Sorta reminds me of one of my all-time favourite Playboy cartoons from way-back-when …

A very-obviously-pregnant woman is standing in from of a Doctor’s desk (complete with legible thingie on the desk saying “Dr Whoever, Ob/Gyn”) – and the Doctor is saying “That’s The Pill for you; unpredictable side-effects !” …

Each time Almost-President Gore gives an AGW speech and where he is giving the speech has record cold temperatures that day, I am reminded of that cartoon, paraphrased as “That’s Anthropogenic Global Warming for you; unpredictable sude-effects !” …

So – since the record cold levels in “local” parts of the UK are to be considered as “local weather” per you, just where the $#@$@# in the UK was experiencing unseasonably warm termperatures ?

Am I permitted to point out that the AGW folks’ dire predictions of the accelerating-increase “Hockey Stick” model of temperatures seems to have some important flaws in it – as, for example, the significant measured downturn trend in planetary temperatures over the past half-decade and more ?

I always smile when people call me an expat. I’ve never been a “pat”. My parents were Frecnh and English expats respectively when I was born in South Africa and over the course of the next 35 years we moved to UK then Nigeria then back to UK and on to South Africa. I have a South African accent and was born there but England was always my home.

I have mixed feelings, personally. I love my new US home and doubt I will live anywhere else for at least …oh, a year. I also miss England, having never, ever thought I would. I feel I am no more British (tho born there) than American (of course) and still feel as much as of a nomad as I always did. My home can only ever be where I am at this very moment. And as for calling me an expat….well, I don’t like ‘ex’ anything and I’ll go along with Silverback. Why didn’t I think of that myself?!

Bella

You are certainly aware that global warming is not proven or disproven by single incidents of local weather or even season to season changes, but decades-long trends. FWIW, NYC winters were far more harsh when the NYC subway fare and a pizza slice was 15 cents than now when each is $2.25 (For some reason, the price of the two always track one another. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/12/nyregion/nyc-beware-the-price-of-a-slice.html?pagewanted=1).

Personally, I perceive “expat” as one of those 1/2full vs 1/2empty mood detectors …

Some of us are expats because we have voted with our feet and live outside the country of our birth, by moving towards what we perceive as being better for our lives overall …

Some of us are expats because we felt forced into exile from the country of our birth, and where we currently reside is the sorry best we’ve been able to find …

I belong in the former group … and even more so after my recent return from 4 weeks back in the nanny-state … fortunately, I spent most of my time in the comfortably-chilly West Coast of Scotland, rather than the proverbially brass monkey weather the rest of mainland UK has been experiencing …

Best comment during that trip was “So after some heavy falls of evidence of ongoing Global Warming, which subsequently got compacted into the shiny very-slippy stuff, more falling evidence of intensifying Global Warming has been beyond the abilities of local authorities to grit in any effective manner.” …

Iota – how about not-yet-repatriated-denizen – or nyrd as the appropriate acronym ?

Wasn’t Prepat a cousin of Prymaat on the old Saturday Night Live Conehead sketches?

Or Julia Sweeney’s Pat character before sex re-assignment surgery on the old Saturday Night Live Pat bits before sex re-assignment surgery ?

It’s not the speed, it’s the rocking resulting from the speed.

(For non-NY’ers, “trains” = subway.)

On the basis that it’s too retrospective, focusing on where you’ve come from rather than where you are, or where you are going, I propose we should adopt a new word which focuses more on future plans. The pre-pat. Or just prepat.