Booker flames the Met

The Booker column was up quite early yesterday (Saturday) evening. Readers might recognise the picture and some of the details in the text. But, within minutes, the trolls were at work, the gratuitous insults flowing – using the classic "flaming" technique which seeks to take the thread off topic and destroy any chance of a reasoned discussion. Last week, the column reached over 2,500 comment entries, mostly on counter-troll activity.

With the Guardian moderators on Comment is Free (or Komment Macht Frei, as Dellers puts it) becoming increasingly severe in excising dissenting comment, the internet is fast turning into a battlefield where the intolerant hold sway. By contrast, our little forum is a haven of civilisation.

Anyhow, the basic thrust of the Booker column this week is to contrast the certainty with which the Met Office argues that the world is heating, against the reality, out in the world.

This is why the Okhotsk Sea incident is so important. Check the internet and you will see a considerable number of papers discussing ice formation in this region, and the impact of global warming – more than enough to justify the claim that this has become a "poster child" for the warmists.

That two large ships and a fisheries research vessel should have been caught out, and locked in the ice, suggests that the conditions, if not unprecedented, were certainly more serious than expected. They do, therefore, seriously undermine the Met Office case that the cooling in the UK and Europe has been a local event.

Booker, however, is now the only MSM journalist to make such a point, his originality and focus contributing to the keen interest in his column, keeping it high in the "most viewed" list for the newspaper.

For this blog as well, readership always goes up when we have a run of global warming stories – and declines when we focus on our core issue, the European Union. But, for those (some ex-) readers who write in to complain about the lack of coverage on EU issues, it should be recalled that "climate change" is fundamental to the EU. Defeat the warmists and the EU is also damaged.

This is where there is a certain lack of vision and understanding. As we pointed out in the previous piece , the traditional, jaded eurosceptic has long since had any direct public appeal – and even then, it was never a winning message. To plug on with the same message, therefore, seems to me not to be the best of strategies.

However, while there are good grounds for defeating the warmists, on the basis that the global warming obsession is harmful, the anti-EU dimension gives added value, especially as so many Europhiles are also committed warmists.

Thus, even if it is an indirect approach (which in war is often more successful, and certainly less costly than the frontal assault), the story of the Okhotsk Sea crisis, and the attack on the warmists, is as much part of the battle as taking on the euroslime directly. We will continue to do both, as will Booker, but from time to time, the emphasis and focus will vary, depending on what is going on in the world.

COMMENT THREAD

A cracked record

I feel a bit like Robin Horbury here, who writes a fine piece on Biased BBC himself complaining about feeling like a "cracked record". You can only keep on saying the same things over and over again for so long before even you get tired of your own voice.

Another thing I also get a little bit tired of is being branded the "bad sod", the one who is always out on his own, who can't join in and put his weight behind the common cause.

That much has been put to me about the Referendum Campaign and also the anti-EU campaign in the Daily Express, which has culminated in the publication today of a 23-page booklet, telling us that we must, "Get Britain out of the EU".

It is not, of course, that we do not agree with the sentiment, but the front cover tells you everything you need to know about the eurosceptic thinking in this country. Redolent of the famous 1940 Low cartoon (inset below), it has the trademark Express crusader standing on the cliffs of Dover, looking out toward the Continent – where (by inference) the "enemy" exist.

And here the "cracked record" comes in. The EU is not a foreign construct imposed on us. Our government is an enthusiastic part of the EU nexus and the only reason we are in the EU is because Parliament permits it. It is not looking over the Channel to the Continent that our brave crusader needs to be doing. He needs to be looking inwards, tearing down the gates of Westminster. The enemy is within.

That said, if there was any doubt that the Express had lodged itself in the last century, we just need to read the offering from editor Peter Hill, where the tone – and content – would be familiar to anyone who had attended UKIP meetings ... of the '90s.

All the buzz-words are there, "sovereignty", the mandatory reference to "Napoleon" and "Hitler", the "wine and milk lakes" and the "butter and grain mountains", not forgetting, of course, the swipe at the "superstate".

I have written too many pieces on this blog about the fate of euroscepticism to want to repeat them, but in the forty years, on an off, that I've been fighting the EU, I would like to think I've learnt a thing or two about the enemy, and how to fight it.

Mr Peter Hill of the Express, however, doesn't appear to have learnt a thing, and the eurosceptic movement is a moribund as ever if that is the best it has to offer. In that sense, the movement itself is the cracked record, endless repeating the same tired, jaded message, while the world carries out without it.

We have to be capable of doing better than that and, until we can, I want no part of it.

COMMENT THREAD

One more on its way?

In this long-running drama, the latest from TASS is that the Makarov has begun the operation to lead the what it calls the "trawler" Bereg Nadezhdy out of the ice trap in the Sea of Okhotsk. The Makarov reached the Bereg Nadezhdy at midnight Moscow time last night and, after completing the preparations, at 02:00hrs began the operation to lead the ship out of the heavy ice zone.

Why TASS should refer to the Bereg Nadezhdy as a "trawler" is something of a puzzle. She is a 13,000-ton Kristall II type fish carrier ("Komsomolets Primorya" type), one of 27 units of the type built from 1983 to 1993. Their function is to receive frozen fish from fishing vessels at sea and transport it to port. They can also act as "mother ships", supplying fishing vessels with fuel, water and provisions. (The ship pictured is an example of the type, the San Luis, formerly the Kildinsky Proliv, built in Wismar, Germany 1989.)

With a beam of 22 metres, the Bereg Nadezhdy should not prove too much of a problem for the Makarov with its beam of 25.97 metres. The real challenge will come when they try to extract the Sodruzhestvo, with her 28 metre beam. It is now anticipated that the Krasin, when she arrives late tonight, will work in concert with the Makarov to make the ice channel wider in the hope the Sodruzhestvo can be squeezed through.

Whether this works is anyone's guess, as so much will depend on the ice thickness and conformation, the temperature and the wind strength. There have been reports of depths up to six metres, is what is reported to be heavily hummocked and layered ice.

