The Met Office brings doom to a place near you

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The Met Office brings doom to a place near you

Guest post By Tony Newbery, Harmless Sky

On Thursday, the Met Office launched its new report on global warming, UK Climate Predictions 2009 otherwise known as UKCP09. This is based on the output of Hadley Centre climate models that predict temperature increases of up to 6°C with wetter winters, dryer summers, more heatwaves, rising sea levels, more floods and all the other catastrophes that one would expect from similar exercises in alarmism.

What makes this report different from any of its predecessors is the resolution of the predictions that the Met Office is making. They are not just presenting a general impression of what might happen globally during this century, or even how climate change could affect the UK as a whole. They are claiming that they can predict what will happen in individual regions of the country. Apparently there is even a page somewhere on their website where you can enter your postcode and find out how your street will be affected by global warming in 2040 or 2080, although I’ve failed to find it.

All this is rather unexpected. In May last year, I posted here and here about a world summit of climate modellers that took place at Reading University. On the agenda was one very important problem for them; even the most powerful super-computers that have been developed so far are not capable of running the kind of high resolution models that they claim would allow them to reduce the degree of uncertainty in their predictions and also make detailed regional predictions that policy makers would like to have so that they can build climate change into infrastructure planning.

Here are a couple of excerpts from the conference website:

The climate modelling community is therefore faced with a major new challenge: Is the current generation of climate models adequate to provide societies with accurate and reliable predictions of regional climate change, including the statistics of extreme events and high impact weather, which are required for global and local adaptation strategies? It is in this context that the World Climate Research Program (WCRP) and the World Weather Research Programme (WWRP) asked the WCRP Modelling Panel (WMP) and a small group of scientists to review the current state of modelling, and to suggest a strategy for seamless prediction of weather and climate from days to centuries for the benefit of and value to society.

A major conclusion of the group was that regional projections from the current generation of climate models were sufficiently uncertain to compromise this goal of providing society with reliable predictions of regional climate change.

My emphasis

http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/ModellingSummit/Background.html

Current generation climate models have serious limitations in simulating regional features, for example, rainfall, mid-latitude storms, organized tropical convection, ocean mixing, and ecosystem dynamics. What is the scientific strategy to improve the fidelity of climate models?

http://wcrp.ipsl.jussieu.fr/Workshops/ModellingSummit/Expectations.html

This was summed up by Julia Slingo (at that time Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, who also chaired part of the conference) in a report by Roger Harrabin on the  BBC News website:

So far modellers have failed to narrow the total bands of uncertainties since the first report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1990.

And Julia Slingo from Reading University admitted it would not get much better until they had supercomputers 1,000 times more powerful than at present.

“We’ve reached the end of the road of being able to improve models significantly so we can provide the sort of information that policymakers and business require,” she told BBC News.

“In terms of computing power, it’s proving totally inadequate. With climate models we know how to make them much better to provide much more information at the local level… we know how to do that, but we don’t have the computing power to deliver it.”

Professor Slingo said several hundred million pounds of investment were needed.

“In terms of re-building something like the Thames Barrier, that would cost billions; it’s a small fraction of that.

“And it would allow us to tell the policymakers that they need to build the barrier in the next 30 years, or maybe that they don’t need to.”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7381250.stm

If, since the conference, several hundred million pounds had been invested in producing a new generation of supercomputers, a thousand times more powerful than the present generation, and the Met Office had already developed and run the kind of high resolution models which were so far beyond the scientist’s grasp just a year ago, then I suspect that this might have seeped into the media and I would have head about it. So far as I am aware, the fastest supercomputers are still a thousand times slower than the modellers considers necessary for credible regional scale modelling of the climate.

So I wondered whether Professor Slingo had anything to say about the Met Office’s new report, and googled accordingly:

“Through UKCP09 [UK Climate Predictions 2009] the Met Office has provided the world’s most comprehensive regional climate projections with a unique assessment of the possible changes to our climate through the rest of this century.

