Our children will not know what snow is …… errr

Wednesday/ Thursday blog

As Britain grinds to a halt under a huge amount of snow and ice, today’s blog almost writes itself.

In 2000, a leading British climatologist David Viner was reported to have predicted that “Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past”.

In the report, Mr Viner, who was at the time a senior research scientist at the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, predicted that within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he is quoted as having said. 

If my fading memory serves me correctly, it was the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia which was caught up in the ‘climate-gate’ scandal in which emails were leaked which might have given the impression that the unit was fiddling the figures to make it look like global warming was happening when the actual evidence told a different story. Naturally an internal investigation by that prestigious uni found that nobody had ever done anything wrong.

On his LinkedIn profile, Mr Viner tells us he has: ‘Over 30 years experience working globally in all aspects of climate change, resilience and sustainability’. He says he is: ‘Currently a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the IPCC and been involved with the IPCC since 1992. Lead Author on the IPCC’s Special Report on Climate Change and Land. TCFD and TNFD experience, I understand the benefits of these task forces to help mobilise the corporate sector to help deliver on the key global climate and biodiversity metrics’.

Forecasting is difficult, especially about the future

So, how accurate was Mr Viner’s reported prediction that in the UK “snowfalls are now a thing of the past“?

I will now test Mr Viner’s prediction using the same methods I used in my book – THERE IS NO CLIMATE CRISIS. Instead of giving opinions or using the usual garbage-in-garbage-out (GIGO) computer models so beloved by supposed ‘scientists’, I will go back and look at media reports for all the years since Mr Viner made his apocalyptic prediction.

Years 2000 to 2010

During the first decade of this century, abundant snow fell in the UK during 9 out of 10 years.

According to the website of Dr. Richard Wild (who completed a PhD on British snowstorms and recorded these events as they occurred), by December 2000 the country was experiencing the most “widespread snowfall over the UK since February 1996.”

Dr. Wild reports a “total of 12 heavy snowfall days” in Britain in 2001, which he describes as “average”.

Although he says “virtually no heavy snowfalls” fell in 2002, in January 2003 “snow caused havoc in many parts of the UK,” spurring the government to signal its intention to introduce “new legislation to force councils to grit roads.” In December of that year, “Heavy snowfall brought New Year[‘s] Eve misery to large parts of Northern England and Scotland.”

In January 2004, a snowstorm interrupted school for 70,000 Scottish children and “a 74-year-old man from Berwickshire died due to having a heart attack trying to free his wife’s car from a snowdrift.” In late February, Dr. Wild reports that “many schools across Scotland, SW England, N England, N Ireland and Wales…closed, with numerous roads remaining blocked with snow” and that “a football match…[had] to be called off.” In November, Middleton, Derbyshire, received 13 cm of snow – the “largest single fall of snow in November since records began in the year 1977.”

Dr. Wild sums up the year 2005 by observing that it “saw 25 heavy snowfall days, the highest (equal with the year 1876) since the heavy snowfall research began in the year 1861.” (See details here, here, here, and here.)

In other words, during the five years immediately following the Independent‘s claim that snow was a “rapidly diminishing part” of British culture, snowfall was minimal in only one year (2002). Not only was there plenty of the white stuff during the remaining four, but 2005 was one for the history books.

So how did the next five years fare?

• in late February and early March of 2006, “Heavy snow showers affected many districts of the UK” (East Anglia was among the areas hardest hit). A few weeks later, “Heavy snow fell across N England, N Wales and S Scotland”. [more]
• in April 2006 “More than 13cm of snow fell in parts of Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and southern London”
• “large parts of Southern England, the Midlands and Wales” experienced “heavy snowfall” in February 2007 [more, more, more]
• in January 2008 Britain experienced “more snow chaos”
• later that year, thousands lost power when London experienced its first October snow in 74 years
• in November 2008, heavy snow was a problem in large areas of Britain
• in December 2008, snow closed “hundreds of schools” and caused traffic difficulties
• during the first 13 days of February 2009, Britain experienced a prolonged period of snowfall in which authorities warned they were running out of road grit [more, more, more, more]
• in March 2009, motorists “were stranded after worse-than-expected snowfalls caused blizzard-like conditions in parts of England”

By mid-December 2009 parts of Britain were in the grips of snowy, cold, blizzard-like conditions.

Years 2011 to 2022

Ditto the second decade. In 2021 snow closed COVID vaccination centres and disrupted travel in multiple parts of the kingdom. Which means 2021 doesn’t qualify as a ‘Children aren’t going to know what snow is’ year.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/09/uk-temperatures-snow-ice-close-vaccination-centres-schools

Unfortunately for great climate experts like Mr Viner, 2020 didn’t, either. You can see the photos here. In 2019, the BBC reported that heavy snow was “sweeping Eastwards across the UK,” and that college students were stranded overnight. Which means 2019 didn’t qualify as a ‘no snow year’.

The Met Office tells us the UK experienced significant snowfalls in 2018. In 2017, snow grounded flights at Heathrow airport. Months afterward, the Guardian ran this headline: Snow turns UK into winter wonderland.

It isn’t difficult to find lovely photos of UK snowfalls dated 2016, 2015 and 2014. The Met Office tells us the UK experienced widespread snow in 2013. In 2012, severe snow brought Britain to a standstill. In 2010, the UK endured severe winter weather with significant snowfalls.

As for 2022, well you just need to look outside your window:

Though, maybe that’s something ‘climate scientists’ never feel the need to do as they have their GIGO computer models to tell them what is really happening with our weather.

Do you trust the IPCC?

Just 22 years ago we were told snow in the UK would only be a distant memory. That was a climate prediction. And this was made by a climate scientist who is now apparently ‘a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’. The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is, as you will know, the body which produces the reports on supposed Global Warming or Climate Change or Climate Emergency or Climate Crisis or whatever it’s called this month.

These are the reports on which useless western governments are forcing net zero on  us – banning efficient affordable petrol-fuelled cars, banning efficient gas boilers, imposing restrictions on farming particularly on use of fertilizers, adding huge renewables subsidies to our electricity bills, covering our countryside with largely pointless bird-and-bat-chomping wind turbines, taking productive farmland away from producing food to use it for solar farms, discouraging us from travelling and many other similar social-control policies.

Yet a person who is apparently ‘a Co-ordinating Lead Author for the IPCC’ has been shown to have been spouting total nonsense – what a cynic might consider politicised propaganda rather than anything remotely resembling science.

Hands up anyone who actually believes the increasingly panicked IPPC reports which are the basis for our governments deliberately destroying western economies and western civilisation.