Kitchen Garden Forum

The National trust Pictures Future Gardens -
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/artic ... rming.html
What vegetables will we be growing ?
Hotter dryer summers, possibly wetter winters, how will we adapt?
How farming is changing -
http://www.farmingfutures.org.uk/

we were told by the experts back in the eighties that global warming meant that by the turn of the century england would have a Mediterranean climate, our grass based dairy industry would be in trouble cos it would be too dry to grow the necessary quantity of grass. it just hasnt happened... all predictions of the future are just wild guesses.... all we can say for certain is that nobody has a crystal ball. the problem we are definitally going to have to address is that oil will run out sometime.... when is anybodies guess... weve allready past some of the past predictions.

I have a copy of a newspaper article written in the early 1970s telling me a new Ice Age was imminent.

And of course the Met Office - which forecasts Britain's weather in detail for both the short (days), medium (6 months) and long (100 years) term - has a 100% track record in its medium term forecasts .

100% as in 100% wrong#. Like last winter to be mild and wet and this summer to be a scorcher.

On that basis, I treat any forecast as to what UK weather to be in the future as as useful as used toilet paper and fit for the same end use.

We have had very wet and cold months for parts of the past 4 summers. And one very hot and dry one (summer that is).Perhaps someone can tell me what to plant given those conditions?

On the basis of hard evidence (a subject the Met Office is sadly lacking in when forecasting), I think I need to plant more water tolerant plants.

# And the test of any forecaster is past forecast accuracy. No-one expects 100% accuracy but some correlation with the forecast and actual results. The Met Office correlation is -100%, thus confirming none of their medium term forecasts are worth anything and putting into serious question why they spend £ millions in forecasting 100 years ahead when their methodology is so wrong...

It's like the IPCC saying all the Himalayan glaciers will have melted in the next 30 years... 100% wrong.

There is a simple phrase to describe this kind of forecaster - beginning with "bunch of" and ending with a derogatory word. It is entirely accurate based on their performance to date and their attitude to anyone who dares challenge them.

And yes I do believe the world is warming. Evidence says so. 20,000 years ago where I write was covered with an ice sheet over 1/2 mile deep. It's melting was of course unrelated to human CO2 emissions - which were negligible at the time.

What a wonderfully olde-worlde idea Rob Collins has of the "typical English garden"

I wonder if he is still stuck in the 1930s

For several years now garden shows have been advocating planting drought tolerant plants - even cactii! If people have planted this type of garden I wonder how they have fared in the conditions that we have had over the past few years.

Predicting the future is always I can remember thinking that by 2000 we would all be wearing silver catsuits and eating food pills rather than real food. OH and the pavements would move and we wouldn't have to walk anywhere and ...

madasafish wrote:I have a copy of a newspaper article written in the early 1970s telling me a new Ice Age was imminent ...

There is a simple phrase to describe this kind of forecaster - beginning with "bunch of" and ending with a derogatory word. It is entirely accurate based on their performance to date and their attitude to anyone who dares challenge them.

And yes I do believe the world is warming. Evidence says so. 20,000 years ago where I write was covered with an ice sheet over 1/2 mile deep. It's melting was of course unrelated to human CO2 emissions - which were negligible at the time.

Yes, of course changes to our climate have happened in the past and these were due to natural causes. The 'ice age' argument is one which is constantly bandied about but does not stand up to closer inspection. The following is from the excellent and informative Skeptical Science web site, which addresses the many misconceptions around all the key climate sceptic arguments and provides the solid scientific evidence that refutes them. Despite it's name, it actually gets skeptical about global warming skepticism.

"Did scientists predict an impending ice age in the 1970s?

The vast majority of climate papers in the 1970s predicted warming.

In the thirty years leading up to the 1970s, available temperature recordings suggested that there was a cooling trend. As a result some scientists suggested that the current inter-glacial period could rapidly draw to a close, which might result in the Earth plunging into a new ice age over the next few centuries. This idea could have been reinforced by the knowledge that the smog that climatologists call ‘aerosols’ – emitted by human activities into the atmosphere – also caused cooling. In fact, as temperature recording has improved in coverage, it’s become apparent that the cooling trend was most pronounced in northern land areas and that global temperature trends were in fact relatively steady during the period prior to 1970.

