I have been hearing on the media that we have just had the hottest April and May for many years, as measured by maximum temperatures. This is a curious way of reporting recent weather. You would have thought they would record average temperatures, as this is a more normal representation of what we experience day by day. I guess the careful wording leaves out the minima which were not so hot.
I remember in early April receiving ice warnings in my car each morning because the outside temperature was zero degrees centigrade when I left home. Coming back in the evening it was none too hot either. On Sunday last when I was playing cricket it was just 12 degrees centigrade – and raining for some of the time. Yesterday was around 12 degrees again, and this is June. This morning was similarly chilly, though as on other days it warmed up a bit by noon. I went to an under cover summer production yesterday evening where we the audience were at outside temperature. I have never seen so many rugs, anoraks, blankets, capes and other unusual makeshift garments be produced as the temperature fell to 7 degrees C.
The impression I have is of more easterly winds than usual, accounting for the absence of rain in eastern and southern England. It also would account for the more continental temperature range, from lower to higher than usual when we face our south westerlies from the Gulf stream. The recent rains have come in the back of our old prevailing south westerlies. The more weather we get from the continent, the wider the temperature range and the drier the winds.
Now all the outdoor events are with us there seems to be more rain around. I accept even if it rains more from now we have had a very dry year so far in the south and west. The complaints about a possible water shortage should be no surprise. Given the large increase in population, and the growing prosperity of people over the years (despite the nasty recession and set back), we need more water capacity. The government should turn its attention to that with the water companies, whatever the weather forecast.
June 12, 2011
Maybe you could ask Michael Gove to look through the UKs GCSE exam papers for the past 5 years and remove the political indoctrination about climate change and replace it with real science.
June 12, 2011
Agreed many questions do not even make any sense “renewables” is not a properly defined scientific concept it is a pure political construction. Chosen to include solar, wind, wave, tide, hydro but exclude nuclear. Not that these are in any scientific sense renewable.
When we have Nuclear Fusion plants going on Earth will these be “renewable” or only when it is from the sun?
Children should go into classes and be a pain ask their teacher to define/explain “renewable” by the laws of physics or shut up about it.
Perhaps also discuss with the teacher why electric cars, bikes, and public transport make little sense. Also Chaos, Probability theory and how hard distant future predictions actually are.
June 12, 2011
When I say “Perhaps also discuss with the teacher why electric cars, bikes, and public transport make little sense.” I mean make sense in terms of CO2 emissions -if you believe in that exaggeration anyway.
June 12, 2011
John, I agree with both your understated conclusion as to being selective with the use of temperature data and your conclusions about the strength and direction of winds over the past 2 months. Here, on my allotment which is rather exposed to winds from the South and South East almost all allotment holders have experienced retarded growth in sensitive plants – for example most young gooseberry plants have shed their fruit, not from lack of rain because tanked water is plentiful, but from the strength, direction and temperature of the wind.
It does make one wonder about some of the data put before us.
June 12, 2011
The good old BBC never like to let a story pass with out having a female scientist/engineer, also someone very clearly from a religious, disabled or ethnic group and endless references to climate change. This applies to nature programs, news items, gardening programs, farming programs, religious programs, all government departments – almost anything they can slip it in to. It is always presented as proven scientific truth. With Sir David Attenborough or similar used to add gravitas. David Bellamy and many others who have more sensible views on the issue seems to have been fully sidelined.
Even earthquakes and tsunamis footage is used, linked in to general increasing natural disasters, to the AGW cause.
As you say population has increased and people need more water we are short of it because we do not store enough or move enough – it is cheaper for the companies just to discourage use in dry summers. July 2007 has the worst floods on record for Gloucestershire – I remember these flood coming about a week after the BBC had been going on about dry summers and drought predictions. Gardeners question time listeners had doubtless just planted drought resistant plants all over their gardens.
The climate will and always has changed we need to engineer real solutions as best we can using a small proportion of the huge amount of money that we can save by not wasting it on the Huhne’s mad “green” energy and house Bling nonsense.
