It seems there is a correlation between the climate change obsession of the media and local authorities in Norfolk and their proximity to the University of East Anglia. Perhaps we could come up with a causal link that we could report as incontrovertible.
No matter what happens in Norfolk, they see the hot hand of anthropogenic global warming behind it. So it is that the Norwich Evening News reports today that Norfolk’s Fire and Rescue Service is spending £3.2 million on new 4×4 vehicles:
because climate change is causing more floods and heath blazes in Norfolk.
No matter what weather condition is experienced, be it warmer, cooler, wetter or drier, the climate change moster is behind it all. But given we keep hearing that the effects of climate change are yet to be experienced and it could be decades or more before nature wreaks her bitter revenge on mankind for burning fossil fuels, these new vehicles must be expected to last a long time.
It was fascinating to see that Norfolk fire chiefs are now experts in climate and are qualified to ascribe the sometimes challenging conditions they work in to changes in the climate. At least it was until we see our old friends at the Met Office have lined their pockets with more taxpayers’ cash by drawing up a climate change impact assessment. Norfolk Fire and Rescue now feel bold enough to state:
And we know from work that the Met Office has done that for every one degree summer temperature hike you get up to 23% more fires.
Presumably it has nothing to do with an increase in population and more people using the local heathland. Perhaps an increase in arson cases is down to people driven mad by the changing climate and feeling the need to set light to things. Norfolk’s fire overlords go on to explain that the new appliances are required because:
In somewhere like Norfolk we have got Thetford forest and the peat at Methwold, which are susceptible to fires and we need to be able to get to them.
One wonders if the fires in Thetford and Methwold only became a problem after a group of scientists decided we were causing the planet to heat out of control.
Well, I suppose it’s one way to get extra money for fancy new kit. One wonders how long it will be before the Ministry of Defence and the militray top brass start justifying the procurement of new toys on the basis that climate change will make it harder to conduct operations with existing equipment…
Autonomous Mind 
This is probably more a clever wheeze by the firemen to get what they want. I wonder if they were refused new equipment in the last few years because “it needs updating” but now that they claim they “need it because of climate change” the budget suddenly gets approved.
‘new 4×4 vehicles’
I knew a person of colour (green) with whom I jousted on matters eco, who lives ( Presume still, though for certain reasons we no longer communicate) in Tewksbury.
We had, in the past, covered such as evil 4x4s and bottled water.
So when that town was struck by the floods, I sent her a picture of a 4×4 delivering bottled water, and asked if, in some circumstances, certain technologies and consumer options were possibly still valid.
I may have pushed it in pointing out that, to be commercially viable, they did need to have a market beyond her… when she needed it.
I think she was interviewed by the BBC, once their helicopter had landed.
Fires in Thetford forest dropped dramatically after railways replaced steam with deisel in the sixties.
Mind you we must have been well on the way to global cooling in those days so perhaps it was just a coincidence after all.
If there was a major fire in Thetford Forest, you’d need helicopters not fire trucks. And the same is doubtless true for Methwold peat bogs.
One has to wonder at the statement that following a one degree increase in temperature you get 23% more fires in the summer. On this basis, presumably there is a correlation that the Met office and the CRU can prove that if Madrid is say 3 degrees on average warmer than London in the summer, then Madrid will have 69% more fires than London.
A 4×4 is useful for snow and ice and we know global warming causes that too.
It;s the lowest lying region of the UK so if they really and truly believed the alarmist claptrap they would be buying boats to cope with the sea level rise.
They probably got knocked back for the money from the Greenest government ever until they agreed to add the line ‘because climate change is causing more floods and heath blazes in Norfolk’
I wonder who got the MET on board though as it would not be the first LWGO* I went to for advice on fire rescue vehicles?
*Left Wing Government Organisation, a bit like an NGO but with government endorsed activists.
This isn’t quite as bad as I had feared when I saw the photo and caption.
I fully expected the Post to say that they were changing to ‘battery-powered’ fire appliances!
8- )
Perhaps an increase in arson cases is down to people driven mad by the changing climate and feeling the need to set light to things.
Or maybe to stay warm in the new climate cooling.
“I fully expected the Post to say that they were changing to ‘battery-powered’ fire appliances!”
Al Gore seems to think that wind-turbine powered vehicles are feasible. I followed the link in this thread at WUWT and fell about laughing at the pathetic computer generated graphics:
dave ward
13/01/2012 at 12:42 pm
Oh.. thank you very much. I now have to spend time cleaning lunch off my PC screen:)
I recall being sent an invention that was one extra step along, whereby the forward motion was used to spin the turbine blades, thereby generating the energy for the… um… forward motion.
I actually like ‘free’ energy… sun, hydro… solar.. whatever, but the enviROI has to add up and be +ve.
Playing currently with units of about the size featured to capture and store to maybe run small domestic appliances for short periods. Trucks, tractors & trains… not so much.
After I posted those links I spent some time at Anthony Ratkov’s site.
There doesn’t appear to be much information about him, other than suggestions he works (or did) in the motor industry. But he really is a dreamer, with pages and pages of drawings and notes for a whole range of ideas, including engines, aeroplanes, alternative energy schemes, etc.Very few would work, or be practical, though. He clearly hasn’t given any thought to the forces applied at the base of a turbine mast, in response to the drag produced by the blades, for instance. Or the huge amount of power that would need to be stored for a full days work with a large tractor…
‘But he really is a dreamer….Very few would work, or be practical, though. He clearly hasn’t given any thought’
Hence a shoo in for a Climate Minister, Science & Tech Editor at most MSM print or broadcast outlets, Lorded inquiry Chairman, etc:)
The ‘official’ motto of the ICE when I was studying Civ. Eng, with Brunel (vs. at the Uni bearing his name) was something along the lines of ‘To shape the forces of nature to benefit of mankind’.
Even then they knew stopping and/or reversing Gaia was a hefty call.
The unofficial one was ‘to do with a shilling what any other damn fool needs a £ for’.
At least the premise kicked off that the engineering solution would actually work (unlike Mr. Ratkov’s notions), but it has struck me on matters climatic, alternative energy, etc, that there is now zero concern on what it costs, in £ or green terms both, so long as something looks as though it might face down Nature.
This is the most unforgivable conceit of all. And though I know zippy about economics, I cannot fathom the support accorded those who would divert resources away from the most efficient or waste-reducing initiatives to those that too often seem more aimed at shoveling as much of other folks’ money down a green hole as those who can take a cut can manage before the uprising.