From:
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/200256/Britain-set-to-shiver-as-cold-snap-brings-frost
Britain will be hit by winter’s first frosts
Saturday September 18,2010
By Sarah WestcottBRITAIN will be hit by the first frosts of winter this weekend – with warnings of snow in the hills. The freak cold snap has come weeks early, after the coldest August for 17 years. Temperatures could plummet to -1C (30F) at night – 12 degrees C below the seasonal average, forcing millions to switch the heating on. The chilly conditions come before the official end of summer – the autumn equinox on September 23 – and will see Britons digging out their duvets to keep warm at night. Forecasters warned the Midlands and Wales would be worst hit and the cold snap is a headache for farmers still harvesting spring barley.
Coldest August for 17 years? Golly, bet they could do with a bit of “Global Warming” right about now… And “12 C below the seasonal average” is a bit more dramatic than the 1/2 C of hypothetical global warming too. And this is while it’s still “summer”…
Don’t even have the spring barley in yet. And barley is one of the more cold tolerant crops. If you are having trouble getting it up and harvested in time, it will be hard to find alternative grains to grow.
The coldest places on Saturday night will be the Midlands and Wales, with temperatures falling as low as -1C and causing frost. “There is the possibility of a slight covering of snow over hills – and with the coldest air situated south of Scotland, it’s England which is most at risk. “This is a precursor for a cold October with a running threat of frost.” Temperatures today will also be noticeably colder – just 12 or 13C (55F) across Britain compared with a normal 15 or 16C (61F).
So we’re running about 3 C colder than normal despite having frost and snow (that release heat in the formation of the frozen water, putting a slow down on temperature drops until the moisture is frozen out of the air).
So I guess “global warming” means snow and frost in summer in Britain… Who knew?
Musings from the Chiefio 
I think there is a prolonged and significant change of the North Atlantic’s temperatures trend.
In my own investigation into the CETs oscillations since 1650 I have identified a natural trigger for those changes. The CET response is cumulative and variable in intensity and delay, but always there.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CETnd.htm
Latest data implies a down-trend at least comparable to one in the 1950-60s
No longer climate warming it is now “Global Climate Disruption” GCD newly invented buzz word for climatologists. I guess after “Global cooling” and “Global Warming” they are tired of being wrong all the time, and needed to cover all the bases. All caused by human activities, of course. For normal people this should separate out climatology as a crank science to be ridiculed. Now if we can get across to politicians, how stupid this looks, maybe this jumping off the economic cliff to save the world, will die out. pg
I live not to far from Ocean City Md and the summer has been a tad warm this past year, but something very curious started happening back around Aug 18th: The leaves on the oak tree I planted this spring started turning red.
At first I shrugged it off going with a hypothesis that it was doing it early because I had only planted it about 6 months earlier, however within a week the Canadian Geese started arriving.
Now that got my attention and I started paying attention more and sure enough I started seeing the older maples and oaks leaves had started turning. This was happening way early then they normally do.
makes one go hmmm.
Thanks for drawing our attention to that E.M., like we REALLY need reminding….
Yup, frost predicted here overnight, and the last couple of mornings have been decidedly chilly, so I think I’ll leave off my customary early morning ‘stroll around and check it’s all Bristol and shipshape’ until the sun is well up in the sky.
My god, think of what that will do to beer if we cannot get a good barley crop harvested!
@Vukcevic: As usual, an interesting chart. Yeah, I’d agree that Europe is headed for some significant cold for a while, as the ocean turns…
@Richard Sharpe: And it’s not just the beer, whiskey too!! Now THAT is a climate catastrophe worth worry! Major brewers need to reserve land for barley in Spain while they still can! Damn the Russian wheat shortage, it’s Barley that matters!
