At 19:52 24/12/2010 -0500, REH wrote:
How could this happen?
REH
Because the northern hemisphere is almost certainly dithering about on the
verge of an Ice Age. Forget man-made global warming. Bureaucrats
(initially the EU Commissioners in Brussels) and second-grade scientists
(motivated by massive government funding for research) have successfully
launched a mass hysteria which, thankfully, is now dying down before it
caused too much unnecessary spending (and vast new extension to
bureaucracies everywhere in the world).
If anybody wants to sincerely enquire the truth of the matter then they
have only to superimpose the temperature graph of the Vostok ice core
sample of the last 400,000 years or so with the CO2 graph of the same ice
core sample. The peaks (of the four interglacial periods) rise up together
(and fast!) and are indistinguishable (to the layman) but in the descents
into the Ice Ages show that the declining CO2 lags well behind the
temperature decline.
And why is that? Because the CO2-breathing flora and bacteria of the
planet take time to adjust to changing temperature conditions.
KSH
Snow! Hit the Panic Button
By
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/international/columns/rogercohen/?inline=nyt-per>ROGER
COHEN
PARIS It snows in winter. This shattering discovery has now cast Britain
and France into chaos for a week, with Londons dysfunctional Heathrow
airport leading British claims to be officially designated a third-world
nation.
Brits have been glued to the radio listening to people like the director
of Alaskas Anchorage airport describe how, with the help of vehicles
called snowplows and stuff called de-icing fluid, its actually possible in
the 21st century to keep an airport open after a snowstorm.
As much has proved beyond Heathrow and the U.K. airports operator BAA,
whose elaborate Christmas production, Fiasco,follow-up performance,
Debacle,and grand finale, Collapse,have left thousands of passengers
stranded and tens of thousands fuming at the worlds biggest international
hub. Colin Matthews, the BAA chief executive, has decided to give up my
bonus for the current yearto focus on getting people moving.
Well, gosh, thats good of you, sir. Its true that at a certain point
cutting costs to increase BAA margins and so boost your bonus does
conflict with getting people moving,especially when the cuts mean no
investment in the equipment airports need when it snows. British Airways
alone has canceled more than 2,000 flights.
Heathrow is the hub that makes you blub.
The French meanwhile have been blaming the government for their own
mega-production, Catastrophe.Can there really be, in nanny-state France, a
government unable to predict snow in winter or deal with it? Pas possible!
What we are witnessing on either side of the Channel is the double whammy
of a debt-ridden public sector making cuts wherever it can and a
bonus-addicted private sector making cuts wherever its profitable with the
resultant disaster foisted on a general public now so cowed and coddled
and fearful and risk-averse in the age of terror and technology that an
inch or two of snow sends everyone into a blind panic.
Add to that dismal stew a pinch of global warming, which some people,
including Matthews, apparently took to mean the end of European winters,
and you end up with the current farce. Europe, thy name is pitiful. When
the budgetary cuts really bite next year, all bets are off.
I can report, having been there, that it did snow in London last Friday
and Saturday. The snowfall bore about the same relation to a blizzard as a
gentle breeze does to a gale. It snowed a few inches for a few hours.
After that it remained cold, an unreasonable thing in winter, I know, but
not unprecedented.
That Friday evening, Dec. 17, my children were leaving on a British
Airways flight from Heathrow to New York. They sat on the plane for
five-and-a-half hours waiting for it to be de-iced. But they did leave.
Others were less fortunate. Jane Weist, on a Miami-bound BA flight that
evening, sat for six hours only to return to the terminal. She was still
there three days later trying to escape a departure lounge littered with
mattresses, blankets, pillows and the terminally enraged.
It cant be beyond the wit of man surely to find the shovels, the diggers,
the snowplows or whatever it takes to clear the snow out from under the
planes,suggested Boris Johnson, the mayor of London.
Yes, Boris, its beyond the wit of man.
Five days after the above-mentioned snow flurry, Heathrow was still busy
canceling flights. As for Eurostar and Eurotunnel, which ferry passengers
by train through the Channel Tunnel, theyve also undergone near-implosion.
Delayed six hours at Folkestone awaiting the Eurotunnel service, I was
told eight out of 10 trains had broken.
I dared to ask why. Its the snow, sir.This was three days after it snowed
and in a tunnel!
French anger has focused on the Interior Minister, Brice Hortefeux, who
has become a laughing stock. In the Parisian gridlock, he declared, there
was no mess, and the proof is it took the prefect three minutes to get
here!That was when it took my colleague Richard Berry 13 hours to drive
the 50 miles from office to home. Do the math: thats an average of about
four miles an hour. It would have been about as quick, if chilly, to walk.
Apparently, if you dont want to blame greed or the cuts or Matthews or the
breakdown of the French state, you can blame the North Atlantic
oscillation. That, for the uninitiated, is the difference of atmospheric
pressure at sea level between the Icelandic low and the Azores high. When
the difference is low, Arctic air penetrates Europe. That happened a lot
in the 1960s. Now its happening again.
This, according to some, is the result of global warming. So if all else
fails, blame global warming for the freeze.
Some Brits arent buying it. The Guardians George Monbiot reported angry
calls: Its minus 18C and my pipes have frozen. You liar. Is this your
global warming?
Not exactly: Its the age of pass-the-buck, blame-anybody-but-yourself
technology-induced, pasty-faced, initiative-starved helplessness in a
Europe thats forgotten what a shovel looks like.
Happy holidays, everyone. See you in 2011.
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Keith Hudson, Saltford, England
<http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/>http://allisstatus.wordpress.com/2010/12/
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