Hmmm, I’ll bet they didn’t forecast this either. Might make a nice museum or art gallery though.
UK Government May Sell Off Met Office, Nature Reserves
John Vidal, Severin Carrell and Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, 13 August 2010
Some of the most beautiful areas of Britain could be sold off and wildlife and countryside protection measures cut to the bone to meet expected 40% cuts in the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, it emerged.
Among the plans being considered by the government, which once declared itself “the greenest ever”, are selling off national nature reserves; privatising parts of the Forestry Commission; privatising the Met Office, one of the world’s leading research organisations on climate change; and withdrawing grants to British Waterways, which manages 2,200 miles of canals and rivers.
Natural England, the government’s principal nature conservation agency, has put forward 400 job cuts next year, and up to another 400 after that, potentially one third of its workforce.
There are also concerns that the Environment Agency, which looks after waterways, air and soil, will have to slash spending on pollution and waste controls and river protection after the environment secretary, Caroline Spelman, recently said she had made it “perfectly clear” that the government would maintain the level of spending on flood defences – which take up more than half the agency’s budget.
Privatizing the Met Office sounds like a good idea. Maybe that would finally remove the political influence.
BP may be looking for a smaller head office. I wonder, tho’ if it goes private does all its data avoid FOI requests?
“one of the world’s leading research organisations on climate change”
Scientists study climate. Politicians study “climate change.”
No good scientist makes pre-determined conclusions about the result of their research.
Who, in his/her right mind would want to buy it?
I wonder how much of this could be avoided if the British govt dropped their subsidies for wind power?
The UK has a £155 billion deficit to try to fill and a national debt heading towards £1.4 trillion.
So of course what we find are civil servants putting up all the most unpalatable cuts in an attempt to keep their own jobs.
The incoming coalition are allegedly ‘green’ so the civil servants will wallow in offering these sorts of cuts. I hope there are minimal cuts to the support for waterways and canals – it is a great resource; but the debt needs to be reduced.
Its hard to how the Met Office can justify its bloated existence beyond giving local short term forecasts. But of course the global warming scare justifies its claims on mega mega computers and a lush expense account. As well of loads of largess and influence to disburse.
BTW – despite the word ‘cuts’ actual spending will continue to increase.
A nightmare scenario — they could sell the thing to Greenpeace; those forecasts could give new meaning to the phrase Comedy of Errors.
That building must be an energy hog — look at all that glass …
Try getting FOIA data from the MET when it’s privatized.
Turn it into a Global Warming Museum . . . showing the whole story of how the scam started, overlap between environmentalism and socialism/marxism, have exhibits showing how temperature data is “adjusted” and of course a rogues gallery of the scammer scientists and politicians who made so much money off the scam.
Special “Al Gore Hall” is a must
Wow Nature England has 2400 employees for their nature preserve forests – how many trees per person is that? I’m not sure the Canadian Gov’t has many more, anyone know(?). Anyway, their is definitely a catastrophic climate change in the global warming fellowship if the growing number of deep-six news stories on the subject is any indication (UK, Germany, the Spanish green bust, NZ lawsuit, etc). The craziness is still out their though when you see global warming protesters in Australia out there in their parkas.
I wonder if they’ll have to pay someone to take it off their hands..?
After all, what is an organisation that can’t get tomorrows weather right – let alone next months, next seasons, next years – worth?
Maybe it will be of interest to one of the TV networks comedy channels…
When you stop and think of all the money and time that has been wasted on one made up, hyped up, disaster – just so a few ego inflated people can try to elevate their science to some fabricated credibility………………
Beautiful looking building – my complements to the architects.
Yes, an art gallery…or better yet a car-dealership; both new and used of course.
Does the purchaser also acquire their legal liabilities?
It seems that things of least value go first. Barbeque summers forecasts
show the value of The Met.
Sell it on e-bay.
Hallliburton could buy it and hire the people. Send them to work in the oilfields of Iraq where it hits 125 degrees.
Looks like it would be a great site for either a coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power station. The Brits certainly will need the electricity and at least a power plant is, well, useful isn’t it.
I wonder if Piers Corbyn might be interested in buying the MET office?
Piers could trim the fat, train the remainder in accurate forecasting, sell off the fortran number crunchers for scrap, and make a tidy profit. The UK would benefit from: better forecasts, lest wasted tax money, and reduced AGW alarm-ism. Piers might be the only person in the world capable of executing the necessary turnaround. Here’s hoping.
There does seem to be a growing backlash, never articulated as such, of course, against the over-hyped danger of global warming. The new danger, however, is a return to disastrous environmental policies of the old style. We don’t want to go back to the bad old days of treating Earth like some kind of unkillable, endlessly regenerating Doctor Who.
I like the fact that they’re finally getting rid of the Met Office, but not the ecosystems! Why would they do such a thing? 🙁
—
It’s an ugly damn’ building, as only a tax-sucking bureaucrat with an empire-building fixation could have ordained.
But where is it located? Proposals for turning the Met Office’s present nest into a museum would come to naught if it’s not a place suitable for drop-in traffic. Any other amusements in the vicinity? How close is it to public transportation and highway access?
It looks as if there’s plenty of floor space available to put in a food court and a games arcade, and that would help to generate additional revenue (so important for museums nowadays). Would an Imax theater be a cost-efficient modification?
Let’s put some thought into this, folks. Tempting though it might be to call in a demolitions team and simply blow the place up (while thoughtfully salting the ground after burning off the rubble), this pile has been inflicted upon the public at considerable expense, and it behooves conscientious consideration of what utility might be made of it after it passes out of the hands of the soon-to-be-extinct Met Office.
—
Pssst, want to buy a used supercomputer?
At least the UK is trying to pay their bills.
Vastly better than the crew claiming to be running the US government.
The Met Office hasn’t already been privatized? You mean it has been working for the public? Or was it actually working for the government?
In the early 1980s when the Met Office headquarters was at Bracknell in Berkshire there were rumours that the forecasting part of its work could be closed in favour of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF). That centre is based at Shinfield Park near Reading. The two sites were only about 10 miles apart.
Must have seemed like an opportunity to cut costs.
Moving the Met Office HQ to Exeter was not popular with everyone especially academics with Oxford and Reading universities convenient for Bracknell and London readily accessible by road and train. The Royal Meteorological Society is also based in Reading. Perhaps by moving to a corner of Devon the Met Office thought they wouldn’t be noticed – out of sight out of mind?
@Dave Row
I really like your idea of a sitcom based in the Met Office. I wonder if Mosher could be signed up as a writer? The fortran prediction engines should enjoy leading roles, of course, emitting enigmatic punched cards every so often with +0.78C stamped on them.
I am sure that the entire Met Office staff could be smoothly transitioned to light comedy with little or no retraining. This would surely be a more productive use of their time.
I was thinking BP as well, then we could blame bad climate change forecasting on ‘Big Oil’!
I was wondering about that too.
No mention of their new 1 gigaflop, 1.2 MW, 12 kiloton CO2 spewing supercomputer.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/08/28/met-office-supercomputer-a-megawatt-here-a-megawatt-there-and-pretty-soon-were-talking-real-carbon-pollution/
Bung it up on ebay. Some silly sod will buy it.
And you get this (which has cost the aviation industry billions)
The British met office has Europe’s biggest computer.
It is housed in a 1 acre climate controlled hall.
It is a new (IBM) and requires 1.2 megabytes to run it.
It takes 8 weeks to boot up.
Can perform 1,000 billion calculations a second.
Has 15 million megabytes of memory.
Cost 30 million pounds,
and it predicted the volcanic ash clouds that shut down the European sky’s,
Perhaps the billions of pounds in law suits have something to do with this ?
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) was created by nulabour. With nulabour’s hatred (envy) of the countryside and the people who lived and worked there, and on the whole didn’t vote nulabour, it was known as the Department for the Elimination of Farming and Rural Activities.
