by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Not many years ago we were being told that summers in Britain would get drier and hotter year by year and winters would be milder and drier in the future. The last two years, however, have been definitely the opposite.
The summer of 2008 and so far also the summer of 2009 have been cooler and, from where I see it, wetter than the previous five or so years.
In fact English summers have turned once again into the kind of summers they were years ago during my childhood though they do appear wetter now even. But English summers used to be a couple of nice warm and dry days to even a week or two in the right months and then a mix of sun and rain.
While the 2008/2009 winter has snow – lots of it in fact – for about a week and cold for a couple of weeks so far I could not say as to whether the winters are shifting back to “normal” English winters. But there is never anything “normal” with the weather in our Isles as it is so fickle. It changes all the time.
The meteorologists predicted a barbecue summer and have now had to do a very serious attempt of back pedaling while making fools of themselves. They now say they never every claimed such a things. Strange thought that everyone remembers them saying just that. Bit like “what hurricane” in 1987.
The point is that all the predictions do not work even at a few months ahead of time so how can they claim to be able to predict anything 20 years ahead and such. They cannot and computer models of any kind operate on the GIGO, the “garbage in/garbage out”, principle and therefore all such claims as to computer models predicting this or that in the future must be taken with a great pinch of salt, and it would appear to be a case here of the bigger the pinch the better.
Some time in the 1970s a scientist working on long-range forecasts “played” with data inputs b y changing wind direction, temperature and such by just a fraction expecting to get just a minor change and in fact he got a shock. And because of the fact that it went off the scale he pronounced then that long-range prediction would never work and methinks he was right.
The problem is when it comes to the continuing claim that the temperatures in Britain are going to be rising and rising which anyone with a little idea will realize that for he last two years they have done no such thing those predictions do not entirely seem to work out.
I may be no scientist but what I think we may be seeing – in Britain at least – is a return to the weather patterns of years ago when summers were rather damper than they have been in the 1990s and early 2000s.
As far as other countries are concerned I cannot speak but when it comes to the likes of Australia the fact that people have decided to live, in large congregations, in areas that cannot support such amount of people may also have a lot to do with the problems that are being experienced there.
However, as I have said many a times before, I believe the climate is changing but which way it is going to go that remains to be seem. The only one thing that can be said for certain is that we mere mortals cannot stop it in the same was as the little Dutch boy, whatever his name was, cannot stem the tide with a finger stuck in the hole in the dike.
We must stop the pollution of the atmosphere with all the exhaust fumes of cars, trucks, and chimneys for it now found that the glaciers in the Himalayas are not melting because of any global warming and CO2 but because of the so-called “brown cloud”, caused by the pollution from the Indian lowlands. So, once again something that, while a result of pollution, has nothing to do with any man-made CO2 induced global warming.
So, therefore, methinks we have to be very careful as to what we accept as gospel and what not.
© 2009
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