On Oct 11, 6:25 pm, John Hall wrote:
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.
--
John Hall
"Honest criticism is hard to take,
particularly from a relative, a friend,
an acquaintance, or a stranger." Franklin P Jones

I, too, am highly suspicious of this forecast of increased
storminess for the same reasons that you give, while not doubting for
one second that the world has got warmer and will continue to do so.
Historically, the stormiest periods in this country were during cold
epochs such as the Little Ice Age when the north-south temperature
gradient was larger than it is now and the zone of maximum gradient
was further south, i.e. closer to the UK. One can safely ignore the
opinions of newspaper columnists on this matter because they know
nothing about climate, let alone climate change, but when it comes
from meterologists one simply has to take notice. But I wonder to
what extent these fellows were making political statements to try to
persuade us that Global Warming is a Bad Thing because it will affect
*us*. My own guess is that the average inhabitant of these isles
finds the warmer climate rather congenial, and probably wants more of
it and to hell with the allegedly drowning polar bears and shrinking
glaciers. The evidence so far does not support a forecast of
increased storminess.. There was a stormy spell 1986 -1993 after
which it has all gone mostly rather quiet. What is the physics behind
these predictions? What, also, is the real rate of sea-level rise,
and how does it comparewith current predictions?

Tudor Hughes, Warlingham, Surrey.