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?
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Why can’t they direct some of the warming here to my home?
I know 17.7ºC isn’t cold but it’s in my bedroom!
DaveE.
“15 million megabytes of memory ” etc etc
Does anybody who work with these things have any comments on their precision and calibration?
Obviously a bit of a dumb question but I’m intrigued to know how they fill that amount of memory and how they can validate the results. My guess is that one could run a whole model in RAM alone? To a level of precision which bears no resemblance to the limitiations of the input data? Where does all the output go? Is it just to produce dramatic graphic simulations of innacurate results? Or will/can this really address some bottleneck in model processing?
Remember Gary Kasparov vs Big Blue.
I suggest a meteorological prediction match: Piers Corbyn vs The Met Computer & the army of cronies from the Met Office.
Of course, Piers Corbyn has a massively unfair advantage – he doesn’t believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming nonsense… so his predictions are likley to right at LEAST 50% of the time. The MET with it’s pre-ordained prescribed view is only likely to be right one third of the time.
DaveE (16:27:25) :
Why can’t they direct some of the warming here to my home?
I know 17.7ºC isn’t cold but it’s in my bedroom!
DaveE
However you must believe in those red and oranges on Noaa´s maps!
I’ve yet to see anyone pointing out the fact that electrical devices like computers, light bulbs (whether they contain tungsten or mercury), space heaters, and electric motors,
are 100 % efficient in the winter time, any ‘waste’ heat merely replacing heat otherwise generated by furnaces and boilers.
Maybe they could power it off windmills? Of course that doesn’t sound to reliable…
Stoic (16:12:35) :
Przemysław Pawełczyk (13:53:03) :
How do you pronounce your name in English please?
Regards
Just like it’s spelled.
“Green campaigners say it is ‘ironic’ that a computer designed to help stave-off climate change is responsible for such high levels of pollution.”
I fail to understand how exactly any Climate Model could ever “stave-off” climate change (even assuming it is caused by our CO2). That implies that someone believes that climate models will actual do something….
[snip – this user has been using multiple identies to post here including “mooseknuckle”, “RICH”, and “navigator” comment deleted, user banned.]
So the MET office has one of the GREENEST buildings in the UK! CO2 is nutrient. We should be glad of that small bounty as they go about proving the uselessness of their forecasts.
Here’s the facts about numerical modelling: chaos principles guarantee that within a relatively short time the results are nonsense. No amount of speed or computer memory can change that. It’s a mathematical fact. Three weeks out is probably the best possible, no matter what computing resources you throw at it.
So if you want to do better, you have to use entirely different principles. For example, a theory of how the sun influences climate might tell you that a year on, the climate will be constrained to a colder (or warmer) regime. You still won’t know whether the weather on day X will be hot, cold, wet, dry, but you will be able to forecast the sort of weather happening around about that time. This kind of forecast simply doesn’t need the kind of mind-boggling computing power in that building. You might even be able to do it with pencil and paper. They are two entirely different kinds of calculation. And the fact that the MET office are gearing up to push numerical techniques beyond anywhere they have gone before (and they have already hit the limits imposed by chaos) tells me they are a bunch of incompetents. Either that or shysters.
I have added some more comments about this at http://peacelegacy.org/articles/uk-met-office-indulges-fantasy .
Stoic (16:12:35) :
How to pronounce ‘Przemysław Pawełczyk’ in English?
I’d przobably go for: ‘Premy-shlaw Pabel-chick’.
It’s przobably Pzolish.
I’ll say it again: anyone who thinks he can model the climate simply doesn’t understand it. It’s a chaotic system.
How do you make a computer model control the climate like Bill Gates wanted Windows to run your household?
We’d better figure out Jack Eddy’s parallel plug Christmas tree first.
Now hear this, now hear this: Al CO2 molecules will report to collection area 6 for further processing.
Hmm…..
Jeremy (16:37:00) :
Yes, but the Big Blue team had a bunch of top analysts and programmers who took the sum knowledge of all chess moves & games to give the computer perfect hindsight.