The BBC, all government departments, pop bands, many charities, the school curriculum & the exam syllabus are positively evil in indoctrinating our youth in this way. Proper scientists know that predicting – especially the future and especially the distant future is pretty impossible to do (What happened to Chaos theory and the butterfly wing?) . The weather has so many unknowns and influencing factors it is clearly impossible as Met office forecast show us time and again. (Will it rain on the day of the Wimbledon Final do they know? – Clearly not).
If you are a believer – Ask yourself is it easy to predict a game of snooker when you know the players and all the ball starting positions. Can you even predict the outcome (in ball positions) of one single shot even if you know all the start information – you cannot do it.
Now is the world weather system (say one hundred years hence) simpler or more complex to predict? Come on Sir David Attenborough we need someone like you to stand up and say the truth for once – that the BBC has been feeding us hugely exaggerated nonsense for years.
June 12, 2011
We had easterly winds last summer for a good part of the time. I recall it was put down to the shift in the jet stream which happens rarely but is a cyclical event nonetheless. I believe it was stated then that it would take another year or two before the jet stream reverted to its more normal course. Nothing to do with Global warming though as no doubt the BBC and the Met Office would have us believe. When are more politicians going to have the guts of Lord Lawson (see his article in the Daily Mail yesterday) and challenge the ‘decarbonisers’ who want to push this country back into the stone age. It is time to tell the Emperor that he has no clothes.
June 12, 2011
John, this brings us back to the Met office. I heard (on BBC1!) recently that the met is 96% accurately for short term forecasts. I was amazed, because so often they predict tomorrow’s weather absolutely wrong. I am not talking about it being 15 degrees instead of 20 degrees, I am talking about torrential rain where dry is predicted etc. But one thing is for sure, they always exaggerate the short, medium and long term weather. I feel that they are no more than a system set up to support BBC claims for predicted global warming. Note that they will NEVER tell you we had the coldest winter for ages, or the most snow. Instead they focus on the hottest April ‘since records began’ – ie. a mere 150 years.
June 12, 2011
It all depend on how you define accuracy I suspect you would get similar % accuracy by saying tomorrow’s weather will probably be rather similar to today’s or last years on the same day.
June 12, 2011
Yes as an island we are surrounded by it.
Appreciate de salination is more expensive in its production, but so is electricity from windmills, and that it seems is not a problem.
You are right John that lack of rain has caused a problem, but only for the south east of the country. Given we no longer have a National Water service, does this mean that it would be more difficult to co ordinate more storage faclities and the transfer by pipes of water from one area to another.
Perhaps we will all need our own bore holes or wells for the future, perhaps not to drink, but for grey use like flushing the toilet.
June 12, 2011
Just a thought, we could always pipe in water from France, as they not only now seem to own some water companies but, electricity as well, which again originates from France.
I now see reported (todays press) that we are training RAF pilots in the French language, so we can use their aircraft carriers as well, given we have shortage of our own.
Anyone want to speculate what other Fench services we may be under control of or have, French boss of IMF perhaps !!!
Who would have thought this 50 years ago.
Who took the great out of Britain ?
June 12, 2011
At the risk of disobliging our host, it was the Conservative Party.
June 12, 2011
Quite agree, more sorting out water supplies and less rubbish about global warming taxes.
June 12, 2011
Why is there more population?
Without massaging the figures, it is pretty obvious that the original English people whatever you call us – “natives”? – are no longer breeding like we used to. Thanks to the publicity on contraception, excellent sex lessons at school, freedom to abort whenever necessary and above all to the Jeremy Kyle Show, our birth rate is plummeting.
So why is the population actually increasing? Wouldn’t it be rather better if it were diminishing? Water, power and transport would be much easier if we were like, say, Australia where there are simply not so many people.
(PS I have realised that Australia has severe water problems and have undergone several long diatribes on the subject while down under. That is the geography down there, I believe.)
June 12, 2011
Chris Huhne attacks energy companies over price increases in the news today.
The reasons, Mr Huhne, are the government’s deliberate devaluation of the pound and your silly green renewable energy policies.
What is he going to do about it I wonder – nothing I assume?
June 12, 2011
He does perhaps almost have a point in the way the contrived complexity of tariffs with loyalty bonuses, different payment methods, fixes, tie ins are all designed to make comparisons difficult.