“For the first time businesses and other organisations have the tools to help them make risk-based decisions to adapt to the challenges of our changing climate.”

http://www.clickgreen.org.uk/news/national-news/12259-landmark-science-warns-britain-is-facing-dangerous-climate-change.html

In an article headlined, U.K. Says New Climate Forecast to Cut Long-Term Planning Risks on the Bloomberg website:

Until today, projections didn’t distinguish between the likely consequences of climate change in the southeast of the nation compared with the northwest, for instance. “We can attach levels of certainty,” Julia Slingo, ….. told reporters today in London.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ae6gM9bGo2Jw

So what’s changed since last year? Well one thing is that Julia Slingo has a new job. She has been appointed as  Chief Scientist at the Met Office. So far as I know, the limitations that lack of computing power place on the accuracy and resolution of models are just the same.

During a rather bad-tempered interview on Thursday evening’s Newsnight, Kirsty Wark asked Hilary Benn, the UK Environment Secretary, why local authorities were being told to use the Met Office predictions as a template for infrastructure planning when their report had not been peer reviewed and the authors had postponed publication of information about the methodology that they had used. She also told him that there was considerable concern among other climate scientists about the Met Office’s research.

Myles Allen made an appearance on the programme warning that local authorities should be very wary about planning infrastructure projects on the basis of climate models unless they were very sure that the science was robust.

Mr Benn parroted the usual mantras without addressing the questions, and looked as though he would have much preferred to be elsewhere.

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wws
June 20, 2009 7:52 am

Once they made the leap into blatantly making up data and decided that the real numbers were irrelevant, what was to stop them from going all the way and insisting that their ravings were all issued Ex Cathedra?
They’ve now completed the journey, and it is explicitly clear that this isn’t about “science” at all anymore. Not one little bit.
We truly live in the days of “policy based evidence.”

John Egan
June 20, 2009 7:57 am

Aren’t these the same duckwads that predicted a broiling summer last year and a warm winter this past winter? Winston Churchill would be proud of their moxie, if nothing else.

Ron de Haan
June 20, 2009 7:59 am

Taxing CO2 is simply a too attractive opportunity to generate free money, unlimited power and control.
This process is nothing more but a socialist coup undermining our democratic societies.
We should act accordingly and stand up to it.
NO TAXATION ON THE GAS OF LIFE.

GerryM
June 20, 2009 8:02 am

Are there two Met Offices in the UK? One seems to be able to tell you what the weather is going to be like at the Liver Buildings in Liverpool on 3rd March 2080, the other consistently tells us we’re going to have hot summers which don’t transpire. I think we should be told.
As a question to the posters here, does anyone have any idea why an upward trend in temperature is always accompanied with disaster and mayhem and has no beneficial effect whatsoever?

michel
June 20, 2009 8:05 am

I had not realized that the Met Office had refused to show its workings. This is truly amazing. After all, these are the guys who get it wrong a few months in advance just about every summer. They forecast it to be warm, and dry in the North and West of the country a couple of years ago. What happened was the coldest summer anyone can remember and deluges in, you guessed it, the North and the West. Clips showing Gloucester under water dominated the news. Northern towns streets turned to rivers, which carried the cars down them.
This almost total inability to forecast extends to the same day. For example I am today looking out at a cloudy sky, from which a few drops of rain are seeking to fall. The Met Office forecast, issued at 7.00am today, calls for a deluge to have started at lunch time, and for there still to be rain at the moment. At lunch we went out for a pleasant sunny post prandial walk.
So why on earth these guys think that they can forecast 20 years out, not show their workings, and have anyone believe them? The mind boggles!

wws
June 20, 2009 8:07 am

“As a question to the posters here, does anyone have any idea why an upward trend in temperature is always accompanied with disaster and mayhem and has no beneficial effect whatsoever?”
Simple. Because this is the answer most likely to result in increased Government controls, increased government revenues, and decreased personal freedoms.
With pronouncements from the state organs like the one detailed in this post, it’s getting silly to pretend it’s about anything else.
But there is a very amusing consequence of this – and that will be watching them try to explain all this way when temperatures keep dropping instead of rising.

