I too was dumbstruck by the lack of numerical comparison with any previous 3-year period for rainfall, so congratulations on your analysis.

Secondly, this delusion of stability is essentially a “Fall” myth which leads to the strange notion of optimum populations.

Although I’m not endorsing any cycle theories per se, there’s a fascinating pdf on the web from the Foundation for the study of cycles from 1977. (”Cycles: the mysterious forces that trigger events”).
They found a 9.6 year cycle in the population of many living species including salmon, lynx, snowshoe hare, coyote, marten, chinch bug etc and basic population geography used to show the graphs of rabbits v. foxes.

Whatever lenght of the cycle, 3 years of (what you subsequently describe as anecdotal) evidence cannot really show a trend.

Sadly, as you point out in your, as ever, insightful analysis the National Trust has become yet another campaigner without regard for accuracy or any true ethical considerations. And their PR led approach plays into the hands of the churnalism of “Flat Earth News”.

Keep up the good work in 2009. We’re going to need you in the run up to Copenhagen.

I like that. Maybe it is about that ecofeminist idea that brutal man rapes nature.

From the Wikipedia page,

“While feminism is a primary entry point, women and men also come to ecofeminism through environmentalism, alternative spirituality, animal rights, and other progressive affiliations. The kaleidoscopic lens of ecofeminism includes a prepatriarchal historical analysis, an embracement of spirituality, and a commitment to challenging racism, classism, imperialism, heterosexism, ageism, ableism, anthropocentrism (i.e. human supremacism), speciesism and other forms of oppression.”

See, if you deny climate change, we all know you’re a white supremacist … phallologocentrist!!!

I jest but this is a serious school of thought. The problem is that it is also a highly polarizing philosophy, and apparently, its seeds have spread through our culture. It is so polarizing that we risk economic suicide as the people turn on themselves.

I would like to see a TV series on Nature’s most brutal practices. Nature certainly is abundant, and beautiful, and we can project onto it our feelings of purity, harmony, and virgin innocence. But nature is also chaotic, brutal, horrific. Ecofeminism blames men for the brutal parts. Ecofeminism blames man for the chaotic parts, the “climate chaos”.

It is great to be able to come to this site and read a careful and reasoned analysis demonstrating the errors in the latest greenie institution claims. But I fear that unless we get down into the heart of their feelings and worldview, they can simply dismiss us as men who just don’t get it.

We’re like the slave owners who claim we can’t set the slaves free because it would ruin the economy.

When people like Matthew Oates tell us that “climate change” is “happening now”, I always want to turn the question around and ask: what would the weather be like if “climate change” was “not happening”? How would we know it was “not happening”? What would the signs be?

As a thought experiment, imagine that by a miracle, carbon dioxide levels were restored to 280 parts per million at midnight tonight, and remained at that level for the next hundred years. What weather patterns would we expect to experience in the UK?

Would we experience a sort of “Goldilocks Climatic Optimum” – not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry, etc.? Would animal and plant populations become fixed in place, neither advancing northwards, nor shrinking southwards, neither expanding nor dwindling?

I’m no scientist, but I think that would be a fantasy. Looking back to historical times when CO2 was at pre-industrial levels, there appears to have been no shortage of extreme weather. The “Great Storm” of 1703 and the gales that dispersed the Spanish Armada are evidence that occasional disastrous storminess has always been with us.

Looking at just the 18th century, we can read about a number of extreme and alarming weather events. The snow and rains of 1774, when the Thames Valley was flooded and when the bridge at Henley was swept away by flood water. The record European heat wave of 1757, when Symons’s Monthly Meteorological Magazine reported “Very great heat in July”. The extremely cold winter of 1739/40, when there was a devastating famine in Ireland. If National Trust conservationists had been alive then, how dismayed and alarmed might they have been! In addition, the widespread destruction of forests to build ships for overseas trade and foreign wars, and species coming under threat – such as wolves (last one reported to be exterminated in Scotland, 1743), wildcats, ospreys, pine martens and capricorn beetles – might well have convinced them that an eco-catastrophe was under way and the end of Nature was surely nigh.

What I find highly ironic is that, then as now, human beings were said to be ultimately to blame for weather excesses. After the storm of 1703, many believed that the disaster had been sent by God to punish the corruption of the English; Queen Anne proclaimed a national day of fasting, to pay respect to those who had died and to pray to God so that He would not send another storm. Extreme weather has been God’s response to human sinfulness, apparently, ever since the Ark. And the remedy? Lifestyle changes – an increase in piety and a reduction of sin, so that God’s wrath might be averted. Sounds strangely familiar.

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose – in human nature, as well as the climate.

A very Happy New Year to the Editors and to all those who make Climate Resistance such an interesting and worthwhile place to visit!

That should probably be, “We’ll be electrocuted…”

They’re just a gang of fleas arguing about where the dog should go next.

It seems that many people, especially in countries that are materially well-off, just can’t resist a good disaster scenario. I believe this condition is called “catastrophism” – we just love it! Add to this the incredible vanity that we can actually change the climate of the whole planet, and science doesn’t stand a chance – we’ve been given an irresistable Quest, which has now become a quasi religion. Heretics will be burned at the stake.