The picture above is from the Okhotsk sea – an earlier season – which illustrates what the conditions could be like. In addition, it could well be dark, with zero visibility in blizzard conditions. Even a fair-weather tow of the Sodruzhestvo would be an extraordinarily difficult undertaking, so the famed Russian expertise in ice navigation is soon to be put to its ultimate test.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

Getting there

I was pretty pointed about The Daily Telegraph finally noticing that wind was a crock, so what does one say when The Daily Mail comes in even later? There was even a piece on the local BBC TV News, "Look North", with Paul Hudson doing a tolerable job, until they put a dismal wind industry spokesman on, who claimed that wind generated for "85 percent" of the time. Of course, she wasn't challenged, so we have some way to go.

Gradually, though, the media is getting the point, and as the facts leach out, even the warmists in The Guardian are not going to be able to hold the line. But what is going to sink the warmist ship, one suspects, is the fickleness of our EU colleagues, who might be talking the talk on greenery but, on the other hand, they are investing heavily in coal. The particular culprit here is Germany, and we have recent acquired a list of new coal projects in the pipeline – listed below:

- EVONIK, Walsum (Duisburg), 800 MW black coal (2010)
- RWE, Neurath (Cologne), 2 x 800 MW lignite (2009)
- RWE Westfalen (Dortmund-Hamm, 2 x 800 MW black coal (2011)
- EON Datteln (Dortmund), 1 x 1100 MW (!) black coal (2011)
- ENBW Karlsruhe, 1 x 800 MW black coal (2011)
- Trianel (municipality) Lünen, 1 x 800 MW black coal (2011)
- Vattenfall Moorburg (Hamburg), 2 x 800 MW black coal (2011)
- Vattenfall Boxberg (close to Leipzig), 1 x 800 MW lignite (2011)

The dates in brackets are the completion dates of the boilers (hydraulic testing and first fire).

In mainland Europe the German utilities are building the following units

- EON, Maasvlakte (Rotterdam), 1 x 1100 MW black coal
- RWE Eemshaven (NL), 2 x 800 MW black coal.

That is over 11 GW, coming on-stream this year or next, while we are doing our best to close down our coal plants. The bizarre thing though is that these are high efficiency plants, with a conversion factor of 45 percent, compared to British coal sets which deliver about 38 percent.

Replacing our current coal capacity with high efficiency sets would, therefore, save vastly more "carbon" than the savings that the entire wind estate – current and planned – will deliver.

Eventually, inconsistencies and anomalies like these will show up, and become a political issue. That will happen because the current policy is to price energy out of the reach of ordinary people, at the same time as it is getting colder. That is something politicians cannot ignore forever – and the media coverage here shows that the process of education is beginning.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

One down

... and two to go in the continuing Okhotska Sea crisis - the biggies. On this day, the Russian Orthodox Christmas Day, the Makarov (above) has rescued the Professor Kizevetter and passed her through to the Magadan which is escorting her to a safe area. Now for the Sodruzhestvo and the 13,000-ton fish carrier, Bereg Nadezhdy, probably in reverse order.

Meanwhile, the Krasin is still on its way, now expected late on 8 January (tomorrow) – earlier than first reported. She really must be piling on the coal. She must then penetrate the ice shelf – from the reports, the best I can gather is that the trapped ships are about 20 miles in, although that will vary as the shelf itself – particularly in this region – is highly mobile.

We also got confirmation from a very badly translated piece of the fate of the trawler Nimbus. It is indeed stuck in the Barents Sea (or was), with the rescue tug Murmanryba coming to its aid.

The Barents Sea is, of course, another "poster child" for the warmists, who fret constantly about the ebb and flow of the ice there. Clearly, it is more flow than ebb at the moment, if experienced trawler captains are getting stuck (and they have to be experienced to be allowed up there, some of the most dangerous waters in the world).

UPDATE: What has been described as a Russian fishing trawler, with at least 11 crew on board, is reported sunk in stormy waters west of the island of Sakhalin, according to the Interfax agency. Two Russian transport boats and an An-74 aircraft were searching for missing crew members, amid "unusually fierce storms that have seen gusts of up to 65 mph". Hopes of finding any survivors are remote due to the stormy conditions and low temperatures.

Another report suggests that this is a Cambodian-flagged ship, the Partnyor, with about a dozen Russians on board. "The ship is sinking," the Partnyor said in an SOS message read on television by a federal fisheries agency spokesman, Alexander Savelyev. "The only life raft opens with difficulty, the wrong way." The ship was about 6 nautical miles from Sakhalin Island's southwest coast when it sent the distress signal.

Back in the Okhotsk Sea, the Admiral Makarov is said to be less than 15 miles from the 13,000-ton fish carrier Bereg Nadezhdy, with rescue operations being hampered by poor weather conditions. The trapped ships are estimated to be some 24 miles into the ice pack, which suggests that there has not been any great progress.

The deputy head of Federal Fisheries Agency, Alexander Saveliyev, is nevertheless saying that all the ships will be freed by the end of the New Year holidays, which run through Monday. "It will only be possible to pull the Bereg Nadezhdy out by dinner time on Saturday," he says, "and the Sodruzhestvo fishery mother ship by the end of the (Russian) New Year holidays."

The Transportation Ministry says that the Sodruzhestvo (pictured above) would be the most difficult to free because it was wider than the icebreaker. This indeed, has been the problem all along, as to how an icebreaker can extract such a large ship.

The incidents, are of course, triggering episodes of award-winning journalism, this example from The Times via Sify. And Mr Murdoch wants us to pay for this?

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

Another landmark

Interestingly, I did the story on the deteriorating condition of our roads on 30 December. I claim no great prescience as I was picking up on a piece in The Scotsman at the time, although what triggered the post was seeing the damage locally with my own eyes. Now, well over a week later, we get the story on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, not as well done, in my view – but there you go.

The story, though, is a classic "us and them" issue. Governments and councils between them, pour money down the drains, while neglecting routine maintenance of vital infrastructure. This, you can get away with for a few years, but then the backlog catches up with you.

So it is here. The pre-freeze backlog had reached £9.5 billion, and with the road maintenance budget having been cut, we are now getting to the point of no return. Roads have deteriorated so badly that they need replacement rather than repair – which we cannot afford. And so we reach another landmark on our journey to becoming a third world country.

COMMENT THREAD

Open thread

Had serious day-jobbing yesterday, which may appear somewhere on Sunday. Exhaustion now intervenes, so I will pick up the pieces after a night's sleep. Meanwhile, a new open thread for you for the forum - anything goes. I've been really impressed with the previous ones - hope you enjoyed them as well.

