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?
Tom P (02:40:34) :
rephelan,
I don’t know why you are questioning Flanagan’s integrity. The lower plot of figure 6 in the Egan and Mullin paper shows precisely what he states:
“…people tend to belief in global warming as a function of their local temperature. In cold and temperate places, those supporting global waming are the ones with the highest level of education, whose opinion is relatively constant whatever the local temperatures.”
Perhaps I was too hasty in criticizing Flanagan’s integrity. There is an equal probability that neither you nor Flanagan can interpret a graph. The paper itself was concerned with the influence of non-ideological information on perceptions of global warming. The non-ideological information in question was the local weather. The chart referenced showed that the weather, either hotter or colder, had almost no effect on changing the perceptions of the more educated and had the greatest effect on changing the perceptions of the least educated. The chart does NOT show that more educated people believe in global warming and less educated do not. The authors own legend for that graph should have given you a clue:
“Figures show predicted probabilities of agreeing there is evidence for global warming when local temperature is much hotter than normal (at the 95th percentile, or 14.7°F above normal) and much cooler than normal (at the 5th percentile, 4.3°F below normal).”
The conclusion of the paper, as presented in the abstract, was:
“Our results suggest that when politically relevant information is conveyed without ideological cues, political sophistication may prohibit the integration of this information into political beliefs regardless of the direction of one’s predispositions. “
The bottom line is that whether you are an alarmist or denialist, political sophistication (defined by the authors as either high education or ideological commitment to a party) tends to leave your position on AGW unmoved in the face of your perception of the weather.
Whether Flanagan has an integrity issue or literacy issue, neither choice looks particularly good for Flanagan….
Many thanks Anthony and team for yet another tailpiece in my column in today’s (London) Sunday Telegraph:
Summer gales of laughter
We are “odds on for a barbecue summer”, says the Met Office: temperatures are “likely to be warmer than average”, with “near or below average rainfall”. Cue gales of mirth at the US Watts Up With That blog, which recalls that the Met Office predicted exactly the same last year, when our coolish summer was in fact one of the wettest on record. A year earlier the Met Office predicted that 2007 was “likely to be the warmest year on record globally”, just before temperatures plunged by 0.8 degrees C, one of the sharpest drops on record.
Is it coincidental that the Met Office’s Hadley Centre boasts that it produces “world class guidance on the science of climate change”?
Joe Bastardi seems to agree with the MET this time around.
http://www.accuweather.com/world-bastardi-europe-blog.asp?partner=accuweather
Joe’s predicting a moderate El Nino later this summer.
Should the Met Office be funded by UK Govt bets placed with the bookies on the weather predictions issued by Met Office scientists and others hired as ‘alternative suppliers’ for a limited ‘competitive market testing’ phase…..
That way, if they lose a few times, the Govt can sack those whose predictions are rubbish, saying there’s no more money left.
It’d ‘align stakeholders’ interests’ far better than the current funding mish-mash, wouldn’t it?
More Met Office inaccuracy, via the BBC, and reported in yesterday’s Observer:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/may/03/bbc-weather-carrbridge-scottish-highland
I live in the Isle of Wight, whose Met Office forecasts are usually wrong, too…
Sure, it’s an accurate science, but the summers of 2007 and 2008 were both wet rather than cold. The mean temperature for the June 07 was 13.7, over the long-term average of 12.6.
To be fair to the Met Office, their press release also said the chances of a 2007 summer as hot as 2003 or 2006 were only ‘1 in 8’.
John Finn (02:55:45) :
Again this has a better than even chance of being correct. It’s unlikely we’ll get the continuous weather fronts that plagued the UK in the past 2 years, so they’re probably not going to be far wrong here.
I wonder, a weather forecast yesterday included the Jet Stream, a rare event on UK TV weather reports. Usually considered too much information by the media elite. 🙂
It shows it as being far to the south of the UK which is I think unusual for summer as it normally establishes itself to the north of Scotland and it is expected to move from its southerly position ending up barrelling into the UK for at least a week or so. If I recall correctly this position was part of the weather conditions contributing to the last two summers and dragged in many Atlantic depressions. Here is a site that provides a similar forecast. http://www.metcheck.com/V40/UK/FREE/jetstream.asp
The last 30C day in London was July 26, 2006
Not any more it isn’t.
Top ten hottest summers: http://www.hadobs.org, CET ranked seasonal
1) 1976 – 17.77C
2) 1826 – 17.60
3) 1995 – 17.37
4) 2003 – 17.33
5) 2006 – 17.23
6) 1846 – 17.10
7) 1983 – 17.07
8) 1947 – 17.03
9) 1933 – 17.00
10)1911 – 16.97
Century average 1701-1800 = 15.46C
Century average 1801-1900 = 15.19
Century average 1901-2000 = 15.35
Significant summer warming over two centuries of minus 0.11
“Not any more it isn’t”
It hasn’t happened yet, AFAIK. This from the Met Office on Friday:
“The hottest day of the year so far was Thursday with Heathrow Airport recording a high of 28 °C, but that is expected to be beaten over the coming week.”
This looks like being a warm week, although I notice that our local 5-day forecast, which was for sunshine every day when posted yesterday, now is more cloudy than sunny. And it’s raining at Wimbledon (4:50pm).
Still, I’m sure they know exactly what it’s going to like in 60 years’ time…
‘going to be like’ – sorry.