From the blog autonomous mind, a cold ill wind blows from Britain. At least this time, FOI requests weren’t quashed like they were with CRU. Below are excerpts. The photocopy of the email from the FOI request is telling.
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autonomous mind writes:
A look at the information makes clear there is nowhere left for the Met Office to hide. The Met Office has been caught ‘cold’ lying about its winter forecast in a disgraceful attempt to salvage its reputation. Its claim that it forecast the cold start to the winter lays in tatters thanks to an exchange of emails between the department and the Cabinet Office.
As a result the Met Office is completely discredited. Also utterly discredited is the BBC environment analyst Roger Harrabin, who on the Met Office’s behalf used a column in the Radio Times (later carried in the Telegraph and the Daily Mail) to state that:
In October the forecaster privately warned the Government – with whom it has a contract – that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.
It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.
Harrabin went on to say in his piece that:
Why didn’t the Met Office tell us that Greenland was about to swap weather with Godalming? The truth is it [The Met Office] did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October. But we weren’t let in on the secret. “The reason? The Met Office no longer publishes its seasonal forecasts because of the ridicule it suffered for predicting a barbecue summer in 2009 – the summer that campers floated around in their tents.
The email exchange in the screenshot below proves this is a lie. The Cabinet Office civil servant (bottom message) confirms the weather outlook supplied by the Met Office earlier that day is what the government will use in its ‘Forward Look’. The Met Office employee (top message) agrees with it.
(note- I rotated the original photocopy image to make it more readable)
The all important sentence is the first. ‘The Met Office seasonal outlook for the period November to January is showing no clear signals for the winter’. The Met Office knew this was the case when it sent Harrabin scurrying off to spin its lie that the Met Office ‘did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October‘. The briefing to the Cabinet Office contains no such warning – and vindicates the parliamentary answer given by Francis Maude when questioned about the forecast the government received from the Met Office.
What is worse is that the Met Office knew this, yet with its claim tried to place responsibility for the lack of prepareness for an extremely cold start to the winter on government inaction. Harrabin added to this by saying he had put in a FOI to the government (referenced in this post) to discover what they were told, the insinuation being it was the government that had something to hide. This is very dangerous ground that leans towards the possibility of the Met Office and a BBC reporter engaging in a joint effort to undermine the government’s credibility.
This leads us to ask a serious question that must be answered: How is it possible that Roger Harrabin could claim the Met Office line he was retailing was the ‘truth’ with such certainty?
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Read the entire report at autonomous mind and also at Katabasis and give them traffic and props for seeing this through. In case anyone is wondering, the address in the document links here:
Organisation: Cabinet Office
Address: 3rd Floor, Kirkland House, 22 Whitehall
Town: London
County: Inner London Borough
Region: Greater London
Country: England
Post Code: SW1A 2WH
Tel: 0207 276 6226
Fax: 0207 276 6271
For those new to the issue, some background here:
MetOffGate – the questions begin
Also, if you did not note it in the article link, this PDF of the FOI request is instructive.
h/t to Indur Goklany
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UPDATE: In comments, we have this –
Steve McIntyre says:
I’ve met Roger Harrabin and am completely confident that he behaved with total integrity in this matter. I am sure that he was misled by his sources.
That may very well be true, but it leaves Mr. Harrabin in the uncomfortable position of defending sources or defending himself. I’ve sent him a private communication offering WUWT with no caveats should he wish to use it a sa platform to explain his side of the story. – Anthony
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“Its claim that it forecast the cold start to the winter lays in tatters….” Is it proper to use the transitive form to lay instead of the intransitive to lie? The forecast lies in tatters?
So, there was a 130% chance of milder, near average or colder conditions and a 50/50 chance of dry or wet, WOW!
Ahh maybe I am missing something but the photocopy e-mail does include a summary which says that there is a slightly increased risk for a cold and wintry start and a mild end to the winter……
I hope fellow skeptics arent going to overplay things and make mountains over molehills.
Even if UK Met did warn the government of a cold start to winter it doesnt explain why they told everyone else something else.
The same Anti Irish autonomous mind? who I unsubscribed to! the plot thickens!
Well there was a 100% chance the met office would use the politicians as a scapegoat and now it seems there is a 100% chance the politicians will refuse to take the blame. United they stood, divided in lies they fall. So much for millions upon millions spent on computer modeling when our grandparents could have forecast the weather better.
