The BBC has been eerily silent about the causes of the latest cold snap. There’s nothing that I can find that suggests that its main weather information supplier the revered Met Office might be wrong; and the Quarmby report, saying that there is no evidence of clustering of cold weather, has been covered virtually without comment. Yet elsewhere, the internet is abuzz with stories that the Met Office is seriously at fault. I wonder why?
And I am intrigued by this item. Paul Hudson, the BBC weather reporter who has dared before to challenge AGW orthodoxy spells out that this December is in line to become the third coldest such month since the Central England Temperature (CET) record was started in 1659. He concludes:
This is the third winter running when we have had very cold and snowy conditions hitting the UK. It comes at a time of continued, unusually weak, solar activity. In my blog ‘could the sun cast a shadow on global temperatures’ I wrote about how Australian scientist David Archibald was convinced that prolonged weak solar activity could mean much colder winters in future. He wrote his paper in February 2009. Perhaps we all need to get used to colder winters across the UK in the next few years.
Stand by for a veritable flurry of denial statements from the warmists at the BBC. But thank God someone in the corporation (from Yorkshire, I note)seems to have a glimmering of common sense. In one report, at least.
Meanwhile, elsewhere on the BBC, the blizzard of AGW nonsense continues.
The Met Office, like the BBC (and the rest of the media, and the government, too, for that matter) are not fit for purpose. They fail to forecast or report properly, but merely propagate ideology. They have their own answer for everything, and it is usually wrong, or against right-minded thinking. In the case of the BBC, we’re forced to pay for this misinformation and dogma. Where are OUR human rights?
Who will tame them? Who dares?
In the post at Bishop Hill http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/12/21/the-quarmby-audit.html David Quarmby comments. You can read for yourself how the Met Office’s devotion to warmism has made a complete cock-up of its main task of providing reasonably accurate weather forecasts. What surprised me was that Dr Quarmby is apparently weak in statistics. Dr Q commented on Bishop Hill’s blog (comment no 55) that to make up for his deficiencies in working out the probability of having three severe winters in a row (on the basis of the simple odds of 20:1 against having one severe winter as assessed by the Met Office) he is to refer the matter to a statistician. Call me unreasonable but I would have thought that an audit of the UK’s response to severe weather would involve, at least, an ability to pin down the probabilities. While we’re about it, it would be nice to have an investigation to pin down how the Met Office fails to do on a £33 million piece of electronic wizardry what Piers Corbyn and Joe Bastardi do (as one commenter notes) on a sheet of paper using a pen (but GIGO, of course).
This is just the kind of thing a reputable and impartial news organisation should get its teeth into, so don’t expect anything from the BBC. I would not be surprised, though, if the coalition alone (which has been in office all of 7 months) gets a bashing from the state broadcaster for the deficiencies of the UK response to the weather.
Dr Q’s audit can be found here http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/audit/winter_resilience_audit.pdf
‘…from Yorkshire, I note…’
We tell it like it is.
Professor Julia Slingo is Mets cheif scientist. But..
” In 2006 she founded the Walker Institute for Climate System Research at Reading, aimed at addressing the cross disciplinary challenges of climate change and its impacts.”
http://www.nerc.ac.uk/about/work/boards/council/biographies.asp
And here it is
http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/
“The Walker Institute is working with Willis Re through the Willis Research Network – the largest existing collaboration between the insurance industry and academia. ”
“The Walker Institute is working with Deloitte, the business advisory firm, on the risks of climate change to business.”
http://www.walker-institute.ac.uk/partnerships/index.htm
Is that not a conflict of interest?
Also check out this womens map reading capabilities.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/met-office-chief-climate-scientist-has-difficulty-reading-maps/
It really is a joke isn’t it? Dogma over proven (even if provable) facts.
This really is going to be like turning round a supertanker. Though increasingly hollow, the propaganda continues… Harrabin (Environmental correspondent) continues to spout his wisdom under the cloak of the dear BBC.
For politician, like the marketers it’s always been about positioning. Oh and the money.
There will come a time when the dissonance is so great, the nonsense so evident that they will have to shift their position. The sooner the better.
There are much better uses for the money, and leaving taxes in the hands of the taxpayer might help the economy or even allow them to save for a difficult old age.
Too many vested interests. conflicts of interest and too much rhetoric invested (the little lie that got bigger and bigger). That the Met Office, BBC and unscrupulous politicians are at the heart of it actually diminishes our country and its institutions.
One train that keeps running, whatever the weather – the climate Gravy Train:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6931584/Met-Office-chief-receives-25-pc-pay-rise.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080619.html
http://www.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/about_us/all_about_wwf/wwf_uk_council_of_ambassadors/sir_john_houghton.cfm
http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=1596
Orwell didn’t get it. The face of evil is not the jackboot stamping on a human face. It is wrinkly, has grey hair and letters after its name. Its a circle-jerk of oldies in a narrow elite with huge pensions and no accountability.
It’s the cosy Quango-Third Sector-Climate Alarm Industry. The fattest of all cats, benignly purring away. You don’t think they would let the truth get in the way of their superannuated reirement plans?
Keep the bluff going until the pension is in the post.
Underwritten by you.
Glancing at that graph, one could be forgiven in thinking it might be a risk assesment form to assist Met.Office employee’s to decide whether or not they dare go into work.
Are ther any statisticians/bookmakers out ther who could tell me the odds of having three 20/1 chances come in? And what about 4? Thanks.
“..the Met Office remains so ideologically wedded to Man Made Global Warming that it refuses to be dissuaded even in the face of three consecutive severe winters which, by its own calculations, ought to have been almost impossible (8,000 to 1 against)..”
http://www.climatechangedispatch.com/home/8337-climate-change-there-just-arent-enough-bullets
Good piece at EUReferendum slating George Moonbat and his nonsensical claim (opposite to what he used to say) that the snow is due to AGW:
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/12/warmer-means-colder.html
George Moonbat is not a scientist, he is just a sad activist who is full of his own importance. What would really annoy people like him would be to ignore them completly. The more oxygen they are given the more ludicrous they become.
That of course is the problem. These idiots are listened to when they should really be carted off to a padded cell.
I think it’s more like they – after having had a consistent supply of the oxygen of publicity – become more ludicrous as said oxygen supply is diminished. Which is what’s happening now. People are lending Monbiot et al less and less credibility, and they’re becoming more and more unhinged.
It’s a religion. When everything proves your beliefs are true, it’s outside the bounds of science. These people have too much at stake, personally. It’s how they define themselves when they look in the mirror every morning. If this falls apart, their very identity falls apart.
Forgive my scepticism. How accurate and comparable to modern figures can the 17th century figures be?
The 17th century extreme frosts are corroborated by endless historical accounts.
So – within a degree or two, you have no need to be sceptical of 17th century temperature records. The averaging-out of multiple records would have dealt with any error on individual readings.
Perfectly accurate. Any errors are adjusted to give the desired answer.
Roland, Phil Jones told me to ask you to delete that. As the BBC has explained, this is how science is done. 😀
BBC-Greenpeace’s chums, at the Met Office website, propagandise any visitor there with the phrase ‘climate change’ at the top of the page [which on investigation there reveals itself as ‘global warming’].
There are other weather forecasting sites which are worth visiting, which don’t have the BBC-endorsed propaganda.
Ill give it to Paul Hudson, he does actually have quite a good blog that doesnt degenerate in to rubbish like Blacks or Harribins.
Anyway, Im currently engaged in a fairly lively debate in one of Hudsons threads, check it out here;
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2010/12/2010-global-temperatures-a-dea.shtml
Regards
Mailman