CEH Preliminary Report On S Yorks Floods–No Evidence That They Were Caused By Climate Change
By Paul Homewood
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/severity-of-november-2019-floods-uk-preliminary-analysis
The Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH) has been monitoring the UK’s river systems, amongst many other things, for many years. Unlike their counterparts in the Met Office, they seem to have their feet firmly planted on the ground and are primarily data driven.
One of their functions is to monitor river flows and to this end they have just published a preliminary report into the recent floods.
Below are a few highlights:
The summer and autumn so far (June-September 2019) have been exceptionally wet in northern, central and eastern England, resulting in widespread and severe flooding. In the summer, localised but severe flooding occurred in Lincolnshire in June and in the western Peak District and Yorkshire Dales from late July to early August, as reported in our monthly Hydrological Summaries. In October, the jet stream adopted an anomalous southern track propelling a series of cyclonic systems across the UK. The prolonged and persistent rainfall contributed to substantial rainfall totals in many regions and, in conjunction with saturated soils, many catchments were susceptible to flooding. Notable rainfall on 7th November prompted exceptionally high river flows in central and northern England, with a number of catchments in South Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire recording their highest ever peak flows. There has been flooding of properties and significant disruption to transport.
Here, we present some preliminary analysis of the November flooding, in terms of rainfall and river flows, and briefly consider the impacts. We also discuss the question of the role of climate change in extreme floods such as these.
Rainfall
On 7th November, an occluded front remained largely stationary across central England for around 24 hours, bringing persistent heavy rainfall. At Gringley-on-the-Hill (Nottinghamshire), 63.2mm fell in the 24-hour period from 03:00 on the 7th. This 24-hour total equates to 122% of the typical rainfall for November as a whole (based on the 1981-2010 long-term average).
Over the same time period, a raingauge near Doncaster recorded 77.8mm. Using the FEH13 rainfall frequency model (Stewart et al, 2013) we estimate that this observation has a return period of more than 60 years at this particular location. This means the chances of rainfall again at this level or higher on one day, in any given year, is just 1.6%.
At another raingauge in Sheffield, 82.2mm was recorded. This has an estimated return period of more than 40 years, and therefore a 2.5% chance of the 24-hour rainfall total being larger than 82.2mm at this location in future years.
The highest ever recorded 24-hour rainfall total in the UK remains at 341.4mm. This was recorded on 5th December 2015 at Honister Pass in the Lake District. This rainfall event had a calculated return period of around 1,000 years, meaning the probability of a repeat occurrence is incredibly slim (0.1%).
November (so far) follows a succession of wet months. In our October 2019 Hydrological Summary we reported that October concluded an exceptionally wet summer and autumn so far (June‑October) in northern, central and eastern England, with many parts receiving more than twice the average rainfall for this period. For the Severn-Trent region (covering a large area of central England), it was the wettest June-October on record (in a series from 1910). These wet conditions in early autumn meant that soils in these areas were already saturated at the start of November, reducing their capacity to store rainfall, therefore increasing runoff and exacerbating flooding.
River flows
The exceptional rainfall described above generated new record river levels and flows for many catchments around the Peak District. We do not yet have access to all of the processed river flow data to confirm how widespread new record flows are, but have obtained data for a selection in consultation with the Environment Agency (Table 1). The map below is taken from the UK Water Resources Portal and shows the hydrological situation in England on 7th November 2019, with a large part of central and northern areas reporting exceptionally high river flows.
On the Derwent, the November 2019 event exceeds notable recent flooding such as the winter of 2000/2001 and summer of 2007, with new daily and peak flow records set at gauging stations established in the 1980s. However, when considering the data for Derby which begins in 1933, although the November 2019 event exceeds recent peaks, it is ranked as 5th highest behind 1965, 1941, 1960 and 1947.
For the Don however, the November 2019 event was exceptional. Although flows in Sheffield were not as high as those recorded in 2007, further downstream in Doncaster, a new peak flow record was set. In the Rother catchment, which joins the Don between Sheffield and Doncaster from the south, flows also approached those recorded in 2007.