These Met Jokers have obviously skewed the past in order to predict thier model future.
Lo & Behold, it is broken.
Failing to look out the window is their biggest downfall after monkeying with history.
Nature, unlike chess, does not play by man’s set rules, but can make itself new every single day. The computer cannot think outside the box, and neither can the Met programmers trapped by thier own bias.
Piers Corbyn, and those like him (Harry Geise for example), can think freshly.
Like the old adage says:
To err is human,
To really screw up you need a computer
“Miles (10:37:52) :
The true carbon footprint must include all of the sa’s, dba’s,programmers,project managers,scientists, etc. offices which may or may not be in this one building. Their traveling to and from work along with their lunch hour’s carbon output, etc must be calculated. Is there a Disaster Recovery site located in some other building ? Backup tapes may be driven to other locations also. There are probably many maintenance workers there all of the time – their travel co2 output along with everything they do that is related to working on at this site must be calculated. All told, the carbon footprint here is much greater than what’s suggested.”
Indeed, but then Co2 output during manufacture, including the manufacturer and it’s suppliers etc, should also be calculated.
“Jeff L (11:06:46) :
Yet more irony:
“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.”
…. so they can try to throw the rest of us back into the dark ages.”
The elite don’t care what happens to us. They do this at their peril.
“slow to follow (16:32:37) :
“15 million megabytes of memory ” etc etc
Does anybody who work with these things have any comments on their precision and calibration?
Obviously a bit of a dumb question but I’m intrigued to know how they fill that amount of memory and how they can validate the results. My guess is that one could run a whole model in RAM alone? To a level of precision which bears no resemblance to the limitiations of the input data? Where does all the output go? Is it just to produce dramatic graphic simulations of innacurate results? Or will/can this really address some bottleneck in model processing?”
Depends on the operating system, hardware architechture etc, some systems have the ability to “partition” memory to create separate, independent, “virtual machines” (In fact I do something similar with VMware under Windows XP, I “configure” available host system RAM to the VM’s, and run my VM’s all in that RAM. These VM’s are Windows servers, 32bit and 64bit, running on a 32bit host). Virtualisation in computing is wonderful, but building virtual climate models and using the results to build social and govn’t policy is a poor used of the technology.
THERE IS NO GLOBAL WARMING WITH INCREASE IN CO2:
http://www.geocities.com/girmao/GlobalWarming/NoGlobalWarming.htm
Stoic (16:12:35) :
Przemysław Pawełczyk (13:53:03) :
How do you pronounce your name in English please?
The last time I commented here it was deep in the night local time so I simply went to bed. 😉 That’s I why I didn’t reply.
Pshemislav Paveltchik
“sh” in English is soft,
“rz” in Polish is like “sh” in English but hard something as “rzh”,
“ł” sounds like w (in wood), but using “l” would do fine. 🙂
“cz” read as I wrote – “tch” as in Russian transcription.
It’s 5.54 here now. You can count the time lag now. 😉
Regards
Oh for the grand old days when Harwell got it’s first Cray and it took, if I remember right, a dozen IBM 360s to keep it fed.
Probably less computing power than in your laptop today.
Kindest Regards
“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.’”
Meanwhile, Europe is banning the sale of all incandescent light bulbs from 1st September despite reports that people with impaired vision are unable to read by the light of their ‘low-energy’ alternatives. But to hell with what other people find necessary eh?
LarryOldTimer they did a run some time ago that gave an iron tight predicition when the wind would be blowing. So all they need to do after that is set up a wind turbine and then schedule the run when they know the wind is going to blow. There is a problem though with flying pigs.
Good morning Przemysław Pawełczyk
Thank you for that!
Regards
They should rename it ‘The DeLorean’.
You can put carbage in and it shows you a different future every time you run it.
show the pic of the globe
compared to the total amount of water on earth ( as a sphere )
and
compared to the total amount of atmosphere ( as a sphere )
its really impressive
Ahem…
There was once a computer at Hadley,
Which forecast the weather so badly,
That they gave it more pop.
But with each teraflop,
It became still less accurate, sadly.