Wintergate?
MetOffice is going private anyways…
The AGW story now is how the dogma of climate change has stood between known climatic variations (and their scientific prediction) and public policy decision making.
The story extends from Snow clearing equipment at Heathrow to Desalination plants in Eastern Australia.
The only thing they were positive about, was that they were certain they had no idea what the winter would be like, maybe. Instead of a 40 million computer, why not a small coin that they could toss, might be more accurate. pg
Re: Wintergate?
I don’t think so. Climategate and Watergate had break-ins in common. The Met Office fiasco only involves breaking ice.
I will keep an open mind. Perhaps along with Watergate and Climategate, Wintergate is another case of “Follow the Money.”
Looking at those statements, it seems a nice summary would have just been to say “…we don’t know…”, rather than what they actually said. But I guess if they did that, the “science” would be called into question, and let’s face it, a lot of people, scientists included, are clearly uncomfortable with the notion that despite all the brains and machines in the world brought to bear, maybe, just maybe, at the end of the day, it’s simply just not possible to know the real answer.
A 50%/50% chance of more/less precipitation
A 70%/60% change of colder/warmer
Three months in advance.
A 100% chance of warmer.
A 100% chance of more drought.
100 years in advance.
Big computers can only make Big predictions with Big leadtimes.
Please don’t confuse Climate Computers with Weather Computers.
Climate Computing is not Weather Computing.
If you want a weather prediction, get a coin.
If you want a climate prediction, send the coins to us.
I have to wonder why the US East was so unprepared for heavy snows.
My gut instinct tells me that GISS had a hand in pushing it’s adjusted temperatures into the forecasts.
It’s time to call the US counterpart of the MET onto the rug.
Warmest evah and heavy sustained snow & cold does not compute.
The Germans had no problem forecasting the cold five weeks in advance, and making proper preparations for it :
http://notrickszone.com/2010/10/20/cold-weather-silences-the-climate-media/
The $64,000 question for me is :
Is the Met Office merely incompetent, or is there a more sinister explanation? Did the “Green Mafia” who now run it deliberately suppress all talk of a cold winter because it doesn’t fit into their paradigm of a warming world?
Either way if, come October 2011, the British authorities want a decent forecast for Winter 2011-12, they should ask the Germans…..
it may not be possible to know the answer- but that’s not the disgusting part. The really bad part is how they LIED when they were caught and then tried to pass the blame off to someone else! And what’s worse, they lied STUPIDLY about something that any fool would know could be quickly and easily checked!!!
Doesn’t say a whole lot for their smarts in general, does it? but it DOES say that they have absolutely no moral scruples whatsoever!!!
Just because they can’t get an accurate prediction a month out doesn’t prove they are wrong about 100 year prediction. It just proves they have no idea what they are talking about.
The question at hand is not about the statement “70 per cent chance of near average or colder conditions” but of, supposedly, forecasting in October an “extremely” and “exceptionally cold early winter”. They are different. They are not the same.
…..extremely cold……. The truth is it [The Met Office] did suspect we were in for an exceptionally cold early winter, and told the Cabinet Office so in October
Near average or colder, and “no clear signals for the winter”, are what was said in October.
The Met will not be able to put a fig leaf over that. But the question remains, will this story make it into the media so the general population knows about it?
How about MetGate?
An all-of-the-above approach, put all the bad eggs in one basket:
GlobalWarmingGate
Chairman of the Met Office: Robert Napier
Chairman of the Carbon Disclosure Project ($64 trillion under management): Robert Napier.
Any questions?
John Kehr says:
January 28, 2011 at 9:38 pm
Just because they can’t get an accurate prediction a month out doesn’t prove they are wrong about 100 year prediction. It just proves they have no idea what they are talking about.
BOL!!!
Ha!
This reveals exactly what I predicted: the MET Office did not suddenly and inexplicably become competent at forecasting. That would be unbelievable, and unlikely.
This is what happens when a cult replaces science. The faster the MET and BBC are discredited the better. Let scientists do the work, not irrational climate theologians.
I think the MET Office using they ‘super-duper computer’ as a Jukebox:
coin-in-Political-Correctness-out. It’s your coin(s) …
It’s not the crime, but the cover-story!!
There is a 70% chance of colder weather and a 60% chance of milder weather which gives a total 130% chance they are making up their forecast.