By John O’ Sullivan
The BBC serves Freedom of Information request (FOIA) on UK Government over weather forecast failures secrecy in worst winter for 100 years.
In an almighty battle to salvage credibility three British government institutions are embroiled in a new global warming scandal with the BBC mounting a legal challenge to force ministers to admit the truth. Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart?
Last week the weather service caused a sensation by making the startling claim that it was gagged by government ministers from issuing a cold winter forecast. Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.
With the BBC appearing to take the side of the Met Office by seeking to force the government to give honest answers, untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.
Rift between BBC, Met Office and UK Government Grows
Speculation in newspapers and the blogosphere has festered for the past week as Chris Huhne, minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) stubbornly remain silent. I contacted the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin, one of the world’s senior journalists on such matters to ascertain if the Beeb had a better handle on the story.
Harrabin advised me, “I phoned the Met Office about this statement and the Met Office press office told me they’d given information to the Cabinet Office that we were facing an early cold winter.”
Mention of the ‘secret’ cold winter forecast appears in the Quarmby Report (Section 2.4) which states, “The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.”
Giving a strong hint that a major rift appears to have opened up between Met Office chief executive, John Hirst and Climate Minister, Huhne, Harrabin further revealed, “The Beeb now has an FoI [freedom of information request] to Cabinet Office requesting verbatim info from [the] Met Office.”
In what may well be an orchestrated manoeuvre between the Met Office and Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC the freedom of information demand will heap huge embarrassment on David Cameron’s gaffe-prone coalition government.
Ministers Facing Accusations of Malfeasance of Public Office
If the Beeb succeeds in forcing Cameron’s government to come clean it looks probable hat government ministers intentionally conspired to withhold vital severe weather forecast information placing both lives and jobs at risk. So far losses to the UK economy linked to this year’s severe winter weather are estimated to be above £10 billion.
MP’s Call for Official Parliamentary Probe
Dr. Benny Peiser of Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF ) reports (January 10, 2011) that Liverpool MP Louise Ellman, chairman of the Transport Select committee, is angling to be appointed to head such an official parliamentary probe.
“The current winter fiasco is no longer a joke as the economic damage to the British economy as a result of the country’s ill-preparedness is running at £1bn a day and could reach more than £15 billion,” said Dr Peiser, the GWPF’s Director.
But if the coalition government gives in to demands for a full inquiry, which is as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas, then no doubt heads will roll in high places.
While the media seems to want to hang this on Cameron, I am not convinced that the problem isn’t the other half of the coalition govt.
This sort of manipulation seems much more in line with the policy of Labor than of the Conservatives.
“He said, She said, is not that good of a method of understanding weather.”
Looks like the fear of truth and fear of a clear vote to raise taxes has them all some feet out from the cliff and in free fall.
It is easy, cut spending or tell the truth of the lust to spend and raise taxes.
sad little men these
Watch the villagers
Light the torches for some fun.
Frankenstein stalks streets.
==============
“it looks probable hat government ministers intentionally conspired to withhold vital severe weather forecast information placing both lives and jobs at risk”
“The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.”
===========================================================
This is just more complete and total BS…………
The MET, at best, predicted a cold spell, not record breaking, life threatening, once in a hundred years cold.
The MET didn’t predict anything. If they could have, there’s no way they could have missed this record breaking weather. What they are saying is the equivalent of predicting cloudy with light showers and have it turn into a once in a century flood.
The BBC is trying to turn this into a political slam fest and trying to blame the party in power, when it’s obviously the MET.
@crosspatch
I think you meant Liberal, not Labour. The Labour party is now in opposition, and the coalition is between the Conservatives and the Liberals.
British Conservatives pride themselves to be very green. Not much difference from Labour.
I’ve just been reading about the £100million cost of repairing potholes in Scotland alone (and as an aside I’ve got a bruised elbow where I came off my bike on an icy pavement)
But the question that I really want answered is this: “if the UK government were given a forecast of a severe did they provide this forecast to the Scottish (devolved) government and if so why not.”
And, if they did provide the forecast, why was the Scottish government so caught out by the bad weather and claim that it was a poor Met Office forecast?
The same question also applies to Northern Ireland as both Northern Ireland and Scotland have had ministers resign due to the severe winter … which if a forecast were kept from them by the UK government results in quite a serious constitutional problem because it looks like the UK government are denying information which could have helped saved lives!
Isn’t Roger Harrabin impressed by the Met Office’s ability to predict milder than normal and colder than normal winters at the same time?
I’m not sure that such presciently varied ‘visions of the future’ can be deemed to be Cameron’s fault. (Excepting the fact that he over funds both the Met Office and the BBC).
“But if the coalition government gives in to demands for a full inquiry, which is as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas….”
The turkeys already have voted for Christmas in the form of the Climate Change Act. This passed through the House of Commons, during unseasonably early snowfall, in October 2008 with all but three MPs present voting for the bill which, if implemented in full, will cost the UK £18 Billion per year.
However, the winter forecast issue will probably not take off in the House of Commons. The Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Labour parties, along with most or, maybe, all of the smaller parties represented at Westminster have swallowed the AGW panic – hook, line and sinker. They will be very reluctant to admit they have been “sold a pup.”
You couldn’t make this stuff up; or if you did, it would make a pretty good soap opera (if results were not so serious; i.e.: Potentially 15+ billion in economic losses).
If the Met Office prediction was somewhat vague, it means trouble for the Met Office
If the Met Office did give a high probability of a harsh winter, in secret, to the cabinet office, then it means trouble for the coalition government (Conservative/lib dem coalition ~ 5/1 ratio of MP’s)
I wonder if the BBC read Watts Up With That, I wrote this yesterday,
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/09/the-met-office-secret-prediction-and-the-political-implications/
“Bishop Hill and other blogs report that Freedom of Information request are being sent off for these ‘ so called ‘secret’ Met Office predictions made to the government.
