Piers Corbyn showed up on Fox and Friends this morning to discuss his most accurate prediction of a bone-chillingly cold winter, and throw some ad hominem attacks towards the global warming “cultists”. Many comments in the blizzard stories on WUWT have touted the achievements and skill of Corbyn, but, as with any long-range forecaster, he has been embarrassed by some spectacular failures.
So, is Corbyn a “broken clock” right twice-a-day or is he a visionary that sees things in the tea-leaves differently and correctly? Well, after this blizzard and the European deep-freeze, apparently we haven’t seen anything yet!
We report, you decide … or something.
From Mediaite (click for video link):
Predicting in November that winter in Europe would be “exceptionally cold and snowy, like Hell frozen over at times,” Corbyn suggested we should sooner prepare for another Ice Age than worry about global warming. Corbyn believed global warming “is complete nonsense, it’s fiction, it comes from a cult ideology. There’s no science in there, no facts to back [it] up.”
Well, Piers is a professional outlier. But he may yet cash in a big pile of scientific chips!
Here’s the same video that should play in any location of the world. Some videos won’t play in certain locations.
“mild “global warming” winter prediction by government fail”
I’ve yet to see a metric for folks such as Piers that stand up and say what they think will happen but I applaud him for doing this. The UK Met posts things and then denies that they have done so. Regular weather service forecasts in the USA are being revised in one room as they are posted for the public in another.
Until someone produces a method for doing so and sticks with it for several years the skill of forecasters will be as controversial as which way to hang toilet paper.
Here’s a link to the Fox Video which is very funny:
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4475360/mocked-meteorologist-gets-last-laugh
We are cooling, folks; for how long, even kim doesn’t know.
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I like Piers, he looks just as kooky as the rest of the climate scientists….
exactly correct
If he can predict correctly and give the scientific methodology that is testable to predict in the future, then he is more than worth listening to. Otherwise he may be more like Bill Miller in the stock market who beat the market for any number of years until he did a spectacular nose plant. However, with the AMO on the downslope and a de Vries minimum on our hands, the chances are pretty good that we shall be burning windmills for their carbon content in 10 years rather than worrying about GHG.
Piers Corbyn has been predicting winter snowstorms in the UK for the last 30 years, usually with a very poor record of success.
Striking paydirt this year does not make his “tea leaves” any better than anyone elses.
He may have had some failures but he’s had some big wins as well. The AGW crowd, on the other hand, have had nothing but failures: I don’t recall any “wins” amoungst them. Everything they predict turns out the opposite and many of their “facts” are eventually proven false. Smart money’s on Corbyn at thus point, but it’s still a gamble because the game is predicting nature!
I like his hair style. A true scientist.
He has some kind of odd ideas, but he is right about global warming. His other ideas might be right too, I don’t know enough about them to know though.
I too like Piers! He is fun, intelligent, and has a sense of humor. That he is not sharing all his methodology with us unlike those scientists on the tax dole who have taken money from us and then withhold the data (methodology), he has done a lot of work at his own expense and is simply trying to make a little money on the deal. Good luck. His long term predictions of the past 30 years of warming and starting into 30 future years of cooling reflect my idea of the natural cycle. That he is willing and somewhat successful in taking on near term weather prediction is laudable. It is very tough to do with what we seem to know right now. The sun as a major player also fits with my view of the natural processes and if he can use solar phenomenon to predict these short term fluctuations – more power to him.
Either way he is much more enjoyable to watch than the AGW crowd and we should be careful of labeling his ideas and thoughts before we understand what the natural system is actually doing and before we see what his understanding of that system actually is. The few glimpses of his understanding that I have gotten makes me more of a supporter than a detractor. Just on a common sense level. The finer scientific level will require some time and patience (a few ahah moments?) but all these theories are going to require that. I certainly wish him well even though I might not always bet on his horse, at least it will be a fun and interesting run.
Well done Piers!
Some of the comments over at Mediaite are precious:
“South America is going to have a hot summer, maybe hotter than 2009/2010”
Based on what I’ve seen of the La Niña charts here, I really doubt that.
A few comments here:
“…but, as with any long-range forecaster, he has been embarrassed by some spectacular failures”
And
“We report, you decide … or something.”
