If NASA scientists are right, the Thames will be freezing over again.

Good grief. Cold kills.

Well, as the old saw says, it's an ill wind that blows nobody good. We've had an Indian summer that lasted all the way through January. The last couple of nights it's been about freezing, but we've hardly had a frost all winter. On Groundhog Day, everyone was saying that they didn't care if ol' Punxsutawney Phil saw his shadow or not, because another 6 weeks of _this_ winter would be no big hardship.

Folks elsewhere that aren't used to it are having a bad time, though. :(

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

It's been balmy and sunny in San Francisco this week, and overall warm and dry so far this winter. That's nice for walking and gardening, but bad for skiing and for the water supply.

If you were to (somehow) plot mean human welfare against mean planetary temperature, I'd guess we're currently located at an up-slope, wild guess +5% per degree C.

(...)

I'm sure you are right.

The meanest humans I know are doing much better than average.

--Winston

Now plot it against local temperature.

Hi!

You simply has to read this article:

The heat period (1937-1947) variability and extreme weather "drowns" compared to the weather the last 10-15 years! (see among others figure

10 November 2011, Climate Variability and Climate Change: The New Climate Dice:

And GW do not exclude severe winters:

Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (2010, November 17). Global warming could cool down northern temperatures in winter. ScienceDaily:

Compare this to the "tiny" GW. Comparison between 2000-2010 with

/Glenn

That last line pretty much sums up the current state of climate modeling.

Isn't that pretty much expected from a chaotic system?

Yes. Everything causes everything, so more CO2 *does* cause a winter storm. But less CO2 would cause different winter storms. The bottom line is that climate models do great modeling the past, given that parameters are tweaked to do so.

Every time something new and unexpected happens, an explanation, like this one, is manufactured.

wing

to

was

y of

d in

...

Check the publication dates. The Barents- and Kara-Sea ice story was a real prediction.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Weather is chaotic - over periods longer than about ten days. Climate doesn't seem to be chaotic - John Larkin hasn't yet worked out that climate and weather are subtlety different concepts, so climate doesn't have to be chaotic even if weather is.

Try not to make the same mistake. It makes you look ignorant.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

You don't believe in derivatives?

rs

intern...

=A0The

:(

Of course I believe in derivatives, but since I know a bit more than you do, I get to believe in non-linear responses to a range of environmental factors, and second order partial derivatives to describe how "human welfare" - and other ill-defined scoring functions

- vary with - say - rainfall and temperature at the same time.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Word salad. Hand waving. You know so much about so many things that you are paralyzed.

Red herring.

Thanks for the heads-up. I'll ignore your subsequent posts then. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Who spent the morning goofing off, but has to get back to work.)

-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

hobbs at electrooptical dot net

So now we have a name for something that has been happening for millions of years.

If enough people make enough predictions, some will be right. Remember David Viner's claim that children will not know what snow is in the future?

years

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gh. :(

arm

but

And the substantive content of "You don't believe in derivatives?" is?

You'd have to come up with some justification to demonstrate that that wasn't hand-waving, and you really don't have the skills to do it.

Paralysed? Not really. Maybe too easily distracted. Nobody is offering me money to pursue any particular goal, and thirty years in industry did teach me to keep any eye on financial advantage.

-- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen