“Gordon Brown yesterday promised a full review of how the country had coped with the coldest winter for 30 years”
Heckuva a job there Brownie.
From the Telegraph:
Met Office to review forecasts after failing to warn public of fresh snow
The Met Office has admitted that it failed to warn the public of the heavy snow that brought swaths of Britain to a standstill on Wednesday.
Forecasters conceded that they did not spot the widespread snow storms that caused transport disruption and a surge of weather-related accidents until it was too late. Up to six inches fell in parts of the South West, with drifts of 7ft in Wales.
Even when the full extent of the threat was realised, flaws in the Met Office’s bad weather warning system meant that the public were not adequately informed, officials said. The system will now be reviewed.
…
Thousands of Britons endured nightmare journeys to work after waking up to several inches of snow despite reassurances that their regions would escape the worst of the latest flurries.
Hundreds of flights were cancelled at Heathrow, Gatwick and regional airports, while schools that had only just reopened were again forced to shut their doors.
Accident and emergency departments reported “unprecedented” numbers of patients, many suffering suspected fractures after slipping on ice.
An 18-year-old college student who died after locking himself out was last night feared to be the latest casualty of the weather. Police believe Nathan Jobe froze to death after falling from a window while trying to gain access to his home in Mountnessing in Essex.
In the Peak District, pregnant 40-year-old gave birth to a healthy baby boy after a mountain rescue team transported a midwife to her snowbound home. Melanie Pollitt had sought advice on the Mumsnet website about her labour pains before calling for help.
Gordon Brown yesterday promised a full review of how the country had coped with the coldest winter for 30 years, after councils were forced to cut their gritting by a half to conserve dwindling stocks.
==============================
I like Richard North’s (EU Referendum) take on it:
They got it wrong and keep getting it wrong.
Now for the reality check, more than adequate testimony that the Met Office is a waste of space.
===============================
Heh.
Seems like the Met Office has a terminal case of botchulism.
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All primate troops must operate on some kind of social consensus.
~”Take your dirty hands off me, you Ape.”
theclimateconspiracy (21:10:30) :
Here’s a thought:-
The unknown process that drags cold anticyclonic polar air south in the northern hemisphere, will at the same time, also drag hot anticyclonic tropical air south in the southern hemisphere.
Just my speculation, nothing more 😉
I have a prediction for the world. The IPCC and every one else is welcome to it for free.
In the future: some regional climates will warm up; some regional climates will cool down; some will become wetter; some will become drier; some will become windier; some will become calmer.
I propose we restore climate to its original, regional significance, and we allow each country to figure out for itself what its own region is going to do.
Farmers in Kenya can work out how to make productive use of their land given their changing climate. Farmers in England can do likewise. And they can each asses their regional climate in conjunction with their regional economy, and technological means. They can consider their region’s demographics, culture, aspirations, etc. They can think for themselves. They can figure out for themselves what Kenyans need, in the context of what Kenyans are themselves able to achieve. And the Brits can do likewise.
Of course, I’m only repeating in my own way what real climate scientists have been saying (OK, maybe not all of them) but beyond the regional scale of climate there is just the inter-glacial “age”. Not climate, “age”.
We may be one global community, but that doesn’t mean we are all the same. We are all equally valuable humans who have intrinsic worth as human beings, and we are also all different, living in different cultures, different situations, different resources and opportunities, and in different climates.
What does anybody care about long term hardly discernible statistical “global” trends when the local climate is what runs our lives? Even if the temperatures go up globally on average, some regions could cool, a fact that AGW alarmists keep insisting on. OK, so maybe this region where I’m living cools… what do we here in this region do about it? How do we handle it? How do we adapt?
This is why methinks, adaption is the only realistic strategy. Let’s prepare to adapt today rather that wait for the “world” to “come together” to “fight climate change”—let’s prepare our adaption strategies now rather than wait for the tooth fairy.
Smokey (19:21:39) pointed to a good article at American Thinker, another piece of mending that can now be done as a result of Climategate: the good work of Soon and Baliunas, showing the importance of the sun in understanding climate changes – and the corrupt process whereby they were “professionally” discredited while known to be producing important work.
It would be good to give them all a hearing here.
Wakefield Tolbert: Check out Lucy Skywalker’s account of her conversion from believer to skeptic here: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/MyStory.htm
And here: http://www.greenworldtrust.org.uk/Science/Curious.htm
It contains the following:
Yes, but don’t forget that the Met Office can routinely predict out to 1000 years ahead – their Dr Vicky Pope said so in 2007:
“Much longer predictions are run, typically…predicting the next 100 to 1,000 years.”
If you want to know what’s wrong with the Met Office, first start at the top: it’s headed up by the eco-imperialist, former WWF-UK chief executive, Robert Napier.
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/08/24/eco-imperialism-every-environmentalists-dream/
Then take a look at what happens to Meteorologists who join the Met Office, for example their Chief Scientist, Julia Slingo:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/met-office-fraudcast/
They start parrotting lies, which (as that post shows) they know are untrue.
And for a sanity check on their projections out to the end of the century:
http://buythetruth.wordpress.com/2009/07/03/climate-robustness/
The MetOffice has a different view of itself
“The big chill — how did we do?”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100114.html
See” Weather warnings we put out, and the subsequent weather”
1 June 1944, SHAPE HQ England
Eisenhower: What’s the forecast?
Met Office: Sir, this terrible storm will go on for another 70 years.
1 June 2014, SHAPE HQ Kansas
Eisenhower IV: What’s the forecast?
Met Office: Sir, We don’t see any inprovement.
______________
The Metoffice is a political joke, a very costly one. Anyone in a supervisory role without a degree in meteorology should be locked in The Tower or the Buck House Lu.
Wakefield, Wakefield, tsk tsk.
“Most men cannot beat the rap on the consensus of their betters”. At the risk of being yelled at as a Godwinist, Germany in the 1930s was a good example of consensus of the “betters”. Doesn’t mean the majority were right, though, does it?
There are many occasions where the one original insight overturned the common view of the day. William Harvey, Louis Pasteur, those two Australian guys who discovered the Helicobacter pylori was the cause of stomach ulcers… Charles Darwin, Galileo, Copernicus, yada yada.
Science does not operate by consensus. It operates by evidence. And it operates gradually, as the evidence builds up one way or the other. The science on climate change is not settled, even if the politics is. If things seem confusing right now it is because we are in a state of change on the way we look at a climate. an old dictum is probably being overturned in front of our very eyes.
Met office, you see what you wanna see … It’s the new science.
The BBC’s hardly even-handed ‘environment analyst’, Roger Harrabin, has a piece today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8462890.stm
It is now entitled “Met Office’s debate over longer-term forecasts”, as if it’s an internal debate, and leads in about a ‘debate’ in the Met office about what to do. But earlier today it had the title “Met Office’s longer-term forecasts criticised” and the criticism aspect was the lead in to the article. Harrabin has toned it all down, as he always does – just an email or a phone call from above and he is happy to comply. He is putty in the hands of the establishment. And since the Met Office is part of the state (under Ministry of Defence), this doesn’t look too good on the BBC either for independent journalism.
Newt Love (20:20:53)
To be fair to the poor boy the report did state that he fell while trying to get in through a window and froze to death, presumably because he wasn’t able to move after the fall. I think most of us of mature years could have met an early death in the wrong circumstances; not necessarily while quailifying for a Darwin award.
qualifying
I have often said, jokingly, that some climate modellers believe that if the real world data does not correspond to their model it must be the real world data that is at fault. Ir seems the UK Met Office, as reported by Roger Harrabin of the BBC, actually believes this….
“All models have biases and these are very small. It may be, as the Met Office suggests, that the observations are wrong, not the model.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8462890.stm
If you take the trouble to research Wakefield Tolbert you will find that despite indications to the contrary he is a real person with his own peculiar blog, where, it may be seen, that the misjudged overweening self valuation manifested on these pages is mirrored in his forays upon other subjects.
The flotsam from the AGW wreckage is so tiresome…. especially when it washes up here.
AGW modeling reminds me of Deep Thought who knew the answer (42) but suggested that a bigger computer should be built to understand the question.
How about we pay all Met Ofice staff based on the accuracy of the 1 and 5 day forecasts, plus the seasonal (ie BBQ summer/mild winter) forecast?
Let’s take each forecast when it’s published and file it for comparison with the actual weather that ocurred. Give them a (small) error window but score each one for accuracy.
Wonder how long it would take for the Met Office to get REALLY good at predicting what’s actually going to happen rather than what they would like it to be according to some wacky theory or other.
