After my disastrous predictions for 2011, here are my predictions for 2012:

1. The referendum on Scottish independence won’t take place yet.
2. SF will leave the Danish government.
3. It will again become possible to get a Danish passport in Scotland.
4. The euro will not collapse – all current members will remain inside the Eurozone.
5. The British inflation rate (measured by CPI) will not fall below 4%.
6. UEFA 2012 will be won by the Netherlands.
7. After a year with record-breaking levels of rain, Scotland will enjoy its second-warmest year ever.
8. The Icelandic volcano Katla will erupt and cause a new flight ban over Europe.
9. The Russian government will be forced to step down and call fresh elections.
10. The Eurovision Song Contest will be won by Georgia.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

I’m afraid that my predictions for 2011 weren’t that great:

1. There will be a general election in Denmark. The Social Democrats and SF will form a minority government, which will quickly get into serious trouble trying to carry out their legislative programme. Wrong: After the election, the Social Liberals entered the government, too, and so far they’re managing to govern.
2. There won’t be a general election in the UK, but the LibDems will get more and more worried about their lack of support in the opinion polls. Not right: Of course there was no election, but the LibDems seem quite relaxed.
3. In Scotland, Labour will win the election but will be unable to find a coalition partner, so they’ll form a minority government. Wrong: The SNP won a landslide victory and formed a majority government. (I’m actually quite happy about being wrong here!)
4. The outcome of the AV referendum will be Yes (but it’ll be a narrow victory). Wrong: The outcome was a resounding No.
5. There’ll be snow on the ground in Scotland for most of the time until the end of March. We’ll then have a warm and sunny early summer, but late summer and autumn will be cold and wet, and we’ll have another white Christmas. Almost right: I got most of the year right, but Christmas wasn’t white.
6. Facebook will get serious competition, but they won’t be overtaken yet as the default social networking site. Right: Google+ got off to a good start, but didn’t manage to chuck Facebook off the throne.
7. The best-selling tablet computer towards the end of 2011 won’t be the iPad. Wrong: Although there are more and more competitors, the iPad still rules the tablet market.
8. Economically, Germany will start pulling the Eurozone out of the slump, but there’ll be more bad news from the US. There won’t be any sovereign defaults (yet). Wrong-ish: Germany was doing OK initially, but then ground to a halt again. The Eurozone is doing worse than a year ago. News from the US are mixed. But at least I was right about the sovereign defaults.
9. Petrol prices will reach £1.50 per litre. Wrong: I think they got as high as £1.45, but prices then fell back a bit again.
10. Neither Denmark nor Scotland will qualify for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship. Wrong: Denmark managed to qualify, although Scotland didn’t.

I think a lesson to learn from this is not to put so many different predictions into each item – it’s too likely to get half of it right, which makes it pretty hard to assess later.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

Det er nu rart, når vinteren endelig siger helt farvel, og man kan sidde udenfor i solen og spise morgenmad uden overtøj på.

I år har vejret virkelig haft travlt i den sidste uge – det er præcist en uge siden, børnene byggede årets sidste snemand.

Nu gælder det så om at få smidt nogle frø i jorden – hvis det går som det sidste par år, slutter sommeren nok midt i august, så der er ingen tid at spilde!

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

Unfortunately, it’s in Danish, but it’s really only the days of the week that are likely to cause problems.

I’m not sure whether it’s more or less accurate that the other forecasts out there, but it’s nice they’ve made one for Newton Mearns, rather than BBC Weather’s G77 forecast, which is based on Paisley.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

Here are my predictions for 2011:

1. There will be a general election in Denmark. The Social Democrats and SF will form a minority government, which will quickly get into serious trouble trying to carry out their legislative programme.
2. There won’t be a general election in the UK, but the LibDems will get more and more worried about their lack of support in the opinion polls.
3. In Scotland, Labour will win the election but will be unable to find a coalition partner, so they’ll form a minority government.
4. The outcome of the AV referendum will be Yes (but it’ll be a narrow victory).
5. There’ll be snow on the ground in Scotland for most of the time until the end of March. We’ll then have a warm and sunny early summer, but late summer and autumn will be cold and wet, and we’ll have another white Christmas.
6. Facebook will get serious competition, but they won’t be overtaken yet as the default social networking site.
7. The best-selling tablet computer towards the end of 2011 won’t be the iPad.
8. Economically, Germany will start pulling the Eurozone out of the slump, but there’ll be more bad news from the US. There won’t be any sovereign defaults (yet).
9. Petrol prices will reach £1.50 per litre.
10. Neither Denmark nor Scotland will qualify for the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

Da der for en gangs skyld faldt ordentlige mængder sne i den forgange uge, besluttede jeg mig for at bygge en iglo til børnene i haven.

Alle danskere har vel i skolen og på TV hørt så meget om Grønland, at principperne for iglobygning er velkendte.

Phyllis virkede dog ret chokeret, som om det var noget meget eksotisk og mystisk at bygge sig en simpel iglo.

Måske glemmer danskere nogle gange, hvor meget Grønland egentlig fylder i dansk kultur. Jeg burde nok prøve at skaffe Nissebanden på Grønland på DVD, så Léon, Anna og Amaia kan lære lidt mere om det store kolde land.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

I’ve noticed that many people seem to take the severity of recent winters as an indication that global warming might not be happening.

However, meteorology isn’t a simple science, and today I found an article that claims to have found a reason why global warming would lead to colder winters in Europe: “shrinking sea ice in the eastern Arctic has caused some regional warming of lower air levels and could possibly lead to anomalies in atmospheric airstreams, which may trigger an overall cooling of the northern continents. These anomalies could triple the probability of cold winter extremes in Europe and northern Asia”.