UPDATE: Having emerged from the pit, suitably refreshed, one sees through the transparent plates which permit the external view of the domain, that we are afflicted once again with global warming - of a particularly heavy duty nature. This is, of course, a local phenomenon, and we do appreciate that the rest of the world is getting so much hotter.

But, oh dear! Two inches of well-forecast snow - and not a gritter to be seen. The roads are skating rinks, pavements are lethal, schools are shutting early and the whole City is grinding to a halt. Yet, the idle, ill-prepared bastards will be there with their hands out for more money in April, all to keep chief executive Tony Reeves in the luxury he most certainly does not deserve, having already pulled down £182,571 of our money in salary and bonuses this year.

COMMENT: OPEN THREAD

It goes on

The Met Office continues to play silly buggers. See Autonomous Mind for the details.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

The Okhotsk crisis deepens

Instincts are proving sound on the Okhotsk Sea drama. After an ominous period of silence, we get a rush of reports, numerous but short – and not happy reading. One of these, at 11:41 Moscow time, informs us blandly that the Admiral Makarov has "cut its way to the ships stranded in the Sakhalin Gulf in the Sea of Okhotsk and is preparing to lead them out of the ice trap".

With more pictures now released of the rescue of the 1,3000-ton trawler, Mys Yelizavety (above and below), another report tells us that the Admiral Makarov was under three miles from the trapped ships. But, tucked in at the end was one terse sentence: "A third icebreaker is on its way ... ".

TASS provides more detail, giving the startling news that the Magadan has been left at the edge of the ice field "to perform, if necessary, the function of an auxiliary icebreaker". No explanation is given, but this gives some clue as to how bad the conditions must be.

Then comes yet another report which identifies the third icebreaker. This is the Krasin, sister ship to the Admiral Makarov (pictured below). She is heading for the area from the port of De Kastri in the Khabarovsk region. Even though this is on the southern edge of the Okhotsk Sea, she is not expected to arrive until 9 January, which also tends to confirm how bad conditions have become.

A Russian Transport Ministry press service official has told Itar-Tass, "In view of the heavy ice situation and for the purposes of ensuring the safety and a guaranteed release of the fishing boats from the ice-nip, the icebreaker Krasin set out from De Kastri port in the Tatar Strait late on Wednesday night in assistance to the icebreaker Admiral Makarov".

Finally, very latest report of this series emphasises, "Third icebreaker hurries to ice-trapped ships' rescue", which sets the seal on the story so far. They are in serious trouble here. It was always going to be difficult extracting the 32,000-ton Sodruzhetsvo, and the bland optimism we have been getting has always sounded unrealistic.

There is a very real chance here that things could go seriously belly-up, with the Sodruzhetsvo being sunk or seriously damaged. In the 1983 ice crisis, the Soviets lost a freighter and others were damaged. This could happen again.

And in the storm condition forecast, with high winds, blizzards and zero visibility, there is no guarantee that a helicopter rescue could be effected. If they could get these trapped ships out now, they would. That they are not doing so, and waiting for the Krasin says they can't. And that tells its own story.

Meanwhile, an unconfirmed report from the BBC Russian Service speaks of a trawler, Nimb trapped by ice in the Barents Sea, having transmitted a distress call.  More detail as and when (if) we get it.

Needless to say, reporting from western agencies continues to be dire, notably this AFP account which has promoted the third icebreaker to Admiral Krasin (which he never was) and has her ploughing "through howling storms to the rescue of hundreds of fishermen ... ".

UPDATE: The Admiral Makarov is reported to have reached the first of the remaining trapped ships, the smallest of the trio, the 2,500-ton Professor Kizivetter fisheries research vessel. She is being towed, "through a blinding winter storm" to ice-free waters. The plan, according to the Interfax news agency, is then to return for the other two ships. No timescale is being given, and one presumes that the Sodruzhetsvo will be left to last, when the Krasin might have arrived.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS

Falling off the map

The online journal The Daily Climate is getting upset about the lack of media coverage of climate change. According to this source, in 2010, journalists published 23,156 climate-related stories in English last year - a 30 percent drop from '09's tally. This brings them back to 2005 levels, after spiking in the run-up to the much-hyped climate talks in Copenhagen and during the Climategate scandal.

Interestingly, of individual journalists, Andrew Revkin of the New York Times delivered the highest output, at 146, but it was our very own Louise Gray of The Daily Telegraph who came third, with 119. She beat even the lead Guardian journalist, Suzanne Goldenberg, who trailed in at sixth place with a mere 81 stories.

However, if the print (and online) volume is down drastically, US network news has shown an almost precipitous decline. Drexel University professor Robert Brulle has analyzed nightly network news since the 1980s. Last year's climate coverage was so miniscule, he says, that he's doubting his data.

"I can't believe it's this little. In the US, it's just gone off the map," he complains. "It's pretty clear we're back to 2004, 2005 levels." Coverage of Cancun is Exhibit A: Total meeting coverage by the networks consisted of one 10-second clip. By contrast, 2009's Copenhagen talks generated 32 stories totalling 98 minutes of airtime. "It's so little, it's stunning," Brulle says.

And this The Daily Climate piece is but one of a whole raft of articles drawing attention to the changed media environment for the warmists. Only a few days ago, we had a long piece in Der Spiegel which noted that "the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeps going up and up, but public interest in climate change is sinking".

Environmentalists, said the paper, are trying to come up with new ways to make the issue sexy – offering the picture illustrated (right)  ... nude greenies, and remarkably lacking in sex appeal. But shock tactics can backfire all too easily, says Spiegel. Climate change used to make headlines. But these days the issue appears to have largely fallen off the radar.

Nature also offers a not-dissimilar whingeing piece, headed: "Why dire climate warnings boost scepticism". It tells us that: "Undermining belief in a fair world may mean that climate warnings go unheeded," then going on to tell us that, "although scientific evidence that anthropogenic activities are behind global warming continues to mount, belief in the phenomenon has stagnated in recent years".

We also get Ted Nordhaus at the Breakthrough Institute, a Californian think-tank for energy and climate issues. He remarks that, "When I was a pollster, I was detecting that many dire messages seemed to be counterproductive, we really needed someone to determine why," the dissertation then evaluating why the greenie message appears to be failing.

The real reason, of course, is that you can only offer messages of impending doom for so long before they lose their effect, so you keep having to up the ante. In time, the messages become so dire and so extreme that they lose all vestiges of credibility, and people simple switch off.

What particularly has done for the warmists this year, of course, is that white stuff that falls from the sky. Thus we have Spiked telling us that the snow crisis of December 2010 has become a striking snapshot of the chasm that separates the warming-obsessed elite from the rest of us.

Nevertheless, we have the High Priests delivering the booster messages, in particular Suzanne Jeffery in International Socialism, who writes under the heading: "Why we should be sceptical of climate sceptics". Every point she raises I have seen repeated – sometimes many times – in the Booker column comments, raised by the infestation of warmists, presented as if they were original ideas.

Much the same comes from Planet Save, with not a new idea to offer, other than to slag off "deniers" with their "BS of the year" awards.

The sheer volume of introspective and pessimistic coverage from the warmists points to a failing movement that has lost confidence in itself and its message, becoming strident and aggressive to boot. They cannot even agree amongst themselves as to the way forward.

But another failing of the warmists is their focus on the traditional media. While the MSM coverage may be falling, the internet has "exploded" – on the blogosphere and on forums and article comments. That is where the debate is being fought and, by and large, lost by the warmists. This very modern scare fails to understand the dynamics of the modern media.

Their only saviour, for the moment, is the inertia of the politicians who, having put measures in place, are not about to change them in a hurry. But the warmists are greedy and ambitious – they always want more, and the high water mark has been reached. They have nowhere to go but down – and it looks as if they know it.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

The limitations of language

Northern Ireland Water's embattled boss, we are told, quit his job tonight after huge pressure was put on him to resign over the Christmas water crisis. It is understood Laurence MacKenzie offered his resignation earlier this evening and recommended that Sinn Féin's regional development minister, Conor Murphy, accept it. MacKenzie is expected to walk away with around £500,000.

And there, language is not enough. It is quite impossible adequately to express one's anger and contempt for a system which rewards public servants for their failures, flying in the face of common sense and justice. And it is this lack of penalty for failure – and in fact the rewarding of failure – that is bringing the system down.

But there is only so much people will tolerate, and this is the system taking the piss in the most contemptible way. And if the gutless and venal politicians cannot address this issue, the Northern Irish people have a recent history of more direct action.

Putting it brutally, but realistically, if Mr MacKenzie's mutilated body was now found on the streets of Belfast, do you think that anyone outside his immediate family would regret that the fat slob had met his end? To that pretty pass does the insolence of our rulers bring us. They know not what they do.

COMMENT THREAD

Another local event

As Joe Bastardi forecasts that the "Emperor of the North" is getting ready to march south in the United States, it seems as if the Chinese have beaten him to it.

Widely reported, not least by Xinhuanet, freezing temperatures, sleet and snow in southern China have disrupted lives of over 3.83 million. The weather has forced 58,000 people from their homes and caused about $200 million in economic losses, with the collapse of the roofs of more than 1,200 homes across the southern regions of Jiangxi, Hunan, Chongqing, Sichuan and Guizhou.

Freezing weather has also damaged more than 300,000 acres of crops, including cabbage and rice. In Guizhou province, 22,800 people were forced out of their homes, and drivers abandoned thousands of cars after ice-covered roads were closed. People, especially those living in the mountains and the elderly, are still being evacuated from their homes.

The National Meteorological Center (NMC) says that the freezing weather is likely to continue for at least another week, although a repeat of the 2008 conditions is thought unlikely. Nevertheless, this is another nail in the coffin (unfortunately, only metaphorically) for the egregious Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo who so desperately wants us to believe that the cold weather, which we experienced in Europe, was "not a global event."

Slingo is, of course, relying on unseasonably warm weather in southern Greenland, and eastern Canada, but even there she may be in for a shock as conditions there deteriorate rapidly.

But as Slingo bleats, and the warmists insist that this year was the warmest since records began, or the second warmest, or whatever, Professor Werner Kirstein of the Institute for Geography at the University of Leipzig cautions against placing too much emphasis on the decade of 2001 -2010.

The claim that it is the hottest on record, he believes, is "a joke". He ends up saying that determining a global average is a tricky business and in the end is only "a theoretical value". The one thing that is not "theoretical", though, is the repeated appearance of these outcrops of "global warming" that Slingo insists are just local events.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

And then there were (still) five

We were not wrong in predicting that the Okhotsk Sea drama still had a way to go. The latest news from the Russian media (as of early morning Moscow time) was that the icebreaker Admiral Makarov was currently towing to safe waters the 1,300-ton trawler, Mys Yelizavety (Cape Elizabeth). The ship has been singled out for attention as it was less than half a mile from the shore and was in danger of being grounded by the moving ice.

This operation was separately reported by TASS to have been successfully completed, and the picture above purports to show the pair of ships on their way to the open sea. Significantly, this appears to be a "close coupled tow" which we referred to in our earlier piece (good videos here and here illustrating the technique), a stratagem adopted inter alia in very cold or windy conditions when the ice is likely to close up immediately behind an icebreaker.

We also see in the report a reference to "hummocked" ice, which is largely a wind effect, but can make ice navigation very slow and dangerous. The story thus takes on a new dimension as we learn that, with the successful rescue of the Mys Yelizavety, the icebreaker Magadan, which was first on scene in an attempt to effect a rescue, has itself got stuck in the ice. With five ships stuck in the ice, and one now freed, the number is back to five. The other ship is identified as the Anton Gurin, a trawler registered in St Petersburg.

We are told that the Admiral Makarov is "moving at full tilt" to help the Magadan, although we last heard from the Makarov's captain that progress through the ice was very slow. That is likely significantly to delay the rescue of the other ships. But, if the Mys Yelizavety needed a close coupled tow to get it out, the big question is how the giant 32,000-ton Sodruzhetsvo will be got clear.

The 14,000-ton Admiral Makarov is a powerful ship, delivering 36,000 shaft horsepower – against the 5,000-ton Magadan with 13,000 horsepower available – but it would struggle to drag the Sodruzhetsvo clear. Even the Russian flagship, the nuclear-powered 50 Let Pobedy, with 75,000 horsepower (pictured above is the Yamal, dragging an 20,000-ton SA-15, I think, in a close coupled tow), might have difficulty.

According to further reports, rescue efforts have been "hampered by weather conditions, storm winds and heavy snowfalls," and "unusually cold weather of up to -17°C" is being experienced. Furthermore, weather forecasts are unfavourable. Temperatures may plunge even further and a storm is expected in the area late Thursday/early Friday.

The implications of this weather are obvious in an area that was said to be "sensitive" to global warming, and had a recent history of declining ice formation.

But what is also fascinating is the poor and highly inaccurate coverage by the British (and western) media, which seem unable to appreciate the magnitude of the drama that is unfolding. With over 400 lives at risk, and no certainty that a speedy rescue can be effected, one might have thought that greater interest would be shown.

UPDATE: Latest is that the Admiral Makarov has now reached the Magadan and is assisting it to break free of the ice. The Anton Gurin, meanwhile, is reported to have broken free on its own.

The position of the other ships is stable, says Admiral Makarov's captain, Gennady Antokhin. The icebreaker is due to reach these remaining three ships by midnight local time (1400 GMT - about now, at the time of writing). "The ice is very serious, frozen in layers, covered in snow and hard to pass through. It sticks onto the ship," says Antokhin. "I think this will not be a very quick operation."

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

Insult to injury

Here's the deal – our regional administration in Westminster gives the euroslime in Brussels zillions of pounds of our money, and they give a tiny part of it back – in this case £18 million – which is then used to build windmills in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Then, of course, the BBC does an orgasmic piece, using the nearest talking head to tell us all how wonderful this arrangement is.

In this case, the talking head is Scottish "enterprise" minister Jim Mather, who betrays the usual economic illiteracy of his kind by declaring, to the obvious approval of the State Broadcaster, that there was the potential to create "more than 60 jobs" from the "investment".

Thus has our language been debauched. State robbery for job-destroying greenery becomes "investment", Mather then burbling on about exploiting Scotland's "green energy potential" and how "vital" the "EU cash boost" will be "in the economic recovery of the Highlands and Islands".

Y'know – and I might even have said this before – when I was a schoolboy, I could never understand why or how people in the French Revolution could have been so cruel as to slaughter their own rulers. But now I understand perfectly. In this case, there are 18 million very good reasons.

COMMENT THREAD

How so very convenient

"Hurricanes could become more prevalent with climate change, but the economic pain they deliver might not be recognized as man-made for 260 years," says The New York Times.

That means, it continues, that "smashed homes and ruined roads may not be attributable to greenhouse gases for centuries, according to new research that suggests climate policies like adaptation should be designed without financial evidence of climate-enhanced windstorms".

So, let me get this straight. We have absolutely no evidence that man-made climate change is causing or will cause more hurricanes, and are unlikely to have that evidence for an impossibly long time – after everyone currently living is long dead – if ever. Therefore, we should proceed on the basis that it is proven.

And these people want us to believe they are sane?

COMMENT THREAD

The cavalry rides to the rescue?

We may (or may not) be coming into the last phase of the Okhotsk Sea drama with the arrival of the 15,000-ton icebreaker Admiral Makarov on station, ready to help rescue the trapped ships (pictured above).

The icebreaker Magadan is already on station and so are the ice-class tugs Irbis and Predanniy, dispatched to the rescue by the Maritime Rescue Coordination sub-center Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk. But what has not been made clear from the reports is the scale of this operation, as one of the trapped ships is by no means an ordinary vessel.

Originally described as "fishing boats" with crews totalling 600 in a BBC report, latterly we have seen three main vessels trapped, with about 400 people, described as the floating platform "Commonwealth", the research vessel the "Professor Kizivetter" and the refrigerated transport ship "Coast of Hope ". (And there may be two more - 1,300-ton trawler, Mys Yelizavety, which is less than half a mile from shore with 78 crew on board, and a trawler with a crew of 25, which also became trapped on Monday).

However, as best we can establish, the three main ships are the Sodruzhestvo, the 13,000-ton refrigerated fish carrier Bereg Nadezhdy and indeed the fisheries research ship Professor Kizevetter.

The one to watch is the Sodruzhestvo (pictured above - the name means "friendship" or "alliance"). Still being called a "fishing boat" by the financially well-endowed but intellectually impoverished BBC (and joined in that by ITN News), she is actually a huge floating crab canning factory.

Built in Finland and commissioned in 1989, together with sister ships Petr Zhitnikov (pictured below) and Vsevolod Sibirtsev, this 32,000-ton giant and its sister ships have no parallels. Each can carry a crew of up to 520 (although only 320 are reported aboard the Sodruzhestvo at this time) and are able to process enough seafood each day to fill up to 350,000 cans.

The ships are ice-hardened and are used to working in Arctic conditions. They are big enough to weather all but the most furious of storms. For the Sodruzhestvo to have been caught out, therefore, conditions must have been exceptionally severe – strengthening the suggestions that we are beginning to see a dramatic turnaround in the weather in the region.

Despite its size and power, the Admiral Makarov will have its work cut out rescuing the Sodruzhestvo. In the exceptional conditions prevailing, where the sea is so cold that the ice closes immediately behind an icebreaker, the Russians have developed a technique called the "close coupled tow", where the following ship is lashed directly to the icebreaker's stern.

This, though, is a hazardous manoeuvre and often damaging to the towed ship, which is literally dragged through the ice. Moreover, it has rarely if ever been tried with a ship the size of the Sodruzhestvo. Thus, while the cavalry have arrived, the drama may not yet be over.

And, working on the basis that the danger is never so acute as when politicians publicly offer reassurance, the situation looked more serious later this afternoon when Putin made a telephone call to the crew of the Sodruzhestvo, promising them "quick help", telling them that the icebreakers would not reach them until tomorrow, when a break in the weather is expected.

Much more of that and they are quite obviously doomed.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

I will not be a member of such a mongrel party.

I don't suppose this can pass without comment. Over on the Tory blog we see Roger Helmer denouncing the possibility of a merger with the Lib Dems...

I give notice to anyone who may be interested: I will not be a member of such a mongrel party. I will not represent it in Brussels. I will not campaign for it, and I will not vote for it. And nor, I suspect, will most of the Conservatives I know.

