1963 Weather Nostalgia Grips Nation

Clarkson of the Sunday Times on the end of the Oil Age (and the new VW Golf R32):

Nobody knows when [the end of the Oil Age] will be because nobody knows how much there is down there, and equally nobody knows how much demand there will be for it in the future. In the past 40 years the population of the world has doubled.

So will it double again in the next 40? Or will we all be killed by parrots? Only the world’s environmentalists, with their crystal balls and their tarot cards, seem belligerently certain about what’s going to happen next.

I disagree with the Clarkson on a lot of stuff, but I do find him quite sane on the environment and climate change, because - like me - he knows that the global warming lobby has very little data to go on, and an awful lot of interest in securing money and grants. That Golf R32 looks great, too. Spare us £26k, guv? At 30 mpg, that's only going to cost me about £90 a week in petrol.

In other news, the press are going apeshit about the coming Big Freeze: coldest winter for 70 million years, March of the Glaciers, fuel shortages, rising gas prices... And the BBC Monthly Outlook carries this disclaimer:

Monthly forecasting
Forecasting the weather beyond about a week ahead stretches even the most experienced weather forecaster. Complex numerical weather forecast models from the Met Office and the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting (ECMWF)are run many times for the month (and season) ahead to build up a picture of the likelihood of different weather types affecting the UK.