January 2011

Don't You Love Local Papers?

On Monday, the Worcester News published a letter from one K Hemming, entitled "Global warming? You must be joking".

The usual nonsense:

"So will all those easily fooled, gullible people now shut up about global warming. If there was any truth in their brainless propaganda, we would all be holding outside barbecues now and frying eggs on the pavement instead of old age pensioners freezing to death."

My response to the editor:

"In Monday's letters, K Hemming referred to "global warming" as "brainless propaganda", basing his claim on the cold weather we've experienced this winter and last.

Since not one climate scientist has predicted UK winter weather suitable for pavement egg-frying, he's rather overstating his case.

What they do predict, however, is more extreme weather conditions.

The Europe-wide Ensembles project, which reported in November 2009, predicted "increases in precipitation across northern Europe in winter", i.e., more rain and snow in winters to come. A graph on page 61 of that report shows a forecasted increase in winter precipitation over the UK.

Dr Kevin Trenberth, of the USA's National Center for Atmospheric Research, has stated that last winter "the cold and snow in Europe was 'balanced' by very warm temperatures in Greenland... The was a large so-called blocking high in North Atlantic that led to the polar outbreaks into Europe and so that is where the cold air went, making it warmer in behind". He notes that this is "weather", not "climate".

A similar "blocking high" was a feature of last month's cold snap. A paper by Varvus et al. in the International Journal of Climatology in 2006 titled "The behavior of extreme cold air outbreaks under greenhouse warming" predicted that periods of severe cold weather would persist, and in some areas, worsen, despite a greenhouse-warmed world.

Whilst we were having a cold snap, parts of Newfoundland recorded temperatures 20 degrees Celsius above the norm for December.

NOAA's National Climatic Data Center reports that "for the 2010 year-to-date (January–November), the combined global land and ocean surface temperature was 0.64°C (1.15°F) above the 20th century average—the warmest such period since records began in 1880."

19 national temperature records were broken in 2010.

So much for global cooling."

And what they printed:

"SIR – In his letter in Monday’s Worcester News, K Hemming referred to global warming as “brainless propaganda”, basing his claim on the cold weather we’ve experienced this winter and last.

Since not one climate scientist has predicted the UK’s winter weather is suitable for pavement eggfrying, he’s rather overstating his case.

What they do predict, however, is more extreme weather conditions.

While we were having a cold snap, parts of Newfoundland recorded temperatures 20C above the norm for December.

Nineteen national temperature records were broken in 2010. So much for global cooling."

Our media mustn't let cited facts get in the way of opinions.

Sigh.