What a dilemma for the media.  On the one hand we have the farcical Copenhagen Climate Conference struggling to establish what to believe, who to believe, who to blame, what to charge, what capital can be made and who should take the credit.

On the other hand we have ‘Extreme’ weather conditions being experienced in the UK at the moment.  Extreme my arse!

Wikipedia defines Extreme weather as: “Extreme weather includes weather phenomena that are at the extremes of the historical distribution, especially severe or unseasonal weather.”  The met office define it as: well nothing really.  It is a term they use when talking about the ‘extreme’ of any weather over a given period.  So, the extreme was 2″ of rainfall in Manchester and 0″ in Cardiff today.  It is not a measure to describe either good or bad weather.  The Met Office use the term ‘Severe’ for that.

The lowest recorded temperature in the UK was  -27.2C in 1895 Braemar (Aberdeenshire);  in England, -26.1C 1982, Newport (Shropshire).

So what have we?  It is 20th December, next week is the shortest day of the year, (does that make it an ‘extreme’ day?), The white stuff falling out of the sky is called ‘snow’ and there’s a severe weather warning which says, “Heavy snow showers may give accumulations of 2 to 5cm and there is a risk of 10 to 15cm over hills.”  For the sake of the BBC, ITV and Sky, that’s NOT extreme.

Classic quote from the ‘outside’ weather girl as I write, “There has been 20cm of snow, that’s 8 inches, and if you look behind me you can see just how deep that is!”  Actually you could. It was just about reaching the top of the kerb on the road.  Big Deal!

How do we react?  We close schools, we close airports, we cancel trains, close the channel tunnel and park up on motorways.

Then again, it did come as a complete surprise didn’t it.  I mean, who ever heard of snow at Christmas, (sorry, Winterfest)?

In the normal course I would not plagiarise anybody else’s work, but given that this is an open letter published in its entirety in the Spectator on 3rd of December, I am sure that it is in the public domain.

Recently the President of the Maldives held a Cabinet meeting underwater.  This was a publicity stunt to bring to the world’s attention that the Maldives are under threat from rising sea levels.  Given the body of scientific evidence that at worst, is a threat that predicts a sea rise of some 20cm by the end of the century and at best, is not under threat at all, inasmuch as the islands are actually higher now than a hundred years ago.

I am happy to reproduce this open letter, taken from a recent climate change supplement of The Spectator, in which Nils-Axel Mörner, a former lead reviewer for the IPCC, and head of Geodynamics at Stockholm University until his retirement in 2005, reassures President Mohamed Nasheed that his country is safe:

Dear Mr President,

You are obviously very concerned about the effect that sea level rises may have on the Maldives. Your Cabinet has been photographed meeting underwater, and you have even declared that ‘we are going to die’ if the climate change summit in Copenhagen fails. I am now writing with what I hope will be some good news. The scientific side of the situation is quite different to that which you imagine. You are, in fact, not going to die.

Before I continue, I should perhaps state my credentials. I have been a sea-level specialist for 40 years. I launched most of its new theories in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. I solved the problem of the gravitational potential surface, the theory that it changes with time; the rotation of the earth, how it affected the redistribution of the oceans’ masses — and so on. Last year, I was awarded a prize from Algarve university for my ‘irreverence and contribution to our understanding of sea level change’.

We both know that the 1,200 islands of the Maldives are all low-lying with the highest point only some 2.5m (8ft) above sea level. Hence, your nation is vulnerable to extreme storms, tsunamis — and, of course, any possible sea level rise.

The IPCC vision is a rise that by the year 2100 may amount to between 30cm and 50cm. This is based on model calculations. Our figure is a 5cm rise, plus or minus 15cm. In a newspaper article, you have suggested that sea levels may rise by between one and eight metres. Those figures, however, do not concur with the physics and known rates of ice melting. So those figures must be dismissed as impossible.

I have been on no fewer than six different field expeditions to the Maldives. We worked in the lagoon, we drilled in the sea, we drilled in lakes, we looked at the shore morphology — many different environments. We have always found the same thing: a total stability for the last 30 years, preceded by a 20cm drop in sea level in the 1970s.

We have presented a detailed documentation of the sea level changes in the Maldives over the past 4,000 years. The record of the last 500 years may be of special interest to the situation of your islanders. It shows:

The people of the Maldives had no problems surviving the 17th century, which was 50cm higher than now. Nor the last century, where it rose by 20cm. This bodes well for their prospects of surviving the next change.

I recently visited Bangladesh, a country cursed by floods. In the Sundarban delta, I documented very strong coastal erosion despite zero changes in sea level. So, even here, there is no global sea level rise going on today — just as in the Maldives, in Tuvalu and in Vanuatu, to mention a few famous sites claimed already to be in the process of becoming flooded.

By the end of this century, sea level may have risen by between 30cm and 50cm according to the various IPCC scenarios. Our records suggest a maximum of 20cm. Neither of those levels would pose any real problem — simply a return to the situation in the 17th and the 19th to early 20th centuries, respectively.

So why the scare-mongering? Could it be because there is money involved? If you inhabit a tiny island and can convince the world that its very existence is under threat because of the polluting policies of the West, the industrialised nations will certainly respond. The money is likely to flow in more quickly than the ocean will rise.

This is the fourth time I have written to you. Unfortunately, I think there is a problem with your email service because so far I have not received an acknowledgement. For this reason, I have decided to write this open letter in the pages of The Spectator.

So, Mr President, you and your ministers in the Maldives really don’t need to worry about a future life beneath the waves. You should pass on this message to the people of the Maldives. It is high time to release them from this terrible psychological burden.

Yours,
Nils-Axel Mörner

I’ve just learned this courtesy of BCS, (British Computer Society).
If you use Facebook, then you WILL be interested in this, their latest potential privacy invasion.
Facebook has agreed to let 3rd party advertisers use your photos in their ads without asking your permission.   If you don’t think that they can do that, then check the small print you signed up to when you joined.

However, all is not lost.
TO OPT OUT of this practice:
Click on ‘Settings’ (in top navigation bar, next to logout).
Drop down to ‘Privacy Settings’
select ‘News Feed and Wall’
select the tab for ‘Facebook Ads’
select ‘No one’ in the drop down.
Save changes.
PASS THIS ON.

On the other hand, you could always do as the BCS suggests, “…bombard Facebook Chief Execs for knowledge of with whom the pictures are being shared, where the potential advert might be placed and demand a fee…”

You can read the full story on the BCS website.

I’d like to wish all the cabin crew at BA a Merry Christmas.

I’d like to; but I won’t, because my personal opinion is that they are a Bunch of Arseholes, (BA).

The only saving grace is that amongst the 1 million disappointed non-travellers this Christmas, there might be a few postal workers!

Bullshit, exaggeration and distortion of the truth seem to go hand in hand with this lot.

YouTube DirektOfficial Copenhagen Conference Video

I’m NOT saying that global warming is not happening.  I only question the real cause.  I totally understand that something needs to be done, but I don’t believe that we are tackling the real problem.  Of coarse tackling CO2 emissions can only be good, but is it tackling the real issue?  This sort of crap does absolutely nothing to answer the questions that need answering.  If we have gone too far, it is in politicising and commercialising a serious scientific problem.  That is  the real tragedy.

How appropriate that they use products of a computer’s fictitious modelling, (CGI), to illustrate the product of a computer’s fictitious modelling, (CO2).

YouTube DirektPlane Stupid...