Weather or Not

"Oh blame it on the weatherman!" as Irish all-girl pop combo B*witched once sang. That might have been the refrain from the Scottish Transport Minister on Monday following the entire country going to Hell when it snowed. In fact, he apologised for the mess and took responsibility - which makes for a refreshing change from a politician. It appears that they took their advice from the wrong weathermen; although the BBC did forecast snow - just not as much as materialised.

I've always said that I regard the weather forecast with the same snide distain that I reserve for the astrology columns. In fact, this isn't quite true. The main amusement factor of astrology is the fact that one twelfth of the population will have the same vague nonsense happen to them. It's easy to poke fun at and, if you read some papers' "stars", you will find that the people writing them are taking the piss as well.

The thing with meteorology is that it is based on good solid science and they are very good at telling you exactly why the past day's weather happened but, as a predictive science, it suffers from the same hit and miss chance of any chaotic system - and the further ahead it gets, the worse it is at predicting things. What happened on Monday is that the line between a sleety shower, a fine dusting of snow and a full blown blizzard is a very fine one. In terms of coping with this, it would seem to be a good idea to plan for the worst but I can imagine that many people would get fed up very quickly if the police told everyone to stay at home at all cost and then have two or three snowflakes to show for their effort.

Apart from complaining that our politicians and council services should be able to counteract nature in some sort of Canute like act, the other thing I have heard people muttering is "Whatever happened to global warming" in the kind of Daily Mail reading smugness that deserves a solid punch on the nose. By this, they mean climate change and, if they had ever bothered to read up on the subject (which is both fascinating and densely complex), they would have found out that crappy cold Winters for the UK is EXACTLY the sort of thing their climate models have been predicting. Of course, one set of weather doesn't make a climate but it's not exactly unexpected either.

I suppose the lesson is: if you are a scientist, you can't win.