Was the flooding event due to climate change?
The UK has experienced a number of nationally-significant flooding events in recent years. Some of the areas of central England that have suffered flooding in November 2019 were also subject to devastating flooding in summer 2007. There is inevitably speculation that floods are becoming more severe as a result of climate change.
One way to investigate this is to look at long records of rainfall and river flow. There is mounting evidence (Met Office & CEH, 2014) for an increase in heavy rainfall in the UK over the last 40 years or so, but increases in rainfall do not necessarily equate to equivalent increases in flooding. To investigate changes in flooding, long-term records of peak river flows are needed. A significant body of research has used the data held on the National River Flow Archive to assess trends in flooding in the UK. This work is in Hannaford, 2015 and the LWEC climate change report card, while more-up-to-date flow and rainfall trend analyses have also been published by CEH scientists (Prosdocimi et al, 2014, Harrigan et al, 2018).
Time series plots showing trends in annual peak flows for the Don and Derwent are shown below using data up to 2016/2017. The Don shows a weak upward trend, but despite the dominance of the 2007 event, the trend is not statistically significant. However, the longer record from the river Derwent shows that there were a number of major floods in the pre-1960 period that were larger than the 2007 flood (which the 2019 peak exceeded). In fact this record shows a weak downward trend, albeit with the single-most prominent feature of the graph being notable variability between years and decades, with more ‘flood-rich’ periods in the 2000s contrasting with ‘flood-poor’ periods such as the early 1970s.
In general, most work on flood trends observes that the north and the west of the UK have seen an increase in high river flows since the early 1960s. This has been associated with changes in atmospheric circulation patterns, in particular, the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). This oscillation affects the position of storm tracks across the UK and has a strong influence on rainfall. More generally, in collaboration with an international team (Hodgkins et al, 2017) we have highlighted the role of ‘interdecadal’ variability in Atlantic sea-surface temperatures (the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, AMO). This is important through the year and across the UK (as opposed to the NAO which has greatest influence in winter in the north-west) and has been associated with the run of wetter summers in the late 2000s/early 2010s, including the summer 2007 floods.
Research in the UK using very long records (like the Derwent record above) points to pronounced variability between decades, leading to ‘flood rich’ and ‘flood poor’ periods driven by the NAO, AMO and other factors. We don’t yet know how much the prevalence of recent floods is down to anthropogenic warming and how much is down to these patterns of variability. Human-induced warming will also influence these modes of ocean-atmosphere variability, so it is hard to disentangle these drivers to attribute any event or cluster of events to anthropogenic climate change using observational records alone.
https://www.ceh.ac.uk/news-and-media/blogs/severity-of-november-2019-floods-uk-preliminary-analysis
In short:
- The floods were largely the result of a very wet summer and early autumn, rather than one day’s extreme rainfall, although that of course was the trigger. As I have already shown, none of these months were unusually wet at all, it has more been a case of cumulative rainfall over the period as a whole.
- Climate science keeps telling us that summers are supposedly getting drier because of global warming.
- The existence of flood dry and flood rich periods is again acknowledged. We are of course in the latter at the moment, just as preceding decades were flood dry.
- The significance of the NAO and AMO are emphasised in rainfall trends.
- While annual peak flows appear to be trending upward on the Don, this record only dates back to 1960. The longer record for the Derwent actually shows a weak downward trend.
In other words, there is no evidence whatsoever that climate change has had any effect at all in the floods.
It is unfortunate therefore that the report closes:
When it comes to the question of attribution to climate change, we need to combine our observational analyses with sophisticated climate and hydrological modelling techniques. Following the widespread flooding in 2013/2014 with our partners we showed that this event was more likely to have occurred because of human influence on the climate (Schaller et al, 2014, Kay et al, 2018). Other researchers have linked the winter 2015/2016 floods to human-induced warming using similar techniques (Otto et al, 2018).