Martyn B
June 20, 2009 8:31 am

At the beginning of the week the Met Office were telling us that it was going to be hot and dry by Thursday, then by the middle of the week they said actually it’s now going to be the weekend, then on Friday evening they were apologising and saying it will be the middle of next week before this hot weather arrives, so quite honestly who in their right minds would believe climate predictions made by this bunch of jokers!

Telboy
June 20, 2009 8:43 am

It’s obvious, isn’t it? All Government-funded organisations have been instructed in the philosophy of the Big Lie. They’re merely carrying out orders.

newbery
June 20, 2009 8:47 am

Michel;
I know no more about delay in publishing the methodology than that the presenter mentioned it in her interview with the minister, and he didn’t respond.
Matthew commenting at at Climate Audit has kindly provided these links to video of the Newsnight coverage:
For the scene setting
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8109923.stm
For the Q&A with the Environment Secretary, Hilary Benn
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8110064.stm

a jones
June 20, 2009 8:49 am

This was reported in the Times of London as a full page spread by the deputy political editor, no less, assisted by the energy editor [who he?] witha commentary by some gentleman saying it was too late to stop the first effects.
As usual I wote a short letter to them pointing out tha if they wished to report and comment on such speculations then they owed it to their readers, indeed they had a duty, to report the facts as well.
Such as the fact that global temperatures are currently falling as even the Met Office admits albeit relutantly, warming will soon return etc.
As usual they did not publish it.
Kindest Regards

KW
June 20, 2009 8:50 am

The MET office needs to listen to Phil Collin’s ‘Both Sides of the Story’…heh

bill
June 20, 2009 9:00 am

wws (08:07:10) :
“As a question to the posters here, does anyone have any idea why an upward trend in temperature is always accompanied with disaster and mayhem and has no beneficial effect whatsoever?”
Simple. Because this is the answer most likely to result in increased Government controls, increased government revenues, and decreased personal freedoms.
With pronouncements from the state organs like the one detailed in this post, it’s getting silly to pretend it’s about anything else.

Huh!!! The parliament (all sides) cannot even keep its excesses of expenses secret. How on earth do you think this global conspiracy has not been blown wide open. The press would love it!!
Perhaps you still believe that the moon landings were fake?

rbateman
June 20, 2009 9:23 am

They’ll never have enough computing power to change the future.
That’s their problem.

hotrod
June 20, 2009 9:33 am

How on earth do you think this global conspiracy has not been blown wide open. The press would love it!!

Large organizations are like living organisms. They satisfy their primary needs before all others. Like a living organism they will at all costs survive, if they can survive, they will try to grow, If they can grow they will try to dominate any competitor for their survival niche. The same goes for the large media outlets. They like the major meteorological organizations have a great deal of their credibility invested in AGW.
Once they crossed the boundary that they would become advocates for a single belief structure, they lost the flexibility inherent in building their credibility on unbiased investigation. That means they have no way to say “Oops we screwed up”, without in effect committing institutional suicide.
As a result you have the appearance of a grand conspiracy but it is really rooted in lots of individuals who are protecting their own credibility and in doing so feeding on each others “liberty with the truth”. It is sort of like the story whispered to a group of people in a circle, when it comes back it has no resemblance to the original story. Each participant either willingly or unconsciously makes a small change in the story to serve his/her own needs, beliefs, or misunderstandings, and the whopper that comes out the other end of the process has no relationship with the information that went into its making.
It is like a bunch of 5 year olds telling fibs so they and their friends won’t get in trouble. It just slowly gets worse and worse over time, until the teacher brings them up short.
I think (hope) the “teacher” (ie the climate) slaps them upside the head with a wake up pretty soon before this never ending escalation of absurdity leads to long term damage to our societies, culture, laws and economy.
Larry

Oldjim
June 20, 2009 10:09 am

Obviously their computers and models have improved dramatically since they issued their global forecast in about 2007 http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/brochures/clim_res_had_fut_pol.pdf in which they stated
[i]We are now using the system to predict changes out to 2014. By the end of this period, the global average temperature is expected to have risen by around 0.3 °C compared to 2004, and half of the years after 2009 are predicted to be hotter than the current record hot year, 1998. [/i]
Of course we now have another 4 years to 2014 for the global temperature anomaly to increase from +0.432 (in 2004) to +0.462 which might be difficult given that the value for 2008 is +0.361 and for the first part of 2010 is about 0.381

wws
June 20, 2009 10:09 am

NIce bill – total ad homineim attack while avoiding any mention at all of the idiocy of the met offices issue.
Spoken like a true Alarmist lemming. You’ve done your masters proud.

