"To understand the scale of the climate emergency, look at hurricanes"

... says everybody's favourite go-to source of Climate Change Porn.

Let's follow their advice and look at long term records.

And... we establish that there is no discernible pattern or long term trend, it's entirely random, and this year 2022 (so far) has seen relatively few major hurricanes.

Admittedly there is a lot of cherry picking with this - the Alarmists sneak in definitions like 'costliest' (of course $ damages are going up, the Yanks have built a lot more valuable stuff near the coastline over the past century); or include weaker sub-hurricanes (which show up more in the records because people didn't used to bother counting them, or they formed and dissipated far out at sea); or select shorter time periods over which there appears to be a trend (2004 was a bad year, but preceded and followed by several years with no landfalling hurricanes) and so on.

So believe who you want, I always prefer raw data where the parameters are clear and consistent. The raw data just shows random patterns since 1851, and if we're using hurricanes as a yard stick, there is no climate crisis.

The English Rain Dance

In some cultures, if there's not enough rain, they do ritual dances and so on, I doubt very much that they work. Apart from attracting tourists.

The English appear to have stumbled across the secret - if a drought threatens, the water suppliers announce hose-pipe bans, and hey presto, within a couple of days we don't need them any more. We've seen this happen often enough in our lifetimes.

Clearly, it will take months for aquifers, rivers and reservoirs to get back to normal, and I do not know whether or when the farmers will have had enough rain to harvest their crops, bearing in mind they have to dry out a bit first, but I'm glad to see the back of the heatwaves.

Could go either way - make up your own mind.

From Euronews:

What role does climate change play in Germany's severe flooding?

How is climate change affecting flooding?

The likelihood of flooding is significantly increased due to the extreme weather patterns caused by global climate change. Changes in the geography of the land also have a part to play in increasing flooding. With certain vegetation and other land barriers being broken down as a result of changing temperatures and freak weather patterns, many of the natural preventative measures against flooding are no longer there.

Higher temperatures mean higher rainfall

America is experiencing its hottest June on record and as a result of this heatwave, we’re experiencing higher air and water temperatures, increasing evaporation. With increased evaporation comes increased rainfall, with longer durations as well as higher intensity and frequency too.

That article contained a link to another article on Euronews:

The longest river in Italy is drying up. What does this mean for those who rely on it for food?

This is a sign of climate change

These record-low water levels, which the AIPO would normally only measure in August, are partly a result of the lack of rainfall that northern Italy has been suffering. “Normally it should rain once every one or two weeks,” says Mantovani, “but now it hasn’t rained for three months.”

The problems start, however, in the mountains, where snowfall has been at its lowest for 20 years measuring 50 per cent less than the seasonal average. The glaciers of the Alps, which act as reservoirs to feed the river, are also shrinking each year. On Monte Viso, a mountain close to the French border where the Po River originates, the permafrost is melting and causing chunks of rock to crumble away.

The situation has set alarm bells ringing about the effects climate change could have on an area so heavily dependent upon the river’s waters. This season has already been a stark warning that the warming planet may turn Italy's fertile farmlands and nutrient-rich Delta into a salty wasteland, while putting hundreds of thousands of livelihoods at risk.

An inconvenient truth

I have spent the last year and a half reading up on AGW theory. One after another, I have managed to iron out most of the contradictions, half-truths and flawed explanations for correct observations. Each one is a bit of an intellectual effort to overcome because it's all things that most people - Alarmists, sceptics, weather forecasters and the man in the street (i.e. me) - just take for granted.

I have spent most of that year and a half kicking myself for being sent off in the wrong direction for not having noticed something sooner, going back, rethinking and redoing my workings (and regretting many of my posts based on false - but widely held - assumptions). I hope that I have now got the bottom of it all and overcome the final false assumption, which had been nagging me for months...
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The 'inconvenient truth' is that the entire Greenhouse Effect is due to clouds (and their altitude)!