It will no doubt take time for an attribution to be published for this flood event. But what we can say with some certainty is that there has been an increasing trend in flooding over the last four or five decades in parts of northern Britain and this is at least consistent with what we may expect in a warming world.
I strongly suspect that pressure has been brought, probably by the Met Office, to include these claims that are not supported by the CEH’s own data.
1066 and all that
River Trent at Littleborough
Anyway, enough of all that. Time for a history lesson!
I cycled around Nottinghamshire in mid October, and took the above picture at Littleborough. Even then the river had already spilt over its banks, giving a good indication of the river conditions prior to the November floods.
Littleborough has an interesting history. It was actually an important town during Roman times, as it dominated the only fording point on the line of the great road from Lincoln to York, via Doncaster. It was then known as Segelocum
The river is tidal at that point, and was fordable at low tide with the help of a causeway.
Littleborough retained its importance for the next 1800 years as an important crossing point of the Trent, with a chain link ferry introduced in 1820, after the river had been deepened. This finally went out of use in 1910, by which time bridges at Gainsborough and Dunham had curtailed the need for the ferry.
Plenty of famous people used the crossing there, including King Harold, on his way in 1066 to the Battle of Stamford Bridge, and a few days later back south again to be shot in the eye!
Two years later William the Conqueror used this same crossing to put down the Saxon insurrection of Earls Morcar and Edwin, and again in 1069 when the Normans ravaged the country from the Humber to the Tyne, and secured the City of York for the invaders.
Nowadays Littleborough is just a handful of houses with an 11thC church, at the end of a narrow track.
Notalotofpeopleknewthat!
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Reblogged this on Climate- Science.press.
I’ve spent many an hour disputing CC with friends, who are still friends strangely enough, but the one point that keeps coming up is that science proves that CO2 is the prime driver of global warming. Its no good producing figures to show there is little change whilst this belief persists. It there any strong scientific evidence that refutes the CO2 myth?
Is there any strong scientific evidence in favour of it?
Yes. Graph global mean temperature* over the last 70 years against atmospheric CO2 concentration over the last 70 years, and you will see there is absolutely no correlation.
*Understand that GMT before 1979 is a gross estimate. We flat don’t know what it was. I’m not exaggerating. It is a best guess.
It is hard to prove a negative – but there is a lot of evidence against CO2 being a major driver. The temperature and CO2 graphs do not match up – more CO2 has resulted in less warming recently.
The warming that we HAVE had is indistinguishable from natural variation – see Nick Lewis’s papers. The UK Met Office has agreed this – and now claims that it will ignore observations and work directly from models.
Models do not consider any other natural source of variation apart from CO2, and have had to vary the Climate Sensitivity number widely to get the models to work correctly. And data on cloud cover now shows it to be a major driver – all of this is ignored in the models…
Well there is what they like to call the ‘Pause’ – static temperatures with increasing CO2. And then you can ask how the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period and the Minoan Warm Period which all seem to have warmer temperatures than today happened. The Vikings farmed Greenland in the past – not an option now. The Romans grew vines as far north as Newcastle and despite the increase in the production of English wines they are not coming from the NE so far. And then ask why none of their predictions have come true – ever.
I can only give you Piers Corbyn’s words from his web site:
The reason why the CO2 atmosphere theory can never work is that the Ocean-atmosphere interface controls the amount of CO2 in air – a warmer ocean (which holds 50x more CO2 than the atmosphere) emits CO2 and vice versa. This is very basic physics*.
Just as when you warm a glass of fizzy drink more CO2 comes off and it absorbs more when it is cold. Putting more CO2 above the glass of fizzy drink does NOT however warm it up!
Ocean temperatures CONTROL atmospheric CO2 levels. It is an observed fact in millions of years of data that Ocean temperature changes LEAD atmospheric CO2 changes.
Irrespective of these facts there are 2 other reasons why CO2 warmist theory must fail: a) the surface cooling effect of plants b) Non equilibrium thermodynamics in the atmosphere – ie the assumptions of the ‘theory’ are nonsense. *Henry’s Law.
