I’ve come to think of Richard Betts as “Dr. No” mainly because he seems to say no to any possibility that the Met Office might not be giving out accurate forecasts to the public. I’ve had a few Twitter exchanges with him this week, and one question I asked in particular tripped him up.
I asked simply:
The link went to this post by Steve McIntyre:
An excerpt:
Earlier this year, David Whitehouse of GWPF drew attention to a striking decrease in the UK Met Office decadal temperature forecast, that had been quietly changed by the Met Office on Christmas Eve. Whitehouse’s article led to some contemporary interest in Met Office decadal forecasts. The Met Office responded (see here); Whitehouse was also challenged by Greenpeace columnist Bob Ward.
Fast forward to July 10, 2013. Using UK Met Office decadal forecasts, Jeff Tollefson of Nature reported as a “News Feature” that “The forecast for 2018 is cloudy with record heat”, covered by Judy Curry here.
An innocent reader would presume that a Nature “News Feature” reporting on Met Office decadal forecasts would include the current Met Office decadal forecast. However, this proves not to be the case.
More here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/15/nature-hides-the-decline/
So I asked Dr. Betts if he could explain this.
While I’ll give him points for responding, the punchline is that Betts apparently didn’t get what Steve McIntyre was saying (or didn’t want to). McIntyre took him to task today for his response to me:
An excerpt:
In yesterday’s post, I observed that Nature’s recent news article on Met Office decadal forecasts failed to show the most recent Met Office decadal forecast and that its inclusion would not have permitted the Nature headline. I also showed the large change from the Met Office submission to IPCC AR5 and their current decadal forecast. Asked to comment by Anthony Watts, Richard Betts of the Met Office did not explain why the Met Office either signed off on or had not objected to the omission of their most recent forecast. Instead, Betts claimed that my plot was “wrong” because “HadGEM2 not an initialised forecast, so Steve is wrong to plot it from 2010 high point – exaggerates difference”… as though this were responsive:
However, I had directly plotted from data from the Met Office so there was no inaccuracy in my graphic despite Betts’ implication. Nor, needless to say, there is no scientific or statistical principle forbidding the illustration of initialized and uninitialized forecasts on the same graphic. Ironically, as shown below, the UK Met Office had themselves done so in the very article (Smith et al 2012 Clim Dyn) from which the Nature News article had been derived.
Here is the graphic that Betts criticized. The CMIP5 contribution,as Betts had observed, is “uninitialized”, while the two Met Office decadal forecasts (green and blue) are “initialized”. The Met Office IPCC contribution also included a hindcast, but I had shown the CMIP5 forecast from 2010 on to highlight the difference (taking care to note that I had shown only the forecast portion.) All data, as noted above, is Met Office data. I plotted the CMIP5 contribution from 2010 on, estimating , as stated in the post, that 2010 was the approximate start of the “forecast” given the timing of the CMIP5 contribution. In response to Betts’ objection, I added the hindcast portion into a revised graphic, observing that this was irrelevant to the conclusions of the post.
Figure 1. See yesterday’s post for explanation.
Now here’s something interesting.
Read more here: http://climateaudit.org/2013/07/17/more-met-office-hypocrisy/
Maybe ‘Doctor No’ isn’t descriptive enough. ‘Doctor Nyet’ might be more accurate, since Dr. Betts seems unable to deviate from the party line in the face of obvious evidence.
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This is just astounding. The temp records around the world are being manipulated, and climate science says nothing. Don’t they realize the risk? If the temp is dropping and they are hiding the decline the world is unprepared for the right change!
When dealing with a skeptic, it is sufficient to give a plausible reason for error. it is not necessary to point out an actual error. Making errors in the error is acceptable, as no alarmist will challenge the challenge of a skeptic.
You must realize the IPCC is part of the UN. Their primary objective is world depopulation.. (UN agenda 21) .. The lie in hiding the decline is purposeful..
AnonyMoose. Sounds appropriately sovietspeak.
This is flabbergasting. Is he really serious?
I see they’ve managed to adjust 1998 down enough to make 2007 the highest. Quite an accomplishment, since 1998 hadcrut was already adjusted well below the normal hadcrut increment above the UAH/RSS satellite LT. Or maybe they adjusted 2007 upward.
Anyone care to guess which roulette number Dr, Betts will place Met Office chips on next?
Some at BH seem to think that he is God’s gift to communications with the warmista UKMO et al. I think that he’s just the ‘spin cycle’ wunderkind deliberately sent to ingratiate himself with realists. Never have I read so many words from an individual that amount to approximately zero in real content … well maybe he’s not up there with the best of them, but he’s close.
The Met Office is lovely. How dare you.
it’s impossible to tweet in a perfectly transparent manner about one’s day job. one day the choice will have to be made, between truth and salary. no sane person will choose truth.
I disagree, omnologos. An honest person will choose the truth. In fact, an honest person in a position that could impact lives would see no other alternatives.
I said the same thing as Streetcred over at Steve’s place and, sure enough, an apologist for his lordship had to step up and prove my point.
Mark
Mark – you disagree because you haven’t read my comment. I said, no SANE person will choose truth.
For higher highs the man doth lust.
Thermometers he does not trust
And so, adjust! Adjust! Adjust!
@Streetcred: my opinion is that he intentionally agrees with low-hanging fruit in order to convince those on the fence of his good intentions. Stuff so obviously incorrect, but impossible for the leaders to concede without shattering the dissonance of the faithful. You’ll note that his “concessions” do not actually happen where they would matter, rather, at places dominated by skeptical minds. Brave, eh, telling a group of folks they were right while in their home? Yeah, real brave.