All the Alarmist pictures and diagrams just show the sunlight hitting the surface and being reflected back down by Greenhouse Gases. Clouds - when they appear at all - merely serve to reflect even more radiation back down and 'warm' (i.e. slow down the cooling of) the surface (which they clearly do during the night time).

To get back to reality, you have to draw in the cloud cover (accepted as two-thirds of the surface, so we might as well round that up to 'all of it') on all their pictures and diagrams and realise that most sunlight hits clouds first - that is the layer that absorbs sunlight. The temperature of their upper surface is determined by sunlight, and that in turn dictates the temperature of land and oceans via the gravito-thermal effect (the Greenhouse Effect = cloud altitude x lapse rate).

When you draw in the missing clouds, you realise what's causing the 'back radiation' and what's blocking terrestrial radiation from all getting to space and being measured by satellites. They are big white things that can be miles thick. They reflect sunlight, so we have to assume they reflect all EM radiation to the same extent (arguably more). It appears to be widely accepted that higher clouds mean a warmer surface than lower clouds, this is a correct observation and ties in with all this.

Another smoking gun is that on Venus and Earth, the upper surface of clouds is at the 'average emitting altitude' aka 'effective radiating layer'. This is not a coincidence - to all intents and purposes, they are the 'effective radiating layer'.

Clouds are also the 'effective absorbing layer' as far as incoming sunlight is concerned. Remember that they calculate a planet's 'effective temperature' based on 'what the sunlight hits first'. The 'effective temperature' calculation gives reliable answers, and so unsurprisingly, a planet's 'effective temperature' is pretty much the same as the actual temperature of what the sunlight hits first - namely the upper layer of clouds.

Unless a planet or satellite has no clouds (Mars, Moon) in which case the 'effective temperature' is a good approximation of the actual surface temperature. (The maths is trickier with the Moon because it revolves so slowly.)
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To sum up - there is a Greenhouse Effect warming the surface. Clouds (if high enough) mean that the surface is warmer than it otherwise would be. Nothing to do with Greenhouse Gases.

"What?" shouts the audience, "Have you gone completely, stark staring mad?
A. Don't most people say that clouds have a small overall cooling effect?
B. Doesn't it get a bit cooler when clouds pass between you and the sun?"

A. Maybe they do, but it's not true. They don't. Do the interplanetary comparison:

Venus - completely covered with very thick clouds at a very high altitude (50 km to 80 km). Hard surface gets very little sunlight, and only indirect sunlight at that. Huge Greenhouse Effect, about 500 degrees.

Mars/Moon - no clouds. Hard surface gets all the sunlight you'd expect. No Greenhouse Effect - even though the Martian atmosphere has about thirty times as much CO2 as Earth.

Earth - two-thirds moderately thick cloud cover at a few km altitude. Moderate Greenhouse Effect, accepted as 33 degrees.

Conclusion - the higher and thicker the clouds, the larger the Greenhouse Effect.

Caveat - clouds have a higher albedo (reflect more sunlight) than land or oceans, so they have to be at a certain minimum altitude for there to be net warming (so that the lapse rate effect trumps the missing sunlight). When I say 'net warming' I am comparing a hypothetical planet with and without clouds - NOT a cloudy and cloud-free area on the same planet. That minimum altitude is two-to-three km above the Earth's surface as far as I can make out, and on the whole they are much higher than that.

