It appears that all is not well with the idea of “climate forecasting” as the Ministry of Defence pulls the financial rug out from under the Met Office climate program. Now how will they pay for the electricity to run “deep black”, the 1.2 megawatt supercomputer they just purchased?
Phil Jones may have drain the moat and sell access to his climate data lists and code to pay the bills.
From the Register, UK
Weather soothsayers lose £4.3m
By Austin Modine
Story excerpts:
The Met Office, home of UK weather soothsaying, is getting its climate research budget chopped by a quarter after the Ministry of Defence ended financial support to focus on “current operations.”
A loss of £4.3m ($7m) funding will hit the Met Office Hadley Centre for Climate Change, according to the science journal Nature. The research institute provides the government with bleeding-edge computer models indicating which parts of the UK should stockpile sunscreen and floaties for the coming Thermageddon.
Please support net journalism. Read the entire story at the Register -> here
Read a couple of interesting articles about the shenanigans of the Hadley Climate Reasearch Unit at Climate Audit:
The UK Met Office Deepens The Moat
Phil Jones: the Secret Agent in Hawaii
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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In adition to my earlier posting: I welcome the MoD to the skeptic community.
Rathtyen – Al Gore is far too closely associated with global warming alarmism to have any kind of plausible deniability if/when AGW is discredited. He’ll probably end up moping around on the political fringe with Ralph Nader and Dennis Kucinich.
But we should be very worried about what kind of damage it will do to science. All the politicians and media figures who have staked their own credibility on AGW will be looking for a scapegoat, and they’ll be desperate to blame everything on scientists and environmentalists.
I think we should refer to Gordon Brown as “Our Beautiful Leader”, a’la North-Korea!
25% is one hell of a pay cut. Perhaps this is crunch time for AGW in the UK. They have claimed elsewhere that the net money will stay the same, with the £4.3M difference coming from other sources. Either way it will mean cuts for somebody somewhere! Of course it would be too cynical to say that during a heat wave is the ideal time to produce oodles of scare stories about climate catastrophe & Fluffy the Polar Bear & all his little friends at the North Pole. Fluffy has no more friends at the North Pole, the prat went & eat them all!
OT. Perhaps some of this £4.3M could be put to better use by the MOD for little niceties for the troops, you know like patrol vehicles that prevent ones leg being blown off (or worse) by an IED instead of wasting 4 years & squillions of taxpayers’ pounds not getting the job done! The history of this particular episode is appalling & shameful. No wonder our Amercian allies look worried when our troops are requested, they’ll wonder what they’re getting. The British Army has been starved of funding for 12 years, the RAF has tons of dosh for 250 planes, few of which are every put for any campaign use. Robbing Peter to pay Paul springs to mind. I’ll say no more it is too painfully humiliating & this is neither the time nor place. Apologies pl feel free to snip as required.
PS Just in case, this was NOT an attack on British troops, but the political system that put them in the mess they’re in, in the first place!
AtB
To Kevin B (04:20:56), Fatbigot and others;
I don’t think they built the roof over the centre court at Wimbledon to keep off the rain. I think it was so that Sir Cliff Richard wouldn’t have any reason to get on court for one of his impromptu sing-alongs.
(They must rank as some of TV’s most cringing occasions ever. In my opinion.)
Richard Heg (03:45:24) :
John F. Hultquist (22:31:07) :
Steven Hill (17:59:15) “. . . by limiting CO2 just in America,”
Reply not sure Obama agrees.
“…..but he expressed reservations about a controversial provision that would slap tariffs on imports from countries that did not similarly crack down on greenhouse gas emissions.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-obama-energy29-2009jun29,0,1735155.story
Interesting… Don’t apply the tariffs and you put domestic producers at a disadvantage, apply tariffs and you sparks trade wars. Either way, the law of unintended consequences prevails. This is mindless!
Pwince (Up)Chuck will get in his jet and do a fund raising tour to get the money. I have faith in him. He has to prove global warming to deflect attention from his adultery. /sarc
I think most people in the UK think weather forecasting is now an even bigger joke than it used to be in the past.
The Met Office are never happier than when they are putting out their Severe Weather Warnings and the latest ploy is to dictate how we should look after ourselves in a heatwave. I know heatwaves are not as common in the UK as they are in some parts of the world but most of us have managed to live through them before without weather forecasters all of a sudden becoming health experts. If their pay cut stops this nonsense I’m all for it!
We must remember that the current panic is based purely and simply on the fact that it is likely to get a bit ‘ot in London in the next couple of days. In the US you have the Beltway; over here we have the M25. According to our MSM (and those who feed them) anything happening outside that doesn’t really exist. The 5-day weather summaries on the BBC’s Ceefax facility last night showed nowhere else across the UK with temps above the mid-20sC. North-east coast and east Scotland is barely getting out of the teens.