After all it must be true, the BBC’s Roger Harrabin reported it?
I wonder if the BBC have thought to send any FOI requests in themselves, just to check the facts of this story. The BBC just renewed a 5 year contract with the Met Office to provide all the weather forecasting for the BBC. The BBC surely does not want to look as if it is being lax in its investigative journalism? If only to check that the service provided to the BBC by the Met Office is competent and can be trusted, as it is taxpayers money paying for this service.”
I wonder if the BBC see the irony of pestering people doing serious work, the UK government, with FoI requests.
I would guess this has Chris Huhne’s [Minister for Climate Change (sic!)] finger prints on it. I agree. If true, it feels like a Left-Lib type ploy.
There must be an enquiry, headed by an “unimpeachable” High Court Judge……….
I hear that HMG has just ordered another tanker of whitewash.
As a UK citizen I am tempted to submit an FOIA request to the Cabinet Office enquiring if they have received an FOIA request on this matter from the BBC.
Crosspatch. The sad truth is that all the evidence suggests that Cameron is signed up as sincerely to AGW as the leaders of the other parties. He is on record as saying that his government will be the “greenest ever”. He is just another out of touch, never had a proper job, politician.
Hey, the BBC re-appointed the Met Office last year for its weather forecasting service. Quite apart from its ‘news’ interest and the political anti-government angle that the BBC might like to put on this, and the discomfiture it would seek to apply to the Conservatives, what about its own interest in being sold a pup just after renewing its contract with the Met Office? If the Met Office was secretly briefing the Cabinet Office differently from what it was telling its paying subscribers, I would think that those subscribers, particularly those that have a statutory public service responsibility, such as the BBC, could sue the Met Office.
Alternatively, since withholding the important information has resulted in serious loss of life, I would think that the Health and Safety Executive should be interested in taking out a corporate manslaughter case against the Cabinet Office and/or the Met Office. Actions for corporate manslaughter are possible against both the Cabinet Office and the Ministry of Defence (which owns the Met Office) under the Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007. Both are specifically mentioned as Crown agencies against which proceedings may be taken.
Are we to believe the MET changed it stripes and really predicted a cold winter? That would be out of character for them.
Of course, at this point either the MET or the Government is in trouble. I don’t see how both of them can escape.
Better buy more popcorn.
I’m pleased the BBC has thrown the challenge into the open as the public will be even further persuaded AGW is a contrived emergency meant to pick their pockets in order to line the pockets of others. The question now is whether the government comes clean and admits they had the severe winter warnings in advance. If so, then the follow-up question is why they failed to warn local governments so that preparations could be made. If not, then perhaps the BBC will keep up its harangue for release of the information. Any way the answers flow, it will do serious damage to the AGW movement which is already reeling.
There surely must be an award we could hand out to the UK government for the best and longest running sitcom. They’ve been the most enthusiastic supporter of AGW among all western countries and are showing they’re not above manipulating the ratings to keep the series going.
crosspatch says:
January 11, 2011 at 8:36 am
While the media seems to want to hang this on Cameron, I am not convinced that the problem isn’t the other half of the coalition govt.
This sort of manipulation seems much more in line with the policy of Labor than of the Conservatives.
——–
That would be a wonderful theory, if labour actually was in the coalition government…..
If the government is lying about the weather, it’s because they’re lying about the climate.
untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.
Oh, please, pretty please!
Cameron’s been pimping the warmist line for a long time; he and his breed of Tory may not be the most vocal of the carbon-haters in the Coalition but he’s not an unwilling accomplice.
Huhne is the archetypal water melon and one of the least impressive Liberal members of the government. Quite why he was given the role as minister to DECC is unclear unless he was being set up for a fall. It’s quite likely the Met Office’s warnings didn’t get past his Department which is stuffed with dyed in the wool AGW believers. If so, he has a lot of explaining to do.
The BBC would only do this is they knew and liked what the results would be. I think there is more than meets the eye here and I have trouble believing that the BBC suddenly grew a journalistic spine. If there is no followup on this story then the Met Office lied – the BBC will only follow through if they can dig up dirt on the conservative party.
I don’t get it. The Met Office gave the Government a severe weather warning (apparently). The Government didn’t do anything about it. But the Met Office were still themselves, telling us something completely opposite.
I fail to see how it’s the Governments problem if the Met Office are giving out contradictory forecasts, except insofar as they should privatise or otherwise throw the entire organisation into the dustbin.
It seems religion and politics do mix.
Somewhat OnT
We should really ride this one for all it is worth.
Establishment Ignores Violent Rhetoric From Eco-Leftists
“When the 10:10 campaign put out a video that showed kids in a classroom being murdered by their teacher for refusing to lower their CO2 emissions, it sparked outrage amongst conservative bloggers, yet hardly a ripple was registered on the pages of the Washington Post, the New York Times, or any of the leftist blogs now erroneously trying to blame vitriolic “right-wing” rhetoric for Jared Lee Loughner’s massacre.
Similarly, there was no condemnation when a lobbying group used an image of a dead girl being hanged to push their propaganda about melting icebergs – and in fact the Discovery Channel gave the group an award for the commercial.”
http://www.infowars.com/establishment-ignores-violent-rhetoric-from-eco-leftists/
Labour is not part of the coalition. You must mean Lib-Dems. But I am not sure it is all a matter of political party allegiance: it has to do more likely with British position in Copenhagen, and thus probably involves specifically Huhne and the Foreign Office.
