Severe winters and climate change

Whatever happened to global warming?

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

Severe winter storms and cold snaps in the US, with temps then going up again well above winter temps, and frost even in southern California and New Mexico, threatening, in southern CA the citrus crop.

Rain, rain, and still more rain, for most of last year, followed by snow, in the UK and also the coldest winter – on record, almost – predicted for Syria with temps of -10C.

So, what exactly happened to the global warming that they were talking about – and still do – that was going to end all snowy and cold winters in (southern) Britain and which would the UK, especially the south, to have a climate much like southern Italy?

Britain was going to be, so it was said, the next wine growing region of Europe but, I guess, we will just have to wait and see, don't we.

The world's climate is changing, that much appears to be the case, but in which way and direction is still a question and while a great percentage of it is due with man's activity and pollution – please not I say pollution and not CO2 emissions as they are not the be all and end all here – some of it is also due to other causes. But we must not talk about those things. The Church of Global Warming will not permit it.

The world's climate is, definitely, in a total mess and in an upheaval and this is also evident by the recent very hot spell in Australian with devastating wild fires followed storms with tons of rain. OK, that put out the fires but also caused serious flooding everywhere where it hit.

In North America during the winter of 2012/2013 for about two weeks a cold area was moving down and then up and then down the country again, and it is this cold front that caused the serious frosts even as far south as southern California.

2012 and the beginning of 2013 certainly have shown that the climate all around the world is going, more or less, haywire.

The wettest drought in history, as the spin doctors of the British government called it (don't ask me how you can have a wet drought, but hey, I am no spin doctor) has caused serious and severe crop failures and farmers are still not even in a position to drill in the next season's seeds into their fields as they are so water logged that they cannot even get onto them.

The same goes for woods and forests and it is hard to do work in those environments in the first months of 2013 also. Everything is just a bog wherever one goes.

Farmers and growers were told, only a year or two ago, that they would to adapt to global warming and to very dry summers and thus should be looking to plant and sow drought-resistant varieties and foods that have, until now, been grown in the warmer areas of Europe and such. Now it would appear that farmers and growers may have to find some water-resistant crops instead.

The wet weather of the so-called summer of 2012 had the potato blight run rampant and the blame was given to people growing food at home in their gardens or in allotment. That some of the blight-resistant varieties of potatoes were the first to succumb no one wants to know. It was not so much the blight escaping from home gardens and allotments to the farmers' fields but the other way round.

In the beginning of February 2013 the umpteenth violent blizzard, this one called Nemo, hit the United States, and dumped many feet of snow on New York, Boston and other places on the East Coast. And in Britain, while no real extreme winter weather materialized as in the last couple of years, at least not at the time of writing, the fact that everything is waterlogged is causing problems.

Glacial melting, once directly blamed on rising temperatures the world over and thus global warming has now been found to be caused by what they call black carbon which, in fact, is nothing more that soot from our industries. But the word carbon sounds so much better since we have now developed a way of trading in carbon credits, those modern indulgences.

The climate around the globe is throwing a wobbly and, methinks, Mother Earth is trying to tell us something and that something is that we need to change our ways and live with Nature and not fight Nature. Man is a part of Nature and cannot be apart of Nature.

© 2013

2008 – the coolest year in decades

by Michael Smith

According to reports the year 2008 is turning out to be the coolest year for at least a decade or more, and that on a glob a scale.

Nevertheless, the run-of-the-mill, go-with-the-flow, climate scientists claim that this is in no way an indication that “global warming” has slowed. It is just a fluke year, they say. I guess in the same way as the summer of 2007 which, in the UK, was one of the wettest in decades, while we had been told, the year before only that we should be expecting severe droughts for the next years and decades to come. Oh dear!

This is despite the findings by climatologists at an Australian university that indicate that “global warming” has plateaued out about 6 to 7 years ago and that the global temperatures have not risen, not even by the smallest of a fraction, ever since. Even the IPCC of the United Nations had to admit, more or less in secrecy though, that those finding from Australia are, indeed, correct.

Someone, please, please tell us what is behind the “global warming” agenda. Or should we rather ask as to who is behind it?

Yes, we have been and are going through a cyclic climate change but this is more likely than not one of the cycles the Earth goes through every thousand or so years..

This does not mean that we do NOT have to do all those things in order top reduce the pollution, to reduce waste, to reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle rather than filling up holes in the ground, often leading to further pollution of the environment.

We also must – and that is all of us in every country of the developed world for starters – live a much simpler lifestyle once again. We must get away from all that air travel on vacation, for instance, from which you then need a vacation to recover from the rigors of the travel and all that. But, then my readers will by now know that I am somewhat of an advocate of staycations rather.

While such a simpler lifestyle does not, necessarily, mean being a Luddite and refusing all things modern or such like, or to live like the Amish – not that there is something wrong with horse and buggy, rather the opposite. But we must try to make do with less and get away from the “I wan, I want, I want” attitude and also we must insist that products are repairable rather than throwaway.

