Category Archives: Greenhouse Worming

Advertising Adjustment

Posted by wh00ps on

Well, yesterday Facebook was full of people shrieking that Christmas was on the way (the apparently agreed tidemark being the Christmas Coca-Cola advert) but I was taken with quite another advertisement, this one for tyres (I forget the brand).

"Remember when you thought you didn’t need a different set of tyres for the winter? Well, maybe the last few winters have made you think again…"

The wheels seem to be coming off (boom-boom!) the whole global warming thing, slowly but surely. You didn’t expect a big announcement did you? Of course not, but the signs are there. Hard, icy winters are expected to be the norm by pretty much everybody for a good few years, and people are taking the opportunity to sell you stuff. The DIY stores no longer try to sell you solar panels but instead go overboard with cheap (that’s taxpayer-funded) loft insulation "to save you carbon" on the massive amount of heating you will need in the winter and of course your fuel bills (massive fraud, by the way. You pay huge amounts of tax on your fuel and then they use the money to sell you insulation you already paid for to save you money on your heavily-taxed… you get the idea. THAT’S corporatism in action) which is also a tacit acceptance that it’s going to be getting a little chilly around here.

The market never lies.

P.E.T.A. (Polar-bear Extinction Team Associated)

Posted by wh00ps on

Remember Knut? The ‘kute’ baby polar bear and superstar of the Berlin Zoo? Well, PETA, the international guild of dog-murderers are claiming that he is ‘disturbed,’ and that this shows quite plainly that ‘polar bears do not belong in captivity.’

Apparently, he sways to and fro, which is abnormal although PETA do not mention how long they spent in the company of polar bears in the wild to discover that they don’t do this. Also -and I would guess that this is what really upsets PETA- the most popular polar bear in the world has started to imitate the people photographing him by standing up and mimicking the action with his paws. Oh heavens! This animal has obviously been tainted by human contact… the end times are upon us, horses are going to start eating each other etc. etc. etc. Given PETA’s record with traditional human-companion symbiotes I suppose the idea that such a majestic wild animal like the polar bear starting to show signs of domestication (imagine if, after several generations in captivity and successful breeding programmes polar bears became as docile as dogs! Oh, the horror) is one step too far. PETA have had problems with Knut before, don’t forget, even when he was a kute liddle bay-bee.

Another thought that occurs to me is that if the breeding population of polar bears in captivity were removed, then that adds more ammunition to the ‘think-of-the-poor-polar-bears-with-no-ice-to-sit-on’ wing of the Climate Change Church. Despite the fact that polar bears are actually doing all right in the wild, thankyouverymuch.

Global Warming My Arse #2 (part deux) (Updated)

Posted by wh00ps on


Well, it’s snowing all right but nothing like as bad as the Met Office said. Either it’s missing us entirely, or they got it wrong. Or there’s more to come. It doesn’t seem too cold outside, but that could be something to do with the gin, or the vodka, or even the ‘tropical’ fruit drink I’m mixing them with, although that doesn’t sound as likely.
It’s been snowing for couple of hours and its only about 15mm deep, so it’s not been snowing heavily. It’s weird going out at this time of night in the snow, everything is so, so quiet, and you can actually hear the snow hitting the ground. It might be worse in the morning…
Update: 16:43 06/01/2010
This after half an hour… (The bottom 5 pictures. Damn and blast, wordpress puzzles me now. If anybody knows how to split it into two galleries please let me know in the comments!) I’ve never in my lifetime known it to snow seriously two times in one winter. Not in this part of Kent anyway…

Update 2: 18:35
Total and utter gridlock. Nothing is moving. I think the roads have been gritted, I’m getting reports from Strood that the roads are clear, but in Chatham at least nothing is going anywhere.

Update 3: 19:25
Traffic’s cleared. Just walked to Tesco’s (for sambucca and tobacco, not cat litter, salt or canned goods), and surprisingly it was a graveyard. I was expecting thousands of crazy-eyed wastrels manically buying cat litter, salt and canned goods but no! I think they’re all in their cars still…

Update 4: 21:42
Heh. I ran out of salt before i finished the last line though. Bugger.

Global Warming My Arse #2

Posted by wh00ps on


I saw a bit of the Chanel No. 4 News this evening, and apparently the nothern half of the country has been hit by more cold weather today:

Temperatures have fallen as low as minus 10C (14F) in some areas of England and minus 16C in Scotland, with no end in sight to the freezing weather in one of the coldest snaps for a century.

They reckon the south is going to get the same tonight (Pictures if it does). The Telegraph says those highly-reliable(!) folk at the Met Office are predicting the heaviest snowfall for 50 years.

According to C4, the story is the same across the world:

China is experiencing its coldest winter for 60 years according to Global Times.


Seoul has experienced the heaviest snowfall since records began according to Koreatimes.


‘Scores have died’ in Northern India.

Even the southern United States has been experiencing cold weather, with ‘rare’ snowfalls in Louisiana and Missisippi and four people dying of hypothermia in Tennessee.

How Embarrassing

Posted by wh00ps on

Mr. Exile, you’ll be over there —->
just as soon as I can get in front of a proper computer. (Update: All Done) I’m on his whatsit and I didn’t even have him on my regular blogroll. Sorry mate.

Still, onto other matters. I winged my way over there to see where the traffic came from, and what should I see but this post regarding matters warming. It really hits the nail on the head as far as I’m concerned. The reason, the Real Reason I don’t accept Global Warming, man-made or otherwise, is purely anecdotal. The science is not settled for definite, but I’m no scientist. The CRU emails are damning and the code maybe more so, but I’m no coder and in any case I was convinced long before that. The language and tactics coming out of the Climate Scientologist lobby (I saw that on Samizdata today- love it!) led me to smell a rat long ago but that’s not the reason.

No, the reason I don’t believe is that from my own experience it is colder every year.
I work outside most of the time, and three or four years ago I was quite comfortable working in a short-sleeved body warmer even in the depths of winter. I preferred it, in fact as I find sleeves get in the way when I’m working. Last winter I had to wear a coat about half the time, and this year it’s been nearly every day. I well remember being outside doing a conga line up and down the street on new years eve 1999/2000 in a t-shirt and not feeling cold in the least. This year I was out in a thick winter coat (with snow falling!) and was so cold I just wanted to curl up into a little ball and go to sleep.
Summers too, far from getting hotter and drier every year, have actually got wetter and cooler. Remember that “hottest day on record” five or six years ago? It nearly reached 40C (sorry, farenheit fans I’ve no idea what that is in the old money) and we were all assured that that was a glimpse of the future. It WAS hot that summer, I actually had heat exhaustion one day that summer, although not that day. It’s never really got that hot again though, not even close. In fact, since then every summer seems to have been a little cooler and a little chillier.

None of this proves anything, of course. Especially comparing new years eves as the temperature changes every day, but as far as I’m concerned I am experiencing a trend of colder conditions every year for the past five or six years, with it warming before that.

It’s probably a natural cycle of some sort.