"John Hall" wrote in message
...
In article . com,
Richard Dixon writes:
Msnip report from The Times
Mr McCallum said that only "flat-Earthers" refused to believe that
the
world was in the grip of climate change and that global warming
would
mean more stormy weather.

That seems very contentious. The former is I believe true, but the
latter has yet to be shown to my satisfaction.

Matt Huddlestone, a climate scientist with
the Met Office, expects storms like that of October 1987 to become
increasingly familiar as global warming intensifies. He said:
"Climate
change is unequivocally impacting on our environment. We've already
seen an increase in extreme storms over the UK in the last 50 years.

Have we? What's his evidence for this having happened or that, if it
has
happened, it was any more than chance? If there were, by his
definition
of an "extreme storm", two in the last fifty years but none in the
fifty
years before that, then anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of
statistics would know that this proves nothing.

It's expected that there will be continual changes into the future.
There will be stronger pressure gradients driving more storms in our
direction, with stronger winds."

One could argue that, since the Arctic seems to be warming more
rapidly
than areas further south, the temperature differential will be
decreased
and the intensity of depressions will diminish. Presumably that
isn't
what the models are suggesting though.

.... this makes interesting reading:-

http://climate.arm.ac.uk/publication...tory_Dr4. htm

A lot to take in, and there are the usual caveats regarding changing
instrumentation, methodology of observers on duty etc., but this
paragraph is worth quoting I think:-

"Conclusions

Very significant variations in storminess have been recorded over the
last 200 years for Armagh observatory despite the sheltered inland
nature of the site. This includes evidence for increased storminess at
the end of the Little Ice Age. However, there is no evidence of
increased storminess over the last 30 years. When similar records from
other Irish stations are examined, there is some evidence of a
possible northwards movement of the storm tracks that have affected
the island of Ireland over the last 30 years."

Martin.

--
Martin Rowley
E:
W: booty.org.uk