On Jan 8, 11:48*am, delboy wrote:
On 8 Jan, 11:25, Tom Gardner wrote:



On Jan 8, 6:35*am, delboy wrote:

On 29 Dec 2009, 17:14, Martin Gregorie
wrote:

On Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:01:59 -0800, Tom Gardner wrote:
ObJoke: we don't have climate, we have weather!

Hence the saying "Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get".

We are having a very cold winter in the UK and Northern Europe (and so
I understand is North America). The whole of the UK is blanketed in
snow and gliding here has largely come to a halt. We also had a
relatively cold winter last year.

So the questions a

1) Are we entering another mini or maxi ice age?

Insufficient evidence to know which way things will tip,
but a good precursor of a flip to a different regime would
be more frequent extreme weather conditions.

2) Is man made global warming/climate change a scam dreamed up by
unscrupulous politicians, so they can control and tax us more? They
fund the scientists who are trying to prove the case, but not the
sceptical ones.

Can I suggest you put the tinfoil hat back on. What on earth makes
you dream that they need *extra* powers/reasons/arguments/etc
to tax and control us!

3) Will sea levels rise when all the snow and ice on the UK eventually
melts (tongue in cheek question)?

4) If the cold winter is down to recent man made global warming/
climate change, we also had particularly cold winters in 1982,
1962/63, 1948, and during the mini ice age period in the 14th - 19th
century. What caused them? Prior to the mini ice age, the British
Isles were warm enough to be a noted wine growing area!

Anybody suggesting one year's *weather* as a indication of *climate*
change is a prime candidate for buying a secondhand bridge in
New York!- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Hi Tom,

1) On the control/taxation issue, you obviously don't live in the Nu
Labour governed UK. They are always looking for new ways to tax us,
and green issues give them a good excuse to do so. They have already
introduced Airport Travel Taxes and extra duties on motor fuels and
large engined cars.

Er, I do live in England.

They don't need _*extra*_ powers etc (double emphasis since
you missed the emphasis in my last message).

If you think that the coming deluge of new taxes is something
to do with New Labour (i.e Margaret Thatcher's greatest
achievement) then you (a) don't understand the depth of the
current financial problems and (b) are going to be surprised
after the next election.


2) The point I am trying to make (at least in my last posting) is that
there is good evidence that the climate has been variable before, with
naturally cold and warm periods. The fact that measured global
temperatures have increased by a fraction of a degree over the last
100 years, and the ice caps are melting, doesn't necessarily mean that
this will be a continuing trend.

Of course. Only a fool would look at a single piece of
evidence and make dire predictions.

In addition, only a fool (or ostrich) doesn't attempt to extrapolate
current trends with associated sensitivity analyses.

The climate scientists look at history and pre-history and many
many snippets of current data. This isn't exactly a new
discipline - it has been gathering momentum
for the past 30 years.

Just what evidence would you require before you
believed that climate change is real?

Is it possible to have such evidence in time to avert
climate change?