Saturday, June 23, 2007

Unremarkable start to summer in Northern Hemisphere.

A boringly usual early Summer.

Greece and other areas of the Balkans and Central Europe still continued to swelter under the wilting heat of winds that fed up from the deserts of North Africa: Winds that moreover had originated close to the tropics. In Britain meanwhile indifferent conditions resulted from cool swirling winds that offered a disappointing start to summer.

Which category this fell within, either Global Warming or Climate Change was hard to tell, but those who had been around for a lot longer than these terms had ever been known, saw nothing unusual or cause for concern.

So which term is it?

So which term is it?

So often we hear of Global Warming. But then we also hear about Climate Change. And then just to confuse things even further we hear about the Greenhouse Effect.

The fact is these are three separate and distinct concepts that have lately been linked together to pretty much equate to the same thing - the idea that man made activity is forcing disastrous effects on the world around us.

Now if there were ever an example of hedging your bets in an argument this is it. And it’s so easily done: First of all invent the threat of a climatic scenario - global warming and feed it with inflated, distorted, and highly selective examples that to the average person without any specialised knowledge may seem quite plausible. Then just to feel doubly secure introduce a second catch all situation - Climate Change - that could comfortably account for any freak of nature of the sort that have been happening for thousands of years.

By now you have the recipe for turning virtually any weather anomaly into indisputable proof of a catastrophic situation that needs quite urgent attention.

But where did all this start off at? Ah yes! It was the Greenhouse Effect. Funny thing is that you don’t hear so much about this just now. Global warming yes! Climate Change yes! But the Greenhouse Effect no! But why? After all, this was where all this hysteria got going with the idea that Greenhouse Gases were trapping heat in the atmosphere that couldn’t escape into space. Trouble is that for this to be happening there would have to be a sort of uniform heat effect across the whole of the globe. It means that no matter where the winds blew from they would always be warm. Yet as everyone knows, and as the maps included in this site illustrate, the world is still capable of quite extreme changes of temperature often within a very short time: A fact that would simply be impossible if true global warming were indeed responsible. That’s why the term Greenhouse Effect has now been ditched in favour of Climate Change.

As for Global Warming, this too is a term that is gradually becoming less common as the evidence throws up glaring inconsistencies that show that as some places have warmed up others have cooled down, or remain unchanged, and that taken as a whole, average temperatures for the planet have shown little variation for a very long time. In other words no great problem, and certainly not one that requires the mobilisation of effort to solve a crisis that never existed in the first place.

Friday, June 22, 2007

Greece swelters under heatwave.

Once again there were rumours of global warming afoot as Greece and Italy, and other nations of the Balkan States and central Europe sweltered under temperatures that touched 40 and were expected to rise even further towards the end of the weekend.

So this was bound to be global warming right? I mean 40 degrees? Pheww!!

Unfortunately not even the most diehard global warming fanatic could claim this one as a victory. After all this is summer: And above all this is Greece, a hot country where for thousands of years, temperatures of this sort are nothing extraordinary, and is why millions of tourists visit Greece each year - precisely cos its hot at this time.

But why the heatwave? As a glimpse at the map below will show this was a result of winds travelling from near the South American continent making their way across the Atlantic and over the blazing sands of the Sahara Desert before blow torching their hot winds on the eastern Mediterranean. Once again no mystery at all, and the picture more than speaks for itself.

In the Bristish Isles meanwhile variable conditions brought the usual quagmire to the Glastonbury music festival, and there were spectacular thunderstorms. In fact just about usual for this time of the year.

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Global Warmers dancing for delight.

In Britain, and indeed most of Central Europe and particularly Greece proponents of Global Warming were dancing for delight as temperatures seemed primed to outstrip all records for the month, as the mercury rose to yet another day of elevated readings. However those of a more sobre disposition chose to hold back the champagne upon examination of the relevant wind flows that revealed that once again these temperatures were not due to swirling clouds of carbon dioxide but the sole work of southerly wind flows that emanated from equatorial regions, and in some cases crossed over stretches of the Sahara desert.

As the map below illustrates these winds then fanned themselves up the coast of North Africa to spread northwards and eastwards to the aforementioned regions.


The image below shows the relevant situation over North Africa at that time with winds crossing the deserts of the north of the continent before introducing baking winds to many European nations.





Tuesday, June 19, 2007

19th June - Global warming descends on Europe

For sure there was Global Warming in Europe as temperatures in Athens Greece topped 38 centigrade with a promise of 42 at the weekend. Meanwhile the rest of central Europe sweltered, as the mercury seemed destined to add that conclusive bit of evidence to those who could ever doubt that the planet was heating up.

But hold the headlines. As these pictures below will indicate the sole reason for this hot spell was not the suffocating clouds of carbon dioxide stacked immediately above continental Europe, but something considerably more mundane - a strong windflow from around the South American continent that in many cases derived yet further heat from the deserts of North Africa.


So yet again the illusive search for the carbon dioxide clouds resumes unfulfilled but undiminished. Meanwhile Britain was subject to strong but warm southerly winds of the sort that contributed to the so called warmest April on record. Yet as we see from the image below the real cause was not a choking cloud of carbon dioxide but simply a southerly windflow that once again meandered up from South America.