“Cuts” in Whitehall speding budgets always result in additional government spending – a 10% cut in Defence always spells a 20% increase in Welfare budgets. Likewise on everything else…
Cuts?Only means more trace waste as the Civil Servants re-arrange the deck chairs on the sinking ship. Cut the subsidies to EAU/CRU, Greenpeace, Fiends of the Earth, slash the civil service on the grounds of gross incompetence and yes, sell off the Met Office. After all, they’ve sold everything else to Dubai, France or the Chinese.
ZT says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:49 pm
“@Dave Row
I really like your idea of a sitcom based in the Met Office. ”
Call it “Yes, Professor”.
Great building for The Met Office. One of the most energy innefficient in the northern hemisphere.
Even big oil couldn’t afford the energy bill.
It takes a hot location to forecast BBQ summers every year.
“At least the UK is trying to pay their bills.
Vastly better than the crew claiming to be running the US Government.”
Very true, Steven, and did you notice that the US deficit for last year($1.7 trillion) was more than the entire British national debt, if Trev’s statistics are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them.
All I can say is, “we’re screwed”!
There is a Cray (?) supercomputer in there I think. Apart from the dodgy programs which add at least 2 units to everything it calculates, it must be worth a few pounds.
It’s been sucking power out of our grid for ages – I bet we don’t recoup our costs!
Closing that place down will save tons of CO2, the “warmistas” will be crying with joy!!
Paradoxically, it was the part privatisation of the Met Office which led them down the blind alley of climate change as a way of generating funds.
Personally, I’d keep weather forecasting in public hands, and privatise the climate “forecasting” lot (which is now the majority of it). When people know that they are really making predictions of warming in order to generate income, perhaps they’ll treat their forecasts with the disdain they deserve.
Cold Englishman – who would want to buy it? Many venture capitalists! Think about it, they can then start selling the cooking of the temperatures to the highest bidder! The UN or the evil oil companies! Instead of passivily accepting what the government doles out, they can seek some of the billions that is being spent on AGW – or sell the setting of the data to those dead set against it.
it is a sweet heart of a deal!
“Try getting FOIA data from the MET when it’s privatized.”
How it would it be different than now?
Sounds like an opportunity for the ‘Goracle’ and Co. to purchase and ensure perpetual misinformation from the Met
DirkH says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:13 pm
Call it “Yes, Professor”.
===========
I was thinking more along the line of, “The Orifice,” “The Last of Summer the Whine,” or “Faulty Towers.”
Bishop Hill had a post about DEFRA a couple of months ago. I had a look at their large budget for Unversities. Looking at the data I downloaded from there this was the situation last financial year (possibly the year before). Perhaps they should cut this first, as cynic I can’t think it goes on anything useful. £22.5m down the drain as we say, certainly £1.1m to UAE can’t be doing any good.
University Of Nottingham £3,272,398.07
University Of Edinburgh £2,748,241.66
Lancaster University £2,392,378.91
University Of Oxford £1,684,098.71
University Of Bristol £1,381,342.80
University Of Wales Aberystwyth £1,170,273.72
University Of East Anglia £1,105,668.94
University Of Surrey £935,000.00
University Of Reading £883,230.47
University Of Cambridge £882,529.75
Cranfield University £661,755.18
University Of Warwick £602,785.10
University Of Southampton £486,278.17
Bangor University £362,862.26
University Of Kent £356,694.81
University Of Liverpool £312,628.75
University Of Newcastle Upon Tyne £310,322.81
University Of Westminster £298,949.57
University Of Exeter £288,123.00
University Of York £264,356.11
Brunel University £255,505.98
University Of St Andrews £204,319.58
University Of Birmingham £197,250.25
University Of Glasgow £188,284.00
University Of Aberdeen £186,441.73
University Of Hertfordshire £151,496.50
The Open University £143,467.73
University Of Bath £121,315.49
University Of Wales Swansea £109,734.80
University College London £103,884.40
University Of Leicester £88,778.75
University Of Sussex £71,364.60
The Queens University Of Belfast £53,611.00
University Of Stirling £40,075.33
University Of Greenwich £31,048.81
Northumbria University £29,908.00
Loughborough University £27,010.00
University of Cape Town £23,817.41
Cardiff University £23,360.00
University Of Lancaster £17,268.54
Tsinghua University £17,250.00
Birkbeck College University Of London £10,704.40
Fred Lightfoot says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:03 pm
The British met office has Europe’s biggest computer.