Bill Illis
June 20, 2009 10:10 am

This is the same argument Hansen used in the early 1980s – that they just needed a little more computing power and they could solve all the equations required to simulate the climate – he only needed a 1988 Cray supercomputer.
Well, we now have climate models and supercomputers that use the energy of a small city and the same lack of accuracy is evident.
It all depends on the theoritical equations for GHGs – which have not been empirically derived/proven but just result from solving a few other theoritical equations.
The equations could still be right – but the year 2005 version of the supercomputer-powered model still says the equations are still wrong.

Neil
June 20, 2009 11:24 am

I have just attempted to start a petition on the site below.
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CRUSourceCodes/BhauuWC8H9oGBsZR9eAJa0C
with this text:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to Force the
Climate Research Unit, or other publicly funded organisations
to release the source codes used in their computer models.
The Met Office , the climate research unit and various
individuals at numerous academic institutions are refusing to
release the source codes used in their climate research models.
These are tax payer funded institutions, which are influencing
government policy decisions which will affect the day to day
lives of us all.
With the Prime Minister’s belief in a new age of transparency,
it is unsurportable that these publicly funded organisations,
are not open to public scrutiny .
It now has to be “approved” , I expect it to be rejected , I wait to see their reasons.
However, should it by some miracle slip past the ” Gatekeepers” , I will post the link on here, and urge all British Citizens to spread the word.

skb
June 20, 2009 11:24 am

The UKCP09 has customisable maps available here: http://ukclimateprojections-ui.defra.gov.uk/ui/admin/login.php
I didn’t fancy registering, but it looks like it has information for the 25km squares.
I thought the met office was part of the ministry of defence, so I don’t know why this is on the defra website

Mark T
June 20, 2009 11:36 am

wws (10:09:18) :
Spoken like a true Alarmist lemming. You’ve done your masters proud.

And then you follow it up with an argumentum ad hominem of your own. Good job.
Mark

Neil
June 20, 2009 11:36 am

I had put the petition in without running the spell chucker , and it won’t allow me to change it , mind you they will probably use that as the reason to reject it !!

M White
June 20, 2009 11:39 am

Susan Watts has a BSc in Physics
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8109923.stm
“The models shows the next 30 years as pretty much set because past greenhouse gas emissions take 30 years to work through the system” – Sounds like a definite prediction to me.
Dr Vicky Pope – “We’ve taken the Metoffice Hadley centre as the basis for our projections and we’ve created 400 different models from that representing all that we know about the uncertanty in the science of our model, we’ve then also combined that with information with information from 12 internationaly known models from around the world which have been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’ve taken all of that and produced probability information combining it with 11 regional models that we’ve run to provide detailed information for the UK, and to produce statistical informatiion about the risks of climat change in the future.”

Its just a rehash of other models.

Aron
June 20, 2009 11:49 am

The computer power excuse is a crock to get more funding for new equipment. There’s plenty of computing power available if they use network or cloud computing as SETI has done for years.

M White
June 20, 2009 11:50 am

Projections from the Department For Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)
http://www.defra.gov.uk/environment/climatechange/adapt/pdf/uk-climate-projections.pdf

M White
June 20, 2009 11:54 am

Hilary Benn, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, will take part in a Number 10 webchat discussing the UK Climate Projections and the Government’s plans to adapt to the challenges it will cause.
The webchat will take place on Monday 22 June at 09:45BST. Read about the UK Climate Projections:
Any questions goto
http://www.webchat.pm.gov.uk/Default.aspx?webchatID=86

Phillip Bratby
June 20, 2009 11:54 am

She’s worked with Phil Jones and John Mitchell. Need one say more.