“It is an observed fact in millions of years of data that Ocean temperature changes LEAD atmospheric CO2 changes.”
Wut? There is no millions of years of ocean data. We can even measure them now!
Increasing the pressure of CO2 above a cup of CO2 solution in a sealed apparatus and seeing if the solution gets warmer is not even faintly plausible as a test of the mechanism of oceanic warming.
Any sort of natural disaster/weather attribution is impossible, and any attempts to do so are purely political. Placing any weight on GIGO models programmed with the assumption of man-made climate change is risible.
The fact that a pair of uniform unweighted dice suddenly come up double-six ten times in a row does not indicate than anything has changed, or that the odds of any future outcome has changed – it is still just random chance.
It’ll only ever be possible to look back 30/50 years from the present to judge what trends there have been, and even then there’ll still be no way to conclusively link it to man’s CO2 emissions, rather than random variation.
Correlation is not causation
and good science not when you ATTRIBUTE things afterwards
.. but when you actually reliably and consistently predict things well BEHOREHAND.
In May the local BBC Environment guy did his prediction
saying farmers were going to suffer in summer ‘Here I am and look how low these river drains are ..droughts msy cause problems’
A week later he was reporting from the Wainfleet floods
.. He has never warned about any more floods
Meanwhile other voices down south have been going on saying that Chalksteams will never recover.
We do know that if GreenBlob start to predict floods
.. a drought will start.
It’s ridiculous blaming climate change for the state of chalk streams when the water companies favour pumping ground water to building reservoirs. In 1951 the SE had 5 million people, by 2021 it will probably be double that, not including all the ‘ghosts’.
Finally:- https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-50459251
Yes, I well remember the drought claims when the Lake District had very low levels in its reservoirs and southern streams had dried up. Ken Livingstone was mayor of London and we got a toilet hippo from him to reduce the amount we flushed.
But this us why the narrative has shifted to “extremes”. Quite how a little warming can produce both flood and drought in the UK is however beyond me.
In October, the jet stream adopted an anomalous southern track propelling a series of cyclonic systems across the UK.
There’s your problem. It also helps to explain the lower than normal rainfall in large parts of Scotland during the same period as Yorkshire’s soaking.
And that’s why the attribution studies are just stupid. The rain hasn’t increased in total if you take a large enough area, it’s just been concentrated into one area by weather factors.
I gave up when I realised the Met Office have gone mad!
The Met Office wish us all to accept that you can use climate models that predict an AGW trend then us the same models for attribution studies, and the records then show no trend.
Then without any sense of irony they say extreme events 7 times more likely due to climate change.
You cannot reason with people who believe that.
That map looks about right for where I live. My river has been exceptionally normal this autumn.
“I strongly suspect that pressure has been brought, probably by the Met Office, to include these claims that are not supported by the CEH’s own data.” I notice that CEH gets funding from NERC, so it will have to toe the line on “climate change”, or else.
And here is a weather forecast for next year, 2020.
The first quarter of the year will be mostly stormy, cold and wet, with chances of some snow. Media reports will highlight January 28th (or some other date) as being the coldest on record – ever. However later analysis will show that between 1876-1893(inc.), and 1901-1923(inc.), and 1933-1972(inc.), and 2010 were all significantly colder on that date.
As the year progresses it will gradually get warmer. During this period it is likely to be wet and windy but with some beautiful sunny days. Some people in the UK call this ‘Spring’, however weather forecasting professionals know it’s just a gap-filler period between winter and summer when anything can happen.
As the year continues on to the summer it will bring only occasional showers, with some of them being quite heavy and some of long duration. Drought conditions may happen in some areas but these should be short lived, lasting less than 6 months. Whether or not a drought actually happens newspapers, TV, and radio speculators will hype-up the idea, making the farmers feel very depressed. As summer gives way to the golden beauty of falling Autumnal leaves, more changeable weather will be experienced, with a high likelihood of rain, hail, gales, frosts, fog and even some early snow, between the pleasantly warm sunny days of a cool, late Indian summer.
