It’s Called Weather, Peter!
By Paul Homewood
The Telegraph’s resident religious correspondent leading weather expert, Peter Stanford, appears surprised by the vagaries of British weather. Of course, it was only a couple of weeks ago that poor confused Peter was telling us we were in for a repeat of the big freeze of 1963!
But returning to current conditions, it needs to be recognised that the sort of mild weather we having at the moment is actually not that uncommon. The CET mean temperature reached 10.0C on Sunday, the highest temperature so far this month, but there have been 70 other occasions since 1772 when it has been as warm or warmer.
The highest January temperature of 11.6C was recorded in 1834, and again in 1932.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
As for variability, the coldest day so far this month was the 16th, when the mean temperature dipped to 1.1C (hardly a repeat of 1963, Peter!). Therefore the difference between high and low for the month has been 8.9C.
As we can below, we get this sort of variability most years. Indeed, there have been many years when variability has been much more pronounced.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/cet_info_mean.html
One of the most extreme months in modern times was in 1947, when the mean ranged from –6.4 to 10.0C. This was how the Met Office described the weather:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/library/archive-hidden-treasures/monthly-weather-report-1940s
Now that really would have been something to write about!
I can only assume the Telegraph are employing him because he is cheap, but isn’t it time they found someone who understands weather to write the column again?
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yesterday afternoon I got out of my 5 acres for the first time since the snow started Friday afternoon. We got about 22″ while Glen Gary, WV in the Eastern Panhandle received 46″. For 3 days, I shoveled from the house to garage with enough space to turn my van around. Yesterday afternoon a neighbor came with an ATV that has a plow blade on the front. He worked his way up my long driveway pushing from side to side. Then he enlarged the turn around area, pushing a huge mound of snow towards the barn. Rush Limbaugh read a report from the “Gray Lady” (NY Times) 2 years ago lamenting that there would be no more snow or winter Olympics. That paper needs to change their quote from: “All the news that’s fit to print” to “All the lies we want to print.” WV Dept. of Highways did a masterful job trying to keep up w/ major roads Friday night through all of Saturday. Now they are turning to 24,000 miles of secondary roads.
The variation in weather (reporting) is consistent with climate change alarmism.
In a preview of the new “Winterwatch” series, in an interview with Michaela Strachan and Chris Packham on BBC News the interviewer said something like “you will be looking at the effect of climate on the wildlife this winter”, meaning the effect of recent floods.
The BBC clearly has been so influenced by it’s own propaganda that it can no longer distinguish between weather and climate.
To be fair, Strachan and Packham didn’t refer to climate change in the remainder of the interview but I expect they will in the series. There has been a tendency not to refer to CC by name but to imply it.
This isn’t the actual interview but it gives an idea of the approach.
I like the description “catastrophic mild winter”!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-35408826
No actual use of the CC term but plenty of terms such as “extraordinary” and “unprecedented”, including “the wettest January since records began”.
Have the MO published any figures yet on which that claim can be based?
Tried to contact the programme about this but they only seem to accept correspondence via facebook and twitter and the blog so I have posted there, Not really very confident of a reply.
Paul – Have you applied for the job? It would fit nicely with the blog and provide a boost to funds.
Dont think Paul would be suitable as his reports are factual, plus the papers top brass would probably be continually hounded by the Green mobsters for employing a CC heretic
There would be plenty fur flying about behind the scenes
You have to remember where the Telegraph is coming from. The amount of coercion that is aimed at AGW seems capable of trashing any reputation. When a producer, a corporation or state wants to prove something then their employees have a stark choice. Ascendency is gained by the toady, the person that wrecks the boat is a ‘loose cannon’. yet, to continue the naval analogy, the ‘Nelson Touch’ was the difference between England and her enemies. Was a determined effort to flout convention. “They came on in the same old way and we defeated them in the same old way”, also supports the opposing of convention. That convention we embrace today is the thing that stops advance and commits us to the daunting future rather than avoiding it. Science is something to be feared and its answers are increasingly safe havens of beautifully ordered low tech. No one ever ventures that the sum of human knowledge will ever move ahead of this medieval witch hunt that is the fear of nature turning upon its adversary, getting its own back. Anthropomorphism has a field day.
AGW is something of a holiday for science in that those places where ‘dragons be’, that will be AGW, won’t it? No one ever damaged their reputation by being cuddly about the condition of the Earth. When science is attacked regularly as being the cause of our ills, a polluter, a threat, ‘Big Pharma’, rather than the salve, is where science wins admiration by this awful compliance. We know that there is a lack of science in our society by the amount of energy that the BBC is throwing at trying to recruit young minds to it. In the gap of application science has been somewhat hijacked by those of a literary bent who can emote and forecast without proof or demonstration. All those things that are alien to procedural minds where fact is king. As a technical author I was charged with turning gobbledegook, science speak, into common English. Scientist are generally incapable of defending their own corner without proving the opaqueness of their art, especially in a social fora where literary contrivance is king.
I don’t know whether I should feel sorry for those that acquiesce (we all have mortgages) or be repulsed by them, no, disappointed I think is more to the point. We see in the current University politics issues that looks a bit like a fear of the unknown, a stiff resistance to being challenged. When teaching today is largely by rote you can understand why.