=================================================
Sorta like giving a F-117 to a two year old, isn’t it.
They don’t have a clue what to do with it…………
It’ll probably be one of these fake privatisations where the government keeps a 51% ‘golden share’ and nothing really changes…
I’ll take it.
But they have to pay me.
If the MET were privatized, I wonder what the demand for Hockey Stick Charts and Apocalypse Maps is. Could they make a living?
Who knew that “Economic Change” would make “Climate Change” a “victim” ?
@Trev
“The UK has a £155 billion deficit to try to fill and a national debt heading towards £1.4 trillion.”
“It’s worse than we thought.” – actual UK liabilities run to almost £5 trillion:
http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/a-lot-worse-uk-mired-in-5-trillion-of-debt-skynews-962ef3b83ad1.html?x=0
I personally think it’s more likely to go higher than £5 trillion because the Kirkcaldy Clown’s creative book-keeping meant that other thing such as PFI (with wonderful innovations such as £11 billion of new hospital buildings actually costing the taxpayer £56 billion) and nuclear decommissioning were also not on the balance sheets.
*********
Sean Peake says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:36 pm
***********
How about “The Life and Times of Bristlecone Pine.”
The Met Office’s Cray vector processor went a few years ago and was replaced by a NEC machine. I used to work in the building that was formerly Cray’s offices in Bracknell. When Old Man Cray died in that car crash in 1996, the company went the way of so many firms run by autocrats and was ruined by the Men in Suits.
I find this business of their IBM taking 8 weeks to boot up a bit unlikely. They must be using a Dell as the console.
Anyway a lot of these “cuts” are part of Dave Cameron’s “Bonfire of the Quangoes” ( a Quango is a sort of outsourced government department Quasi-Autonomous Non Government Organisation ) and is probably a load of hype. The Waterways Agency was so heavily cut by the last govt. that there is probably too little left to make savings.
Good! Perhaps now they’ll behave more like AccuWeather and stop trying to tell us what the weather will be like in 25 years time. The Met Office’s home page is littered with “climate change” yet most people who come to the page just want to know what the weather will be like in 1-3 days time.
Sell them off as soon as possible and fire the head. :o)
Will the Brits get as much for the Met as the Washington Post got for Newsweek?
Amazing, isn’t it, how being broke and nearly bankrupt can focus your attention on the real priorities in life? ….Like flood control…. and energy for heat next winter.
Yet another sign of the ebbing tide of the faith based Man Made Climate Change hypothesis. Please, Oh Please! Let this clarity also infect the US government reps, agencies, and pols!
Thank You, Anthony, for making this market place of information, ideas, and debate possible! Thank You to every Contributor and the Moderators that keep the commentary civil and on topic!
Keep ‘Spreading The News’!
Guess what is near the top right of the Met Office’s home page? A weather pull down menu? No.
Guess what’s the next thing down on the left side?
Guess what is in the news section?
It goes on and on like this. What a crying shame. :o(
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/
Has anyone noticed that if you Google “Met Office” the result shows “Met Office weather and climate change forecasts for the UK and worldwide.”??
Privatising the Met Office maintaining half the current budget?
That’s incredible.
Anthony, make them an offer.
Since the data is already difficult to retrieve, why not just fill the building with concrete?
Meant to say:
“Guess what is near the top left of….”
This is the fourth piece of ‘cuts’ news in the UK in the last week that has made me go “Yes!”. The excess has to go. The whingeing from the greenies in the Guardian article shows they haven’t got a clue. It may be desirable that ‘environmental’ things get done, but how do you chose that over all the other ‘must haves’.