B. Yes, but you have to compare like-with-like.

i. Higher clouds warm the atmosphere, but it is not a local effect. The atmosphere tries to equalize temperatures around the globe (a phenomenon we refer to as 'the weather') and does a fairly good job under difficult circumstances (freezing poles, sweltering deserts). The oceans do the same thing, but that is way more complicated and poorly understood.

ii. Most of the temperature you feel - and all of the official temperature measurements - is the air temperature with no direct sunlight. Direct sunshine just gives a bit of a boost - on a hot, sunny day, it's still very warm in the shade with no direct sunlight. On a freezing cold winter day, it's still very cold even when standing in full-on direct sunlight hitting you at 90 degrees.

iii. So if you want maximum daytime temperature, you have to be a cloud-NIMBY - clouds everywhere else to warm the air (benefitting you as well as 'them'), but clear sky where you are to get the extra few degrees caused by the direct sunshine (only benefitting you and your immmediate neighbours).

iv. How many hours direct sunshine does a typical patch of land or ocean get in 24 hours? About four? Are those few hours really enough to keep the surface warm for the other twenty? Clearly not.

v. While you do feel warmer when there are no clouds between you and the sun, nearly everybody accepts that clouds tend to slow down cooling in the night time. The net effect is an overall win for clouds.

vi. If there are very low clouds (fog or mist) of course they have a direct cooling effect. That has partly to do with them blocking sunlight, partly with them being at a low altitude, but primarily because they make things damp and so the surface (and you) lose thermal energy because of the latent heat of evaporation.

vii. It is also the case that clouds often mean rain. We notice that rain cools the surface but we don't notice that this indirectly warms the atmosphere higher up - it's because of the latent heat of evaporation. So we automatically associate 'clouds' with 'cooler', not realising that most are 'high and dry'. There are clouds directly above you two-thirds of the time, but it's not raining two-thirds of the time, even in Wales or Norway.
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There. I've said it. Sue me.
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The icing on the cake is that some Alarmists say that warmer temperatures will evaporate the clouds = more direct sunlight on the surface = higher temperatures. The opposite is true! Less cloud cover would mean a) less Greenhouse Effect and b) more direct radiation from surface to space, especially at night = lower temperatures again, so entirely self-regulating = stable temperatures.

Climate science - as easy as A, B, C.

We all accept that the actual average sea-level temperature of the Earth (288K) is about 33K higher than its 'effective temperature' i.e. what it would be if Earth had no atmosphere (255K). That's basic physics - average incoming solar radiation in W/m2 minus amount reflected as light (known figures) raises temperature of the 'surface' (as defined - see below) to whatever it needs to be to radiate the same amount of W/m2 back out to space.

The Consensus is that the entire 33K discrepancy is due to the presence of minor trace gases in the atmosphere, such as the +/- 2% water vapour or 0.04% CO2 ('greenhouse gases'). The surface converts short wave visible radiation from the Sun to longer wave infra red radiation, and this is trapped/absorbed or reflected by the 'greenhouse gases', which in turn warms up the surface even more, so it emits even more infra red in a vicious circle. Here is a typical article explaining this, which includes the energy budget diagram which doesn't add up as a bonus. Parts of that explanation are correct, parts are guesswork and assumptions, it is riddled with contradictions, leaves a lot of loose ends and unanswered questions, and overlooks some important basic physics.

Actually, if you sift out the basic physics from the guesswork and just apply the basic physics, it is quite easy to work out that the hard surface should be 45K - 50K warmer than the effective temperature. The formulas and calculations are the same whether or not there are any 'greenhouse gases', which suggest that they do not increase temperatures. As a matter of fact, there is only a 33K discrepancy, because water vapour and water in the troposphere have a moderating influence and reduce surface warming and temperature fluctuations (which accords with everyday experience and like-for-like comparisons of temperatures in humid and dry areas).

They could and should teach this as part of GCSE level physics, it wouldn't take more than two or three lessons.

A. Barry

You can easily work out that there are about 10,000 kg of air (101,325 Pascal ÷ 9.807 m/s/s) for every m2 surface. We know that 1 m2 of air at sea-level has a mass of 1.293 kg. So if atmosphere were same pressure and density all the way up, with a hard edge, it would be 7.7 km high.

You can guess intuitively that the atmosphere gets thinner as you go up and gradually tapers off into space and that there is no hard edge. So let's assume actual average density is half that at sea-level, a reasonable guess is that most of the mass of the atmosphere is up to an altitude of 15 km or so, and atmospheric pressure falls by about 7% for each km you go up, at least for the first five or ten km (which is not far off actual measurements).