Fair enough, one might think. His reasoning being:

What do the Lib-Dems bring to the party? An even more limp-wristed approach to immigration, and justice. A positively dangerous attitude to terrorism, as we can see from the current debate on Control Orders. Their “Pupil Premium”, which subsidises failure when we should be investing in success. A general pretension to fiscal probity, undermined at every point by a determination to spend on particular pet issues. A blind, lunatic obsession with the climate issue, and a closed-minded determination to spend eye-watering sums on futile attempts at mitigation. And above all, total subservience to the EU.

We shall never have a robust EU policy while we consort with Clegg and his kind. We shall never see the repatriation of powers from Brussels that we promised (and then forgot). We shall continue meekly passing authority and responsibility for our governance from Westminster to the EU.

But can anyone say it would have been any different with an outright victory under Cameron? And does this not come a little late? The time for breaking ranks with the Cameron loser was long ago. Had Mr Helmer and his kind, not least the pretenders Hannan and Carswell et al, grown a spine and spoke up long before, perhaps the Tories might not have lost an unlosable election to bring us here in the first place.

After years of Helmer serving as a token eurosceptic for the Cameron party, it's difficult to take this at all seriously. It's still only a phoney gesture. Since the same applies to the Conservative party with or without a Lib Dem merger, we will need to see bolder statements than this to be convinced. And then it will be interesting to see if Daniel "I voted for David Cameron and would do so again" Hannan will do likewise, or if maintaining his cushy little number doesn't warrant the risk. The smart money is on the latter.

Either way, with or without the Lib Dems, the party remains as something I do not recognise as conservative. I will not be a member of such a party. I will not campaign for it, and I will not vote for it. And nor, I suspect, will most of the conservatives I know. Go figure.

COMMENT THREAD

Re-writing history

Winston Smith has nothing on the Met Office, which is busy re-writing history in an attempt to convince us that it predicted this awful winter weather. Autonomous Mind is on the case, complete with a reminder of what the Met Office actually did say, in public at least.

The current legend is that the Met Office did know after all – and told the government Cabinet Office. But it did not make its forecast public. That, however, hardly explains why the government budget for winter fuel payments was only £40 million for the whole winter, with the early bout of Arctic weather having triggered £100 million of extra benefits spending by early December.

There is something particularly sinister about this attempt to deceive, and Autonomous Mind is determined to track it down. This needs blowing wide open. Biased BBC is also duly affronted – particularly at the role of Roger Harrabin, who is playing a dark hand in all this - and the admirable Tom Nelson is keeping track of the posts.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Kill the cows

Mad Cow disease (BSE) causes global warming. I bet you knew that all along.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Not real scientists

Picked up by our forum members and others - albeit somewhat late, as it bears a publications date of 13 December - is an important article in the New Yorker magazine, written by Jonah Lehrer under the title "the truth wears off".

Its importance stems from its detailed treatment of a subject that modern science would prefer to ignore, the subject of bias in research studies, although the article is marred by the silly title and the equally silly strap, which reads: "Is there something wrong with the scientific method?"

The silliness is evident from the reading, as there is nothing wrong with the scientific method. The narrative confirms this ... eventually. Somewhat laboriously, it leads you to the main thesis about bias – bringing us then to a biologist at the University of Alberta called Richard Palmer.

His concern is the effect of selective reporting of results, the classic, so-called "publication bias", where journals will only normally publish positive results, so there is an unconscious tendency to steer results in the right direction in order to secure publication.

Palmer emphasises that selective reporting is not the same as scientific fraud. Rather, the problem seems to be one of subtle omissions and unconscious misperceptions, as researchers struggle to make sense of their results.

There are also cultural issues involved. For instance, workers in Asian countries are far more likely to report successful trials using acupuncture than their Western counterparts. Palmer notes that this wide discrepancy suggests that scientists find ways to confirm their preferred hypothesis, disregarding what they don't want to see. "Our beliefs," he says, "are a form of blindness".

Another toiler in the vineyard is John Ioannidis, an epidemiologist at Stanford University. One of his most cited papers has a deliberately provocative title: "Why Most Published Research Findings Are False," where he notes that the problem of selective reporting is rooted in a fundamental cognitive flaw.

We like proving ourselves right and hate being wrong. "It feels good to validate a hypothesis," he says. "It feels even better when you've got a financial interest in the idea or your career depends upon it. That's why, even after a claim has been systematically disproven" - he cites, for instance, the early work on hormone replacement therapy, or claims involving various vitamins - "you still see some stubborn researchers citing the first few studies that show a strong effect. They really want to believe that it's true."

Although not specifically mentioned, the application to "climate change" is self evident, which underlines the importance of the article. However, the theme needs to be taken further in order to have an effect.

The essential problem is getting researchers (or those who read their work) even to recognise the existence of bias. This, I write in the Booker column comments, adding that the authority and "prestige" afforded to "the science" makes it very difficult to change a settled view.

Furthermore, people who tend to be unduly influenced by authoritative views are most likely to be affected by such biases, and least likely to recognise them ... and indeed will be offended by the very suggestion of a bias (or many). And rarely inside the circle of specialists who claim authority in the field of climate change do we see any serious discussion of the possible effects of bias and, most often, it is workers outside the field who are most able to detect it.

It is my view that, however, that in the "climate change" field there are several biases at play, not least one coined by myself and my PhD supervisor, which we labelled "acceptable diagnosis bias" - a propensity to detect or report results which are acceptable to the peer group.

This phenomenon is not new. In Ceylon between 1943-46, the most common diagnosis for pyrexias of unknown origin was "malaria", accounting for some 35 percent of hospital and dispensary attendance but, after the successful completion of a mosquito eradication programme, it no longer became acceptable to report such illness as malaria. Physicians, therefore, took to labelling pyrexias of unknown origin as "influenza", the overall rate of such reporting remaining remarkably constant.

This exerts its effect in the publication of papers, where researchers tend to steer their results in a direction which will ensure peer approval. Perversely, therefore, peer group review in this context reinforces the likelihood and effects of this bias, to the extent that peer review is a major distorting factor ... alongside publication bias and several others.

So prevalent in scientific research are various biases – which emerges from Jonah Lehrer's piece – that any person purporting to offer scientific work, who is not aware of the role, nature and potential effects of bias, and has not scrutinised their work for the possibility of it being affected, is not a serious scientist.