What I wonder is why the advice was suppressed instead of merely delayed; it could have been (albeit belatedly) made public once Copenhagen was over. Or is it that by then it was already too late for forecasting a cold winter?
Now, if only someone could expose Canada’s CBC, which reads like a national tabloid for climate change alarmism.
This is what we call et tu Brutus. Or form a circle, last one at the back gets the knife.
Where did the Met Office gets its forecast for a cold start to winter? Their computer model is incapable of forecasting it. I suspect that they the plagiarised Piers Corbyn’s forecast.
I have FOI requests in to both the Met Office and the Cabinet Office.
“The same question also applies to Northern Ireland as both Northern Ireland and Scotland have had ministers resign due to the severe winter”
Actually, no, just Scotland. Northern Ireland’s Regional Development Minister should have resigned as the person responsible for the water crisis (40,000 without running water for up to 10 days when the thaw happened and reservoirs drained out burst mains), but didn’t owing to the bizarre form of government we have here. Different parties have responsibility for different government departments.
Hector M. says:
January 11, 2011 at 9:21 am
The problem was (before Cancun not NoHopenhagen) that the conference was in Nov/Dec and by then all private forecasters had indicated not just a cold Dec but an Extreme Dec. The Met Off was still calling for a warm winter but may have been saying a coldish Dec elsewhere. The wording will be crucial and knowing the MetOff it will allow for all interpretations. The slimeballs at the BBC are just playing nappy/dyper/couch politics (bachside covering). It would be interesting to know whether these seasonal forecasts were part of the new BBC-MetOff contract. Now that would be interesting if the MetOff were telling the BBC one thing and the Government another. Ooooh, merde-ventilateur-mûr all come to mind.
You mean Cancun.
This will be fun. How strong was the secret warning, who in government knew about it and were the Met. Office gagged from revealing their late change of tack to local councils and the general public? The National Grid might have been interestd too.
There has been a stony silence from the Met. Off. regarding their forecasts for January, February and March. Maybe they haven’t checked with Piers Corbyn yet.
Is it any wonder the government wanted a warm winter? It cost them a fortune in Cold weather payments to the elderly when it started snowing…
And I am sure they would love to be able to introduce more Green Taxes to recoup some of the money we owe.
As always any enquiry will be a greenwash, nothing to see here, move along…
On a side note: The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is married to Miriam González Durántez, She is on the Board of Directors of Acciona, S.A., the Spanish renewable energy, infrastructure projects and water management conglomerate.
I am sure that has nothing to do with his policies, but interesting none the less.
Kool-aid anyone?
I think they’re all as bad as eachother. Although it does look like the Beeb and the Met eco loons allied themselves against the government.
I’m just wondering what has happened to BBC reviewing its neutrality? After some time it’s back to being fully biased towards AGW. Hell, even when Arnie left office, the best thing BBC News said about him was that he was ‘green’.
Yesterday I watched Horizon with Ben Miller (from that comedy clip that was shown not too long ago here). His scientific task was to talk about temperature, heat, etc. In the end the inevitable happened – Global warming. Hell, he even got a weather station from the Met Ofiice to put up on his roof, and praised its accuracy, bla bla blah.
The Beeb is a one big, biased joke, it makes me sick watching it now these days.
the good part is that there is now palpable hatred growing between the Government and the Met Office, and also a deep and gathering mistrust growing among the public of both of them.
Thus this looks like a win-win no matter how it plays out.
The BBC is an institutionally left-wing organisation, which has been a repository for left-wing journalism for at least 40 years. It is also profoundly “green” to the point of removing sceptical presenters from broadcasting in environmental programs.
The aim of this request is almost certainly to embarrass the Coalition government. It is a short-sighted aim, particularly because the BBC has plenty of skeletons in the cupboard on telling the truth over environmental issues, and the Met Office has also a lot to lose in a mud-slinging match. Both institutions are largely dependent on Government patronage for their existence, and Windmill Dave is developing a reputation for bearing grudges. This imbroglio will run and run, at least 3 buckets of popcorn and a case of beer. Draw up the sofa, turn off the phone and enjoy!
thegoodlocust January 11, 2011 at 9:18 am
“The BBC would only do this is they knew and liked what the results would be. I think there is more than meets the eye here and I have trouble believing that the BBC suddenly grew a journalistic spine. If there is no followup on this story then the Met Office lied – the BBC will only follow through if they can dig up dirt on the conservative party.”
Spot-on assessment IMHO.
Metgate?
Governments come and go so politicians are expendable.
The BBC and the Met need to be seen to be vindicated over this ‘blunder’ as they will still be here long after this coalition government has been forgotten about.
The truth is that this whole faux controversy is utterly staged. They are ALL as thick as thieves and have ALL participated in AGW fraud.
It is just that the politicians are the weakest link and the least important so they will be the scapegoats on this one. Its either the BBC and the Met or Cameron’s coalition government.
It is as they say (though I detest the expression) a no-brainer.
I don’t see how the BBC FOIA request would help the Met Office. Whatever advice was given to the government, it wouldn’t explain why the Met office continued to tell us that it would be warm.
@ Elizabeth: The CBC’s delirious trumpeting of man-made global warming is about the only means they have of attracting any kind of readership. I make a point of going to their website with the sole purpose of debating the warmists who flood the comments on any article on climate change. I’m pretty unhappy about my tax dollars going to support that despicable AGW mouthpiece.
No wonder Chris Huhne has remained silent. When he flew back from Cancun he was so exhausted that he had to fly to California for a holiday with his girlfriend.