Moving on to Winter, and the temperatures will fall, as initially Westerly winds blow in chilly rain into the UK. Later the winds may well change to northerly, north-easterly, or easterly — this will cause the temperatures to drop quite significantly as they occur. Winter has a higher potential for snowy periods, especially on the high ground and in Scotland, and 2020 will be no different — in fact it is very likely to be quite a bit snowier than the last 10 winters, or so it may or may not seem, with records for the snow depth and/or duration on the ground are, in a real sense, put in jeopardy (if and when this snow event happens).
And that is the end of the weather forecast.
Whatever happens the farmers will inevitably complain, and bleating alarmists will fear that every tiny variation they highlight in the natural weather progression is a sign. Just what sort of sign it is can only be divined by a very talented psychoanalyst deconstructing their utterly puerile, illogical and irrational rants.
Over the coming year the BBC will, of course, just continue to broadcast the same nonsensical drivel from the Harrabin, Shukman et al., not caring about scientific or historical honesty. Hopefully 2020 is the year when listening/viewing figures about their output will show a significant decline, as the majority of the general public realize it’s just irrelevant Green agenda tosh. No doubt the whispering ejit Addledborough will inflict yet another pseudoscience series of programs on the docile sector of UK sheeple.
If I don’t get to say before the end of the year, have a happy and prosperous New Year Paul Homewood and all the good people here.
Alarmists just claim Global warming causes everything
droughts floods etc.
That way they have all their bases covered.
In Sept MattMcG predicted flooding increasing
but he said at the coast, whereas this flooding was well inland
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-49731591
Any pro-vegan anti-beef progs on the #BiasedBBC ?
Today I count 2 + 2 in programme items,
… making 7 in a week !
Does that include the “saving the planet” wildlife shows?
no I didn’t include them
So we learn that despite an admirable dose of facts, showing nothing very remarkable, actually the trend is “at least consistent with what me may expect in a warming world”
Blinkered scientists!
How can they not have realised (or perhaps they have been forbidden to mention), it is a LOT MORE ‘consistent’ with the activities of those naughty witches!
Saint Greta will pick them out! Go fetch some fire-lighters and a stake! How dare they?!?
Got to love the attribution study suited, which admits it’s just a series if model runs that assume Climate Change will change the climate – and even then some of the model runs showed drought, not flooding!
How can any serious actual scientist run models that show not just differences but total opposites occurring and say the models are valid?
Jamal Munshi ascribes modelling results to: “CIRCULAR REASONING IN CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCH”
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3130131
“A literature review shows that the circular reasoning fallacy is common in climate change research. It is facilitated by confirmation bias and by activism such that the prior conviction of researchers is subsumed into the methodology. Example research papers on the impact of fossil fuel emissions on tropical cyclones, on sea level rise, and on the carbon cycle demonstrate that the conclusions drawn by researchers about their anthropogenic cause derive from circular reasoning.”
Fredi Otto’s thesis was on the “Philosophical aspects of climate modeling”
Click to access 21709e57fe1b4b9f3548face2f7965fb7153.pdf
“Parameterisations in nonlinear models make it nearly impossible to detect chains of causes and effects in a climate model. Therefore an intransparent method of fitting the model to data, which is called tuning, results in manipulated physics of the climate model and prevents a meaningful analysis of the modelling results.”
She should re-visit her PhD thesis….
The BBC is still doing its best to attach the climate change tag to the current River Don issue, even wheeling out an XR representative. They didn’t do quite so well with their vox pops, though. Asking a Fishlake resident what politicians should be concentrating on, he replied: “Brexit!”
See also this: https://wattsupwiththat.com/2019/11/24/a-battle-for-the-jet-stream-is-raging-above-our-heads/
“even wheeling out an XR representative”
They are official activists, funded by left wing billionaire foundations, consulted by government and used by politicians to say that “something must be done”. In June, Gail Bradbrooke appeared before a parliamentary select committee, seemingly as an expert witness on climate.
https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/business-energy-industrial-strategy/news-parliament-2017/climate-change–net-zero-target-evidence-17-19/
“BEIS Committee question Extinction Rebellion. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee examine the rationale for going faster to hit the net zero target, hearing from witnesses including Gail Bradbrook, Extinction Rebellion, Isabella O’Dowd, Climate and Energy Specialist, WWF, and Baroness Bryony Worthington, Environmental Defense Fund.”