Chris Manuell
June 20, 2009 11:55 am

Great News! I have found the page on the met office website which tells me what the weather will be like in 2050 compared to 2009 in the South East of England!
Average rainfall up 1mm from 748mm to 749mm
Average Winter Rainfall up from 204mm to 237mm
Average annual temperature up from 10 degrees to 12 degrees C
Average warmest day up from 30 to 32degrees C
As we live in the driest part of the UK I think the extra millimetre will be most welcome if a little hard to notice, bet we still have hosepipe bans though!
Still perhaps the average temperature going up 2 degrees may stop so many people in the UK dying of the cold, which is a national disgrace.
In fact contrary to the the news as put over by the BBC and others it all seems rather positive. And there was me thinking the weather would be like the south of France or Spain.

M White
June 20, 2009 12:13 pm

Aron (11:49:18) :
Distributed computing , that’s how they came up with this
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml

newbery
June 20, 2009 12:17 pm

skb:
Thanks! I’ll try to have a look at it, but the dropdown list labeled ‘sector’ on the registration page doesn’t include ‘blogger’, although it does include ‘Multi-sector’ and ‘Non-sector Specific’.

Dave Andrews
June 20, 2009 1:10 pm

Let’s look on the bright side.
This is obviously Met Office/UK govt posturing pre Copenhagen. Are there any climate modellers who think their models can really even produce regional models, yet alone get down to 25km gridded squares?
The fact Myles Allen, currently of the ‘trillionth tonne’ fame. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7242/full/nature08019.html is sceptical says, well, tons!

tallbloke
June 20, 2009 1:42 pm

I noticed Vicky Pope didn’t just say there was uncertainty in the models, but uncertainty in the science.
the escape hatch is being unbolted.

Sam the Skeptic
June 20, 2009 2:23 pm

The Telegraph’s new environment guru got so far up my nose with his analysis piece on this that I threw caution to the winds and actually wrote them a letter.
No sign of it so far so I’ll post it here (if you think it’s appropriate; otherwise I’m sure you’ll use the scissors on it).
“”For Geoffrey Lean to cite the 2003 heatwave as conclusive proof of impending global catastrophe — which is what he appears to be implying — is disingenuous at best and downright dishonest at worst.
Climate is a non-linear chaotic system and any one weather event is indicative of nothing but itself. August 2003 was a freak as were similar events in 1990, 1932 and 1911. The figure of 35,000 deaths which he quotes as attributable to that event appear to come from a report in the New Scientist, based on data from the Earth Policy Institute which is an environmental pressure group and can hardly be said to be an objective source. Neither, it would seem, is the Met Office whose forecast for this summer looks like being wrong for the third year in a row but which claims it can accurately predict the weather 50 years into the future. Forgive me if I feel disinclined to believe such nonsense.
But if this single event is indeed the forerunner of more extreme heatwaves to come, can Mr Lean perhaps explain what we should make of last winter’s extreme events across the North American continent with record early snowfalls, record snow cover, record late frosts, record low temperatures (a situation which continued into the southern hemisphere at the start of their winter) none of which appeared to be of interest to the so-called climate scientists whose alarmist pronouncements (the result of further tweaking of their already dubiously constructed computer models) become more frenzied by the day?
Or have we reached the stage where any unusually warm event is to be trumpeted as evidence of runaway global warming while unusually cold events are to be ignored or dismissed in a whisper as “just weather”?””

Neil
June 20, 2009 2:27 pm

O/T
tallbloke , did you ever own a “Wedge” ?