If you want to calculate this properly, you use the Barometric Formula (or 'Barry', as I affectionately call it) which is based on actual ideal gas laws and gives you reasonably accurate predictions for pressures at different altitude, at least for the troposphere (which is all we really care about, i.e. is the bottom 11 km, others say bottom 13 km, it's thicker at Equator and thinner at the Poles). The formula is very clever. I can just about understand how they work it out, but I would struggle to reverse engineer it or explain how to derive it.

B. The lapse rate

In an intuitive way, you can also guess that the temperature at the top of the atmosphere is close to the temperature of the nearly empty vacuum of space, which is either close to 0K or has no measurable temperature at all, depending on your point of view. So temperature falls the higher you go, as anybody who has been up a mountain knows.

Remember that 'energy cannot be created or destroyed, it merely changes from one form to another'. Air at sea level as thermal energy (aka kinetic energy) and no potential energy (it can't fall any further down). Air higher up has the same amount of total energy - less kinetic energy and some potential energy. It is reasonable to expect the total amount of energy to be the same at different altitudes.

Once you accept this, you can work out the lapse rate. I'll show you how, just for fun and because it is important:

Potential energy in Joules = mass x gravity x height.
So J = m x g x h

Joules required to increase temperature of 1 kg of a substance by 1K = specific heat capacity ('cp' ) of that substance.
So T = J ÷ (m x cp)

We can simplify/merge those two equations as follows: T = (m x g x h)/(m x cp); cancel 'm' top and bottom; T = g x h/cp; divide both sides by h; T/h = g/cp.

(Thanks to Tallbloke for this short-cut - Wiki gives an explanation which is almost impenetrable to the layman, although it ends with exactly the same formula)

1 kg of air which is 1,000 metres higher up has got 9,807 more Joules of potential energy than 1 kg 1,000 metres lower down, so the air lower down must have 9,807 more Joules of kinetic energy (and vice versa).

How much warmer is the air 1,000 metres lower down?
Specific heat capacity of air = 1,006 J used/needed to increase 1 kg of material by 1K
T/1,000 = 9.807/1,006
T/km = 9.75K
Hence the predicted lapse rate = 9.75 K/km altitude.

[I think it makes more sense to a) use the specific heat capacity for constant volume rather than constant pressure, and b) to calculate J/m3 rather than J/kg. That means first using Barry to find pressure, at different altitudes and then finding the temperatures which balances Joules of kinetic energy and Joules of potential energy (basing calculations on density at different altitudes, not on pressure, so you need to know pressure and temperature to work out density, and the temperature is the thing you are looking for!), which is why the lapse rate I worked out was 8K/km. I'm not sure if my logic on a) and b) is 100% sound, but my method gives an answer which is closer to the real world observed typical rate of 6.5 K/km, so I'm happy with my method for now.]

C. What is the surface of the Earth?

The Consensus give a nod to Barry and the main reason for the lapse rate. They don't deny they exist, they give the formulas but then downplay them as irrelevances and draw no conclusions from them. It's like the road sign saying turn left and the sat nav saying turn left, but turning right anyway. It's all about radiation from the surface being reflected back down by those dastardly 'greenhouse gases'! Any other explanation is heresy!

The Consensus' most heinous and borderline criminal obfuscation is in their definition of the 'surface'. They define 'the surface' as the hard surface at sea level, or the surface of the oceans (two-thirds of Earth's surface is ocean).