The chief architect of the CCA along with the aforementioned Bryony Worthington, Ed Miliband, is now co-chair, with Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, of the Labour think tank IPPR’s Environmental Justice Commission.
https://www.ippr.org/environment-and-justice/commissioners/
One of their “commissioners” is Farhana Yamin. She is the founder of an activist set-up called “Track 0” and also an Extinction Rebellion activist, so there is a direct link between IPPR and XR and by association, the Labour Party and the Green Party. https://www.businessgreen.com/bg/interview/3082614/meet-the-green-radicals-extinction-rebellion-activist-farhana-yamin
“In addition to founding “Track 0”, (well funded, including by the Prince of Wales Corporate Leaders Group), https://track0.org/about/partners-supporters/, she is an associate fellow at Chatham House, a visiting professor at University College London and a member of the Global Agenda Council on Climate Change at the World Economic Forum”. (Davos)
Members of the WEF Managing Board include Al Gore, Mark Carney, (BoE), Christine Lagarde, (ECB) and other financial big hitters, so we have a direct link between XR and global financiers, https://www.weforum.org/about/leadership-and-governance.
Additionally Yamin is lead author for three assessment reports for the IPCC on adaptation and mitigation issues, so we have an XR link with the IPCC and the UN, https://unfccc.int/climate-action/momentum-for-change/advisory-panel/farhana-yamin
An analysis and history of XR here:
Click to access Extremism-Rebellion.pdf
No surprise then that the new Conservative manifesto includes a commitment to the Paris agreement and to the advice of the Climate Change Committee, including the clustering of industry and money for carbon capture. The wind and gas lobby seems to have cashed in. No mention of the CCC view that the taxpayer and customer will have to pay for it.
For a comparison of the nuclear option favoured by the late Prof Mackay and wind and gas by Gummer, Google ‘ Has Gummer Goofed. Notion’.
Thanks Dennis. Useful reference!
A comment from bBBC
from bBBC
Caught a absolutely sickening piece of BIAS / Agenda pushing on BBC Breakfast this morning.
Reporter was in Fishlake. A area badly affected by the recent floods.
Amazingly, he managed to turn it into a 4 minute Anti Boris, Climate Change agenda pushing circus.
He was interviewing residents who’s homes were flooded.
Asking them if they could trust the Government to listen to them, of course, they couldn’t !!!
Boris is a liar, he doesn’t know what its like to be flooded.
After a few Anti Boris soundbites, he moved the report onto linking the weather to climate change.
He asked one bloke if he thought that climate change was the cause of the recent floods and if it will sway his vote at the election,
fair do’s to the fella, he said it was just a freak event (correct) and would have no impact on his voting intention. Reporter asks him will Brexit have a effect,
the chap said i hope so,
You could sense he was a Brexiteer
so clearly the BBC didn’t want this so cut him off sharpish.
Report ended with them speaking to who else,
but Ex-stink-tion rebellion !!!
Its all down to climate change,
she is voting to make sure she has a future, blah blah blah , music the the Beeboids ears.
And with that, the lecture / propaganda ended.
Sickening stuff. And they wonder why they are losing viewers hand over fist.
Note than England’s climate is Cfb (Köppen-Geiger). Has been for at least a century.
Ipso facto, THERE HAS BEEN NO CLIMATE CHANGE IN YORKSHIRE!
All the naval gazing is preposterous. NOTHING could have been caused by climate change, because THERE HASN’T BEEN ANY.
