BRITAIN IS FREEZING TO DEATH
MIDDLE class families are among millions of Britons who cannot afford to heat their homes this winter, as elderly ride on buses all day to stay in the warm.
After a week of snow and freezing temperatures a shocking picture has emerged of the bleak months ahead for 5.5 million households. Pensioners, who are among those most vulnerable to the cold, are resorting to extraordinary measures to keep warm. Many have been using their free travel passes to spend the day riding on buses while others are seeking refuge from the cold in libraries and shopping centres.
Dot Gibson, spokeswoman for pressure group the National Pensioners’ Convention, said: “Now that we have one of the coldest winters, older people are going to have to make the unenviable decision whether or not to put the heating on. The Government should guarantee that they won’t cut the winter fuel allowance.”
The death toll from the big freeze rose to seven yesterday. They included two men who were killed in a crash on the M62 in Humberside and two teenage girls who died when their car collided with a Royal Mail van in Cumbria, The winter death toll is set to rise steeply as official figures show that nine elderly people died every hour because of cold-related illnesses last year. The number of deaths linked to cold over the four months of last winter reached nearly 28,000...
...But working families also face a tough time meeting the cost of keeping the central heating turned on as fuel prices
...National Energy Action estimates that 5.5 million households will have plunged into fuel poverty by early next year due to price rises.
This is up 400,000 on the group’s last estimate and represents 21 per cent of the UK’s 26 million households.
...Last week Lillian Jenkinson, 80, and William Wilson, 84, were found dead in the gardens of their homes 70 miles apart in Cumbria. Both are thought to have lain undetected in sub-zero temperatures for hours.
And then we have this news from this side of the Atlanta.
Cold Blast Kicks Off the New Week
Canadian high pressure is plunging southward behind the storm that laid down the first significant snows of the season from hicago to Cincinnati and Raleigh.
See Photos: First big snows
This high is providing a blast of chilly air. Temperatures in most locations east of the Rockies will plummet by as much as 20 degrees below early December averages.
Map: Current temperatures
In addition, a brisk northwesterly wind flow around low pressure in eastern Canada will make it feel even colder, while producing lake-effect snow for days!
...First, let's exam the temperature side of this story.
As you can see on the maps below, highs will only be in the 10s and 20s over the majority of the Midwest on Monday and
Tuesday. The Northeast will range from the mid-20s to near 40. Much of the South will range from the 30s to the 60s.
Gusty winds will provide an extra chill to the air from the Great Lakes to the Northeast and Southeast...
Big Upcoming Snowstorm for the East?
This may be the scene in portions of the mid-Atlantic and Northeast over the coming weeks, so you might want to get your shovels ready.
A storm that will take shape by the middle of December will cross the country and could end up developing into a major snowstorm for portions of the mid-Atlantic and New England.
There are different storm track scenarios at this point that mean the difference between mostly rain or a potential blizzard along the Interstate 95 corridor from Washington, D.C., to Boston.
So far, Chief Long Range Forecaster Joe Bastardi has been correct with the Winter Forecast for the Northeast with his prediction that late November to December would be cold and stormy for many.
According to Bastardi, "Repetitive cold waves and the threats of storms will keep hitting parts of the East in the weeks leading up to Christmas."
"One or two of these storms has the potential to become a major snowstorm for portions of the mid-Atlantic and New England, including the storm that may hit the East from December 12-14."
I mean, it's even bad in the socialist paradise of Canada.
Can you believe people are Loosing their Religion over this.....
What happened to the 'warmest year on record': The truth is global warming has halted
A year ago tomorrow, just before the opening of the UN Copenhagen world climate summit, the British Meteorological Office issued a confident prediction. The mean world temperature for 2010, it announced, 'is expected to be 14.58C, the warmest on record' - a deeply worrying 0.58C above the 19611990 average.
World temperatures, it went on, were locked inexorably into an everrising trend: 'Our experimental decadal forecast confirms previous indications that about half the years 2010-2019 will be warmer than the warmest year observed so far - 1998.'
Met Office officials openly boasted that they hoped by their statements to persuade the Copenhagen gathering to impose new and stringent carbon emission limits - an ambition that was not to be met.
Winter's icy grip: Drivers and pedestrians battle through blizzards in Kent last week
Last week, halfway through yet another giant, 15,000delegate UN climate jamboree, being held this time in the tropical splendour of Cancun in Mexico, the Met Office was at it again.
Never mind that Britain, just as it was last winter and the winter before, was deep in the grip of a cold snap, which has seen some temperatures plummet to minus 20C, and that here 2010 has been the coolest year since 1996.