We peasants tend not to bother over much about these things; we just take off another layer or open the odd window and drink lots of cool beer till things go back to normal.
When we go back to drinking hot tea!
Re: bill (04:47:29)
Bill, I didn’t suggest that climate change has been a major cost to the UK so far, just that past borrowing to help fund a government spending boom (tripling of health service expenditure, for instance) followed by more unexpected borrowing to fund a ‘Keynsian’ response to the economic downturn, has left the UK in a bad financial position – big debts combined with falling tax revenues. Although Gordon seems to be in denial, most commentators seem to agree that big cuts are going to be necessary in government spending, including – real pain for the Labour Party -the NHS.
In the light of this, hobbling the economy with expensive plans to combat greenhouse gasses might be a decidedly unattractive way to go into an election.
This is what it’s been all about from the beginning– all the data hoarding, data laundering, reluctance to discuss or engage on the issues, refusal to explain statistical methods, etc.: they were petrified that if the truth became known, i.e. that their claims were dubious and that their work product was inferior, that they would lose funding.
Now it’s happening anyway. They are losing funding because of a deep recession causing a loss in tax revenue and a political scandal that is eating away at government credibility. Government is in the process of straightening out it’s affairs, and when that happens it means job losses and cuts.
Maybe they will be more forthcoming with the data from here on out, but I won’t hold my breath. But as long as the temperatures continue to drop, the pressure for audit and review will increase.
The UK Met Office have been forecast a heatwave for several days – it has duly arrived. Well done the Met office for another correct forecast.
As to the funding cut, well, yes some people (those who reject scientific endeavour, those who reject the spirit of discovery scientists have, those who want science to find what they want it to find, those who know the answers, those who politics drives them to want not to find out the answer to questions) will rejoice. Myself I think it’s a sad day – if the cuts actually happen that is. But, then, perhaps I’m the only person here ever to have actually met and listened to a scientist from the Hadley Centre, to have seen they such people are not liars, or commies or lefties, or out to form a world Government or some such nonsense….
Peter Hearnden (09:50:37) :
“The UK Met Office have been forecast a heatwave for several days – it has duly arrived. Well done the Met office for another correct forecast.”
Care to provide your sources?
Here’s London Heathrow right now, in the hottest part of the day:
27C / low of 16C. Forecasts do not rise to the level of “heatwave”.
http://weather.msn.com/local.aspx?&wealocations=wc%3aUKXX0085&q=London%2c+GBR&setunit=C
Here’s a report of the Met from a week ago (19 June):
“The Met Office says it is too early to tell whether it will be a very hot summer this year, but the signs so far are that it will be warmer than our last two summers and conditions could well trigger its heatwave warning system.
In London, this would mean daytime temperatures had exceeded 32C and night-time temperatures were over 18C degrees. In the North West, it would be 30C and 15C, respectively.”
And here’s a current story:
“Britain sizzles in heatwave”
“The Met Office has issued a “heat health” warning for this week, with a 60 per cent chance of temperatures reaching 32C (89.6F) while night time temperatures in some areas could remain as high as 18C (64.4F).”
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/4/20090629/tuk-britain-sizzles-in-heatwave-dba1618.html
A 60% chance of a nearfuture event? A “could be hot” summer forecast?
89/64F just doesn’t sound like a heatwave to me.
This does:
“At 14:32 BST on Wednesday, July 19, 2006, it was confirmed that the previous highest July maximum temperature, (36.0 °C, 96.8 °F at Epsom, Surrey in 1911), had been beaten at Charlwood, near Gatwick Airport with a temperature of 36.3 °C (97.3 °F). Later it was confirmed that 36.5 °C (97.7 °F) had been recorded at Wisley, Surrey. This confirmed that the period of prolonged warm weather was a true heat wave. However, despite some predictions, the United Kingdom’s all-time temperature high of 38.5 °C (101.3 °F) attained at Faversham, Kent, on 10 August 2003 was not reached.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_heat_wave_of_2006
Perhaps the EU elections have put the wind up the bureaucratic parasites that waste taxpayers funds producing this kind of pathetic drivel.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/5532147/Met-Office-predict-likelihood-of-climate-change-on-your-doorstep.html
Oops, I left out the link for the 19 June quote, and it was 19 May.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8057528.stm
The “current story” link I posted would seem to be adequate to disprove that a Met forecast has “duly arrived” and/or is “correct”.
