January 2012

Hot? Or Not?

Today my outdoor thermometer was reading 12ºC at 3pm, rather warm for this time of year, or so it seemed.

So I decided to investigate. The Met Office provides a dataset of Central England Daily Temperatures, dating back to 1878. After downloading the daily maximum HadCET 1878-2001 data, extracting the January 8th data, adding today's measurement, and playing with a spreadsheet, I got this graph (click on image to enlarge):

The line through the middle of the graph is a linear trend line, increasing over time.

Also interesting is the numbers of January 8ths with maximum temperatures of 10ºC or more:

1878-1944, 8 January 8s with max temp 10ºC or more.

1945-2012, 15 with max temp 10ºC or more, the last eight of which are from 1992 to 2012

So, yes, January 8th is getting warmer in these parts.

Refusal to Govern

It's chilling to find one's old predictions coming true.

Back in August 2006, in a post about a particularly bad thinkwanktank report on Climate Change Messaging, I stated:

As we begin our downward spiral our governments will increasingly refuse to govern, instead blaming easily targetted parts of the populace for our woes. And when the energy crunch starts to hurt, they'll move from blame to punishment, lashing out blindly as the rug is pulled from beneath their feet.

And then today I read this report in the Indy, Cameron tells MPs to stop making laws:

Sir George Young, the Leader of the Commons, has told cabinet colleagues the next session must include fewer, better drafted Bills.

The fewer, the better, of course, because that will please their owners, big business and the banksters.

Still no sign of any legislation to deal with the greedy usurers, of course.

H/t to @MagsNews for the link to the Indy report.

Postscript, February 5th, 2012:

A post today on the Gaian Economics blog led me to a Green House Think Tank paper on Sustainability Citizenship (.pdf) from Prof Andrew Dobson, in which he starts his summary by stating:

"Governments have stopped governing; markets have become the origin and legitimating source of policy."

Precisely!

Postscript, September 11th, 2014

By George he's got it!

George Monbiot, in his latest Guardian column, "Stopping climate meltdown needs the courage that saved the ozone layer", says

"Governments gather to discuss an urgent problem and propose everything except the obvious solution – legislation. The last thing our self-hating states will contemplate is what they are empowered to do: govern"