Calling Charles Onians [...or Climategate Time Travel]

[On Mar. 20th, 2000, UK's The Independent ran an article on its Environment section, signed by Charles Onians and titled, Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past. Of course, you can see where i'm going with this... specially if you reside in the isles.
Onian starts off the article in this manner:

Britain's winter ends tomorrow with further indications of a striking environmental change: snow is starting to disappear from our lives.
Sledges, snowmen, snowballs and the excitement of waking to find that the stuff has settled outside are all a rapidly diminishing part of Britain's culture, as warmer winters - which scientists are attributing to global climate change - produce not only fewer white Christmases, but fewer white Januaries and Februaries.

He then goes on to quote Dr David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia (...and so the circle closes! Remember the leaked e-mails!), who said:

"Children just aren't going to know what snow is."

To be fair, this same Dr. Viner said that heavy snow will return occasionally, but that when it does we will be unprepared.

"We're really going to get caught out. Snow will probably cause chaos in 20 years time."

In any case, that was back in 2000... and we now know more.
Well, for some reason, the comments application is still running for Charles Onians' 2000 article... One particular comment...]

Calling Charles Onians

by alexjc38 on Sunday, 27 December 2009 at 09:53 pm (UTC)

Hello? Charles Onians in 2000? Don't ask me to explain but I'm posting this back to you via a time warp from December 2009. Yes, the future! You probably won't believe me and will think I'm mad or joking, but get this. Britain is suffering its second extremely cold winter in a row - we have enough snow, ice, frost and freezing fog to cobble dogs with (whatever that means.) Far from being "a very rare and exciting event", snowfall has become a major hazard in this country twice this past year - and we haven't even got to February 2010 yet. Also (again you will probably think I'm joking) but the CRU has just become a liability to climate science - leaked e-mails and files have revealed a web of deceit and manipulation that threatens to undermine the theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming itself. I urge you to pull this article immediately, as it will become a laughing stock in years to come. Charles? Hello? Hello? ... Rats, I'm probably too late.

[Source: environment.independentminds.livejournal.com]