Weather supercomputer used to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters
Excerpts from the story by the Daily Mail See WUWT’s original story on this
The Met Office has caused a storm of controversy after it was revealed their £30million supercomputer designed to predict climate change is one of Britain’s worst polluters.
The massive machine – the UK’s most powerful computer with a whopping 15 million megabytes of memory – was installed in the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter, Devon.
It is capable of 1,000 billion calculations every second to feed data to 400 scientists and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.
The computer used 1.2 megawatts to run – enough to power 1,000 homesThe machine was hailed as the ‘future of weather prediction’ with the ability to produce more accurate forecasts and produce climate change modelling.
However the Met Office’s HQ has now been named as one of the worst buildings in Britain for pollution – responsible for more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide a year.
It says 75 per cent of its carbon footprint is produced by the super computer meaning the machine is officially one of the country’s least green machines.
Green campaigners say it is ‘ironic’ that a computer designed to help stave-off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution.
But Met Office spokesman Barry Grommett said the computer was ‘vital’ to British meteorology and to help predict weather and environmental change.
He said: ‘We recognise that it is big but it is also necessary. We couldn’t do what we do without it.
‘We would be throwing ourselves back into the dark ages of weather forecasting if we withdrew our reliance on supercomputing, it’s as simple as that.’
The figures have been published by the Department of Communities and Local Government which calculated the ratings and emissions of every public building in the country.
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“We couldn’t do what we do without it.” – like botch the BBQ summer forecast?
Boudu (08:23:51),
What is Al Gore’s IQ?
Opps! In retrospect that picture is actually a valid analogy:
B.S. in/B.S. out
A thousand years ago, southamerican indians, the Incas, just looked at the seven sisters, in the sky,(The pleiades globular cumulus, in the constellation of Taurus ) if these looked hazy, it was going to be a rainy season. As simple as that…
An x-box, nintendo or whatever electronic gadgets wouldn´t be better and cheaper for these met office grown up kids?…
They´re gonna kill the rest of the world just by laughing at them.
It doesn’t matter how powerful these computers get, it’s still the problem with GIGO. The climate scientists still don’t get it.
Gotta agree with Przemystaw.
If 2000 advocates shut off their computers it could make up the difference.
They can just power it with one of those wind turbines. Then, when it doesn’t work, they will know that the wind is blowing less than about 10 mph. How marvelous. As the climate has been rightfully described as a chaotic non-linear system, it can’t be forecast or predicted. GIGO, however powerful the computer. But they are now able to make the errors they make much more quickly.
In socialist worker’s paradise we all have equally friendly carbon footprints, except some are more equal than others!
Przemysław Pawełczyk (08:07:13) : . . . look up the definition of two words
1. Irony
2. Hypocrisy
Then think about the post in the context of the meaning of these two words and you’ll eventually figure it out.
As often stated on this blog, Bad Data in, Bad Data out. The power of this computer is useless if the MET is using selective(AGW bias) AlGoreithms. Its just one big carbon foot print. Not that thats a problem in the long run, but does the UK need the added tax? Isn’t the economy tough as it is?
Burn down this evil computer and its false prophicies!
“Green campaigners say it is ‘ironic’ that a computer designed to help stave-off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution.”
HA! So the models aren’t created to get at the truth, they are created with a political goal in mind.
I knew it!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8224543.stm
Take a look at this one fellas! Of course it’s par for the course to announce that it doesn’t explain the warming over the last 30 years, etc. I suspect rears are being covered to avoid total embarrassment in due course. This is unprecendented for the BBC, rather unlike the unprecedented warming over the last 30 years or so. Think ICECAP nailed this one a tad earlier on their site. Curiously, the paper doesn’t appear to have any mention a disclaimer about warming over the last 30 years, unless I missed it, which is possible., but the BBC report does. Hmmmm, how strange.
“… uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.”