June 20, 2009 2:35 pm

“from that representing all that we know about the uncertanty in the science of our model, we’ve then also combined that with information with information from 12 internationaly known models from around the world which have been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’ve taken all of that and produced probability information combining it with 11 regional models that we’ve run to provide detailed information for the UK, and to produce statistical informatiion about the risks of climat change in the future.”
Er, how? The different models tend to treat different variables differently (which is why they are, well, different.) And each of those models makes different starting assumptions. So how do you blend them? Do you average them? Or take median projections or pick the one whose predictions you like best and use it as a base line?
And, just for fun, how can you “take all that we know about the uncertainty of the science in our model” and do anything at all with it? You might usefully take what is actually certain (colder in winter than in summer, colder the further north you go – that sort of thing) and work with that; but uncertainty is about what you don’t know and about what, within the parameters of the model you are working with and the data you have, you cannot know.
Dr. Pope should know better than to spout this educated sounding nonsense.

Ron de Haan
June 20, 2009 3:02 pm

I have referred to this subject in earlier postings but the UK MET OFFICE is into the AGW/Climate Change Doctrine over their ears.
They not only provide data in support with IPCC directives but they also train politicians, managers and staff of NGO’s and civil servants in all facets of the scheme including how to handle skeptics and deniers.
The biggest problem we have is the fact that the entire process of presentations and meetings are performed in a closed circuits, only attended by proponants in support of the hoax. No skeptics or deniers are admitted.
You only have to visit the MET OFFICE website to find out about the training programs they offer.
So if you are wondering why it is the world is running haywire on the non existing probleme involving our climate, here you have the answer.
The UN created world wide network involving all the National Weather Services to sing the same tune.
They have the support of thousands of consulting organizations, NGO’s, foundations and communities promoting the same kind of shit.
We have the Hanson’s, the Mann’s, the Gore’s, the Clinton’s, Kerry, Biden and Obama. A bunch of Biljardairs and TV Tycoons that believe the world is going to hell if our populations grows too much.
Really sick idea’s from really sick, but powerfull people.
The irony of it all is that what the Iranians currently are fighting for in the streets of Tehran, is we are bound to lose soon if we don’t stop this charade.

Jim H
June 20, 2009 5:29 pm

I’m trying to make hay at the moment in the UK, and the Met office weather forecasts aren’t making it any easier! They aren’t able to predict with any degree of accuracy more than a day or so ahead (I need 5-7 dry sunny days to make good hay). So how they can predict 70 years ahead with such confidence beats me.

Ron de Haan
June 20, 2009 5:38 pm

Jim H (17:29:39) :
I’m trying to make hay at the moment in the UK, and the Met office weather forecasts aren’t making it any easier! They aren’t able to predict with any degree of accuracy more than a day or so ahead (I need 5-7 dry sunny days to make good hay). So how they can predict 70 years ahead with such confidence beats me.
Jim H,
Right, you can not trust their weather forecasts and you can’t believe their long term climate predictions.
I think they suffer from a serious image problem.

John F. Hultquist
June 20, 2009 10:12 pm

Would it not be best to understand the science of the climate first and then to program the computer? If your science is correct then even a not-so-super computer could work on the data sets for a month or two and give useful results for 20 years out. It wouldn’t make much difference if I got these useful results in September or November of this year for the year 2030. But because the science is not understood: a bigger, faster, super-duper computer is going to help – how?

Ed Zuiderwijk
June 21, 2009 2:55 am

It’s bl..y fathersday here in Cambridge and I was promised a “barbecue summer” this year. It’s 17 C outside and overcast. Some barbecue in our woollies!
The minister for Something and Climate Change, Mr H Benn, bleated yesterday that it should now be cristal clear to the deniers that the Earth was doomed, if we did not mend our ways. Ye sinners, repent!
This stuff is a good illustration that bad science can make otherwise reasonably intelligent people say totally idiotic things.

June 21, 2009 3:40 am

You have to understand what is happening, politically, in the UK. The government has placed its levers of power in all the governmental and civil service institutions, and has used that influence to bludgeon people into following the government line. Nowadays, it only takes one slip of the tongue, one casual remark, and you are hounded out of your job.
From the police, to the health service, armed forces, education, local government, government scientists**, the BBC (especially the BBC), and even the met office – if you don’t tow the government line you may as well find a new career.
Thus the Met Office is just doing what it has been ordered to do – promote the Global Warming agenda or loose all that lovely funding that has just bought that new super-computer.
http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/news/Met-Office-s-new-30m-supercomputer-help-save-lives-worldwide/article-1015148-detail/article.html
Ralph
** Here is the fate of a high-profile scientist who stood up to the government (he was about to stop the recent Iraq war).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/6390981.stm
In Westminster Parliament-speak, “his life was deliberately taken by others” means, in more common parlance, “murdered” ….