Jim says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:59 pm
“How about “The Life and Times of Bristlecone Pine.” ”
or “Fellowship of the Tree Rings”
cedarhill says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:34 pm
Looks like it would be a great site for either a coal-fired power plant or a nuclear power station.
With the amount of electricity their super computer uses it probably is a nuclear power station.
——————————
“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.” WUWT
Jimbo says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:48 pm
and uses 1.2 megawatts of energy to run – enough to power more than 1,000 homes.”
====================================================
Tell me again, how many people died last winter because of their forecast? and from lack of electricity?
It could be that are trying to show us that the science is settled?
“Plans to privatise the Met Office will short-change the taxpayer by millions of pounds, the union representing over 1,250 scientists and other staff at the UK forecaster has said.”
http://www.prospect.org.uk/news/newsstory.php?news=548
A potential buyer would probably bring in some analysts to see which part of the business is salvageable and how many people are needed for that. Looks like layoffs. Many layoffs.
And:
“How can an agency that is a key contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change be privatised and still be expected to provide objective information?”
ROTFLMAO.
J. Knight says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:17 pm
“At least the UK is trying to pay their bills.
Vastly better than the crew claiming to be running the US Government.”
Very true, Steven, and did you notice that the US deficit for last year($1.7 trillion) was more than the entire British national debt, if Trev’s statistics are accurate, and I have no reason to doubt them.
All I can say is, “we’re screwed”!
For those that have not seen the scary reality of the US debt this is work a look – http://www.usdebtclock.org/ – but don’t leave it running on your laptop any longer than you need to – it’s processor intensive and likely to overheat.
It’s nice to see that the UK priority on Climate Damage is flood mitigation.
Looks like they have twigged on the age old maxim of best- defence against superior forces.
Take the high ground, guys.
Works even better against Natures, gravity seeking forces than it does against human agencies.
Rivers are pretty.
Streams are nice.
Don’t build near water,
that’s ancient advice!
You know, you’d think the people working in that expensive building could do better than a guy with frizzy hair working in a small, cluttered office.
Verity Jones says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Jim says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:59 pm
“How about “The Life and Times of Bristlecone Pine.” ”
or “Fellowship of the Tree Rings”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
or, “The Hockey Stick Science Forgot”
So now the UK’s nature preserves are for sale, just like its politicians. Nothing new here.
The main point of the Met Office is to give reasonably accurate weather forecasts for the next 7-10 days. The weather in the UK is complex so the supercomputer will still be required.
Beyond that – who will pay money for their climate change ‘research’? As a private company – if this ‘research’ is shown to be false, made up, or done in an amateur fashion [eg. statistical methods] they could be held liable and sued. That should concentrate minds on whether to do anything more than short term forecasts!
I would expect a much slimmer Met Office to be the result of this.
Perhaps all climate science should be outsourced to private companies – it should cut down on the propaganda, weed out the amateurs, and concentrate resources on real science.
Hilarious!
Amino Acids in Meteorites says:
August 16, 2010 at 4:29 pm
Verity Jones says:
August 16, 2010 at 2:47 pm
Jim says:
August 16, 2010 at 1:59 pm
“How about “The Life and Times of Bristlecone Pine.” ”
or “Fellowship of the Tree Rings”
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
or, “The Hockey Stick Science Forgot”
———–
“Larch of the Rings” ??
Trev says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:06 pm
“BTW – despite the word ‘cuts’ actual spending will continue to increase.”
That’s the difference between governmental budgeting and real budgeting. In governments any increase in the budget that is less than it originally would have been, even if the total is still increasing, is a cut. So if the budget required to continue status quo into next year is an increase of 15% from this year but you only receive a 10% increase, it’s a cut.
Fred says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:10 pm
“Turn it into a Global Warming Museum . . . showing the whole story of how the scam started, overlap between environmentalism and socialism/marxism, have exhibits showing how temperature data is “adjusted” and of course a rogues gallery of the scammer scientists and politicians who made so much money off the scam.
Special “Al Gore Hall” is a must
It should be a “catastrophic climate change” museum, including the “coming Ice Age” from the 1970s.