Dont forget that Roger Harrabin, as opposed to Richard Black, has recently changed his stance on CAGW. He has not moved 180 degrees, but he certainly moved 45 degrees; maybe 90 degrees. And dont forget that there are short term weather forecasters at the Met, who, IMHO, are excellent. I visit the UK routinely, and avidly listen to the Shipping Forecast, which is a thing of beauty. I am certain the forecast of cold weather came from the short term forecasters, not the useless climate modellers.
@Hector M.
‘What I wonder is why the advice was suppressed instead of merely delayed; it could have been (albeit belatedly) made public once Copenhagen was over. Or is it that by then it was already too late for forecasting a cold winter?’
It’s this winter, not the last, that this refers to – Cancun not Copenhagen.
Unless the Government told them to, that is.
It must be just me, but I can find no source of the purported FOI request, neither in this thread (including the OP) nor in the many echoes out on the interwebs.
Are we to really expected to take the whole basis for this story on faith ?
“……untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.”
Third bloody cold winter in a row for the British Isles! Focus on the facts and ‘the truth shall set you free’. Untold GOOD will likely befall the inhabitants of the planet.
Never seen a MET office forecast yet that was specific enough to be a true we will nail our colours to the mast forecast. The most forceful its likely to have been is ‘The is a small but possibly larger chance of the winter being colder than normal’ . I would be extremely suprised if it was any more definate than that, unless they added a note along the lines of ‘And Peirs says it will be really bad and he’s a better forcaster that us’ LOL
Wait one minute… Am I to believe that any major government would actually do anything different preparing for winter, or any season, based on weather forecast?
Oh, oh, the Met said it is going to be a warm winter! Lets completely forget the fact that it is still going to be WINTER! If anyone prepared differently based on the Met Report (real or not) than they were idiots in the first place.
Now, if the Met did actually predict record breaking cold snap that would bring the country to its knees, then the real story is that the Met might actually have a predictive model that is semi-functional, at least on a 6 month out window, which would be a pretty big deal.
I find the prospect of the BBC, the MET office and the government -CAGWers all – fighting amongst themselves, quite delicious.
May this one run and run.
This is quite intriguing. If the AGW obsessed Met Office did indeed forecast a very cold winter, that would be surprisingly out of character. Harrabin is a complete warmist as well, so I would expect him to be supportive of the Met Office. So perhaps the Met Office did forecast that the winter would be a tiny bit cooler than BBQ standard, after all.
If, as it is claimed, the Government gagged the Met Office, that was a particularly stupid thing to do, so maybe the BBC is motivated to help out their mates at the Met Office and maybe they feel sore that, as a customer, they did not receive the true forecast. The cabinet minister ultimately in charge of the MO would be Liam Fox as defence minister, but the windmill fanatic Huhne is a much more likely culprit. It would be good for the country if this scandal cost Huhne his job.
However, we all know that the establishment is expert at wielding a whitewash brush, so I won’t hold my breath.
Is this mere conjecture or something Harrabin is reputed to have said? There is no section 2.4 in the final Quarmby report and the words “The Met Office gave” do not appear in the entire document. Correspondence with the Met Office is documented under the Evidence section of the WEB site. Has anyone found any such statement anywhere relating to the Quarmby Report?
Posturing to try to protect the Met. It’s trying to prove a negative. Since the Met did not provide any such forecast, no evidence of them having done so will be forthcoming as a result of the FOI request. The conspiracy theorists will then claim the government is hiding the smoking gun documents. That the debacle is all the government’s fault and their just trying to cover it up. Voila! The Met comes out looking like the good guy regardless of the fact that they never provided the government with any such dire forecast.
Just more spin, span, spun.
Well, it’s clear that the Met and the BBC are in cahoots on this, otherwise Harrabin wouldn’t have been allowed to run the story in the first place. It’s also clear that the purpose is to exonerate the Met, at least in part, and shift its share of the blame for its repeated winter failures onto the Government. The Conservatives have never liked the BBC and, I think, would be quite willing to screw them over if the chance is there – so there could be a nice little dust-up, however green the coalition claims to be. Huhne’s utter silence is indicative of some sort of government cock-up or, more likely, indecision on how to play this sideswipe (hardly surprising with this egregious narcissistic twit) but I’d be willing to bet that if there really was a government cover-up, some low-grade civil servant will face the chop after a token enquiry for ‘failing to process’ a memo or some such bull. It’ll all disappear because they’ve all, Beeb, Met, Gov, got too much invested in the scam.
Steeptown says:
January 11, 2011 at 9:29 am
“Where did the Met Office gets its forecast for a cold start to winter?”
They looked outside their window.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I’m suspicious of what the game plan is behind the FOI request.
I’d feel more comfortable if a true skeptic filed the FOI request, in his own words.
AJB
Refer to EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS, item 6] under WEATHER.
I can’t find anything to back up the claim that the Met Office was told by the Government not to release the cold winter forecast. The Met say that public research caused them to discontinue their [rubbish] seasonal forecasts. So, they will probably say that they knew it was cold and warned the Government, but also they were observing the wishes of the public as identified in the market research.
I hope this analysis is wrong and that the Government did gag them. That would be much more interesting.
It’s a little over the top to talk of the worst winter in 100 years, as this article does. Winter’s not half-way through yet, and although it was the coldest December in Britain in a century, it’s perfectly possible that January and February will be no worse than average. That’s more or less what Joe Bastardi predicts, whereas Piers Corbyn reckons it will be one of the three or four coldest winters in a hundred years. We’ll know in March, of course, but I think my tuppence is going on Bastardi.
Interesting, and it could be true.
The main suspects are the ultra-Green prime minister Cameron, who began his leadership by petting huskies in Antarctica and pronouncing on AGW being the government’s biggest challenge. However, he has gone rather quiet on this subject lately, presumably recognising that one cold winter may burn his fingers.
