Guest Post by Steven Goddard
Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun The Japanese don’t care to, the Chinese wouldn’t dare to Hindus and Argentines sleep firmly from twelve till one But Englishmen detest-a siesta
– Noel Coward – 1931
Persistence is the British trait which kept the Shackleton crew alive and helped England withstand the Nazi’s throughout World War II. It keeps the Catlin Crew going and kept Lewis Pugh relentlessly paddling his kayak over Arctic Ice towards the pole. And it is the same trait which keeps the UK Met Office forecasting warm summers year after year. The Met Office forecast 2007 to be the warmest year ever globally, and a hot summer in the UK.
Instead it turned out to be a cool summer and the rainiest on record in England. Similar story for summer 2008 and winter 2008-2009 . Yet in fine British tradition the Met Office remains undaunted –
The coming summer is ‘odds on for a barbecue summer’, according to long-range forecasts. Summer temperatures across the UK are likely to be warmer than average and rainfall near or below average for the three months of summer.
Chief Meteorologist at the Met Office, Ewen McCallum, said: “After two disappointingly-wet summers, the signs are much more promising this year. We can expect times when temperatures will be above 30 °C, something we hardly saw at all last year.”
The last 30C day in London was July 26, 2006 – that was over 1,000 days ago. But you have to admire their grit and determination to get the global warming message across to the ignorant British population.
“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
– Attributed to Albert Einstein
Darts anyone?
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
What a lot of fuss! The MET Office is following government dictat and covering itself by claiming there is a 50 50 chance of this summer temperatures occasionally exceeding the average MINIMUM past temperatures. Just need to get one day above the previous MINIMUM levels and they are correct in their forcast.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1175398/Prepare-barbecue-summer-Say-goodbye-wet-weather-forecasters-predict-sizzling-summer.html
Merrick (19:04:52) :
Speaking as a scientist, it’s only under the most well-defined and controlled of circumstances that I ever seriously consider letting non-scientists take scientific data (except of course as a teaching exercise). … (In fact, taking the “easy” measurement is by far the most common cause of data bias among inexperienced scientists and non-scientists performing experiments).
I would suggest that the less the intelligence of the driller the better. You admit a scientist will cherry pick for an easy life. Tell a robot to go out and tak drill depth measurements every 20 metres whatever the terraine and it will. Tell a semi intelligent entity to do the same and it will realise that there is no point and not safe measuring ice thickness within 10cm of free water and it will cherry pick by moving back by a couple of metres.
Not having measured ice thickness before I would imaginge there are few instruction needed
Use gps to record position
Clear snow from top of ice (judgement needed here!)
drill down until drill shows no resistance to furter advance
Clear hole of ice
Drop measuring tape and weight down hole to more than depth of drill length
Pull back until tape is taught and measure to top of ice, record measurement
Measure from ice to to water top (can be used a secondary check), record measurement.
Remove tape from hole
Walk another 20metres north and repeat
Simple – yes?
But, hey, how can *I* question the motives or techniques of those brave tent-bound souls who are about to start endangering lives other than their own?
I’m 100% certain Ken Borrek Air will have written additional costs into their quote for resupply and pickup at the end of june to cover any dangers-they were not forced to take the contract!!!. And I would hope that KBA would ask for volunteers for the operation if danger is involved
‘Natural’ forecasting isn’t much cop either. Isn’t red sky at night supposed to portend a sunny day for the next day? I thought so, but one day last summer my wife and I were driving home (west bound) and there was a beautiful sunset mid-evening. It poured down the next day!
According to the Daily Telegraph, the Met Office guy stated that this forecast was based on “probabilities which showed there was a 50 per cent chance of the temperatures in June, July and August being above average”
A 50% chance of being above average? You don’t say.
He didn’t mention whether there was also a 50% chance of the temperatures being BELOW average.
That really would be a coincidence, eh?
He WANTS AGW?
Not necessarily – he just wants to keep his job!
The odds do appear to favour the MetO
I suspect that the probability will be more of the ‘child gender’ variety. Couples mistakenly believe that the more boy or girl children they have, the more likely it is that the next one will be the other sex. It is, of course, always 50:50
Oldjim (01:47:36) :
I use Metcheck http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/HOME/? which seems to be much more accurate – it forecast the two nights of frost this week unlike the BBC
Thanks – That looks much better than the MO! I like WeatherAction, too, but you have to pay for any detail.
FWIW, I find this useful for local (UK) rain tracking: http://meteox.com/
I think the Met Office may have over cooked it! For two days they’ve been all over the press/msm. They are now being “cautiously optomistic” according to one weather presenter on todays lunchtime news on BBC1, when asked by the news reader if he was “under pressure” for good weather this summer. I expect it’s the swine flu kicking in, or the bird flu, or the BSE/Cjd, or the salmonella in the egg industry, or the killer bugs, or any one of the hairum scarum stories we’ve been fed over the years. We’re all going to die, only trouble is, when?
