It is alleged that the Eskimos have twenty-seven different words for snow, even though that is dismissed in some quarters as an urban myth. But maybe it's an urban myth that it's an urban myth, who knows?
Either way, I usually pay a bit of attention to the weather forecast and I have the definite impression that weather forecasters are coming up with lots of new words or phrases to express the basic idea of "cold". For example, on today's Channel 4, he described the wind as "nagging" (which I thought was quite poetic). Then there are words like crisp, biting, fresh and so on, which I've heard quite a few times recently.
Another commonly used term is "below average temperature", which seems a bit politically correct, as it implies that the "real" temperature is constantly going up because of something called "global warming", so while it seems cold, that's only because there's a downward blip and actually it's much warmer than you think.
Or maybe they just do it because they get bored stupid just saying "cold" all the time, in the same way as football commentators use dozens of different euphemisms or synomyms for "ball" or "goal".
But as with all these things, I wonder whether I am imagining this or weather everybody else has noticed any cool new euphemisms for "cold" as well?
Bankrupt
1 hour ago
13 comments:
You're right, they have been expanding their language recently. But this cold has been going on for so long I think the forecasters are simply trawling the thesaurus just to break the monotony.
I tend to notice when a cold period is described as a "cold snap" as if cold is abnormal and short-lived.
W42, it is all rather entertaining.
AKH, I've not heard "cold snap" for a year or two, you can hardly describe the last few months as a "snap". The word "Narnian" springs to mind.
I liked one reporter who called the weather "office friendly" a while ago.
One thing I just saw however, relevant to this, intrigued me. There's a kids news show every day at our state broadcaster (which I watch ofcourse, they explain things in easy terms...). Yesterday they had a segment about GW. There wasn't any current event or anything. They just interviewed a climate scientist, and the gist of the the interview was essentially:"not all scientists agree that it is humans causing this", and "most do, but we still don't know how much". That was it. Which is a very strange turn of focus. Why this, why now?
The broadcaster is the equivalent of the BBC for all intents and purposes.
Kj "office friendly" is brilliant!
As to man made GW, I don't know much about physics, but I've read as much as I could understand it strikes me as physically impossible for small amounts of CO2 to have any impact on the weather.
Water vapour and ice and clouds have an impact (we know this because on a clear night it is always very cold and on a cloudy night it is warmer), but not C02 as it is self-cancelling.
CO2 is 400 parts per million and the proper atmosphere is about 20 km thick = 2 million centimetres.
So if all the CO2 sank to the bottom and rested on the earth's surface like a blanket, it would be only 800 centimetres = 8 metres thick. That is so little it cannot make any difference.
I'm ambivalent about it myself, but probably more on the cautios side. The thing I found strange, or perhaps surprising, was the careful backtracking attempt directed at kids, while the official line is death and destruction...
The CO2 argument seems to rest on "well, we can't find anything else".
My theory remains that there are some of Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" about climate. One day someone's going to find something that shows a pattern with climate that actually fits. It might even be that CO2 is related, but not the whole story. Because the problem for the scientists is that their CO2/climate correlation worked for quite a few years, and then fell apart (ironically, around the time they worked it out).
I'm reminded of the high rate of Leukemia in Sellafield. It had to be the nuclear power, right? Nuclear power station, high Leukemia rate. And this connection hung around in the public domain for years.
Then a scientist came along and noticed that Corby also had higher leukemia rates and that also, areas of the country that had had lots of evacuees had a high leukemia rate after WW2 and that one of the towns in the US that got a new naval base also had a high leukemia rate. And the conclusion was that the common factor was large migrations of population - a load of yokels got hit by a load of outsider germs.
Kj, I've not noticed much back tracking on the BBC. Every single programme about anything always has to mention MMGW towards the end.
TS, that is fascinating? Do you have a link to anything? But I still claim my pedant points for "leukaemia" with an "a". Or is it "leukæmia"?
Mark, where did you find that "æ" I've been looking for one for years to use with "mediæval".
"I've not noticed much back tracking on the BBC"
That's because MMGW is the new official religion. The Beeb can now be all inclusive about religions other than Christianity, but it mustn't query the dogma of MMGW.
B, on a PC, you press down alt and type 0230 With Apple press alt and the key for speech marks/comma.
and on a laptop it's AltGr and a, as I found out by trial and error, also finding useful things like ³ and € along the way.
B, and stuff like this œ∑´®†¥¨^øπ“‘«æ…¬˚∆˙©ƒ∂ßååΩ≈ç√∫~µ≤≥÷
Yup, and I've now discovered that shift AltGr gives me a whole lot more, including ® and ©, which I have also been looking for for years.
Post a Comment