Then there is Chris Huhne, the eco-loon, minister of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).** He was wanting to sell a great package of new offshore windelecs this winter, and the last thing he needed was a prediction of freezing weather.
Did Huhne apply pressure to the Met Office, to suppress that cold forecast, so he could get his bill through parliament? If he did, then he should go immediately. And if he did, then the government is liable to £billions in claims from companies and councils, who were caught out by the falsely warm forecast.
** About time they dropped that stupid title, for what used to be the Department of Energy.
.
Jim Cripwell says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:08 am
Harrabin, Haribin, or dustbin you still cannot trust this guy to write or print the truth. He is as slimy as a snake. It is even possible that he has created this story completely out of thin air in an attempt to move the problem out of public view. How that? I hear you say. Look, he prints the story, no facts in it at all, everyone runs around trying to find out if it is true. He, the BBC , the MetOff and the Gov say nothing. We all wait the FOI to bring results. 6 months later, nothing. We think, oh all FOI in the UK take forever and after 6 mths the offence is out of time and voilà, the cock up is forgotten and the MetOff et al can get on with their spin on AGW supported by the BBC and Harribin/Harribin/Dustbin whomever. See, simples.
“Chris H says:
January 11, 2011 at 9:17 am
Huhne is the archetypal water melon and one of the least impressive Liberal members of the government. Quite why he was given the role as minister to DECC is unclear unless he was being set up for a fall. It’s quite likely the Met Office’s warnings didn’t get past his Department which is stuffed with dyed in the wool AGW believers. If so, he has a lot of explaining to do.”
The claim is that UK MET Office passed their secret severe winter weather warning to the Cabinet Office. This is The Prime Minister’s office. Huhne would only get involved if the matter was passed directly (and only) To him. He would only be able to suppress the warning with the connivance of The Cabinet Office. I would have thought such an action unlikely unless The Prime Minister (Cameron) was also involve and, therefore, also part of a conspiracy to suppress if indeed there is such a thing rather than bungling. In any event only time will show what actually happened and who did what, if the information can be levered out into the public domain. That remains to be seen. This is The UK folks.
Ralph says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:13 am
Ralph, I think you will find Cameron did his petting in Svalbard (Spitzbergen).
Go here for your commemorative photo:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photographic-Print-Cameron-Driving-Dog-sled/dp/B001NHBNGE
I’m wondering if there’s more to this than meets the eye. John OSullivan is going to need to shine some light on this……..
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/met-office-smokescreen-confusion-or-conspiracy/
………..who said the met office was gagged? Was it Haarabin?
Another interesting aspect is that Harrabin of the Beeb started all this stuff, then appears to have added to it, then there is the alleged Beeb FOI. The only thing missing is that the BBC appears to be totally silent on the entire matter.
If the Beeb and the Met go at it in public it will be all good for sensible Britons who smelled something slightly off about climate alarmism and will consequently be outraged by all of the tax money wasted on placating the eco-lobby. If one or both organizations unwittingly opens Pandora’s Box the scandal will be bigger than Climategate.
matt v. says: January 11, 2011 at 10:53 am
Sorry to be pedantic but what page in which document? I am referring to the final report, the PDF file at:
http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/final-report/wrr-final-report-2010-10-22.PDF.
On page 31 under the heading “Weather and climate change” I find the following:
To what are you referring?
The Government, the beeb and the Met Office all have strong warmist agendas and have unashamedly flaunted them for years.
Maybe at long last the Green Revolution is starting to devour it’s own offspring.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
This could be fun.
Apart from anybody else supressing a weather forecast (if it happened) is insane. It’s like keeping it a secret that there will be a wednesday next week. It is bound to come out!
I wonder if this is one of the first indications of what will happen now that the BBC is in opposition.
Of course, saying the government is liable is the same as saying the taxpayers (or voters) are liable. Accountability ultimately lies with those that continue to vote these people into office. Until this behavior changes, the public will continue to get hit with the bill.
Mark
AJB
See http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/12/21/the-quarmby-audit.html
Dear Anthony/Mr Moderator
The following link to Paul Hudson’s web site shows a great graphic of power generation from wind during the severe cold weather.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
I did try to post in tips?
Wait. First “BBC analyst” Harrabin writes a piece, and then the BBC issues a FOI request to find out whether he’s been right? That’s a funny way of doing investigative journalism.
The eternally and institutionally left/liberal BBC is naturally hoping that the FOI will provide a sufficiently robust stick with which to beat the Conservatives . . . in my opinion the MET Office will be the big loser here because their sorties into the world of political spin are lightweight.
Left, center or right the politicians have ruined meteorology specifically and science in general with their venal self serving ways. The BBC has just been the willing messenger.
The Government is proposing that the BBC, with its astonishingly bloated budget, should make some contribution to the public sector economy drive. Expected cuts in the range of 10-11% are what are required.
The revenue from the Government for paying the over-75s’ licence fee is £556 million.
The BBC say it could lead to a real terms decrease in its programming budget of up to 26 per cent – the equivalent of the entire budget of BBC2. They say the ‘only solution’ would be a £20 licence fee increase as it is quite impossible for them to find any savings.
It seems bureaucracy is sacrosanct. The 92 BBC suits on more than £150,000 a year are deemed untouchable. It is also absurd to say that when it comes to programme-making savings could only come from making fewer programmes or poorer quality programmes. The inefficiency and overmanning in the BBC’s programme-making is beyond belief. Yet the ratings buster continues to be Dad’s Army repeats.