Mark
Extrapolation of the CET underlining long term trend I did about two years ago is shown here.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/CET-NV.htm
In addition, further on are some details for the CET’s natural variability hypothesis
I am afraid that my faith in Dr Betts was severely dented when I had an exchange with him over the the Bishop’s place in the Discussion thread about the AR5 process. He asserted that the way the Summary for Policymakers and other key documents have been put together in the past (and for AR5) is absolutely trustworthy and hunky-dory – nothing to see here. When I raised indisputable examples of where this was not the case, he had no comeback, and certainly didn’t retract his assertion.
No, I read it… sane and honest are not mutually exclusive. I think there is a lack of honesty in the climate field, that’s all.
Mark
I have critisized Betts fro his first appearance on the blogs. I have too often met people such as him when I worked in the UK and I have said many times ‘his job depends on climate models for it’s existence. He is in no way going to listen to anything that attempts to change the view of the UK Met off.
omnologos says:
July 17, 2013 at 10:27 pm
I guess that makes me insane but I’m happy to be so.
I’m surprised that others are surprised, temp manipulation has been part and parcel of climate science for over thirty years. The real shocker is are our governments aware?
Maybe I’m unique here in that I have actually met Richard Betts and had a beer with him – after an event with Steve McIntyre run by the GWPF and attended by many BHers. So let me add my tennpennorth.
He is undoubtedly a career MO guy with all the cultural assumptions that brings. But he’s also genuinely interested in understanding the sceptic viewpoint – he recognises that the MO can be prone to Groupthink and actively sought to counter it by coming to such events and – no doubt at risk of some disapproval from his co-workers.
After our convivial and pleasant discussion (he and Prof. Jonathan Jones deep in discussion like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern was a sight to behold) he remarked
‘if only we had had such meetings ten years ago ,we might have avoided the climate wars’.
Please be careful not to let your faraway cultural assumptions about the guy tread over the line from civilised discourse into something more at home with Joe Romm or Bob Ward.
The Spectator article on Met Office forecasting failures was rebutted (here with link to original article: ).
I was surprised that they’re proud of an 87% record of forecasting tomorrow’s temp. to within 2C. How hard can that be ? I reckon just forecasting “same as today” would do better. ANyone know where I can find historical UK daily max. temps to prove the point ? Ideally for several discrete locations so there can be no accusations of smoothing…
This is what the Met office web site says about Richard Betts
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/our-scientists/science-leaders
“Richard Betts is Head of the Climate Impacts strategic area, which includes climate impacts research and also the climate change consultancy unit. He was a Reviewer for the Stern Review on Economics of Climate Change.”
“He is also the Editor of the Journal of Environmental Investing.” (A visit to their website shows him on the editorial board)
http://thejei.com/index.php/JEI/about/displayMembership/2
The website says: “The Journal of Environmental Investing is sponsored by the generous support of BE Bio Energy Group AG, Powering Energy Change”. It looks like their only source of funding.
“Solør Bioenergi is a leading market player in the generation and distribution of renewable energy based on wood and wood waste. The core businesses are the energy recovery of impregnated wood waste, production of process steam and district heating, as well as the production of biofuel in the form of wood briquettes.”
Meanwhile the UK is expanding biomass power station conversions from coal because of EU regulation and penalties against coal.
I have made regular contributions to “Bishop Hill” about Dr. Richard Betts.
My view, not shared by all, is that he is a “double agent”.
He tries to come across as “reasonable” and wanting to engage with the sceptic community.
This is an abstract of a talk he did at Oxford. http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/4degrees/programme.php
“If global mean temperatures reach 4°C above pre-industrial, which seems likely if greenhouse
gas emissions continue at current rates for much of the coming century, we can expect a very
wide variation in regional climate responses across the globe. This presentation examines a
large number of climate simulations to assess such potential changes and the ranges of
uncertainty in these. While most of the ocean surface is expected to warm at less than the
global mean rate, the Arctic ocean surface is projected to warm faster than the global mean
due to positive feedbacks from melting sea ice (Figure 1. At 4°C global warming, regional
warming of 10°C or more is plausible in the Arctic.”
Draw your own conclusions.
Does anyone really believe what comes out of the Met Office or any of its workers?
Latimer Alder says:
July 18, 2013 at 12:53 am
“‘if only we had had such meetings ten years ago ,we might have avoided the climate wars’.
Please be careful not to let your faraway cultural assumptions about the guy tread over the line from civilised discourse into something more at home with Joe Romm or Bob Ward.”
Oh and if only the BBC had not decided to treat CO2AGW as anything other than a theory. I actually liked the BBC’s science reporting pre 2000; when they always presented a counterview in their articles. This changed some time after 2000, as we now know, Richard Black and futerra schooled the BBC journos to treat CO2AGW as unequivocal fact.
I don’t think the BBC will regain my trust. Even if they change their stance on CO2AGW some time in the future I know now that they are a corrupt organisation.
I don’t think any debate with Betts or the MO would have changed that. Since 1972 CO2 and related climate science has been used as a political tool (Earth summitt Rio, Maurice Strong, later 1975 Endangered atmosphere conference in Stanford – CO2 was used as scapegoat for “new Ice Age”, then later for CO2AGW). Betts is deluded if he thinks he has a say in how he is used. He is a tool, whether he knows it or not.