Here in NE Oregon,we have had a cold,wet June.Today seems like summer with highs in the 80f. range.I got brave and put my tomatoes out.NOAA must use the same Ouja board.I feel there is a warm bias in the forecasting computer programs….
Peter Hearnden : rather than defending the Met Office and the Hadley Centre with platitudes and beatifying the actors therein, maybe you could respond specifically to the behavior detailed in this post:
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=6324
The RAF do not need to know the aviation weather forecast for 2080 until 2080.
DennisA (03:05:59) :
“The research institute provides the government with “bleeding-edge” computer models indicating which parts of the UK should stockpile sunscreen and floaties for the coming Thermageddon.”
>Was this just a typo or did the writer mean it? Bleeding us dry maybe.
Bleeding edge is an IT term for experimental stuff that is probably not going to work – sums up the models quite well I thought.
The Register is an IT news site with a reputation for irreverent reporting, but they also have some real journalists there (the kind who analyse rather than just regurgitate). Interestingly, the comments on AGW stories are now running much more skeptical than they used to a few years ago* – the IT nerds in the UK are not buying into the scare-mongering anymore.
*Completely un-scientific, anecdotal evidence and therefore fully justifiable in the current “debate”!
Peter Hearnden (09:50:37) :
WOW! You mean they can actually forecast the weather and the end of the world? If we can’t shovel money at them then we could at least sacrifice a goat in their honour. If the budget gets squeezed too much they can move into my garden shed. It has a wind vane, barometer, thermometer and a piece of sea weed hanging outside. On a cold night the wife makes a chicken broth worth dying for.
Peter Hearnden (09:50:37)
“But, then, perhaps I’m the only person here ever to have actually met and listened to a scientist from the Hadley Centre,”
WRONG
“Peter Hearnden (09:50:37) :
The UK Met Office have been forecast a heatwave for several days – it has duly arrived. Well done the Met office for another correct forecast”
Sorry to dissillusion you Peter but the Met office aren’t predicting a heatwave as I know it. Click on temperature on UK map and go through the week.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_temp.html
Apart from London [UHI in a valley] it’s not that hot, certainly not how it was years ago. And the orange shaded part, today Monday, was put on this afternoon. It wasn’t there this morning. So their prediction of hot weather in the midlands was made in the middle of the same day!
I’m not saying it wont be hot in parts but they aren’t predicting it.
cheers David
REPLY: The Met Office forecast at the link above shows worst case 23C (75F) in Birmingham. 23C/75F is hardly a heat wave, and the remainder of the week is around 20C or less. – Anthony
It strikes me that we are all missing the most salient point revealed by this story, which is the relatively great deal the people of the UK are getting for their money. Using the arithmetic I learned from the nuns in Catholic school, long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away, the fact that $7 million equals a 25% cut would mean that their precut budget was $28 million. Hansen and the crew at GISS have been setting us back for over a billion/year for quite a while to rather incompetently replicate what NOAA is providing already at similar levels of cost and skill. Not to mention the other billions we are providing to fund highly cogent studies of ” The Effect of Global Warming on the Prevalence of Clubfoot in the Population of Three toed Sloths of Lower Patagonia” and thousands of other research topics deemed relevant for funding almost exclusively by the inclusion of the magical syllables “Global Warming” in the title. One could only wish that the taxpayers of the US would be subjected to so meager a dunning to pay for our daily dose of Warmisr propaganda as our compatriots in the UK.
Almost no one knows what was in that climate bill the House passed, especially the people who voted for it. Passing a bill without knowing what’s in it should be an impeachable offense, IMO.
Does anybody remember Smoot-Hawley? The Smoot-Hawley Tarrif Act is responsible for making the recession of 1929 into the world-wide Great Depression.
Of course, this legislation is worse than Smoot-Hawley because we have an historical example of how trade wars and tarrifs don’t work. But our leaders are so much smarter than they were 20 years ago. They’ll know what to do when the time comes.
Andrew P
“That’s not what has happened in Scotland where the idiot politicians have just passed our Climate Bill which commits us to 42% cut in CO2 emissions by 2020! If ever evidence was required for politicians living in an parallel universe this must be it.”
Nothing new here though. Aristophanes had it summed up in “The Birds” back in x*10^2.441BC or whenever (too idle to look it up) – our leaders (LOL) and their hangers on in the Big Smoke (London to you foreigners) and our other capitals live in “Cloud Cuckoo Land.” They hardly seem to notice that we voters exist. But they will!
China now burns more coal per day than the US, Europe, and Japan combined. And that is just “controlled” coal burning. Uncontrolled coal seam fires in China produce more CO2 than all the cars in the US.
People who believe the US Congress can make a dent are beyond delusional.