HAGWE everyone!
Barry Foster (05:30:10)
The saying is:-
Red sky at night
Shepherds delight
Red sky in t’morning
Shepherds warning
so I guess it’s all down to whether you’re a shepherd or not (and what you’d like to be doing on the following day).
Anth, since you brought it up *but* saw no response from _sod_, a quick google search (initially couldn’t locate his/her blog with a simple search so I had to get creative) reveals last post sometime just before elections last year with outside participation (judging from user comments/posts) just enough (one would do) to not strictly qualify as a ‘null’ set.
No mission statement regarding AGW, however, the operative mission statement _is_ “Countering right wing myths, military propaganda and media ignorance.”
Funny how the ‘media ignorance part’ about AGW (or any subject really) seems to repeatedly be issued ‘a pass’.
.
.
Over here in the UK, a barbecue summer is defined as two or more consecutive days without rain 😉
sod:
No it wasn’t. I should know. I live there.
Anyone who watches a BBC weather forecast will know that objectivity is not a Met Office failing! Snow/cold/wind/rain = nasty; sunshine/warm = nice. Global Warming has nothing to do with it.
Metcheck needs to correct a few glitches; it’s currently showing South Wales with a temperature of 49C for midday on May 8. Seems unlikely!
Flanagan:
So what does that say about people who live in hot places then?
Flanagan,
I forgot to add: In my experience, it’s the uneducated and ignorant who tend to have fixed opinions, and the educated and intelligent who tend to question things.
And I’m by no means alone in this experience.
Barry Foster (00:21:34) :
Look up Piers Corbyn :
http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/pv.asp?p=wact5&fsize=0
So it’s one of the blogs where the METO are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.
If they call for an average summer of sunshine and showers they would get accused of sitting on the fence.
If they call for a below average summer there would be cries for impending iceage.
If they call for an above average summer they get accused of peddling global warming.
So much for us ignorant Brits. !
Iceberg,
Unlike some others, this blog is not “The Borg.” There are many different people posting here from all different points of view.
The UK met office bases its forecasts on the need and desire to support the AGW/MMCC narrative, I would love to be a fly on the wall during their planning meetings, the UKMO have dug themselves into a pretty deep hole now, they cannot reveal the truth about long term climate trends because it would place them firmly in the sceptic camp and because the UKMO has been infiltrated and is now led by political ideologues instead of actual real non political scientists every statement has to conform to the set political AGW narrative.
The end result is of course that the political reality spewed out by the UKMO starts to diverge from actual observed reality and because of the inflexible nature of the AGW political narrative they find it impossible to stop lying and the lies become ever more unbelievable and their predictions ever more unreliable, the old saying holds true, ‘oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive’.
A fine institution perverted and its hard won reputation destroyed for short term poltical gain, that is a tragedy isnt it? A tragedy that is being repeated too often and to too many once fine institutions.
The furthest forecast to date is that by the Tyndall Centre for the Environment Agency, for the year 3000:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4720104.stm
The UK taxpayer paid one government agency to commission another government agency to produce this miracle of forecasting.
the year 3000
Haven’t they even seen Futurama?
Fry (who is revived that year) asks Leela what happened with global warming. “Oh, that” says Leela, “that was cancelled out by the nuclear winter..”
Clark (12:16:32) :
“After two disappointingly-wet summers, the signs are much more promising this year.”
They mean they predicted a two hot and dry summers and were disappointed. Now they are predicting a warmer dryer summer and by the mighty god of averages it looks jolly promising.
Alexej Buergin (12:38:14) :
Yes I remember well. The pubs ran out of lager.
jgfox (14:34:10) :
Thank you for writing the email. It ‘s often best to approach departments in a polite but direct manor. Well done and I will read the reply in full when I have had some sleep. Meanwhile I will comment on a small part of their responce.
Seasonal trends in weather affect large geographic areas, so the seasonal forecast for the UK is set in the broader context of Europe as a whole. We are also looking at trends over a longer period – the actual weather will be subject to many sub-regional and local variations.
In the stock market there is the foolish mantra that “the trend is your friend”. This works well when the trend remains intact and everyone is making money but when the trend changes it is the naive that get hurt the most. They can’t bring themselves to believe that the trend has changed and continue to throw more money in, in the believe that the market will resume the trend.
How is it that we throw our tax money at these shallow buffoons? Do they not know that in order to predict any trend you must understand the underlying fundamentals and even then a seemingly random event may disrupt the best of forecasts.
These people advise governments using short term trends to predict the climate years into the future. Although in this instance we are talking about the weather, it is none the less symptomatic of the shoddy state of the many sciences that have been hijacked by those who are running a political or funding agenda.
I think we need a competition among WUWT blogists. Who can predict the English summer using the UK Met office data. I think 25% will be right and 25% wrong, 25% will be half right and 25% half wrong.
Can we do better than average?