This is of course quite separate from the possibility that the Gulf Stream might one day move or slow down, which would give Scotland and Denmark a climate more like Alaska’s.

Update (3/12): Here are two more articles about this topic, one in Danish and one in English.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

I’m blogging this from Aarhus, which is not how things were supposed to be.

We were supposed to spend a week in Copenhagen, celebrate my dad’s 70th birthday, let Anna play with her first and second cousins (Ursula, Aya, Karl and Olivia), show off Amaia to everybody, and then fly home to Scotland last Friday.

However, Thursday morning Phyllis’s parents contacted us about an ash cloud.

At first, we thought it was a delayed April’s Fool joke, but as soon as we switched on the TV, it became obvious that it was no laughing matter.

By Thursday evening it had become obvious that our flight home would get cancelled.

Friday morning I went to the main railway station to see what they could do.

I was offered a train to Amsterdam with changes in Fredericia, Padborg, Hamburg, Münster, Enschede and Amstetten, and then a ferry to Newcastle. There were only two problems: Firstly, the train was leaving an hour and a half later, which meant that I had to call Phyllis to get her to pack our bags urgently and rush to the station. Secondly, to get the ferry ticket, I had to line up in a separate queue, although they assured me that the ticket should be available.

I then queued for more than an hour, and by the time I got to the front, there were no more ferry tickets left.

I consulted Phyllis, who had already arrived, and we decided to go to Amsterdam anyway in the hope that there would be more ferry tickets available there (and we would be much closer to the English Channel if trains or ferries became available there).

So we rushed off to the train and started working our way down Europe.

However, when we reached Neumünster (north of Hamburg), the train stopped and we were told to change to a replacement bus.

Because we had lots of luggage and two small girls in a damaged buggy, we were the last to get to the bus, so by the time we got to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, the train was long gone.

I went to another long queue, and then another, and then we were lucky: A nice lady in her fifties had a look at my wee girls and asked whether I really wanted to spend the night in Duisburg Station. I said no, and she then offered us a free hotel room for the night.

Of course I said yes, but I got a shock when I saw our room: A suite with two queen-sized beds in Park Hyatt just round the corner from the main station, with breakfast included! It was the most luxurious hotel room I’ve ever been in!

The next morning we returned to the station to continue our journey to Amsterdam.

However, a technical problem meant the train was suddenly changed to take off from Hamburg Harburg, but again our slow progress with our wee girls meant that we missed the train.

I asked when the next connection was, and I was told that we wouldn’t reach Amsterdam till dinner time.

We concluded that this would be useless, given that the news programmes were claiming that there were no hotel rooms left in Amsterdam because so many people were stranded in Schiphol.

So we asked to get back to Denmark, which they agreed to do.

This time we got onto a direct train, and we got to my parents’ flat in Aarhus just in time for dinner.

In the evening we booked a new flight for Friday (Billund-Edinburgh), which is also when the three big kids are now supposed to return from France, so hopefully the ash cloud will disappear before then.

If it stays in place, we don’t know what we’ll do. Rent a minibus, drive down to France, get the kids, drive up to the Channel, take a ferry and then drive home, perhaps?

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

Sadly, however, it froze before I got a chance to pour it in.

Yesterday was quite a warm day, however, and after a long drive the scooshers started working again, so I wanted to take the opportunity to fill it up with my precious screenwash, only to find out that it had frozen, just by being in the boot of the car.

Given that the whole purpose of buying screenwash is to prevent it from freezing, that annoyed me a bit.

If you look at the photo, you’ll see that it tells you normally to dilute it with water, but to use it straight in a severe winter.

So this winter must be colder than severe according to Asda.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites

It appears that there are many more scientists who think our civilisation is heating our planet up more than would have been the case otherwise than there are qualified people thinking otherwise, and I therefore do think it’s foolish to avoid taking strong measures to combat global warming.

However, as the recent Copenhagen summit showed, the evidence is not yet so overwhelming that all of humanity can be convinced, and it’s therefore very hard to achieve any meaningful emission cuts.

We therefore need to get more evidence and refute all major competing theories.

One of the alternative favourite theories cited by the opponents of global warming is solar activity.

I therefore found this article (written before the current cold spell began) very interesting:

But how to prove this? During the 20th century, solar activity rose steadily, as did the amount of industrial gases being pumped into the atmosphere. With both quantities rising, it has been impossible to distinguish between them. Now, that has all changed.

In the past 12 months solar activity has fallen to levels unseen since the 1920s. Sunspots have become rare sights and for three quarters of this year the Sun has been spot-free. According to one study if the trend continues at its current rate, the Sun will lose its ability to produce sunspots by 2015. That would take it back to its condition in the latter 17th century, when hardly any sunspots appeared for 70 years — and Northern Europe underwent the worst years of the so-called Little Ice Age.

Winter scenes from this period were romanticised by artists such as Brueghel painting frost fairs and hunting scenes. But was the 17th century sunspot crash responsible for the Little Ice Age or a coincidence? Could we now find ourselves plunged into a similar freeze if the sunspots do not return?

I’m well aware that the current cold spell doesn’t disprove global warming in the slightest. One possible consequence of global warming could be the Gulf Stream moving or stopping completely, and that would make the British Isles even colder than they are at the moment.

It will be interesting to see if the solar activity theory can be complete refuted within a few years, though.

Share and enjoy!

Hide Sites