Here are a few reasons why that is wrong:

1. If you calculate the 'effective temperature', you should also be looking at 'effective surface', which is whatever the sun light hits first, Earth has a lot of clouds, so the 'effective surface' is NOT at sea-level.
2. If you approach Earth at speed from space, you feel it when you hit the atmosphere. That is the real surface.
3. If you scale down the earth to the size of a football, the troposphere is only 0.2 mm thick. You think it's thick when you look up at an airliner, but it's only 11 km away, you could drive that far in a few minutes.
4. There are about 10,000 kg of air (mass) for every m2 surface (see above)
5. The sun only warms the top few inches of the hard surface (or water), that's a few kg of mass per m2. So if the atmosphere is 0.2 mm thick, the hard surface or sea-level is barely a couple of molecules thick.
6. When we talk about the surface of the ocean, we mean the top of the water, not the hard surface at the bottom.
7. When we talk about the surface of the Sun or a Gas Giant, we mean the surface of the atmosphere, not the hard surface lower down (to the extent there even is one). Why do we change the rules when looking at rocky planets with thinner atmospheres?
8. As far as heat distribution goes, we might as well treat the top few inches of the hard surface as the bottom part of the troposphere. It's usually the same temperature, and must be the same pressure.

Therefore, the real surface is the whole troposphere, not the hard surface or the surface of the oceans.

Summary

The troposphere is the surface, and as a whole and on average, is the temperature you would expect from incoming solar radiation = +/- 255K. This is what you would expect, and this is what you get. I don't see why anybody taking this view should be on the defensive in a discussion. It is those trying to say otherwise who are struggling.

The troposphere itself, it is not a constant 255K. There has to be - and there is - a lapse rate. There are different ways of calculating/predicting it, and it can be observed/measured, so it's about 33K warmer than 255K at the bottom (the hard surface); it's about 255K half-way up (as defined); and it's about 33K cooler than 255K at the top of the troposphere.

Bonus

This A-B-C easy GCSE-level approach also explains a lot of things which the Consensus explanation can't and doesn't (and by and large, just glosses over to save embarrassment), for example:

1. Why the top of the troposphere (or the peak of a very high mountain) is colder than the 'effective' temperature, i.e. colder than it would be if Earth had no atmosphere.

2. Why the day/night temperature range on Earth (+/- 15K) is so much smaller than the day/night temperature range on the Moon (+/- 300K).

3. Why, despite the 'greenhouse effect', Earth's day-time temperatures at the surface are lower than what they would be without an atmosphere.

4. Why the 'greenhouse effect' is much stronger at night (i.e. actual temperature minus expected temperature of the night side of Earth if it had no atmosphere) than in the day time (when the Sun is blazing down on us and there is plenty of radiation sloshing about).

5.  Why 'heat rises' is a truism only observed in enclosed spaces kept above the temperature of their surroundings (central heating in buildings; actual greenhouses/polytunnels) and why convection doesn't actually transfer heat upwards. For sure, there are thermals above hot surfaces (like square miles of dark tarmac at airports, which can make landing trickier than it need be on hot days), but for every molecule that goes up, one has to come down. One molecule converts kinetic energy to potential energy and the one coming down does exactly the opposite.

6. Why there is no need to get tied in knots over which methods energy (in its various forms - visible and infra red, kinetic energy, potential energy, latent heat of evaporation/condensation etc) is distributed in the troposphere (conduction, convection or radiation). All you need to know is that energy tries to distribute itself as evenly as possible (governed by the physical laws discussed here, or by winds/weather, if you want an everyday term for a complicated process).

7. Why the troposphere emits twice as much radiation towards the ground than it does out into space. This cannot be satisfactorily explained by 'greenhouse gases trapping and/or reflecting heat', it is because the troposphere at sea level is warmer and hence emits more radiation that the layer higher up, which is colder and so emits less radiation, see here.

8. Why water can't be a 'greenhouse gas', although this is based on observation rather than physics, which is really complicated with water vapour and water (see here).