But is this not in his remit too? Simply force them to give a simple standard tariff quote per KWH with no fixes, tie ins, or complexity – all companies quoting on the same simple basis for ease of comparison. Insurance could do with this too as people are similarly cheated regularly here too comparison being impossible without spending most of your life doing it!
Do something sensible instead of just talking for once.
June 12, 2011
You could always just look a your bill and use a comparison website. Almost has a point? What! Complex tariffs and many of them are often just a smokescreen for high bills. Online s@ver 5 dual fuel or online fuel V5. There is also 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 and 12 versions of each. Each one replacing the previous one. Not to mention other plans all by the same company. The trick being to keep the idle customer on higher paying plans. or move to the expensive standard tariff. How can it be any other way? A bit like musical chairs really.
To blame it on green policies and a devaluation of the pound is to ignore profiteering and lack of competition from the main six billing companies.
Thirty years ago people lived in uninsulated houses and burnt coal. There was fuel poverty and despite advances in insulation and boilers the problem remains.
June 12, 2011
So let us lift a glass or three to Dr Pachaury and his IPCC comrades!
Working on a not for profit basis – just like the EU Commission – this selfless man points the way for all Climate Changers. If only we could have some of those trillions to repay our national deficit!
June 12, 2011
Lifelogic
Exactly so.
Confusing rates, tarriffs, standing charges, fixed term supply agreements and the like are a delibrate policy to confuse, and make comparison difficult.
June 12, 2011
But the bills are being driven up by government actions, deliberately. They have not increased the generating capacity and more is going to be lost in the near future, even more increases on the way. Also more reliance on France covering the shortfall, except they won’t, Germany will have to buy all they can get once they shut down their nuclear capacity. So we will be at the tailend of the queue! Dump the green taxes and the wind farms and we may be able to live.
Slightly off topic, I see it snowed on Snowdon, Friday afternoon.
June 12, 2011
But is this not in his remit too?
Actually this kind of thing (consumer protection regulation) tends to come under BIS remit rather than DECC remit.
June 12, 2011
Oh well never mind – I’ll still blame Huhne because of his insane energy policy anyway.
But if all the supply companies were simply to quote on the basis of a standard government approved quote say a fixed charge £40PA and X pence per KWH price fixed for one year minimum no tie in. Customers could change at any time if they wish then the problem and all the contrived complexity and back door charges would largely disappear overnight.
June 12, 2011
Yesterday, both the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail carried major articles on the stupidity and expense of the AGW scam, carbon cap and trade, renewable energy taxes etc. According to Delingpole, this time last year, the Bilderbergers were discussing not AGW but Global Cooling.
Presumably, it has either taken a year for the authorities to work out how to tax us for Global Cooling instead of Global Warming without our noticing the shift, or the Bilderberger’s AGM is due and someone wants to see some action to report re last year’s discussion.
As the driver of a heavily CO2 taxed car, I look forward to an imminent zero rating as I help to keep the planet warm, whilst Prius etc owners are refused entry into London, without the production of a £50 note.
June 12, 2011
Quite right John, up here in the North, we haven’t got out of winter clothes yet . Summer dresses lie unused, and the sun tan cream will be out of date before a quarter is used. I keep having to turn the heating back on, as my summer heating schedule is forcing me to put layers of cardigans on !!
When are the Conservatives or the Collition going to do something about the BBC? They really are a criminal organization. I cannot understand the useless Patton appointment !!
June 12, 2011
Consideration of resevoir and intraregional pipe building, good.
On ‘number reporting’ could I suggest some encouragement for the media – and similarly departmental press releases – to always include more than one summary statistic. At least quote; mean, median, max, min, skew and kurtosis and observe whether distribution was unimodal or not. It is quite worrying to think that we all forget to use and think about the simplest of numbers once we have left primary school. More everyday use may just help us all, whether in cricket or weather statistics.
June 12, 2011
A national water grid is needed. Or maybe the fantsists will tell us the electricity grid should be removed and each area generate their own local electricity allowing competition to flourish?
June 12, 2011
You may laugh but one serious train of scientific thought has it that one day all electricity will be generated at a local level, through one of the variations of nuclear or some new technology we haven’t stumbled across yet.
If you think about it the windmill / solar panel lark could operate along much the same lines.
Seriously though, we can’t even build a short stretch railway line without it running over budget over time and a lot of haggling. The chances of the UK government being able to organise a national water grid is nil.