These statements always bother me. First, “1.2 megawatts of energy” is a statement of power, not energy. Energy would be expressed in W*hr. And then, “to power more than 1000 homes” for how long? In this case, it’s easy to assume they simply meant 1.2 MW of power which would imply 1.2KW of power for each home. As Retired Engineer already stated, this seems slightly low, but at least in the ballpark.
I’ve noticed it becomes much more egregious when discussing things like wind power when all that is mentioned is peak generating capacity (which almost never happens!) and the ability to power a bazillion homes based on that number as if the wind turbines would always run at peak capacity.
Garbage in, Gospel out
Have you checked out plantsneedco2.org? This big machine is responsible for pumping out tons of plant food into the atmosphere, thank the UK MET office for doing its part for the good of plants everywhere 😉
That’s a real purty piece of hardware.
But it doesn’t matter what because of the GIGO principle. All that expensive, energy-sucking hardware does it let them get the wrong answer faster.
Sorry to put a damper on this parade. But for about 7 months out of the year, the low grade heat output (room temperature plus) can and should be used for SPACE HEATING.
Then we only have the 400,000 watts to run the AC units during the summer to account for. THERE I cut the “Carbon Footprint” by 1/4 in a piece of brilliant logic.
Wait, maybe the SuperComputer runs off NUCLEAR? Then it has NO carbon footprint.
Or, they could take ALL the solar power available in UK and run it. Then it would run only during sunny days. Of course that TOO would cut down on its use. (Sunny days in England? What, about 100?)
All jesting aside, I’ll repeat my primary “large computer” mantra:
GIGO GIGO GIGO GIGO GIGO…
Now if they were to BAN printing the outputs and keep them as vapor (binary digits, screen displays only) we’d have a REAL “Green” winner.
I guess I’ll just be a green WHINER for now.
Dr. Joe
I wish everyone would stop complaining about the MET office computer. Its the best money that’s been spent on climate science from a skeptics point of view (unless you are a UK taxpayer of course). The MET office is the only organization using global circulation models to predict the weather on a seasonal basis so they are making verifiable predictions. From my perspective, let them have all they want. Let there be no uncertainty about the quality and reliability of global circulations models and their ability to predict the future.
Awesome. You can’t make something up this good!
Oh, and CO2 is not pollution….
I love this quote: He said: ‘We recognise that it is big but it is also necessary. We couldn’t do what we do without it.
‘We would be throwing ourselves back into the dark ages of weather forecasting if we withdrew our reliance on supercomputing, it’s as simple as that.’
Yes, that’s right. It’s amazing to think that increasing our machines’ capabilities requires more power, which as of now, requires burning those fossil fuels. Maybe it will click in someone’s head that a lot of those other things they are trying to make hugely expensive are also necessary.
Seeing the negative public response about their carbon footprint, maybe now they will run models that are actually good and confirm that CO2 is not the cause of climate change… or they could just relocate it is some third world country and make them pay for the carbon credits tax and continue showing that CO2 is bad. The heat produced by the supercomputer could be used to heat space and water for a small village in Africa.
rbateman (08:17:25) :
This reminds me of the Lemon Computer System some outfit sold the California DMV a few year back. It never worked right, and threw the DMV into total chaos after which they had to admit it was a dud. The people who sold it to them couldn’t fix it either.
They finally had to scrap it and start over.
Sell the thing and try to recoup some of the loss.
I rather doubt there is anything wrong with the computers. All computers are subject to two fundamental rules: garbage in – garbage out and they do exactly what you tell them to do. A supercomputer is no different, it just does everything on a bigger scale. In this case, it’s probably a bit of both.
Wasn’t their some MET guy that did solar monitoring and had a better track record of prediction than the “real” MET team? I think he used commercial off-the-shelf PC hardware. Just saying…
But they need a computer like this to painstakingly maintain through retrievable records, boldly apply completely unbiased corrections, and maintain as thoroughly impartial a register of climatic conditions as humanly possible!