Lehrer cites Palmer, who summarises the impact of that one bias of selective reporting on his field: "We cannot escape the troubling conclusion that some - perhaps many - cherished generalities are at best exaggerated in their biological significance and at worst a collective illusion nurtured by strong a priori beliefs often repeated," he says.

One almost shrieks with approval – this describes "climate change" to a tee. The absence of any serious discussion in the field on the effects of bias further confirms that practitioners – whatever their titles and pretensions – are not real scientists.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Nice one

With Russian ships still trapped in the Sea of Okhotsk, in ice of two-metre thickness, Republican American blogger Steve Macoy recalls a 2006 symposium on global warming.

Illustrated were findings that that a large warming area existed in the western part of the Sea of Okhotsk, and a warming trend widely extended toward the western North Pacific. It was thus "widely believed" that the global warming was recently proceeding and the East Siberia region just north of the Sea of Okhotsk was one of the most sensitive areas to the global warming in the Northern Hemisphere.

The Sea of Okhotsk turns out to be quite an important area from the warmist perspective, this paper reporting that it plays a role as the pump of the North Pacific – thus having a significant effect on the climate of the region. It forms a significant ice factory for the whole region and there are said to be "clear indications of global warming" around the sea.

This report in 2006 claimed a dramatic shrinkage of ice (illustrated), and a shortening ice season – with dire economic consequences. And it was this paper which reported on the area of the sea being "a sensitive area to the current global warming", despite cyclical effects being reported elsewhere.

With the region now experiencing thick – and evidently unexpected – ice, this is clearly of more importance than just the trapping of a number of ships. The ice in the whole region is something of a warmist poster child, and another one that has suddenly lost its appeal.

As the reducing ice extent has been used as evidence of global warming, so can we assume that the rapid increase in ice may be an early sign that the warming is over?

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

A distinct nip in the air

To the fury of diverse warmists, who tend to lack humour or a sense of irony, the range of countries suffering from unusual coldness has now expanded to India, with a cold wave hitting the north, claiming 27 lives.

Close to 24 people died in Uttar Pradesh alone, three deaths were reported in Jammu and Kashmir with Qazigund in south Kashmir shivering at minus 7.4°C, while Kokernag town in Anantnag district recording a minimum temperature of minus six degree C. Srinagar, which experienced a heavy snowfall two days earlier, froze at -2.4° C, against 0.8°C last Saturday.

The temperature in Leh nosedived to a scary -23.6°C. The Srinagar-Jammu national highway was snowed-in, turning the place into an island with no links to the world outside. The lack of basic woollen clothing and heating facilities to the millions out there, didn't help matters either.

Even, it is said, Delhi – home of Rajendra Pachauri - quivered as temperatures dropped to 14.6°C, one of its coldest winters in years. It has been hit by thick fog which disrupted flights. The elderly and the children seem to be the most affected with a 70 year old man and a two year old boy succumbed to the extreme weather in Bahraich and Farukkhabad districts respectively.

The Times of India is recording the coldest period for seven years in Bombay, with the temperature dropping to a frigid 12.9°C overnight between 31 December and 1 January a degree less than last year's record. With increasing cold in the north, the mercury is likely to dip further, the weather department predicts.

"There was a western upper air system disturbance over Jammu and Kashmir, which caused almost a five-degree-drop in the temperatures in the northern region. Even though this system is moving eastwards, the easterly winds continue to affect the southern and western parts of India," said an official from the India Meteorological Department (IMD), Pune.

"The northerly winds, too, are quite strong and there is snowfall in some northern regions. Because of the five-degree drop in the north, Mumbai is experiencing a distinct nip in the air," he added (pictured).

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

And they don't mess about

This could be an interesting spring, if this report is correct.

COMMENT THREAD

Your money, their waste

The Independent runs a story this morning about how the NHS wastes over £1 billion of taxpayers' money a year as managers spend vastly differing amounts on the same supplies.

This is from John Neilson, managing director of NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS), who said cash was being needlessly squandered by health trusts which are paying multiple prices for identical equipment - ranging from stationery to surgical instruments.

The story struck a chord, as a "been there, done that one" hardy perennial, that makes you groan inwardly when you see it crop up, yet again – with no fix in sight.

Many years ago, when working as an advisor to a small cleaning chemical manufacturer, we tried to break into the NHS market, selling dishwashing detergent for commercial dishwashing machines at a fraction of the price sold by then the "big three". And we were talking serious money, our price – with a very healthy profit – less than a third of what the NHS was paying for identical products and service.

I will not bore you with the details, but after several years of trying, with impeccable references and going through all the hoops, our sales were exactly nil. And that was by no means the only product or service, where the NHS is being ripped off, as John Neilson once again points out.

What is so utterly bizarre is that this information is well known and long known. Any number of people – including myself - given a few months in the NHS with sufficient powers could save millions. But it never happens. Year, on year on year, the money drains away.

We pay, they waste ... and we're supposed to be grateful when they come back for more?

COMMENT THREAD

It's back!

Snow in North Yorkshire is causing havoc only a few days after the thaw ... and it's feeling distinctly nippy here as well.

Meanwhile, local authorities are doing what they do best – sweet Fanny Adams. That means that hundreds of thousands of households are now suffering from rubbish mountains as refuse has not been collected. We no longer need a "winter of discontent" to have piles of rubbish in the streets. This is a normal event in 21st Century Britain.

The piece in the paper (linked above) has as one of its (three) writers, the fair Louise Gray, fresh from her recent triumph of telling us that, when the wind doesn't blow, windmills don't produce any electricity – as has been the case over most of the holiday period.

Even then the dumb broad (American English does have its uses ... "dismal tart" sounds too aggressive), can't get her the figures right, claiming that wind provides nearly half of ten percent of our electricity, when the actual output from renewables is 6.7 percent, and wind delivers 2.3 percent, with an average load factor of about 26 percent. And for this, we spend a £1 billion in subsidies, a fact which Gray conveniently fails to mention.

But it is omissions like this that mean the dots are never joined. Local government – as always – is whingeing about the "cuts" and that provides the excuse for doing even less for their money, while keeping a goodly number of over-paid, well-padded arses on comfy seats.

