Today began with dark clouds and rain and it took some time for the belt of clouds that had brought rain yesterday afternoon, to give way to brighter skies. The rain has come very early this Fall in central California. Being English by birth, and despite many years spent here in sunny California, I can’t help being weather-conscious. Anyone who has grown up in close proximity to both the Atlantic and the English Channel is weather sensitive for life. Weather in the UK is the first topic of conversation when people meet in the street and weather spoils plans for outdoor activities in a way that BBQ diners and sports people in Cal would never understand.
Being English by birth is my only qualification for being an expert on weather, but I have said before on this website that if personal witness conflicts with either expert witness or media witness, believe your own lying eyes. This year has been a cool year here in coastal California. The winter was long and the summer short and other than a couple of weeks in July, temperatures have been lower than usual. Last winter was the wettest for at least a decade. Fall seems to have come early. This passes without comment in the media, yet the two weeks in July of extreme heat made daily headlines against a backdrop of global warming predictions. Al Gore was mentioned a lot.
It is hard to remain unconvinced about global warming, not because of daily experience of weather but because of daily media propaganda. I keep thinking that there must be global warming since the media takes it for granted and important bodies like the UN and EU also say so. This morning though, on KSFO (a conservative talk radio station) I caught the tail-end of an interview with a renegade weather man. He poured scorn on the global warming crowd and suggested that the computer models they employ use faulty material. “Garbage in, garbage out” as hi-tec people are fond of saying! He also charged that most of the global warming advocates have axes to grind or employers to please. This is a charge usually leveled at anyone who disputes (American made) global warming, but I am sure he is right and that any scientist who breaks ranks in a University or UN think tank is history. Science is no longer a discipline where politics is set aside and facts can speak for themselves. Just look at the field of IQ measurement, where political correctness rules! I am sure Leftists dominate the climate disciplines as they do nearly all of academia. The program host mentioned his trip to view the Alaska glaciers and said the tour guide casually mentioned that some glaciers are shrinking but others are growing alongside and that this is how it always is.
The Atlantic hurricane season has been a washout, too (no pun intended!). This was meant to be a record-breaking season, thanks to global warming, yet the experts and media reporters almost cry when reporting that the season is ebbing away without a breeze. There is still time yet, I suppose, but what if the experts’ predictions prove to be woefully wrong?
I grew up in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when winters were mostly long and cold and wet, and snowfalls and freezing spells made life miserable. The experts then were predicting another Ice Age and blaming the (American) Atom bomb tests and (American) DDT. Suddenly in the mid-70’s the weather greatly improved and we had a couple of long outstanding summers. The weather since that time has been better and the Ice Age has receded! Perhaps the fluctuations are just caused by cycles big and small in the earth’s climate.
Maybe, somewhere on the Internet, there is a site where renegade climate scientists can post up their facts and opinions without fear of persecution. If not, someone should start one. Being English by birth, a skeptic by nature, and a cynic where the media is concerned, I would be a daily visitor. In the meantime, I shall continue to trust my lying eyes.