The BBC is, at least, consistent in its policy on spending cuts for itself and the rest of the public sector. On its website it has an interactive section entitled Spending Review: What would you cut? It allows you to move a slide along for different Government Departments to reach £50 billion of savings.
But alongside, it gives you an ‘equivalent to’ section. The one on welfare only offers cuts in the basic state pension. According to the BBC, a one per cent cut in the health budget means leaving the hospitals empty for 10 days a year. Defence cut means ‘fewer service personnel’ – even though there are more civil servants in the MOD than soldiers in the armed forces.
The examples ‘are for illustration only.’ But how revealing that none of the examples ‘for illustration only’ involve cuts in the civil service, or the £40 billion spent on Quangos, or even our £14.5 billion budget contribution to the EU.
Read more: http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1079&page=1#ixzz1Al9ufljj
This gives you an idea of what a mud slinging match this could turn out to be. Stock up on the popcorn because it could turn ugly.
DaveF says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:01 am
This afternoon I saw a large flock of geese flying south. Since I live near the Solway Firth, not many miles from the Scottish border (as a goose flies), I thought it was interesting.
Good thing I got three bags of coal delivered not too long ago. And I’ve got a 4WD. 😉
Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, is an AGW enthusiast. Back in September he was crowing over a new multi-billion windfarm off the coast of Kent – the same windfarm that produced next to zero power in December. Mr Huhne is best known for his equivocation over the Treaty of Lisbon – he said publicly that it was quite different from the EU Constitution; in fact, although its *format* was quite different, its *content* was identical. It’s noticeable that in his boasting about the new wind farm, he said nothing about the amount of power it would feed into the grid – but did go on about how many jobs it would (somehow) create. Such are the people who rule us.
Once more, the science termed ‘climate’ (inter alia) is being utilised by the political world as a 28 pound hammer (with the 4 foot handle) in an attempt to fracture other political factions, with the object of driving a wedge.
However, in this case, the UK Met Office and the BBC have their own agenda (which may be similar), so are these two bodies attempting to clarify the situation, or muddy the waters?
For once in their (recent) dishonourable lives, it would be real news to read that the government of the day has “come clean”, and told the truth to its electorate.
But if the coalition government gives in to demands for a full inquiry, which is as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas, then no doubt heads will roll in high places.
Well we all know just how valuable those “enquiries” are anyway, don’t we.
But I don’t understand how the Met Office can get all high and mighty about this; they are charged with the responsibility of forecasting the weather and for broadcasting these forecasts on the BBC (the UK’s publicly-funded television service). The BBC weathermen and women who we see on our screens are all in the employ of the Met Office – they don’t just broadcast, they are the meteorologists involved in the actual forecasting behind the scenes. And now they are saying that they stood before the cameras and gave misleading and false forecasts because their collective arm was being twisted by some Government minister?
“Mention of the ‘secret’ cold winter forecast appears in the Quarmby Report (Section 2.4) which states, “The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.””
As the Quarmby Report is a public document (placed in the HoC Library and made available to ALL interested government agencies well before the onset of winter), and as the government (under the direction of the Transport Secretary, Phillip Hammond) based its preparedness for the coming winter squarely on this report, accepting ALL its recommendations – I think its a bit rich for the notoriously left-wing biased BBC to be trying to direct criticism towards the government.
And as for Harribin – the BBC’s chief AGW propagandist – to say “I phoned the Met Office about this statement and the Met Office press office told me they’d given information to the Cabinet Office that we were facing an early cold winter.” just makes it so much clearer whose side he’s on. He’ll back the Met Office against the hated Conservative-led coalition all the way. No hint here, you notice, as to why the Met Office issued a ‘severe’ warning for the Quarmby report and a ‘mild’ forecast on it’s website and press releases.
Don’t let them muddy the waters – the Met Office is the guilty party here and we, the British taxpayers, demand an enquiry into why this publicly-funded organisation is suborning its scientific principles in its obsession with keeping the AGW scare running.
http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/interim-report/press-release.php
http://www.dft.gov.uk/press/speechesstatements/statements/hammond20100726a
AJB
The quote relating to the Met Office predictions was not in the final Quarmby report (nor the misleadingly named “Interim Report” – in fact, the Interim and Final Report together constitute the Quarmby Report). Rather it is found in a report commissioned by the Transport Secretary as an urgent inquiry into how the country’s transport system had fared in the face of the severe weather conditions at the end of November – beginning of December.
From section 1:
“On 1st December, I was asked by the Transport Secretary to carry out an urgent audit of how well the highway authorities and transport operators in England have been coping with the unexpectedly early and severe spell of winter weather, having regard also to the Review into winter resilience carried out by the Panel I led earlier this year and our Recommendations.”
The quote appears in both the “Executive Summary and Recommendations” segment (in section 6, as noted by another commentator), as well as in the body of the report, in section 2.4, under the heading of “The weather”.
The report can be accessed at: http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/audit/winter_resilience_audit.pdf .
Cheers.
I still say whitewash. Neither the BBC, the Met, or the Liberals want to discredit Climate Change (or disruption or whatever the latest is). So nothing will come of it. Besides, as we learned with the statute of limitations there – by the time they get around to saying “no”, it will have expired.
Nigel Brereton says
“Defence cut means ‘fewer service personnel’ – even though there are more civil servants in the MOD than soldiers in the armed forces.
You are talking rubbish. UK Armed Forces number around 178,000
http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/index.php?page=48&pubType=1&thiscontent=160&PublishTime=09:30:00&date=2010-12-02&disText=1%20November%202010&from=listing&topDate=2010-12-02
MoD civil servants number about half of that. The Coalition’s cuts will reduce civil servants by 25, 000 and Armed Forces by 17, 000 by 2015.
“Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.”
No a milder than average prediction was not made. The Met Office made that clear at the end of October that they were not predicting a mild winter.
Y’all, this might simply be the Met office trying to save face by shifting some of the blame. If you were in their situation, with that kind of mud on your face, would you have a better way of getting back some lost credibility?
There is another element to this, the MET office has a commercial side to in which its supplies forecasts to industry , if these forecast where equally worthless as the one given in public , there may be ground for these companies to take the MET to court.
But I would caution that there is an awful lot of ‘what do you mean by…’ in this story, for example what do you mean by ‘cold’. I can see wriggle room coming into play here over these definitions both from the MET office and the government, 3-1 both parties will end agreeing that there is ‘room for improvement in commutations’ and the issue will be kicked into the long grass so quickly it will break the sound barrier.
Nigel Brereton January 11, 2011 at 11:59 am
Jeremy Crick January 11, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Thanks chaps, at least that much is now clear. So we’re talking about a couple of weeks in November before “nowcasting” started and oblique aspersions being cast on the strength of a purported phone call to a press office. To what end? This post seems to sum up the situation quite well:
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/met-office-smokescreen-confusion-or-conspiracy.
This is like watching a playoff game, where John Madden is heard to say: “When the wheels come off, they don’t just fall off, they come flying off.”
I have a theory based on many years of experience in the faculty lounge. This story has the ring of a faculty lounge story. My theory is that at the MET office, the “climate people” and the “weather people” hate one another and do not speak to one another, though they might yell at one another. The “climate people” told the government that the winter would be mild. The “weather people” told the government that the winter would be disastrously cold. The government is owned by the climate people and accepted their report while ignoring the report from the weather people. The report that the government was informed about the cold winter is coming from the weather people. That is the background. The remainder is politics.
The comments are interesting, but nothing will occur.
The media chooses government, not the “voting public”. They also choose policy. There are a sufficient number of “floating voters” who can be swayed beyond any political ideals when an incumbent party has lost its popular support (such as the previous Labour government and the post Thatcher Tories).
We live in a post democratic Rupertocracy. Enough young, disenfranchised and non-critical folk can be found and persuaded that “change” will be a “good thing” and that they have “the power”. The power to vote for whomever the controllers of Sky, the BBC and the “news”papers decide they should “vote” for.
The young have not yet had it beaten out of them however, as the disturbances surrounding the tripling of student fees bears witness. They will learn (pun intended) that there are no real promises, or honesty, in politics. Those most wanting to govern are least fit.
The rest of us are so jaded we sit back and allow it all to happen.
If BBC have a contract with the Met Office for paid-for weather forecasts, they must have been given the severe cold weather prediction. Why did BBC not pass this in to the public in their weather reports?
If the Met Office withheld and did not give the severe weather warning to BBC, then what are BBC paying for on the five year contract?
If the Met Office arbitrarily withheld the weather warning from its paying customers, just how reliable is this institution? Will this happen again?
Looking at the link to the Quamby report, it says:
“We can’t know when such a severe winter will hit us again, but we can take steps as a nation, to ensure that when it does, we will cope better. This report highlights the short-term need for national Government and local councils to ensure that they have plans in place, and enough road salt, to deal with the possibility of another severe winter in 2010/11.”
This does not indicate that there was any specific forecast made by the Met office to precipitate this recommendation.
I haven’t found any other stories from any respected media sources including the BBC, about the UK Met office being gagged by a minister, and being forced to change ist forecast about a cold winter. This seems to me an unconfirmed rumor which is making the rounds of the GW skeptic web sites.
Can anyone find any independent confirmation of this story?
Poor Met. First they can’t forecast weather. Now they can’t keep the closet shut.
Australia is next to ask these questions with our devastating cyclical floods:
“IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts, the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones warned yesterday. January 4, 2008.
Readers of WUWT will recognize that name from Climategate emails.
“There is absolutely no debate that Australia is warming,” said Dr Jones. “It is very easy to see … it is happening before our eyes.”
The only uncertainty now was whether the changing pattern was “85 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect”.
“Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back.”
Tax policies, city planning & engineering are being formulated on this information.
The results are there for all to see.
[ http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/this-drought-may-never-break/2008/01/03/1198949986473.html ]
We have a number of parties here, each anxious about their position in this rather unfortunate affair.
Perhaps the MO did warn the government, but perhaps not in the starkest words possible.
Perhaps someone in government saw the warning but were busy with many other issues, and “knowing” that the globe was warming, discounted what the MO had said.
Perhaps in the government and the upper layers of the public service, there is not completely complete sweetness and light on all issues.
Perphaps too, the BBC has some issues with the government (threatened budget cuts).
Perhaps the MO has these issues as well.
Perhaps the BBC is sore at the MO office too, with or without just cause.
Well
now read on!
We may have a multi party dog fight brewing.
Everybody striving to prove they did no wrong.
Perhaps wiser heads will prevail and then this will all be swept under the carpet.
It worked so well with climategate.
Perhaps it may work well again.
But then, perhaps it will not.
Watch this space.
There is much at stake, both in the UK and internationally.
I should have added – what is happening seems to be for very high stakes.
The MO and the BBC seem to be playing a high risks game.
May I suggest reading Janis “Groupthink” particularly the chapter on the Bay of Pigs episode where Kennedy & Co played a very high risk game.
A faulty feeling of invulnerability led them to make choices, without realising how risky these were.
And how unreasistic their assumptions and analysis.
Watch this space.
It could get interesting.
Reminds me of my kids when I discovered my grandmother’s plate had been broken and glued back together again. Fingers pointed in every direction. Even the cat was pointing paws.
