weather

[touchingcloth]

And I'd never heard of a pint of Bass before I got here...

Typical Londoner

[DannyM]

And I'd never heard of a pint of Bass before I got here...

Typical Londoner

But I've always liked a pint of London Pride...

[zoegirl]

I know exactly what you mean! I'll make a deal with you right now: if you ever come to London, and I'm in London (3/4 times a year I'm home), I'll join up with you for the a day and take you to some proper little off-the-tourist-beaten-path places...We'll still be in the West End, but ya average tourist will never know where I'd take you... Do you like your clothes, Zoe?

ummm...do I like my clothes...what?

[DannyM]

I was just thinking of an exclusive boutique or two that I could point you in the direction of. That's all.

[zoegirl]

oh...ok/... it was just....random...

(Why yes, I like my clothes....why????)

But I get it now...

[DannyM]

I fear I was writing in common-speak, always a danger with a common-as-muck Londoner ...

[zoegirl]

oh, as in, "DO I like fashion?"...clothes shopping?

[DannyM]

Yep, that's what I meant...

[zoegirl]

Gotcha....I get it now even better!

So glad today is over...home...day off tomorrow for Remicade...hoping the nurse won't have to give me Benadryl...although that would give me more sleep!!

[DannyM]

You try to have a good one, Zoe...

[zoegirl]

Well, we are having revenge from the gorgeous weekend we had....two days of gloomy rainy weather...actually not so bad but it does dampen (ha!) one's spirits.

[DannyM]

Erm about me saying summer proper was due to start mid-week this week...pure rain and drizzle; yet another blinder from the Met Office ... These people think they can predict future catastrophic global warming...yet they cannot even predict the weather seven days ahead!! Are these people voluntary, or do they actually get paid?

[touchingcloth]

Well predicting weather is quite different from predicting climate. Don't be so harsh on the Met Office...I believe their predictions are amongst the most accurate of any meteorological organisation in the world!

Perhaps I'm just in a particularly jovial mood because Bristol has had beautiful weather today!

[DannyM]

Hmm...Yes I am jealous, TC, but I have been 'assured' that tomorrow here is gonna be a scorcher! I can't say that I share your enthusiasm for the Met Office.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/colu ... ather.html

"Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, as 200,000 merrymakers were departing from the Thames after enjoying a spectacular fireworks show in sub-zero temperatures, flakes of snow began to fall on Whitehall. In light of the Met Office's prediction that this would be a "mild" winter, with temperatures above average, it seemed an apt way to start the New Year. But hasn't the time come for us to stop treating the serial inaccuracy of Met Office forecasts as just a joke and see it for what it is — a national scandal?"...

"But in the past three years, with the Met Office chaired by Robert Napier, a former global warming activist and previously head of WWF UK, its pretensions have been exposed as never before. The "Climategate" leak of documents from the CRU, along with further revelations from Russian scientists, have shown the CRU/Met Office alliance systematically manipulating temperature data, past and present, to show the world growing warmer than the evidence justified. And those same computers used to predict temperatures 100 years ahead for the IPCC have also been used to produce those weather forecasts that prove so consistently wrong."...

"Scientific method has gone out of the window, to support a theory that looks more questionable than ever. The whole set-up — Met Office, Hadley Centre, the CRU, the IPCC — looks hopelessly compromised. It is a state of affairs so bizarre that it cries out for political intervention. Yet our politicians, from Gordon Brown and David Cameron down, are so in thrall to this new religion that they cannot see evidence staring them in the face — that the show has gone off the rails. How many more winters and summers will it take before sanity finally breaks in to put an end to this scandal?"

So I'm afraid the ineptness of the weather forecasters and the 'global warming' scaremongerers go hand in hand...

[touchingcloth]

Weather and climate are quite different beasts though. Weather forecasting in the UK is especially difficult due to our location (away from the equator, between an ocean and a continental landmass, temperature dependent on the Gulf Stream as well as the sun) - trying to model which factors are going to dominate and bring us sunshine or doom and gloom is tricky to say the least.

For Chris Booker to call the Met Office inept doesn't really capture the whole picture. For him to go further and say that they're inept because they're shills for the IPCC is verging on conspiracy-theory lunacy.