Globally, it insisted, 2010 was still on course to be the warmest or second warmest year since current records began.
But buried amid the details of those two Met Office statements 12 months apart lies a remarkable climbdown that has huge implications - not just for the Met Office, but for debate over climate change as a whole.
Read carefully with other official data, they conceal a truth that for some, to paraphrase former US VicePresident Al Gore, really inconvenient: for the past 15 years, global warming has stopped.
This isn't meant to be happening. Climate science orthodoxy, as promulgated by bodies such as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the University of East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), says that temperatures have risen and will continue to rise in step with increasing CO2 in the atmosphere, and make no mistake, with the rapid industrialisation of China and India, CO2 levels have kept on going up.
According to the IPCC and its computer models, without enormous emission cuts the world is set to get between two and six degrees warmer during the 21st Century, with catastrophic consequences.
Last week at Cancun, in an attempt to influence richer countries to agree to give £20billion immediately to poorer ones to offset the results of warming, the US-based International Food Policy Research Institute warned that global temperatures would be 6.5 degrees higher by 2100, leading to rocketing food prices and a decline in production.
Grip of winter: A woman and girl sit under a tree on a bench in South Weald Park, Brentwood, Essex, this week
The maths isn't complicated. If the planet were going to be six degrees hotter by the century's end, it should be getting warmer by 0.6 degrees each decade; if two degrees, then by 0.2 degrees every ten years. Fortunately, it isn't.
Actually, with the exception of 1998 - a 'blip' year when temperatures spiked because of a strong 'El Nino' effect (the cyclical warming of the southern Pacific that affects weather around the world) - the data on the Met Office's and CRU's own websites show that global temperatures have been flat, not for ten, but for the past 15 years. They go up a bit, then down a bit, but those small rises and falls amount to less than their measuring system's acknowledged margin of error. They have no statistical significance and reveal no evidence of any trend at all.
...But though it was still successfully trying to influence media headlines during Cancun last week by saying that 2010 might yet end up as the warmest year, the small print reveals the Met Office climbdown. Last year it predicted that the 2010 average would be 14.58C. Last week, this had been reduced to 14.52C.
...But little by little, the supposedly settled scientific ' consensus' that the temperature rise is unprecedented, that it is set to continue to disastrous levels, and that it is all the fault of human beings, is starting to fray.
...The question now emerging for climate scientists and policymakers alike is very simple. Just how long does a pause have to be before the thesis that the world is getting hotter because of human activity starts to collapse?
You heretic….you are trampling on hallowed ground!
And this is causing major catastrophes out there where people are losing their livelihoods!
All of the contenders in line to head the prestigious House committees responsible for setting America's energy and science policy are global warming skeptics, and that's causing scientists to worry that Republicans will use their new positions for political grandstanding at the expense of scientific advancement.
The Republicans, who will take over leadership of the House in January, have not yet announced who will chair the Energy and Commerce Committee or the Science and Technology Committee, but the short lists for both committees consist solely of congressmen who question the veracity of climate change.
Already, Republican Speaker-elect John Boehner of Ohio has fired an opening salvo against Democratic inroads on climate change policy, announcing last week that the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, a pet project of outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi, would be dismantled.
...Wentworth, a spokesman for the Union of Concerned Scientists. "While they play politics, sound science is being trampled in the process."And here!
One of Al Gore's campaigns to save the planet has scaled back its field operations since climate legislation failed earlier this year in Congress.
The Alliance for Climate Protection was operating in about 25 states at its peak, including Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
But the group now has field offices in just seven states.
Read we're not going to be able to get money out of this congress to support our BS jobs.
"We've always believed it’s a mobile and nimble operation," said Sean Sarah, the non-profit group's spokesman. "We move to areas where it’s most effective. Of course the situation in Congress has changed. So our strategies and tactics have changed along with it."
No surprise there...that's all that matters...Washington to get the money and Nashville because ALGORE needs his office for photo ops, hosting politicians, etc.
Sarah didn't disclose which states the Alliance still has workers in. But he said the group retains its same staff size and headquarters in Washington and Gore's hometown of Nashville.
Gore in 2008 launched a $300 million advertising and lobbying campaign through the Alliance to help pass climate legislation on Capitol Hill, telling CBS' 60 Minutes at the time it was a “blitz as sweeping and expensive as a big corporation's rollout of a new product.” (See: Gore, but not forgotten)
The group has not disclosed how much of that money it ultimately spent.
What else can be said...I blame global warming.
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