9a. Why it is irrelevant that N2 or O2 are transparent to, and cannot absorb or emit infra red (even if this were true, which is questionable). They can certainly warm up, and they in turn keep the hard surface at the same temperature. So even if N2 and O2 aren't emitting infra red themselves, the hard surface converts that warmth back to radiation anyway. The total infra red leaving the hard surface is the same whether it is bouncing back and forth as infra red between hard surface and troposphere (the Consensus), or whether the hard surface has to convert kinetic energy from N2 and O2 back into infra red first (the actual explanation).

9b. Why, even if the troposphere were indeed completely transparent to and unaffected by infra red radiation, incapable of absorbing or emitting it, the temperature at the hard surface would be the same as it is now. The hard surface would quickly reach 255K (accepted by the Consensus) and it would warm up the troposphere by conduction and convection until the whole troposphere (the effective surface) were 255K on average (it being incapable of radiating heat to space, that's the Consensus). That 255K would be the average, there would still be a lapse rate and so the temperature of the hard surface would increase to 288K (and the top of the troposphere would be about +/- 222K). The hard surface would then be warm enough to emit the required amount of infra red straight through the troposphere and back into space (not being able to lose any more energy to the troposphere by conduction or convection).

10. Why there is a lapse rate on all planets with an atmosphere, even Gas Giants (Jupiter, Saturn), which have no hard surface (and if they do, radiation from the Sun never gets there) and which consist mainly of 'non-greenhouse gases' (mainly hydrogen and helium); why they are insanely hot at their centres; and why those Gas Giants are actually emitting more radiation to space than they get from the Sun.

11. Why the 'greenhouse effect' on Mars is barely measurable (max 5K), even though there is twenty-five times as much CO2/m2 surface area as there is on Earth.

12. Why you can predict Venus' hard-surface temperature fairly accurately using the same basic physics (here). All you need to know is distance from Sun and albedo, from which you work out 'effective temperature'; the height of 'effective surface'; the acceleration duty to gravity and specific heat capacity of the gases in the atmosphere, from which you work out the lapse rate up- and downwards. Whether or not the constituent gases are 'greenhouse gases' is entirely irrelevant. Knowing the mass of constituent gases in kg/m2 helps as well for cross checking.

"It never rains but it pours"

The Guardian appears to be taking this expression literally.

Guardian reader's letter, May 2019:

Weather forecasts are ignoring the drought in England

Paul Brown is spot-on in his criticism of how weather forecasts and presenters ignore the continuing drought (Weatherwatch, 28 May). It is as if they are in a parallel universe where the climate emergency does not exist. Wildlife, gardeners, farmers and all who care about the environment are desperate for proper rainfall, especially in central and southern England.

Linda Lennard, St Albans

Guardian article, Feb 2020:

With every flood, public anger over the climate crisis is surging

Sometimes it has felt as if the rain might never stop. These storms have gone beyond the point of simply being storms now, each blurring into the next to create a strangely end-of-days feeling. Everything is freakishly sodden and swollen, and while the rural flood plain on which I live fortunately hasn’t flooded anything like as badly as some, the rivers are rising alarmingly.

Yet still the lashing winds and biblical downpours keep coming. Suddenly the 40 Days of Action campaign that Extinction Rebellion (XR) will launch on Ash Wednesday (26 February), encouraging people to reflect on the environmental consequences of their actions in a kind of green Lent, feels ominously well named.

So what is it chaps, wetter or drier? (Or would you always have this impression if you compare a month in Spring with one in Winter?)

Oh, surprise surprise, it's neither.

Paul Holmewood summarised rainfall charts for England and Wales 1766 to 2016, and there is no discernible trend, annual rainfall in most years was between 800mm and 1,000 mm:



If you really squint at the ten-year running average, there appears to be a slight upwards trend from the early 1900s (about 850mm) to the 2010s (about 950mm), but most years stayed within the 800mm - 1,000mm range.

As he says himself:

By far the wettest month was October 1903, when 218mm fell. The wettest month in recent years was November 2009, with 192mm.