The BBC joins the bum forecast CYA extravaganza!!! If those folks had any brains, they would sell tickets to their cage-match-clown-circus. Imagine the receipts from the popcorn booth alone!
Apropos literary quote:
While most eyes here are focussed on the political side, the decision not to inform the public would still have been done by the Met office.
So if this story is true, I would really be interested to know who made this decision, the former WWF boss himself, the Slingo woman or whoever.
To Mike Haseler says:
January 11, 2011 at 8:54 am
Mike, nothing stopped the Regional Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland getting their own weather forecasts from the Met Office. Indeed even county councils in England do that.
Please stop trying to “spin” this into a separatist issue, if the regional governments didn’t care enough to ask they are the ones to blame for the concequences.
EW says: “British Conservatives pride themselves to be very green. Not much difference from Labour.”
As they say, “two cheeks of the same arse.”
>>Stacey
>>The following link to Paul Hudson’s web site shows a great graphic
>>of power generation from wind during the severe cold weather.
>> http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
Wow! A BBC correspondent saying that wind power does not work? I’m amazed. Was he found hanging from a lamp post the next day?
.
Ahh, but what if the gov’t. told them, “Mum’s the word”?
That contention has been rebutted on a prior thread.
Regarding the balance of power at Westminster on the issue of climate change, it is safe to say that the tide is definitely turning – and it’s being led by Tory backbenchers. Tim Montgomerie of http://conservativehome.blogs.com/ (no Party poodle, he), himself a sceptic, said the following in an interview with the left-wing Sunday paper, The Observer:
“Tim Montgomerie, founder and editor of the ConservativeHome website, said climate change had the potential to be as divisive for the party as Europe once was. “You have got 80% or 90% of the party just not signed up to this. No one minded at the beginning, but people are starting to realise this could be quite expensive, so opinion is hardening.””
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/07/climate-scepticism-grows-tories
On his own blog, more recently, he announced the following:
“By massive margins, Tory members have long believed that energy prices, not climate change, will be voters’ top priority. They have been vindicated. There is going to be no progress on combating climate change for the foreseeable future. The climate change lobby was badly wounded at Copenhagen, late last year. Last week, because of the US mid-terms and the election of a sceptical Republican Congress, the lobby is close to death. Yes, we should continue to do green things that have other benefits (eg energy conservation). Yes, we should invest in clean technologies (but Dalibor Rohac sounds a warning on this). But no, we should not be doing anything that pointlessly hurts energy consumers, handicaps UK manufacturing and which does nothing to stop China, India and other energy-poor countries from increasing the world’s carbon footprint.
“We need to do what Lord Lawson has long recommended. Get richer so we can afford to adapt. A richer world can then afford to invest in resilience against extreme weather events. In the meantime Chris Huhne should [be] worried about warming Aunt Mabel’s house. He can’t do anything about global warming.”
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/thetorydiary/energy/
What we now need is for some of these Parliamentarians to show some backbone and begin to challenge government policies, such as energy, which are driven by the ‘green’ agenda on the floor of the House of Commons.
Scotty 12:26:
Hi, Scotty; So your money’s on Corbyn then? But then, even in an average Scottish winter it’s wise to stock up on coal and have a 4WD; me, I’m down the end of Cornwall so it’s not so bad. Best wishes, Dave.
Let me get this straight: the Beeb is actually investigating something related, however tangentially, to the climate-change exaggeration? Like, they’re actually rooting out facts, and stuff?
My head just asploded.
Mike C says: “Let me get this straight: the Beeb is actually investigating something related, however tangentially, to the climate-change exaggeration? Like, they’re actually rooting out facts, and stuff?”
Come on – it’s man-made doomsday created by the evil people who drive cars (BBC staff exempt because belonging to such a eco-good organisation sends you direct to eco-heaven) – so it’s man-made by disbelievers in global warming … QED the severe weather is a consequence of those disbelievers QED the severe weather was caused by the eco-gods bringing down their raff against the “heretic” in the Met Office that didn’t tow the “it’s will be another mild winter”.
Therefore they must root out the heritics in the Met Office to ensure the eco-gods don’t punish us by bad forecasts!
How outraged is the UK public, any poll results? If the Met actually did predict a long, cold winter, was the announcement of this prediction suppressed to avoid casting a pall on the climate conference in Cancun?
I dont agree with the anti Cameron tone of the article, as I think his government is actually pretty good on most issues. However I do agree that his government has been very wrong in coddling the global warming propogandists, and those idiots need to be purged. If the climate office did indeed suppress a Met office prediction that correctly predicted a record cold winter, then the head of the climate office should be fired, and replaced by somebody who is at least neutral on the subject of global warming.
Like others, I am a bit surprised that the BBC is investigating this. In the past, they had been very leftist, and tended to favor the pro global warming propogandists. If even they are changing, and want to find out the truth, that is a good sign that the global warming propogandists are in trouble.
upset Someone’s the to trying apple-cart.
Rearrange the above into a well known saying:-))
Just another sign of the times.
What fun! Brits getting to watch their government broadcaster take on their government weather prophets and their government government, all funded by the decreasing number of citizens who still have jobs and pay taxes. To the barricades, anyone?
RetiredDave has not long posted on Bishop Hill that Paul Hudson has put up a graphic which supports their assertion that they did predict a colder than average winter:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/2011/01/the-met-office-winter-forecast.shtml
Personally I think there’s a political war going on in the MO between the meteorologists and the climate modelling warmists.
This is new — The Met on the side of the good guys?
Don’t be fooled! the bbc & other “Pain stream media” don’t have scores of psychologists, sociologists and anthropologists etc.. On their pay roll for your benefit.