But, with a billion pounds in subsidies on "climate change mitigation" being just the tip of the iceberg, and global warming back in town, you would think some of these people could make the links. "Climate change" is an obsession we can no longer afford.

Perversely, the only sight of council workman we have seen over the Christmas period is a little man distributing leaflets telling us when our recycling collections are to be. How good it is to see the council get its priorities right, as the poor sod picked his way through the snow and the overflowing refuse bins.

The same, it seems, is happening in New York City, where garbage is piled high as well, although they have some little excuse there as the sanitation trucks are used for snow clearance. Here, no one has seen a garbage truck - or rubbish cart, as we used to call them - for weeks.

And now the United Nations agency UNICEF is warning that children in flood-hit areas of Pakistan, suffering from acute respiratory infections and malnutrition, are at risk because of the harsh cold weather. It wants another $82.1 million "to continue its life-saving and recovery programmes for children in the affected areas".

This, presumably, is the same United Nations which regards global warming as one of the greatest ever challenges to mankind, drinking from the same well of stupidity as the officials in this country who pour money down the drain on climate change and then cannot even organise the rubbish collections.

It is getting so that "third world" would be a compliment for these morons.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Crises in the East

Since 30 December, Russian ships have been trapped by ice in the Sea of Okhotsk, part of the Gulf of Sakhalin, and rescue attempts have so far been frustrated. The drama, redolent of the 1983 ice crisis, apparently involves ten ships, including a research vessel and what are described as three "fishing boats". With crews totalling 400, it is more likely that these are factory or processing ships.

The BBC report, claiming to cite the Russian news agency TASS, refers to ice of 12-inch depth – which seems unlikely. Ice hardened ships, which would be needed in these waters, can usually handle up to three feet (1 metre) of ice. Sure enough, the TASS report talks of ice approaching two metres thick, with the icebreaker Magadan (pictured below) struggling to reach the trapped ships. Such is the density of the ice that it had to halt four miles away from the vessels.

According to a second report by TASS, Magadan will be joined by the Admiral Makarov icebreaker, one of the largest in the far eastern icebreaker fleet. Rescue operations will then resume, scheduled for 4 January. No lives are said to be at risk. Currently, temperatures are reported down to -22°C and the extent of ice has clearly caught the Russian by surprise – and indeed the thickness, as the Magadan has been unable to cope.

Separately, but in the same general region, Japan Times, via Tom Nelson and UPI are reporting record snowfalls in Japan. Members of the Self-Defence Force had to be drafted in to help clear a huge New Year's Eve traffic jam in Tottori Prefecture involving about 1,000 vehicles. A local express train was stranded between stations and was rescued only after a 34-hour wait, with about 130 passengers on board.

Record snowfall in region on the Sea of Japan coast forced about 1,200 people to ring in the New Year aboard stalled trains.. Others were not so lucky. In Daisen, an 82-year-old woman buried by a rooftop avalanche Saturday afternoon died after the ambulance took about five hours to arrive after being summoned by her family.

Other roads have remained closed throughout today, including one where about 300 trees were found to have collapsed over a distance of about five miles because of the weight of the snow. According to a local meteorological observatory, three feet of snow had accumulated in Yonago, the most since 1940.

Previously, the heaviest snow in recent memory was in January 2006, the picture (above) showing children making their way along a street in the city of Iiyama in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. Then, over 100 people died in weather-related incidents.

The extremes of temperatures, icing and snowfall in the Far East give a lie to British Met Office scientist Julia Slingo's claim that recent bad weather in the UK and Europe were localised, and that global warming was proceeding apace. With heavy snowfall in the United States, and in China and Mongolia, the extent of cold conditions has now spanned the northern hemisphere.

COMMENT: OKHOTSK SEA CRISIS THREAD

Bastardi and Corbyn

... respond to the Met Office

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

And so it came to pass

... a paper via WUWT which tells us that there is no correlation between CO2 levels and temperature changes – something that has been obvious for some time.

With total silence from the political establishment and the claque, the debate goes on elsewhere. When it is over, and the church of global warming lies in ruins, there will be a reckoning. People will want to know why their politicians wasted billions and trillions on this fantasy, taxed them to the hilt and lectured them interminably about saving the planet – and lined their pockets into the bargain.

The fascinating thing at the moment is how detached and isolated the political classes have become, so much so that they do not have the least idea of what is happening in the real world, what the real issues are, and how much merde is poised to cascade over their collective heads.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Troll fodder

Two main pieces (of three) form the Booker column today. One is headed: What we need in 2011 is an opposition. The other bears the title: As we count the cost of the freeze, Government prepares for global warming.

And which one do you think is getting the most comments – and the attention from the trolls? That attention, of course, is a relatively recent phenomenon, where we see a limited number of users appear on the comments, in what is clearly a concerted attempt to hijack the discussion and use it to promote warmist propaganda. Such attempts must be resisted, but fending off the trolls is time consuming and tedious. However, it is part of the battle.

COMMENT THREAD

The costs multiply

With this sort of thing happening, we can no longer afford the luxury of a Met Office obsessed with global warming – not that we ever could.

Apart from anything else, we need the Met Office focused on the job it is supposedly paid to do, to reduce this sort of abuse, where rail companies "cancelled hundreds of trains during the big freeze in a bid to meet punctuality targets", and thus avoided having to pay compensation for poor performance.

Commuters would have been entitled to a five percent price reduction on season tickets if fewer than 82 percent Southeastern services had been on time. But, by cancelling trains, the firm, which operates some of the country's busiest commuter routes from Kent, East Sussex and outer London, passed targets by just 0.4 percent and avoided having to pay out.

It is this sort of behaviour that has one dreaming of wheeling out the tumbrils, and when the "referee" is also bent, there is very little hope of any other option.

COMMENT: NEW GLOBAL WARMING THREAD

Happy New Year

Estonia joins the euro and becomes the 17th member of the eurozone, the United States, unable to use its own coal to generate electricity, is exporting it to China, where it will be used ... er ... to generate electricity, the lights are going out on hybrid Civics, German solar isn't cutting it in India, CDMs are still a rip-off, the Met Office wants more money, somebody really does want less snow ... and we're all going to die.

Seems as good a time as any to wish you all a Happy New Year.

COMMENT THREAD