Again, I can see no evidence of anything unusual occurring in the last decade or so. There is a suggestion, though, that very wet months were not as common prior to the 20thC. This can be better seen by looking at the number of months >150mm per decade. The latest ten years is shown for comparison:


On average, it is fair to say that it is a little bit wetter now than it used to be in the early 19thC. But above all it is the year to year variability which dominates the record, just as it always has.

As to actual 'floods', the chances are these are down to deforestation and dredging/straightening of watercourses upstream; and more urbanisation (building over large contiguous areas, especially in areas prone to flooding) and not enough dredging/straightening of rivers downstream.

Winter Landscape

Damp/dry drive dilemma

It rained for a few hours today, and there's a dry patch where I normally park a car. But there's been no car there for at least two days.

Hmm.

Daily Express on top form

It was more dust than rain.

It rained for a few minutes, just long enough to wash all the dust out of the air. It dried very quickly and gave my car a surprisingly regular mottled effect.

Christmas Cars

Welease Bwian!

From The Daily Mail:

Steel barricades are being erected on the coast today ahead of Storm Brian sweeping into Britain tonight, bringing 70mph winds and more than two inches of rain as the half-term holidays begin.

The wild conditions, caused by a 'weather bomb' over the Atlantic Ocean, are expected to cause widespread travel chaos with the worst weather forecast across southern and western England and West Wales tomorrow.

Defensive barriers have been put up in the Cornish town of Fowey - where Dawn French owns a £5million clifftop mansion - by the Environment Agency on roads most likely to be swamped as Storm Brian arrives.

Fun Online Polls: Man-made climate change & Have you turned on the central heating yet?

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Are this year's strong hurricanes and Indian monsoon evidence of man-made climate change?

Yes - 10%
No - 90%

Thanks to all 114 who took part and 8 who re-Tweeted. I'm with the majority on this. It'd be bloody embarrassing if it turned out to be true.

Rapscallion in the comments linked to this fine article.
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Sticking with the weather, the Daily Mash republished their article on central heating, as it seems to do this time every year*.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"Have you turned on the central heating yet?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

* One recurring article we haven't seen this year is Ryanair switching to its winter schedule and blaming the reduction in the number of flights on high airport taxes. They've got themselves in to a whole different mess this year.

Hurricanes used to arrive in alphabetical order...

Fun Online Polls: The French presidential election & Bank Holiday Monday weather

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

If you were voting in the French presidential election:

Macron - the Europhile, Goldman Sachs-funded former Rothschilds banker and Socialist minister - 7%
LePen - the other one - 93%

I wasn't expecting the result to be nigh unanimous. Perhaps it's partly to do with how I phrased the question. Perhaps it wasn't value neutral enough?

It appears to me that Le Pen is rather more sympathetic towards Brexit, which is why I voted for her. Whether she will be better or worse for France (from the point of view of the French) than the Establishment candidate is not really my concern and I have no strong opinion either way.

A good turnout, thanks to all 129 who took part.
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When I was agreeing with Mrs W what to do over the Bank Holiday, she said we're not pencilling in any trips for Monday as it always rains on a Bank Holiday Monday.

Sure enough, it was lovely at the weekend (when we did our outdoor stuff)  and is now chucking it down here.


So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Is it fair to say that it normally rains on a Bank Holiday Monday?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.

"It's a beautiful day"

This fairly recent Michael Bublé song is the perfect background music for smug middle aged people to drive round in their open-topped cars, so I have heard it quite a few times in recent weeks.

It was only a couple of days ago that I actually listened to the lyrics. Unlike most pop songs they are not stream of consciousness gibberish, they are in fact gloriously spiteful.

Here's an excerpt from A-Z Lyrics:

'Cause you may not believe, that baby, I'm relieved,
When you said goodbye, my whole world shined

Hey hey hey, it's a beautiful day and I can't stop myself from smiling
If we're drinking, then I'm buying...[etc]

Fun Online Polls: Storm names, advertising and shaving.