@Chuclkes: Take a look at the Flags of Visitors on the right. There are a lot of folks NOT in the UK and Australia visiting. So please forgive my forcing you to see the reality of your plight against your will, and take what comfort you can from knowing all those other folks are
laughingsympathetic…;-)
@P.G.Sharrow: What is happening, IMHO, is the fact that a 30 year interval is NOT climate, just slow cycle weather, is slowly forcing it’s way into the public view. All the ‘change’ and ‘disruption’ and whatever they have to invent next to try and avoid the truth that a 30 year average of weather is just weather is just an indication of how screwed up is the thesis.
OK, it’s “fun” that a couple of places (central Oz and the UK) are extra cold. We here all know that global warming isn’t happening, so this is, as it were, more confirmation for the already-converted. And of course it’s helpful that many of the Brits and many of the central Ozians (both of them?) will now probably become more cynical of AGW.
But these are only two spots on the globe. The media were happy to play up the Moscow heat-wave while temperatures plunged in central Siberia and South America. We need to make sure that we don’t play the same game, and are seen not to play the same game. So maybe
(a) items like these two could be put in a global context – eg. cooling oceans http://icecap.us/images/uploads/argodata.jpg + http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif = cooling planet
and (b) the natural forces that might be causing the global cooling could be highlighted (start with the sun, eg.
Click to access Solar_Arch_NY_Mar2_08.pdf
http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2009/07/08/solar-physicist-predicts-ice-age-solar-cycle-24-has-now-gone-clearly-below-dalton-level/
http://www.john-daly.com/solar.htm
http://nsw.royalsoc.org.au/talks_2010/talk_Sep2010.html)
to preempt the inevitable blaming of it on human-caused “climate disruption”.
To put it another way, we may win a battle thanks to some local weather, but we still have to win the war over climate.
@Mike Jonas: All good points. All I can offer in my defense is that I’m a trader first and a climate guy second (by force of the fact that I need to make money to eat…) So I focus on weather events as they tell me what might be important things about markets and give me clues where to make money.
While I try to remember to bring in the AGW connections, the fact is that when Im in ‘deep trader mode’ I’m really thinking more about the barley, beer, natural gas, heating oil, insurance industries, ag equipment makers, road salt suppliers, etc. And with a focus on the 3 to 6 month trade aspects more than the 1000 year climate implications ( 30 years is still just weather cycles, not climate…)
So these stories got me thinking about beer (after thinking about whiskey ;-) and that ‘input costs’ would be going up for European and Aussie makers. Need to check on Canada too, but if Canadian barley is doing OK, then maybe TAP (Molsen Coors) would have an advantage on input costs… And SAM and HOOK ought to have an advantage as the USA is warmer. It also implies that food costs in Britain are likely to rise (so restaurants may not do so well, but grocers will have higher ‘year over year’ sales; as grocers always pass on the increased prices but restaurants often don’t). For Australia, I’m not so sure. The added water may well mean improved crops. Need to look into that… But my sense of it is that Australia is more water limited than cold limited. So Aussie brewers and ag related may well do better.
And LNG shipments into Britain ought to rise, so that LNG tanker stock TGP ought to do well… (and it has been rising nicely from lower left to upper right…)
So I thank you for adding more of the AGW context, and can only hope you forgive my pecuniary leanings…
HOOK and SAM both have nice charts, but SAM looks a bit topped to me and HOOK is looking like a parabolic rise on takeover rumors, I’d not buy it until after a drop back to sane multiples… TAP looks like a nice entry and with cheap valuations too. Probably worth looking at the latin american brewers as well. I think I need to do a focused posting on Brewing stocks… with ‘lab work’ to asses the quality of the products too ;-)
6 month performance rank:
Oddly missing from the list is BUD. It does not have an ‘industry’ marker on it’s chart either. Guess it doesn’t fit into the “US Brewers” industry anymore (then again, most of those on the list don’t look very US to me… ah the vague nature of industry groupings) or lost it’s marker in the merger.
But the mind wanders ;-)
Yes, yes, solar stuff and ocean cycles and such are far more important than I’d noted in the posting…
(CCU has a spectacular run and 4% dividend… wonder if I could pass off a case or two as ‘evaluating company products’… and a business expense… 8-0)