By far the biggest story of recent days, of course, has been the astonishing chaos inflicted, to a greater or lesser extent, on all of our lives by the fact that we are not only enjoying what is predicted to be the coldest December since records began in 1659, but also the harshest of three freezing winters in a row. We all know the disaster stories – thousands of motorists trapped for hours on paralysed motorways, days of misery at Heathrow, rail passengers marooned in unheated carriages for up to 17 hours. But central to all this – as the cry goes up: “Why wasn’t Britain better prepared?” – has been the bizarre role of the Met Office.
We might start with the strange affair of the Quarmby Review. Shortly after Philip Hammond became Transport Secretary last May, he commissioned David Quarmby, a former head of the Strategic Rail Authority, to look into how we might avoid a repeat of last winter’s disruption. In July and again in October, Mr Quarmby produced two reports on “The Resilience of England’s Transport System in Winter”; and at the start of this month, after our first major snowfall, Mr Quarmby and two colleagues were asked to produce an “audit” of their earlier findings.
The essence of their message was that they had consulted the Met Office, which advised them that, despite two harsh winters in succession, these were “random events”, the chances of which, after our long previous run of mild winters, were only 20 to one. Similarly, they were told in the summer, the odds against a third such winter were still only 20 to one. So it might not be wise to spend billions of pounds preparing for another “random event”, when its likelihood was so small. Following this logic, if the odds against a hard winter two years ago were only 20 to one, it might have been thought that the odds against a third such “random event” were not 20 to one but 20 x 20 x 20, or 8,000 to one.
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The computer programs have been force fed a whole lot of 'green garbage' and can't think straight. As for the meteorologists, where else can you be wrong at every day and still keep your job? It's time for some pink slips.
Clearly the Met Office is like a neo-con; a progressive mugged by reality.
Global warming schemes, now re-named Climate Change, fit the overall psychology of the progressives who want a central plan to reduce all the risk in their lives. But sooner or later, reality trumps the plans of these utopians who live in a fantasy of cause and effect.
Liberty will always trump statism because it allows for risk taking and it is constantly evaluating reality by observing outcomes of trial and error.
Statists and utopians are perfectionists who cannot stomach the risks of getting it wrong; so they plan and plan to avoid normal trial and error. Statists are extremists who try excessively hard to get it right and there is a high cost to all that effort. However liberty allows for getting it wrong, liberty constantly adapts to errors. That is why liberty is more efficient, more productive. Because the dynamics of liberty ensures that errors seldom get repeated while success gets repeated rapidly by many.
Climate change dynamics are like the battlefield. The reason the progressives are appeasers is because no battle plan survives contact with the enemy because you have no way of knowing for sure what the enemy will do. In a more general context, no plan survives contact with reality. The Climate Hockey Stick has not survived reality.
Instead of having a master plan for Climate Change, all we can so is leave enough flexibility to adapt to the reality of trial and error. If we lock ourselves into a plan, failure is assured. But to operate without a plan requires some faith, sometimes even a leap of faith. Hence faith and free market capitalism tend to work well together. That’s the approach we should take with Climate Change.
The best approach to the weather or climate change is what Bjorn Lomborg calls for… get ready to adapt to the uncertainty of change, whatever it is and whenever it comes. Meanwhile spend money on certainty, on self-evident problems such as malaria which is known to kill millions right now in the third world.
It's just an opinion, but were they wise they would be prepared for this sort of unusual thing to become the usual.
Some of the earliest climate change predictions I recall seeing involved greater unpredictably of weather in general, an increase in extreme weather events, a warming of the Arctic, and harsher, colder, winters for northwestern Europe.
I got some pictures the other day from a friend who had went home to Hopedale in Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador) for Xmas, the water is still open and we have more snow in Ottawa than they do….. talked to my Da down in NB yesterday, they're having another wet Xmas — for years (and years) they've not had the winters I remember as a lad.
It's enough to make folks who are smarter than the average bear wonder where it's all gonna end up isn't it?
If indeed unpredictability were true then maybe the AGW crowd would be onto something. The point is though that someone who takes the time to study the sun has been making accurate predictions. Therefore the preponderance of evidence would indicate that global warming/cooling is determined by solar activity not human activity.
It's enough to make folks who are smarter than the average bear wonder where it's all gonna end up isn't it?
Yup, and that's why nomdeblog's rational makes perfect sense.
nomdeblog's "rational", with the exception of the final paragraph, is a simple partisan screed.
There are those on the other side of the climate change divide who have been able to construct equally profound (do I need to note that as sarcasim?) comments.
“It's just an opinion, but were they wise they would be prepared for this sort of unusual thing to become the usual.”
At what cost? That’s the usual partisan screed from the progressives, ignore costs, prepare and prepare for everything. But the fact is, we cannot afford to insure ourselves against all risks, we have to take some risks and live with the consequences. We have to make choices.
In short the Brits can’t simply beat ploughshares into snow plows without consequences; i.e. one scenario would be ending up not having enough ploughshares and maybe having too many snow plows. That’s the risk. There is no certainty.
At what cost nomdeblog?
What do you think was the cost of this little fiasco?
The writing has been on the wall for a while now, the climate is changing. We can debate all day long whether or not humankind has had anything to do with that or not, but that won't change the fact that things just ain't like they used to be now will it?
I just assumed the MET is forecasting warm winters so the taxpayers will continue support solar panels?
* Do solar panels have electric heater coils to melt the snow?
* i wonder how they wash them during freezing weather?