I don’t know. The whole climate thing completely confuses me. I’m veering towards the idea that the more temperate winters we’ve (mostly) been having for the past 20 years or so are a result of global warming but that the net result of global warming will be extremes of temperature - very hot summers, very cold winters…because weather systems will have shifted owing to climate change, but I have no idea at all what weather systems these are (apart from the hadley cell I can’t remember the names of anything). I’m also assuming (perhaps wrongly) that eventually there will be a balance (of sorts).

Happy New Decade!!

Forgot of course that anyone from the South of the world, views cold as if it were the devils own doing and so you would hate with a shuddering, eye-widened insane screaming all thought of frozen toothpaste and ice on the inside of the windows (bloody central heating killed Jack Frost).

But I’m glad you liked it.

And, 20 years of sharply (SHARPLY)increasing cold? Well I do wish that we hadn’t buggered up the planet, but I can’t be sorry that we’re getting proper weather back.

But that is the bit that confuses me. Winters were colder when I was a child. They were, it’s not just my memories of living out in the middle of nowhere 1800 feet about sea level doing it. And I’ve asked my grandparents and snow (a lot of snow) was quite common when they were younger. So surely the warmer winters of the past two decades and before (at least they’ve seemed warmer to me) are the anomaly, not the return to the weather we used to have?

Common sense dictates that we have buggered up the climate - how could we not have have? The number of factories, the number of engines running constantly, the number of buildings spraying heat and fumes and chemicals up into the air, even the sheer volume of people on the planet, this must all affect temperature and pressure and the balance of the weather which (from what I remember of A level geography and a bit of reading since is all exceedingly finely tuned).

So I’m not one of these people who say “there’s no such thing as global warming because look! see! temperatures are dropping” because all of the above and more would affect things and cause temperatures to drop eventually (not counting the position of the British Isles anyway which by rights should be a colder place than it is).

But have the higher temperatures of the past couple of decades (in particular - I know that temp has been rising steadily for much longer than that) been a way of the world shrugging weather back to a balance of sorts (and do we just not know what normal is any more?).

Hum.. those last paragraphs were incredibly confused…and I’m not sure that I’ve actually managed to say what I meant, and I rather think I’ve come across as someone who doesn’t believe in climate change (which I do). Hang on, let me try to write what I mean in very simple (for me to understand) sentences.

Weather used to be colder. It’s not colder now. We’re buggering up the planet’s climate. That’s without a doubt. It’s going to get colder here. But it used to be colder here (and if you look at medieval records it was significantly colder). But then if you look at records from even further back - Roman times say - it was significantly warmer (they grew peaches in the North East). So, if we stopped all the things we do that affect climate then probably things would readjust to a level and a balance will (eventually) be reached because that’s what the planet does. This balance may be colder or it may be warmer than it is now. If we don’t stop doing what we’re doing then obviously the climate pendulum will swing further in either direction…ok, this is where I stop and am flummoxed…

Anyone got any thoughts?

>Proper winters stop all unnecessary questions.

oh.

oh.

and then the rest and all the forecoming made sense. beautiful. in a non-(australian)-life sense.

on the upside, you’ve probably got another 20 years of sharply (SHARPLY) increasingly cold and colder weather ahead.

too pissed and tired to actually COMPREHEND anything, of course.

Happy New Decade, regardless!

We are softies nowadays, what with central heating and cars and shops and stuff.

And I agree with you and let’s not be humble about it - our opinions are worth something!- boilers should come with a health warning, nasty noisy things. And that’s before all the heat makes the germs proliferate. There’s nothing like some cold to kill off all the bugs.

Tent in the backgarden? It’s a thought! But it wouldn’t be the same, it would just be me camping out in the snow and for it to be a proper winter the cold has to invade your home…

All the damn snow is melting now…I hate it when it starts to look dirty.

You’re right, there is a clarity of thought you get in really cold weather. It energises while heat saps.

Hi John and welcome! I know those places!! We had friends at Low Turney Shield. Turney Shield was the house just down past the cattle grid wasn’t it? Or is my memory completly off?

Seriously, yes, 2 inches of ice on the inside of the windows - however that could have been because we’d bought the house in the September or October and didn’t actually move in until New Years Eve so it had been empty for a while! The people we talked to did mention that the winter we’d moved in was (almost) as bad as 63!

My dad was working away so it was left to mum to cope with the move, we didn’t have a car (and only one bus a week when it could get through) not that it would have been much use anyway and we moved in with no coal other than a couple of bags we’d slung into the back of the removal van. (Which dumped our furniture in the layby and then hot-tailed it back to Newcastle before the roads were completely blocked.) So we (my mum and I - my brother poor little thing decided he wasn’t staying and went back to our grandma’s) lit a fire, whereupon all the pipes in the house burst. By the end of that first night we’d managed to burn a few bits of furniture.

It’s still my most favourite place in the world, definitely the most beautiful place in the world and the place I’d move back to in a heartbeat if I had the chance (for chance read cash). There’s not a day goes by that I don’t miss the aching lonely beauty of it. Still, inching ever closer… I’ll get there in the end, even if it’s just be buried there.