June 12, 2011
Dear Bazman
That famous Fantasist Arthur.C.Clarke in predicting 20 future items for OUR planet in the mid 1990’s [remember how many other of his predictions have come about,why? he was not only a science fiction writer but an emminent scientist as well],one of which was LOCALISED electricity generation,to lose the loss of power from enormous GRIDS and LESSEN power cuts by keeping them local.I lived in a place called Calvinia in the Karoo in South Africa for 2 and a half years ,the town is sort of end of the line electricity supply wise,for years any maintainance work and installation work meant that Calvinia was cut off for a whole Sunday [lots of times given it was at the end of a 175 kilometre line] even if the work being done was 175 kms away,the local council due to enormous pressure from it’s residents,installed a generator and solved the problem [safely as well] NO MORE POWER CUTS and any local ones[negligable] took no more than half an hour to solve,
result Happiness.Also by the way that town gets an average rainfall of 350 mm,and still manages in the middle of a semi desert,my house I bought had water tanks fed from the roof [as do most in the town] 4 of them with capacity in total of 16000 litres,I had the best water you have ever tasted and no need of the municipality water supply,all my waste water
was recycled by various means,my plot was fertile and productive,I grew lots and particularly had 16 fig trees that produced so much I invited the poor to come and help themselves,my grape vines were so productive I made my own wine,all you lot do in this country is moan and groan ,before I get the usual ….K ..f back to there I grew up here and went there at 36 yrs of age,I remember a south london phrase from my youth “all mouth
and NO trousers” very appropriate. Finally look at my post of yesterday about Professor Ian Plimer about the Icelandic recent eruption wiping out mankinds last 5 years of carbon saving in just FOUR days plus Mount PINATUBO in 1991 which I have cited for at least
15 years.
June 12, 2011
Running a small town in the outback of South Africa is in no way the same as running a country like ours. If you look at the outside of all our towns, there is an industrial estate which gulps electricity. Then there are still some heavy industries which gulp electricity. Our water, too, is used industrially. Here we need a lot in our local factories for washing fen soil off our fruits, legumes and asparagus tips (yummy!). We have a very dense population here – some of the tightest areas in the world, actually.
Having said that, yes, we are Socialised far too much. We need permission to blow our nose nowadays.
June 12, 2011
There is some truth in this as the government is paying up £0.43 per unit to produce your own electricity and £0.03 to export unused units it to the grid with the Feed-in Tariff scheme.
A rainwater capture scheme should be set up similar the electricity scheme. Could save the householder a lot of money as the equipment would be a lot cheaper than that used for energy generation. A large plastic tank buried in the garden would not be technically that expensive or difficult when building a new house. The water being used only for toilets and watering the garden. How much rain falls per square meter in Britain per year. You would think enough for this purpose?
June 12, 2011
Water cost say £2 per M3 (in and out charges) so if you work it out it is probably far cheaper just to pay for the water charges than to buy/install and maintain an ugly tank and pump system. Just flush the loo a bit less and take fewer baths (too many is bad for your skin anyway).
June 13, 2011
Could be a bit pricey for installation and burial of the tank, but a 5600 litre tank can be bought for £700 and and the right pump could last 30 years. There would be very little to see. My water bill last year was £500 without watering the garden much.
June 15, 2011
So the tank stores circa £10 of water you might be able to save perhaps £150 PA less costs and interest and maintenance and electric for the pump. When you need it most it will still be empty.
June 12, 2011
The fundamental problem is that of “professional politicians and administrators”. None of these people, well intentioned though they may be, has any serious scientific or technical education, so they are ill equipped to make informed and rational judgements on these vital issues, and are thus prone to manipulation by people who do have the appropriate qualifications but who may not be quite so well intentioned. There is a vast industry supported by the AGW myth, from scientists whose generous research grants depend upon it, to industrialists whose companies depend upon it, to aforementioned politicos/administrators whose jobs in one way or another are dependent on it, that has plenty of incentive to doctor the facts and misinform the policy makers. Chris Huhne is a case in point, with his utter lack of any in-depth technical education.
