Living with Calcutta’s record low temperatures
3 March 2013 Last updated at 00:03 By Rahul Tandon BBC News, Calcutta
‘Dressing for the cold has become a major talking point in Calcutta, where the temperatures are the lowest for a century. One piece of cold-weather gear appears to be de rigueur in this city – the monkey hat.’
Climate advocate Mike Hulme from the CRU, in 1997, edited a book, ‘Climates of the British Isles’ along with Elaine Barrow, also of the CRU…with contributions from many scientists including Phil Jones.
It was dedicated to…
Professor H.H. Lamb, Founder and Director of the Climate Research Unit, 1972-1978.
This is what Prof. Lamb said in 1972:
‘A new ice age is creeping over the Northern hemisphere, and the rest of this century will grow colder, a British expert on climate has claimed.
Prof. Hubert Lamb, director of climate research at the University of East Anglia, had a few comforting thoughts in an interview Sunday:
“The full impact of the new Ice Age will not be upon us for another 10,000 years and even then it will not be as severe as the last great glacial period.
“We are past the best of the interglacial period which happened between 7,000 and 3,000 years ago,” he continued. “Ever since then we have been on a downhill float regarding temperature. There maybe a few upward fluctuations from time to time but these are more than offset by the general downward trend..”
Lamb said temperatures had been slowly dipping for the last 20 years.
“We are on a definite downhill course for the next two centuries,” he declared. “The last 20 years of this century will be progressively colder. After that the climate may warm up again but only for a short period of decades.”
Lamb said climate changes come in cycles determined by astronomical and physical factors. He said one main cause is the amount of radiation received from the sun.
“We know that the behaviour of the sun changes at intervals and these changes have their effect,” he said. “The distance between the earth and the sun also varies through the ages as the earth’s orbit increases or decreases its elliptical path. The tilting of the earth as it rotates round its own axis also makes the polar ice cap grow, and this effects the air masses around it.”
The last great ice age took place about 60,000 years ago and was the sixth over a period of a bout a million years. The great ice sheets covered most of the British isles and in America covered what are now new York City, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Kansas City. The ice was at least 5,000 feet thick.
“I don’t think it will be quite as serious this time,” Lamb said. “But there will be a lot of glaciers on high ground which do not exist at present.”’
In 1997 MIke Hulme said this in ‘Climates of the British Isles’:
‘There is a danger that this recent political concern about climate change and its impacts bestows on climate an unwarranted importance as an agent that shapes our lives.
Many studies of the possible impact of future climate change seem, implicitly, to elevate climate to being the major factor that will influence future human activity and welfare. Little attention is paid to whether or not climate is the main driving factor behind observed changes in such [activities]. Even if recognised explicitly that other factors are involved these are so unpredictable that climate often retains the appearance of being the main controlling factor. [Factors such as Europe’s Common Agricultural Policy for instance]
It only takes a simple thought experiment to realise that other considerations, too, will swamp the effects of climate change on future human and animal welfare…..war, technology, demographics, disease.
To assess the true significance of climate change it must be evaluated against changes that will occur due to other environmental constraints and social constructs.’
I leave it to you to draw your own conclusions as to the significance of either statement….but both bring into question the BBC’s attitude towards climate change…and whether or not any dissenting voices are to be allowed to question the ‘consensus’ on what the BBC has decided is its own private media platform.
Global cooling was a theory supported by very few people that got more media interest than it deserved. It is an interesting study on how ‘a scientist told me that…’ is enough to make something newsworthy.
The problem is that whilst most people quickly realised global cooling was rubbish so many people from media organisations, through ngos and protest groups to governments are so vested in global warming existing that they dare not ponder if it does.
Not sure that this isn’t a slightly revisionist view of global cooling. You may not like the website but this post is a fascination compiliation of global cooling stories from the 1970’s.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/03/01/global-cooling-compilation/
A bit more than ‘supported by very few people’ getting mre media interest than it deserved. It was a fairly widespread scientific meme at the time.
Global warming got very little academic support but, as your link shows, a lot of press coverage. No revisionism there.
It is not about temperature truth, it is about power, wealth redistribution, anti-capitalism, opportunistic tax stealth, climate justice, all the agendas in the world .
Doesn’t matter if its up or down, any excuse will do. The scientists are just the useful idiots.
The scientists, or at least those who back the AGW theory, are more than useful idiots – Climategate proved that.
Beeboid’s Hampstead Harrabin does seem to have gone quiet.
This could end with the Beeb contemplating the same problem as Kissinger in 1975:
“We are ready to withdraw all of our forces [from South Vietnam] by a fixed date and let objective realities shape the political future. . . .We want a decent interval.”
Correction: it appears in 1971 in a briefing document prepared by Kissinger’s staff.
That’s a really good (and funny) article in the BBC which has absolutely nothing to do with global warming but how different cultures perceive the cold. What quotes from 30 years have to do with wearing balaclavas is beyond me.
For those who bother to follow the link, there is a very interesting sidebar on Sweden were babies are deliberately put out in -5C to sleep! You’d be arrested here for that and probably jailed for life in India. Nothing to do with bias but CULTURAL differences.
But if it had been extra warm rather than extra cold in Calcutta you can guarantee that it would have been attributed to climate change/global warming…
It didn’t. It’s another non story from Alan.
No – it’s another non-story from the BBC.
9degC is not that cold.
I know I would have loved to have that temperature for all of this winter out playing golf, instead of the @0deg with a wind that made it feel like -10deg.
I also wear a balaclava in these conditions, but this guy thinks spending a few paragraphs describing it makes his paycheck worthwhile.
I’m also sure most people would be at their work on time. It’s the privileged lot, like BBC staff, who would use it as an excuse.
Much ado about nothing!
BBC = Itz Cold
These days CRU gets EU funding, but according to reformed global coolist Professor Lamb’s Wikipedia entry, doomsaying was quite profitable in the 70s too –
“Over a period including the UK’s exceptional drought and heat wave of 1975–76 he changed to predicting that global warming could have serious effects within a century. His warnings….caught widespread attention and helped to shape public opinion. He gained the unit sponsorship from seven major insurance companies, who wanted to make use of the research of the unit when making their own studies of the implications of climate change for insurance against storm and flood damage.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Lamb
Global warming or the next ice age – the mitigating actions are still the same.
Funny, that.