Wakefield Tolbert (22:10:39) :
“Also: The charts clearly show some warming that correlates to increased Co2…”
Show the chart, please.
And…
“Outspent 1000-1? Where did you find that?”
See here.
Instead of a new super computer, the Met should have invested in some new super radar. I would even put it out on the ocean so I could see what’s coming my way.
“The observations are wrong, not the model”. That’s the path to Lysenkoism, which is quite possibly where we’re headed.
Remember the comment from the Newsweek reporter about the Duke lacrosse team rape case, after it was clear that the charges were false: “the narrative was correct, but the facts were wrong”. Very few, if any, of the faculty members who signed the big letter/full page newspaper ad condemning the lacrosse team and players have ever apologized or even admitted that they were wrong. We’re facing the same phenomenon when it comes to AGW. Probably nothing less than a new Ice Age could cause these people to admit error, and even in that event they most likely would try to claim that it was caused by CO2.
Here are my recollections and a few links related to their failures.
25 September 2008
The Met Office forecast for the coming winter suggests it is, once again, likely to be milder than average. It is also likely that the coming winter will be drier than last year.
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2008/pr20080925.html
25 Feb 2009
Coldest winter for a decade – Met Office
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090225.html
—–
30 April 2009
The coming summer is ‘odds on for a barbecue summer‘, according to long-range forecasts
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20090430.html
Met Office cools summer forecast
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8173533.stm
—-
2009
Met office forecast a mild to average winter
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/science/creating/monthsahead/seasonal/2009/winter.html
Met Office – 5 January 2010
“The current cold weather started in mid December and it has been the most prolonged spell of freezing conditions across the UK since December 1981.”
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20100105.html
“Britain’s freezing weather: worst snow for 50 years”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/6939124/Britains-freezing-weather-worst-snow-for-50-years-paralyses-transport-networks.html
——
10 December 2009
Climate could warm to record levels in 2010
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2009/pr20091210b.html
Wakefield Tolbert
“To defeat relativity one did not need the word of 100 scientists, just one fact.”
Einstein
Wakefield Tolbert
———–
Oh, you mean like the Climate Research Unit. :o)
Some of the funders for CRU
British Petroleum (Oil, LNG)
Central Electricity Generating Board
Eastern Electricity
KFA Germany (Nuclear)
Irish Electricity Supply Board (LNG, Nuclear)
National Power
Nuclear Installations Inspectorate (Nuclear)
Shell (Oil, LNG)
Sultanate of Oman (LNG)
UK Nirex Ltd. (Nuclear)
Source: http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/about/history/
CRU Seeks Big Oil And Big Business Cash
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=171&filename=962818260.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=156&filename=947541692.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=332&filename=1056478635.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=270&filename=1019513684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=1041&filename=1254832684.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=204&filename=973374325.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=185&filename=968691929.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=159&filename=951431850.txt
http://www.eastangliaemails.com/emails.php?eid=362&filename=1065125462.txt
Now what were you saying. :O(
UK readers will be specially amused by that item. Gordon Brown’s ‘reviews’ are famous. At one point I think he had around 100 going on, which is especially hilarious as he finds taking fresh decisions really hard.
From his point of view a ‘review’ has the advantage of kicking a topic into the long grass – in this case probably until after our next election.
Incidentally, we have been “promised a full review of how the country … coped”. “The country” got on with it – it was government, local authorities and the Met Office where the shambles was.
Will this “full review” study what resources were directed to global warming which should have been focused on local cooling?
Don’t hold your breath.
@Wakefield Tolbert
As majority expert opinion is of interest, please note that the majority of the seven or so billion people on the planet are not interested in reducing consumption, for any reason. You have to ask yourself, are you smarter than the species? Or is there something about the very nature of life itself—and we are life, you and me, we are born into this and are carried along by forces far outside our control and understanding—is there something about how nature made us that is a mechanism that strives to move forward and explore possibilities? See, we as individuals are not smarter than the life manifestation of the species. We just don’t know how that works. So yeah, we discover a few bits of knowledge here and there, how to make CPUs out of sand, how to make antibiotics, how to measure temperature from history, and so on. But the vast movement of the species, a natural force of nature, seven billion organisms, moving, changing, adapting, and occasionally leaping to new emergent potentials. We do not understand that. We never have. We are riding blind at great speed.