A good and perfect example here is computer printers.. I personally have had the experience with an Epson ink jet printer that while less than a year old had done more than it alloted amount of pages (for some reason they are only laid out for a certain number of x-thousand pages and that's it) and its waste ink reservoir had become full. I contacted the company and was told that it would cost about £70 for a new waste ink reservoir and another £75 to fit it. Upon getting this quote I mentioned that the printer was new only £30 and that I could buy more that 4 printers for that amount they wanted to repair it and the gentleman on the other end then said “oh, well, I suggest you buy a new printer then.” Is it not silly when it is more expensive for the spares and the repair than buying new? I think it is. But I digressed somewhat.

The “go-with-the-flow” climatologists are trying to tell us that 2008 being the coolest in a decade or more is but a fluke. Well, I guess we shall see. It will not be if the other groups of scientists that no one wants to hear from, however, are correct. For we are then, in due course, headed for a cooling period, which is also being predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac. While I know that some will say that the Old Farmer's Almanac is not science the fact is also that many of its predictions, the majority, so I understand, have, over the years, come true.

As I said before, it does not matter as to whether or not the warming is slowing or has stopped and is going into a cooling; the arctic ice will still, I should think, continue to melt for some time as it is now warmer, in general, than it was before and pollution has a great deal to do with that, we still have to learn to live with “climate change” and especially so if it is going to go the other way as well. We also must to increase our efforts to get away from polluting fuels, such as coal and oil, for or electricity, for instance and we must, and I am going to say that again, reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle our waste and get away from being a throwaway society.

As to generating of electricity we must get away from non-renewable fossil fuels and go for fuels that are renewable, but I am also not advocating the use of bio-fuels; far the opposite. As regards to transportation the ICE (internal combustion engine) has no future unless it is fueled by what it was originally intended to be run on, namely methane gas.

Other forms of transportation, especially when it comes to short distances, for instance, should be considered. There is no need to get the car out just to go down the road to get the newspaper and a pint of milk or for the kids to go to school. Cycling or walking will do nicely there.

But, that theoretically, is another matter and subject.

Whether or not the planet is cooling down again and whether or not climate change is bought about by human activities, e.g. the motor vehicles and all that – this still must mean that the Vikings were releasing lots of CO2 into the air as well, as in their time there too was a very warm period which was followed by a mini ice age, we must reduce our negative impact on the environment. We must stop living as if tomorrow did not matter. It does. It does for us and for our children and their children and the rest of the entire Earth.

We must continue with our struggle to reduce, reuse, re-purpose and recycle regardless of what is happening and we should have started a long, long time ago. Problem is that everyone seems to have been thinking that everything will just be OK for ever, regardless of what we do. Oil is running out and we should have never used it for what we have been using it, namely burning it in cars and furnaces. But, alas, it has happened and we are reaping the harvest now.

Food for thought!

© M Smith (Veshengro), December 2008
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Global cooling predicted Old Farmer's Almanac

by Michael Smith

According to the venerable “Old Farmer's Almanac”, which was first published in 1792 and is the oldest continuously published periodical in the United States, the world is set for a "big chill," possibly a mini-ice age.

The 2009 edition, published earlier this month, predicts that the Earth already has entered a sustained period of global cooling.

If the finding from Australia are correct an the temperatures did indeed plateau out as they said in about 2001 then it could be a fact that “global cooling” is about to begin and if the previous periods of climate change of the Earth are anything to go by this cooling could be rather rapidly, much faster than the warming ever was. Going out from that we could see the Thames frozen to its full depth again in a couple of centuries – not that either of us are going to see it.

True to form, the almanac also includes tips on gardening and how to stay warm all winter with just one log, the latter piece is somewhat tongue in cheek though as it recommends the use of the log in this way: “Toss the log out of an upstairs window, run downstairs and outside to retrieve it, run back upstairs, then fling it out of the window again. Pretty soon you're going to be very hot and you don't need to turn the heat on.”

"The next 20 years, it's going to be colder," said Sarah Perreault, assistant editor of the Old Farmer's Almanac. "We do recognize that (global cooling) could be offset by greenhouse gasses and other human effects on the earth, but we're trending toward the cool period now."

The almanac is predicting a period of global cooling partly due to the lack of sunspots, a situation which some scientists believe causes cooling on the sun and, subsequently, the earth.

Perreault said the staff still uses the weather prediction method devised by almanac founder Robert B. Thomas, using a combination of solar sciences, meteorology and climatology.

"Obviously we have more technology now," she said. "We have the benefit of having more information than he had, but it's basically the same."

She said the method is not exact. Since the almanac is published so far in advance, it cannot take into account the most up-to-date information on Pacific Ocean oscillations El Nino or La Nina, for instance.

Still, the almanac has an 80 percent success rate for its weather predictions, Perreault said.

In its early years, the almanac was one of the chief sources for weather forecasts for farmers and other businessmen.

In addition to weather predictions for each day of the year, the Old Farmer's Almanac also includes gardening tips about such things as planting milkweed to attract Monarch butterflies.

The forecast cool period of the next 20 years, as predicted by the Old Farmer's Almanac might then just be the precursor, with hot spells in between, as it used to be in the previous cycles of climate changes, to a real mini-ice age that could, as I said before, lead, once again, to the freezing of the Thames, a tidal river, and to the coats of this country having its waters partly frozen. Something that none of us have seen thus far, I am sure.

© M Smith (Veshengro), September 2008
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