June 21, 2009 3:49 am

>>>If several hundred million pounds had been invested in
>>>producing a new generation of supercomputers, a thousand
>>>times more powerful than the present generation
…. then you will simply get the wrong answer 1000 time quicker! Processing power has no effect on GIGO.
BTW, you will note (from my post above) that the announcement of the new Met Office computer (funded by the government) is roughly coincident with the announcement of the new Met Office Global Warming report that says we are all going to fry (a speculation in line with current government propaganda).
Point proven??
Ralph

Arthur Glass
June 21, 2009 5:21 am

” At the beginning of the week the Met Office were telling us that it was going to be hot and dry by Thursday, then by the middle of the week they said actually it’s now going to be the weekend, then on Friday evening they were apologising and saying it will be the middle of next week before this hot weather arrives, so quite honestly who in their right minds would believe climate predictions made by this bunch of jokers!”
” He thought he saw a Rattlesnake
That questioned him in Greek:
He looked again, and found it was
The Middle of Next Week.
‘The one thing I regret,’ he said,
‘Is that it cannot speak!’ ”
–Lewis Carroll
Curioser and curioser!

Arthur Glass
June 21, 2009 5:33 am

‘Dr Vicky Pope – “We’ve taken the Metoffice Hadley centre as the basis for our projections and we’ve created 400 different models from that representing all that we know about the uncertanty in the science of our model, we’ve then also combined that with information with information from 12 internationaly known models from around the world which have been used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We’ve taken all of that and produced probability information combining it with 11 regional models that we’ve run to provide detailed information for the UK, and to produce statistical informatiion about the risks of climate change in the future.”
” He thought he saw a Garden-Door
That opened with a key:
He looked again, and found it was
A Double Rule of Three:
‘And all its mystery,’ he said,
‘Is clear as day to me!’ “

bill
June 21, 2009 5:55 am

Ed Zuiderwijk (02:55:29)
When you say Cambridge are you refering to the UK variety?
The average for June is 19.4C for Oxford
The last 4 weeks have seen temperatures well in excess of this.
in fact the 1st 5 moths of the year compared against 1961 to 1990 average are:
j -0.55
f 1.75
m 2.25
a 2.67
m 1.88
Cambridge must be a cold miserable place in your mind’s eye!

bill
June 21, 2009 6:07 am

Moths = months!
ralph ellis (03:40:15) :
What paranoid Britain do you live in!?
There was plenty of MSM documentaries questioning the death of the scientist. He would not have been able to stop Iraq, (Blair was under control of Bush).
Are you suggesting that there is not one of the 10s of thousand civil servants not willng to blow the gaff on false evidence, lies, funding irregularities of the met office and all the others.
Piffle! If someone is willing to sell the papers the story about a few million GBP in false expenses (clearing moats, clearing creepers, and £0.01 phone calls) then I am absolutely certain that there is a queue waiting in thre wings to sell their “met office are liars and criminals” stories that you suggest are true.

bill
June 21, 2009 6:51 am

Some Met Office Publications of Interest:
How British measurements should be made:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/library/factsheets/factsheet17.pdf
Analysis of central England Temperature record
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/HCTN/HCTN_46.pdf
Uncertainties in the Central England Temperature series 1878-2003 and some changes to the maximum and minimum series Hadley
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/publications/HCTN/HCTN_50.pdf

Barry Sheridan
June 21, 2009 7:06 am

For readers of this blog unfamiliar with the utterances of theUK government and its sponsored organs, please note that they have become, with rare exception, little more than unprincipled charlatans. The Met Office fit neatly into this category because their primary interest is not aimed at trying to explore the underlying science so that it can actually improve our understanding of climate. Instead it routinely cherry picks its way through the data to create scary scenarios that suit its headline grabbing agenda.
Like parliament, the Met Office has brought itself into disrepute, which is profoundly sad as they have some first class talent. Capable people poorly led as is the norm for modern Britain.

wws
June 21, 2009 8:01 am

It just occurred to me that Bill and Aminadjab have a lot in common.
Different systems, same maniacal worship of authority as represented by the status quo. Same claims that official acceptance of the status quo is “proof” that anyone in opposition must be insane or criminal.
Hey bill, notice how that’s working out for Aminadjab these days?