So it was very refreshing to read about a former AGW protagonist who has completely changed his views and now realises that it is all a self-sustaining scam by vested interests – including government, all those green taxes, remember – and, as he concludes, “Yes, carbon dioxide is a cause of global warming, but it is so minor it’s not worth doing much about.” See the Express’ surprisingly god article on Dr. David Evans, formerly of Australia’s Department for Climate Change:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/252230/An-uncomfortable-lie
June 12, 2011
I just read the article in the Express also several other scientific research papers that are readilly available on line from NASA and others that dispel the myth regarding CO2 and links to climate change. Remember the warmists changed the name to climate change as there wasn’t any warming over the last decade. CO2 =0.036% of the Earths atmosphere. Many suggest that weather changes are linked to solar activity that has decreased in the last 10 years. The Sun is a variable star with variable emissions that impacts the jet stream that in turn impacts weather. Climate is weather over time. The problem we have is that to admit CO2 based climate change is false would reveal the rank stupidity of all the politicians and zealots who base their tax and spend policies on a myth!! 20% of our fuel bills (hidden in charges) are for green renewable projects like useless windmills. The EU has decreed that we shall have 20% renewables by 2020 and the Germans employ 200000 people in the windmill industry. So our German/French masters who lead the EU will get their way. Mr Redwood please speak to more sensible Tory MP’s and start the long required debate about this rank stupidity before it destroys us and our industry.
We wouldn’t need as much water either if the Government pulled its finger out and stopped immigration from outside the EU, particularly the scam on student and their families visas (350000). Why are you waiting to April 2012 to do something about this when the academic year starts in September/October??
June 12, 2011
I think that the Carbon Religion is maintained to support may of the jobs in Gov and Council offices. How many jobs would vanish if the truth were told?
Methane is a far more aggressive greenhouse gas as is water vapour. Can’t sombody explain this to the half wits who control these things.
June 12, 2011
The trouble is so much has been invested in the exaggeration (and in profits to be made from the carbon scam) that organisations like the BBC, MP’s, Government, Environmental Charities and the EU that now they cannot admit they have be “misleading” for years. Also they have indoctrinated the children at school into the belief system and they too now need re-educating in reality.
Doubtless the line will be eventually be “there is rather less of a GW problem now thanks to our great foresight around the turn of the century and the BBC’s great leadership on this vital issue aren’t we at the BBC clever”.
June 12, 2011
Climate change has always been a part of the world.
A question you could throw at the Warmists is this one:
“OK. So what temperature would you like our planet to be ?”
Do they want us to preserve our climate as it is forever ? Isn’t that artificial and wrong ?
June 13, 2011
Bazman WHY no answer,you are typical of this country of mine that I left in 1980,you think NO answer means NO question SORRY it does not.MY friends in the ANC did NOT accept this ,I know that things BAD happened but so did they happen in ULSTER,yes people expired
but then came 1994 and a man called MANDELA and since then WHAT?. It is incumbent on those that seek an outcome [sorry to use that term as it has stupid connotations] but look at what has transpired since then. dear dear dear me I think my poor old brain will expire,except if it does I will leave behind a THOUGHT BOMB and laugh at it’s consequences.
June 13, 2011
Mike stallard please use your Cranial capacity properly,I was using what is generally called COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS ,but in the last 3 years since I arrived back ,I have concluded that
my own countrymen are all ten pence short of a shilling.
June 13, 2011
Mr Redwood,
You write “I have been hearing on the media that we have just had the hottest April and May for many years, as measured by maximum temperatures. This is a curious way of reporting recent weather.”
This is quite wrong, I am afraid. It has been the warmest spring (March-April-May, not just April and May) ever measured by the Central England Temperature (CET) which is an average of both daytime and night-time temperatures, and this is what was reported. For the UK as a whole it was the equal warmest (with spring 2007) on record.
The CET is a highly useful comparative measure because it is a record that dates back to 1659 – the longest continuous climate record in the world, so something of which we should be proud.
You may well have had some frosty nights in early April but this is nothing unusual before the middle of spring, and there were in fact fewer frosty nights than usual. April’s minimum temperatures were remarkably high at an average 3.5 to 4.5 degrees above normal, and April’s CET was the highest on record by 0.7 degrees, which is a wide margin in this context. The UK average for April was also the highest on record.
