Yes, it is colder than usual in some parts of the northern hemisphere, and warmer than usual in others. Alaska and northern Canada are 5-10C warmer than the average for this time of year, so are North Africa and the Mediterranean. The cold and the warmth could be related: the contrasting temperatures appear to be connected to blocks of high pressure preventing air flow between the land and the sea.
But in 2005, Monbiot likened the weather to climate. Of course, that was during a relatively warm British winter. From Monbiot’s Dept. of Double Standards:
“It is now mid-February, and already I have sown eleven species of vegetable. I know, though the seed packets tell me otherwise, that they will flourish. Everything in this country – daffodils, primroses, almond trees, bumblebees, nesting birds – is a month ahead of schedule. And it feels wonderful. Winter is no longer the great grey longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 and 1963 are – unless the Gulf Stream stops – unlikely to recur.”
_ _ _ _ _ _
Well, the Gulf Stream hasn’t stopped, and Britain’s freezing. So what happened to the confident prediction of AGW believers in 2000 that “snow is starting to disappear” from Britain?
Perhaps Monbiot will tackle that in his third “weather-is-not-climate” column. Thanks to Britain’s icy weather, it should be due any day now. A dose of humility about the difficulty of predicting climate wouldn’t hurt his credibility.
———————————————————————————-
DISCLAIMER: This is my opinion, and not necessarily that of my employer, the North County Times.
Comments 2
Brad, this is TERRIFIC stuff. Thanks for posting.
My memory is faulty to a fault, but I seem to recall that years ago you were a rather strong supporter of the global warming science. Am I correct?
Not trying to pick a fight. Indeed, for one to change one’s mind in the face of significant evidence to the contrary shows a degree of objectivity I’m not sure I consistently demonstrate.
So two questions:
1. Is my memory failing me (again)?
2. If I am right, tell us how you came to change your mind about global warming (well, sort of a question).
Richard,
You are correct – a few years ago I was a strong supporter of AGW theory. I changed my mind after Climategate. The conduct in the Climategate emails, such as doctoring a chart to “hide the decline” in a temperature proxy, and colluding to keep skeptics from reviewing AGW papers, was deeply unethical.
And the scientists suppressed their worries about AGW’s weak spots for fear skeptics might benefit. In one Climategate email, scientist Kevin Trenberth told his colleagues it was a “travesty” that they couldn’t find the missing heat Earth supposedly was accumulating. But publicly, Trenberth says the heat is there, somewhere, and doesn’t undermine AGW. This is the attitude of a propagandist, not a scientist.
Moreover, some of the worst supposed effects of AGW are not caused by greenhouse gases at all, and are not global. The melting of Himalayan glaciers is almost totally caused by soot wafted up by air currents from India and China, according to research from NASA and from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Soot is not a greenhouse gas, it is a particulate form of carbon, and its effects are localized, so lumping it it in with CO2 as a global AGW agent is nonsense scientifically.
And so on. Here is another version of my blog post, at my North County Times sci/tech blog.