John Galt
June 21, 2009 8:58 am

When the government tells you there’s nothing to worry about, that’s when you should start worrying!

June 21, 2009 9:29 am

>>>Are you suggesting that there is not one of the tens
>>>of thousand civil servants not willng to blow the gaff on
>>>false evidence, lies, funding irregularities of the met office
>>>and all the others?
I am. Most people, including many of those who are robotically mouthing the Global Warming mantra, are merely keeping their heads down in order the keep their jobs.
http://news.scotsman.com/immigrationandrefugees/Home-Office-whistleblower–sacked.5205333.jp
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/personal-view/3609386/Its-all-over-when-the-whistle-blows.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1173208/Home-Office-whistleblower-sacked-leaks-Tory-MP.html
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Politics/Damian-Green-Leak-Christopher-Galley-Civil-Servant-Sacked-For-Handing-Documents-Over-To-MP/Article/200904415268721
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article410114.ece
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article444819.ece
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4161/is_20070121/ai_n17146081/
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article2804407.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1141979/JAMES-SLACK-Who-restore-sanity-madhouse-21st-Century-policing.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2004/jan/09/pressandpublishing.broadcasting
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-452477/Police-order-shopkeeper-remove-golliwogs-window.html
http://www.christianvoice.org.uk/Press/press019.html
.
I could go on and on with quotes, but you get the idea; freedom of thought and speech are being systematically terminated. It is easy to intimidate the civil service, the police and the masses, if you can use the power of the state to arrest and sack people.
P.S. I am not a Christian, nor am I anti-gay, but I include the last item to demonstrate how petty the arrests and intimidation have become. A previous generation would have laughed and ridiculed a deranged (from my point of view) preacher, but now they are arrested and prosecuted. Moral – keep your mouth shut and head down, because you are next.

Chris Schoneveld
June 21, 2009 10:32 am

I didn’t realize that the garbage-in/garbage-out principle could be circumvented with more computer power.

JFA in Montreal
June 21, 2009 1:31 pm

At least, in the old days of reading fish entrails, it ended to be much cheaper to taxpayers…

newbery
June 22, 2009 3:28 am

The BBC’s Science Correspondent, Pallab Ghosh, has some interesting background on this controversy here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8106513.stm

June 22, 2009 4:14 am

Totally reckless and irresponsible, unless the MetO can show us exactly how natural variation of the climate functions, they should all get the cane!
Jim H (17:29:39) :
I’m trying to make hay at the moment in the UK, and the Met office weather forecasts aren’t making it any easier! They aren’t able to predict with any degree of accuracy more than a day or so ahead (I need 5-7 dry sunny days to make good hay). So how they can predict 70 years ahead with such confidence beats me.
I`ll do you a long range forecast, mail me, ulriclyons at gmail dot com.

Stephen Wilde
June 23, 2009 3:43 am

bill (05:55:29)
Interesting.
Using a 1961 to 2000 baseline brings in all the colder UK winters of the 60s and in particular the exceptionally cold Spring months of 1963.
No wonder they can get the early months of 2009 to look warmer than ‘average’ even though those months actually represent a return to more normal temperatures after the 1975 to 2000 warming spell.
If it keeps getting cooler they will have to take the baseline period back to the exceptionally cold and snowy Spring of 1947.

Neil
June 25, 2009 9:07 am

Sadly , only for UK citizens, but :
http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/CRUSourceCodes/
Now if someone could start another re the data , which I missed out, and it won’t let me edit , they will still ignore it !!!!!