The results to last week's poll were as follows:

Which was your favourite storm name so far? (Multiple choices allowed)
Abigail - 3 votes
Barney - 0 votes
Clodagh - 2 votes
Desmond - 0 votes
Eva - 0 votes
Frank - 2 votes
Gertrude fka Jonas - 3 votes
Henry - 0 votes
None. The practice is very silly - 80 votes

Lighten up, people!
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I watch a fair amount of telly and hence a fair amount of advertising.

The old rule is that there is no point advertising a completely generic product like potatoes or sugar. People will probably buy them anyway, and if one farmer/producer reminds people how great his potatoes are, at best people will buy more potatoes, but they are just as likely to buy somebody else's. So it is only industry-wide organisations who would pay for it.

At the other extreme are products which are totally unique to the producer, they don't really need to be advertised either. If you need that product, you will buy it from the sole supplier, so Rolls Royce don't need to advertise their cars.

Most advertising seems to be for companies/products in the middle ground - cars, banks, online betting, price comparison sites - these are all much of a muchness, they are generic products but with some market segmentation.

- If you buy Car X, you will need to buy replacement parts for it in future. This overlaps with Indian Bicycle Marketing - cars are marketed as manly cars, girly cars, family cars, hipster cars and middle aged cars.
- If you open an account with Bank X, then you are unlikely to switch accounts for several years;
- If you have opened an online betting account with your "free £10 to play", you are likely to stick with them for while (or at least until you have lost more than your "free £10 to play"); and
- Price comparison sites. If you can get more customers, you get more advertisers, which means more customers etc.

Something else which irks is the amount of advertising for disposable razors. There's Gillette and Wilkinson's, who have been locked in mortal combat since the dawn of time (like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola) with increasing outlandish claims.

Since The Onion spoof from 2004, Fuck Everything, We're Doing Five Blades, they really did go to five blades or here. On the other hand, you see relatively little advertising for dry/electric shavers.

I assume it's because people replace them so seldom, but it might be that it's only a very small market share and most people use disposables.

So that's what I need to find out: "Do you use a dry/electric shaver or disposables?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

For the record, I tried disposables briefly when I was a teenager, hated it (rash, cuts etc) and have used an electric shaver ever since.

Fun Online Polls: Plastic bags & Storm names

The results to last week's poll were as follows:

How many plastic bags did you or members of your household pay 5p for last month?

None - 60%
1 to 5 - 29%
6 to 10 - 10%
11 to 20 - 2%
21 to 30 - 0%
More than 30 - 0%

So the claim that the number of supermarket plastic bags used has gone down by 80% might well be true. The unknown variable is, are people buying an equal and opposite amount of bin liners etc. to use instead of plastic bags? How do we find that out?

A good turnout, thank you to everybody (121 people) who took part.
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This week's poll:

Which were your favourite storm names so far?

You can choose as few or as many as you like.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Weather forecasts with German supermodels.

Week One: It's Cloudier Schiffer.


Don't miss next week's exciting instalment: "Weather forecasting with transexual tennis players" starring Rainy Richards.

Fun Online Polls: Your favourite season & the value of a place in a queue

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which is your favourite season?

Spring - 27%
Summer - 36%
Autumn - 33%
Winter - 4%

So, summer it is then, by a fairly narrow margin.
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Another little brain teaser this week.

What has more influence on the value of a place in a queue? The number of people in front of you or the number of people behind you?

Take part here.

Clue: you are in the queue in the supermarket and you realise that you have forgotten to buy XYZ.

There is a nuisance cost to you of doing without XYZ for the next few days. If you leave the queue to get it, there is a time cost of starting again at the back of the queue; the value of the place is equal to the time cost of starting again at the back.

If the value of your place in the queue is lower than the nuisance cost, you will leave the queue, go and get XYZ and start again.

If the value of your place in the queue is higher than the nuisance cost, you will stay in the queue and do without.

When working out the value of your place in the queue, do you count the number of people in front of you or the number of people behind you?