This, however, has nothing to do with global warming, the UK representing a tiny fraction of the globe, so don’t worry on that score. Nobody has claimed or even implied that it has, so you can accept that the UK has had a remarkably warm spring without it in any way threatening anybody’s position in the climate change debate – particularly as June thus far has been rather cool. The implication, therefore, that there has been some underhanded misrepresentation of the temperature is therefore unnecessary.
It is a shame that interesting facts about the UK’s weather cannot be reported without an immediate and irrelevant brouhaha about global warming ensuing.
Reply: The reports I heard reported maxima. I have found overall this spring and early summer to be cold, with my heating triggering again this morning in June!
June 13, 2011
Quote: “The reports I heard reported maxima. I have found overall this spring and early summer to be cold, with my heating triggering again this morning in June!”
Which reports were those? None that I know of. Do you have specifics? June has indeed been cool bar brief warmer interludes, that is not in doubt. That the spring was the warmest in a 352 year record is not in doubt either.
Whatever you might have “found” about the spring is contradicted rather vigorously by the facts, and I’m sure you will agree that it is always important to deal in facts.
June 13, 2011
That’s the problem with reading reports and assuming that they’re correct, without checking their background.
I live in your constituency, and it was the warmest April on record across the UK, and across the Berkshire area. There was an unprecedented spell of heat around the Easter weekend, with the Wokingham area experiencing temperatures above 25C for a number of days in a row.
As Stephen Henry correctly mentions, climate data are based on average temperatures and not maxima. By this measure, it was the warmest April on record locally and nationally, just to clear that up.
I’m sure that you are more than well aware that believing exactly what is written in the media can lead to the formation of erroneous opinion. This sadly appears to have happened here.
Paul.
Reply: There is no mistake to be sad about. The media I heard reported high maximum temperatures. There were also low minimum temperatures. The average was high but was not reported in the accounts I heard. I was making a different point – we felt it was often cold because morning and evening temperatures were low. They were again in early June. We are allowed to say what we feel and what we observe – life is not just about averages.
June 13, 2011
I’m pleased that Stephen Henry has added some scientific evidence into this debate. April was the warmest such month for over 350 years in England; although the max temps were particularly notable, the data quoted below are all for mean daily temperature. It was also the warmest spring on record, despite Mr Redwood encountering the occasional frosty morning.
The average for this April was 12.0C The 1971-2000 average is 8.08C. The previous warmest was quite remarkably 0.8deg C lower at 11.2C (as recently as 2007). The warmest prior to that was 10.6C in 1865. This data is from the Central England temperature series. It is the national temperature series for the UK and the longest instrumental temperature series in the world with monthly values back to 1659. It is not the product of some research institute trying to stoke alarmism (as some might see it) but the life’s work of the late Prof. Gordon Manley, the UK’s foremost climatologist of his time. He was hardly a global warming zealot! His series is updated each month by an independent climatologist and also quite separately by the Met Office. The annual data gives unequivocal evidence for warming over recent decades.
There are many people who wish to take refuge in scepticism about global warming – they will eagerly follow your lead, as your comments show. Their comments are not based on fact – and the human memory plays all sorts of tricks.
By the way, published data can sometimes underplay the importance of recent records. The Met Office sometimes quote from a data series that starts in 1910. To say that it was the warmest April since 1910 (as the media sometimes report it) merely reflects the starting point of the series; when it was also the warmest since at least 1659, it is a different magnitude of record, surely. Oh, and the CET has been widely used and respected as a reliable indicator of climatic change for decades.
As regards to single wet, cool days in June which may wash out cricket matches which you also write about elsewhere on your blog, these events can co-exist with a warming trend due to global or regional warming. The answer lies in the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what we have today, climate is the amalgam of weather events over decades. The weather varies enormously from week to week, even from day to day, as today and yesterday clearly show. We cannot judge trends over decades by our reactions to single days.
June 15, 2011
Sir Frank Chapman and Paul Golby bosses of British gas and E.ON. Standard Chartered Bank chairman John Peace.given honours for presumably helping run (large businesses with strong market positions that put up prices-ed) and Myrvyn King for getting inflation forecasts wrong? Fred Goodwin should be Knighted for services in banking, creating jobs and maintaining standards in public life and so should all his mates.