Ryan,
You either said too much or not enough. Failures? Name them so we can all appreciate the degree of failure you are talking about. Then we might decide…
ShrNfr writes:
“If he can predict correctly and give the scientific methodology that is testable to predict in the future, then he is more than worth listening to”
Well he is making a living with his method which he explains in his website. Of course, he is careful in revealing his craft because after all, science has also a part of intuition and diagnostic that the computers won’t have. At least, he puts his name on his forecasts and assumes the successes and the failures. Already better than most…
As for global cooling, Corbyn is right on. Only those who have not read Marcel Leroux are unaware of it…
[ryanm: we report, you decide is a quip about fox news, which puts split screen “debates” on the air for 2-3 minutes, and then on to the next thing. you can google his forecast wins and busts. joe bastardi at accuweather has a similar “greatest hits” album out there.]
Reminds me of a story I once heard. If you want a lifetime of gainful employment, be an economist that always predicts doom and gloom. In good times they can afford to keep you on because they can use a contrary opinion. In bad times they keep you on because you are right.
Fox always has to do ten things at once, never content to simply let one person talk. Always a split screen, crawl underneath, sound fx in background, backbeat and whoosh noises under it all.
Split screen with Corbyn, announcer tells us “We’re looking at video of extreme snow in London.”
Really? Snow was falling, but most North Americans would call it a dusting, not “extreme snow”!
What he’s doing is no different to the methods the warming fiddlers use: if the temperature is generally on an upward trend, you’re going to be correct more often than not when you forecast warming. If the temperature is generally on a downward trend, you’re going to be correct more often than not when you forecast cooling.
In conclusion, nobody has a ******* clue what they’re talking about when it comes to medium and long-term projections. Economists are the same. The system is too complex to be understood well enough to forecast a priori.
In the same forecast Piers also had this to say:
unfortunately he is totally wrong!!
Brisbane has experienced cold weather with record heavy rain and floods and 21 – 24C temperatures.
So he was right regarding extreme weather but the wrong kind.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/qld/brisbane/brisbane
I find I have to be very careful not to only listen to those who say what I like to hear. Otherwise, I would pay a lot more attention to Mark Madriga’s forecasts on Yiddish Columbia Turkey Vision here in BC. He says what all the big city folk want to hear.
Still, it was fun to watch Piers. Entertaining fellow. He’d make a great TV weatherman.
His drive-by comments regarding lunar/solar/oceans/virgin sacrifices are just too much for me. Stop the drivebys and tell us the mechanism -with calculations- you subscribe to.
He’s been amazingly wrong with regard to weather in the USA. He predicts tornadoes in the Midwest or South during tornado season, and rain in the Midwest or South during rain season, and if any rain or tornado shows up in the Midwest or South, he claims success. He treats the entire USA as if it were a tiny island, not a vast land mass that has all kinds of weather going on year round. He rarely pinpoints where his predicted disaster storms are going to strike in the USA, rather he gives himself tens of thousands of square miles to work with. His Florida/Southeast hurricane predictions this year were a spectacular flop, but he still claims success.
He reminds me a lot of the AGW soothsayers who make such broad and varied predictions that no matter what happens they claim they predicted it. The fact that he isn’t one of their camp doesn’t mean he isn’t blowing the same hot air.
Janama, Brisbane is experiencing the australian monsoon now. So the difference between forecast and actual is where the limit of the monsoon reaches southward. Since this weather system boundary is sharp, the contrast between being off for a hundred kms is starck: either heatwave or deluge. Given the powerful winter enjoyed in the Northern Hemisphere, and rising pressures anticyclones from Antarctica, this monsoon line has been confined in a relatively narrow corridor, hence the deluge of rains. I would argue that it is more the intensity that Piers is warning about in his long term forecast. Anyway beats the heck of the IPCC clowns’ own forecasts…
crosspatch says:
December 27, 2010 at 6:10 pm
“Reminds me of a story I once heard. If you want a lifetime of gainful employment, be an economist that always predicts doom and gloom. In good times they can afford to keep you on because they can use a contrary opinion. In bad times they keep you on because you are right.”
Do you refer to Piers Corbyn or to the AGW proponents when you say “doom and gloom”? From what i’ve heard, Global Warming leads to the extinction of polar bears, penguins, Sanat Claus, millions of climate refugees, flooded cities, well you know the drill. Sounds pretty gloomy to me.