As our soggy summer ends...

...here's a fine explanation of how the AGW "consensus" is looking increasingly unwell.

And to think the soppy tarts who run our country still believe devoutly in this fantasy, and would harm our economy in support of it.

Just admit you're wrong, okay? We'll try not to be TOO smug, I promise. Because the longer you leave it, the angrier people will be...

Brrr....

The BBC, a fully paid up member of the anthropogenic global warming fantasy, sulkily reports:

This year appears set to be the coolest globally this century.

Data from the UK Met Office shows that temperatures in the first half of the year have been more than 0.1 Celsius cooler than any year since 2000.

But...how can this be? Everyone knows that the world is on the very precipice of a fiery death. At some conveniently indeterminate yet IMMINENT point in the future.

"The big thing that's been happening this year is La Nina, which has lowered global temperatures somewhat," said John Kennedy, climate monitoring and research scientist at the Met Office's Hadley Centre.

Aah, I knew there'd be a simple answer. And not an admission of "err, actually it turns out we're a bunch of total fucking idiots who need to do some serious apologising and backtracking" right now." Although these people really need to start considering that now's the best time to fess up, because the longer this goes on the more ugly and embarrassing will be their eventual retraction.

Go read the rest of the article - it reads a bit like a kid being caught red-handed scrumping apples tearfully spluttering "but, but, but, but..."

Don't tell Al Gore...

The Devil's Kitchen flags up this intriguing climate snippet in the Scotsman:

THE last ice age 13,000 years ago took hold in just one year, more than ten times quicker than previously believed, scientists have warned.

Rather than a gradual cooling over a decade, the ice age plunged Europe into the deep freeze, German Research Centre for Geosciences at Potsdam said.

Cold, stormy conditions caused by an abrupt shift in atmospheric circulation froze the continent almost instantly during the Younger Dryas less than 13,000 years ago – a very recent period on a geological scale.

The new findings will add to fears of a serious risk of this happening again in the UK and western Europe – and soon.

Imagine that - the whole continent freezing in a single year. How would we cope with disaster on such a monumental scale? It'd certainly render irrelevant the trivia and froth that occupies us. Even the hugely entertaining sight of Gordon Brown's life's work lying in ruins would be pushed to one side. Though hopefully not completely, as it really IS very entertaining. Anyway...

We already know the earth has been cooling for a few years. Obviously, anyone with any sense (anthropogenic global warming believers are not among such a group, and may leave via the door marked "idiots") will know that a few years of very minor cooling is no more important than the few years of very minor warming we've recently had. A 4,000,000,000 year old planet is very obviously going to have fluctuations of temperature, governed by a series of interconnecting cycles, many of whose timescales are so immense we cannot really hope to wrap our minds around them.

However, the notion of a sudden, catastrophic shift in climate in the "other" direction is quite arresting. The human race is very good at coping, adapting and thriving, and I've no doubt that we'd manage even in such unpromising conditions, although if it were to happen any time soon we'd all probably all spend the rest of our lives struggling to cope.

And yet, it is still possible to find so many fuckwits who believe we should all be obsessing over man-made global warming and knackering up the economy even more in order to "combat it". The mind boggles.

When something must be done...

Norman Baker is a curious fellow. Liberal Democrats tend to be a bit peculiar at the best of times, but Mr Baker appears to enjoy taking it to interesting extremes.

An opponent of such nefarious and unconnected evils as the monarchy and Brighton & Hove Albion FC, he is now to be heard railing against airlines:

Airlines which fail to get at least 95% of passengers through check-in within 15 minutes should be fined, the Liberal Democrats have said.

Transport spokesman Norman Baker said queues had to be minimised at Gatwick and Heathrow to ensure a "smooth and efficient journey".

No-one likes queues, we'll give him that. And smoothness and efficiency, yes, we're all big fans of that.

But he added that no penalty existed for excessive queues at check-ins run by airlines.

Presumably because it's none of the government's business how companies choose to treat their customers, nor do they have a remit to act as the Queue Police.

Those failing to deal with at least 95% of passengers within 15 minutes should be fined by the Civil Aviation Authority, Mr Baker said.

I would be fascinated to learn who WILL act as the Queue Police, however. One hopes the Civil Aviation Authority choose to focus their activities on more important topics than spewing out lots of clipboard-wielding aspirant traffic wardens to officiously declare such abominations as only 94.78% of passengers being processed within the permitted time period. Horror of horrors.

"Delays should not hold up planes for long periods of time on the runway, nor should flights be left stacking over cities, wasting time and creating significantly increased carbon emissions. Unfortunately this is not the case at present."

I am no expert on aviation, but I am willing to bet that jet fuel is not at its cheapest right now. It is therefore no great leap of imagination to suppose that airlines are not exactly going to be keen on keeping their aeroplanes in the air much longer than necessary. The incentive already exists for them to not waste time, and it's better than the earnest intonations of a notoriously odd politician.

Mr Baker's report also calls for the carbon emissions details of passengers' journeys to be printed on tickets.

Oh for crying out loud. What exactly does he think will be achieved by this? "Oh dear, my flight to the south of France is going to emit 0.2kg of carbon dioxide per mile, I'd hate to be seen as a advocate of polar bear genocide, best cancel the booking and go on a nice cycling holiday in Pembrokeshire instead".

Or more likely, it's an attempt at futile guilt-tripping, allowing another AGW fantasist to take the moral high ground about the Impending Global Cataclysm that's been due to occur "any day now" for about twenty years.