When you fool yourself
February 3, 2009 by Ken
Filed under Environ-mental, Uncategorized
The snow is a notable event, well actually according to the met office it is ‘extreme snow event’
With the country grinding to a halt under a blanket of around 4 inches of snow it is tempting to ask why such an event as a moderate fall of snow can bring the country to a complete standstill. Quite obviously this does not happen in other countries so it must have something to do with the attitude of our own government and local councils.
A pointer to the general thinking can be seen in the Telegraph which tells us that:
The business community estimated that the freak weather could end up costing the already recession-hit economy £3 billion amid predictions that the chaos could last all week.
The only problem with that argument which is seen everywhere in the media is “The Freak Weather” did not cause the chaos, that was caused because we were not prepared for an event such as snow falling in winter! This is in the general run of thing quite normal for this country, so it was not an abnormal phenomenon an anomaly or an aberration that could not have been expected. This fact did not discourage Boris Johnson describing the event as “absolutely extraordinary circumstances” and “virtually unprecedented” he also said (I paraphrase) that councils could have invested in the machinery and infrastructure to deal with the snow but it was questionable whether this would be financially viable in the circumstances.
Given the recent weather has been milder with less snow, however the major change is the attitude of preparing or rather not preparing for the prospect of winter snow and keeping the country open for business.
I remember back in the 1970s talking to a council member in Bath the council was at that time, discussing the cost of installing a system of heating the roads in the town centre to prevent ice forming. This was a major investment, but was being considered because, of the scientific consensus, which was that mans use of aerosols was causing global cooling, hence Bath Council were making preparations to face the consequences. I do not know if they ever did install the underground heating blanket but if the did they would have been feeling left out in the cold, when the scientific consensus changed to believe in the new phenomena of Global Warming. This time though the rather inconvenient levels of C02 which were downgraded to produce the cooling scare were upgraded to produce the Global Warming scare and the aerosols were themselves ignored.
So I think what Boris Johnson is telling us is that snow falling on Britain is going to become virtually unprecedented given the circumstances of Global Warming, it is going to happen less often and is therefore not worth preparing for the event. In some ways it is a shame that the Global Cooling scare did not last a bit longer, if only it had we might have been prepared for the absolutely extraordinary circumstances of Snow falling in the UK during the winter.