At the same time as some scientists were suggesting we might be facing another ice age, a greater number published contradicting studies. Their papers showed that the growing amount of greenhouse gasses that humans were putting into the atmosphere would cause much greater warming – warming that would a much greater influence on global temperature than any possible natural or human-caused cooling effects.

By 1980 the predictions about ice ages had ceased, due to the overwhelming evidence contained in an increasing number of reports that warned of global warming. Unfortunately, the small number of predictions of an ice age appeared to be much more interesting than those of global warming, so it was those sensational 'Ice Age' stories in the press that so many people tend to remember.

The fact is that around 1970 there were 6 times as many scientists predicting a warming rather than a cooling planet. Today, with 30+years more data to analyse, we've reached a clear scientific consensus: 97% of working climate scientists agree with the view that human beings are causing global warming."

(Bolding of text added by me.)

The moral of this tale would seem to be not to let our notoriously unreliable memories override factual evidence. Calling all forecasters - whether climate scientists or weatherpeople - a "bunch of ..." seems rather counterproductive (although it is marvellous for reinforcing our own prejudices).

Full article: http://www.skepticalscience.com/ice-age ... -basic.htm

Another very readable article at Skeptical Science, 'What does past climate change tell us about global warming?', is worth a look as it touches on some aspects of the 'ice age' argument. It explains how human activity is rapidly forcing our climate into a new and potentially dangerous (for humanity) state.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate ... period.htm

As for the Himalayan glacier 'mistake', Skeptical Science addresses this too, but without the usual headline-grabbing media frenzy approach. Yes, errors were made and the rows that followed were inevitable given the level of climate scepticism that exists, but here are a few extracts:

"Himalayan glaciers: how the IPPC erred and what the science says

Glaciers are in rapid retreat worldwide, despite 1 error in 1 paragraph in a 3000 page IPCC report ...

Many of the Himalayan Glaciers are retreating at an accelerating rate (Ren 2006) and roughly 500 million people depend on the melt water from these glaciers (Kehrwald 2008).

The IPCC made an unfortunate error in a very long technical document. Moreover, the response to this error was far from exemplary. Highlighting this error to undermine climate science, however, is a classic example of cherry picking – a dangerous game to play with 500 million livelihoods at stake."

The moral here appears to be don't pick out one flawed cherry and dump the whole bowlful.

Full article: http://www.skepticalscience.com/IPCC-Hi ... iction.htm

For anyone who wants to check whether their memory is serving them correctly, or is unsure of what all the fuss is about when it comes to discussing global warming/climate change, I can't recommend Skeptical Science highly enough.

It's written in a readable, accessible way (it must be for me to understand it) and the rebuttal of each sceptic argument takes only a few minutes to read through. Let me know how you find it.

http://www.skepticalscience.com/

I thought this might spark some interesting discussion and it certainly has.
Yes the forecasters often get it wrong even on a daily basis, and it would be great to have a crystal ball. There does seem to be a trend to more volatile weather, events and a mix of wet periods and drought in summer here. I tend to plant a wide variety and hope the weather suits some of it.
This year it was so hot a lot of the ripe laganberries cooked on the vine, but the grape harvest was amazing, A couple of years ago the winter was mild and the parsley grew outside all winter, last winter was harsh and I lost my overwintered broad beans. Win some Lose some.
John Walker, looks like some interesting references to read later, I saw a comment of yours on the bbc website and thought well said.

John Walker

Thanks for that.

I note it does not refute my basic point which is that the Earth has been warming for the past 20,000 years and the biggest and fastest change happened before man started burning fossil fuels...

and there is a detailed rebuttal of John Cook's points: here.
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/repri ... ience.html
and


http://motls.blogspot.com/2010/03/john- ... ience.html

Thread now locked by moderator.

There have been rather too many "interesting discussions" on the forum lately, so lets stick to gardening for a while please.