“Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”
(Mark Twain)
As we face another day of blizzards and record sub-zero temperatures, you might be interested to hear what the clever people at the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia were saying a decade ago.
In March 2000, Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the CRU, went public with the warning that within a few years winter snowfall would become “a very rare and exciting event”. “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Viner now works on climate change projects for the government-funded British Council and still stands by his prediction. I wonder what he thinks as the cold snap looks set to extend well into January. He’d probably say this is weather, not climate.
They say when snow falls, nature listens. Well, climate scientists don’t!