I think this report is quite important as an explanation to the general public of Climate Change. Whilst we are all aware that there has been some warming of the climate (the Thames doesn’t freeze anymore, for instance), the public is misled as to what is happening. This report completely destroys the climate change meme, by just relying on observable facts. The climate change industry though is only brought into the picture in the form of their ‘computer modelling’. The story thus is, in reality not a lot has changed and much of what you are told is baseless. Climate change as a scare story is entirely reliant on made up, pretend scenarios.
OT Paul, but there is an interesting article in the current online issue of Forbes Magazine by the environmentalist Michael Sellenberger entitled, ‘Why everything they say about Climate Change is wrong’ which is well worth a read. Whilst still on the warmest side of the argument he politely discredits much of the usual alarmist nonsense. I don’t think he’s going to be on Greta’s Christmas card list anyway. Worth a look.
So to summarise: after a thoughtful, long, detailed account well-supported by actual facts and data, they conclude that “climate change” (which is code for CAGW) had nothing to do with these floods – as we all knew. And then they tack two paragraphs onto the end saying “Yeah and by the way it was all caused by climate change” (by which they mean CAGW),
Extraordinary.
No, scratch that – what I meant was, how completely predictable!
I have to agree with earlier commenters here. What they appear to be saying is that there is no evidence that climate change is involved here and, in fact the climate here hasn’t actually changed here in any significant way. But we all know that it was climate change really don’t we children?
The comment about witches was right on the mark, those computer models really have no more credibility than the methods used by medieval witch finders. Maybe instead of trying to reduce CO2 output they should just start burning deniers.
Hi Paul. In case you missed BBC 1 six o’clock news tonight (Monday): Justin Rowlatt, in his hyped report on the ‘alarming’ rise in carbon emissions over both the last year and the last decade, wildly mis- and over-stated the percentage rise in emissions since prior to the Industrial Revolution. With a backdrop of the two century period in an on-screen graph he stated that the rate of increase since the end of the LIA was 147%; rather than saying the rate is 147% of that that applied before the Industrial Revolution began. Unsurprisingly, both the graph and the bogus statistic were extinguished from the ten o’clock. This type of hype misinformation is also everpresent in Dublin. Recently the chair of our Climate Advisory Council,an eminent former economist, blatantly erred in a high profile climate committee in our parliament that whereas methane has a relatively short lifespan that “carbon (emissions) lasts forever”. I have requested a correction and my complaint is being considered by the committee. Regards
Talking of the current political Climate
It is said that every Cloud has a Silver Lining
As the parties are all talking about investing (spending/borrowing) to tackle climate change.
Any investment is better than no investment. Austerity and economic stagnation is worse.
The investments may not be the wisest but neither are they the worst. Investments in Trident (Mutually Assured Destruction MAD) or the rest of our armaments industry that we sell or use to blow up people and there infrastructure is worse. It is better to invest than deindustrialization. They can kid themselves that there efforts are helping to save the planet.
But if it releases the billions that would otherwise not be released then more power to there elbow. Of course the mistake they will all make is borrowing the money instead of creating themselves. No doubt those lending will do so as an investment in getting control later. So will do all they can to encourage the investing (borrowing) with what ever is in vogue.
Be it Climate Change today or the Cold war or hot wars yesterday/tomorrow.
I assume you got your economics training at Islington Technical.
A sound rebuttal of my statement if ever I have heard one
You keep using the word ‘invest’, it doesn’t mean what you think it means. Any money that is spent on tackling a non existent problem is money wasted that will make all of us poorer.
Unlike Investing in Trident that makes us so much richer . But it does create jobs if expensive ones.
It will only make us poorer though if we borrow the money instead of creating it ourselves.
Rainfall history question. Anyone know the east of England rainfall patterns ?
Local wildlife people assured me that Lincolnshire streams were much reduced over the last 100 years
..and said that was largely due to CLIMATE CHANGE.
Their anecdotal proof was that one particular small canal often needs topping up.
… My own anecdotal experience is from bike rides, that show me that in recent years the water table is pretty high.
And that every time there is a dry spell, the alarmists shout drought and that is followed with rain and flooding within a week or two.
.. Has historical rainfall really fallen ?