Snow Excuse For Dishonesty

Temperatures across the UK dropped last Thursday night, and with the fall came a biting easterly wind and, for some, the snow (ours in Crewe lasted until Saturday morning). But, for the Fourth Estate, it takes a while for the penny to drop and the opportunity to occur, so it’s only today that the climate change denial lobby has made a concerted effort to assert itself.

Science, Guv? Nah, too difficult, innit?!?

And this has been done via the newly formed alliance between the Mail’s tedious and unfunny churnalist Richard Littlejohn, and James “saviour of Western civlilisation” Delingpole, both of whom work from the false premise that lying snow on high ground in March means that there isn’t really climate change at all, that it was all a con, and, well, wind turbines!

Still not fair and balanced

Littlejohn kicks off with a slice of straightforward dishonesty: “Thirteen years ago, the global warming gravy train was only just getting into gear. Since then we’ve lived through a decade of global cooling”. Moving right along from the inconvenient fact that 13 years and a decade are two different time periods, as can be seen from the chart below, we haven’t been living through a cooling period.

Spot the cooling

“This has been the coldest winter in 30 years”. No it hasn’t. Try again. “At the weekend we came dangerously close to running out of gas”. No we didn’t. “We are closing perfectly good power stations”. Ooh, Didcot A anyone? It was more than 40 years old and a serious polluter – so a new station has been built next door. Yes, we’ve been opening power stations, too.

So what’s Del Boy got to tell us, apart from the usual abuse? “Looking out of my window just now, I noticed that the Northamptonshire landscape was completely blanketed in Dr David Viner. Just like it was yesterday. And the day before that, when we rescued two orphaned lambs from the frozen fields. Which isn't something you normally expect in March, is it?”

Isn’t it, Del? You must have been too young to remember 1979, when we had snow showers – and heavy some of them were, too, thanks – in May. That was in addition to the heavy snowfall in late March and the snow showers on April Fool’s Day (someone with a sense of humour up there). And once again we get the fallacy that your weather equals global climate.

Otherwise, all Delingpole manages is to cite Anthony Watts and David Rose, and bang on about David Viner’s comments to the Independent, while ignoring this: “Heavy snow will return occasionally, says Dr Viner, but when it does we will be unprepared. ‘We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time’”. Still, agendas to push and all that, eh?

If they were right, the lies and abuse wouldn’t be needed. No change there, then.