Henry chance says:
August 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Sell it on e-bay.
Hallliburton could buy it and hire the people. Send them to work in the oilfields of Iraq where it hits 125 degrees.
Put them to work in Afghanistan. They could talk to the drug gangs and Taliban in southeastern provinces (or would that be forbidden by the UN because it would be cruel and inhumane?) and in the central and northern provinces to help develop the estimated $1 trillion in mineral wealth. Either way the local tribes (and the rest of us) could use them for comic relief as they put their scientific expertise to work and show the corrupt government officials what real sleaze is.
Well, a certain New York base Major League Baseball team might be interested in expanding their market into the UK and the MET office would be perfect for that.
Think, after purchase, all the new owners would need is to add a letter S to the sign out front and to all the stationary. Then, Voila!!! The METS! : )
John
From the Guardian article Sweeping cuts to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs’ budget challenge coalition’s green credentials.
I like this bit from the ‘wringing of hands’ part of the article:
“Bat populations are clinging on to survival in isolated pockets, facing starvation due to the dwindling insect populations”
But they are thriving in the Palace of Westminster doncha know – oops – sorry it’s just the subspecies dingbats!
Doug
I like the building. With all that glass it would make a great indoor botanical garden; a *ahem* greenhouse, so to speak.
A new Chevy Volt dealership?
Soap opera: “As the World Burns”
J. Knight
Obama has a solution for everything – blame it on Bush.
I wonder if Al Gore would be interested in buying it?
>Try getting FOIA data from the MET when it’s privatized.
Or, indeed, when they are publicly funded.
all who are sacked will find a job in the green army planting trees thats where thay all belong
When I wrote to them asking who had authorised the spend, and use of the Met Office’s resources to produce the petition in support of the – I have to say it – charlatans – at the UEA after toing and froing they wrote to me and told me that they were run on a profit and loss basis, presumably inferring that they didn’t need their owners, i.e. the taxpayers, permission to spend money not associated with their raison d’etre.
In short they have a P&L (pigs might fly, but hey if it they think there’s a market for CAGW forecasting then let’s sell it) and are ready to be privatised, with maybe a short rump continuing the weather forecasting that originally made them world famous for good reasons being held in the MoD.
The Met Office also had a Control Data Corporation (CDC) Cyber 205 in the early 1980s. I think the Met Office had problems getting it to communicate with the Cray at ECMWF and there were other problems with the 205.
Their best piece of kit was the IBM 360/195 delivered in the early 1970s. Gene Amdahl worked on the IBM 360 architecture. Denis Healey was at the Defence Ministry then. In those days there seemed to be a bottomless pit of cash for high technology for departments in the Ministry of Defence – the Met Office being one beneficiary. Later they added a 370/158 that did much of the batch work.
Firstly, a friendly reminder t0 our cousins in the Virginian Colonies, (Oh how we were so foolish to let those go, & those in Bordeaux!!!!) “The Met” is short for the Metropolitan Police Force in London, UK! The Met Office is the weather (allegedly?) forecaster!
Secondly, I suspect this could be just a red herring. The story a few months ago was that the BBC was “seriously” considering reviewing its contract with the Met Office for the provision of weather forecasting services , again allegedly! Good story to fool the skeptics for a few moments, a quick bit of “slight of hand” & the contract was renewed! Situation normal, same people, same faces, same story, all green! Don’t be taken in just yet, I am not holding my breath. Having said that, if it was put up for sale (& who in the lord’s name would want to buy such a lame duck?) it really would signal a sea change in thinking on AGW/CC! Who has £235M/year & wants a £30M puter? One can clearly see the lame mentality of the Met Office’ PR machine, the arrogance with which they see the general ignorance of the populace, in that they can be fooled by claims of great accuracy from a super computer & their computer models means that the trillion calculations per second or whatever equals being right! It’s rather akin to penis envy of someone saying “hey, my new Porche 911 can do 0-60 in 3 seconds & a maximum speed of 150mph”, the same nut is still behind the wheel! No, I think this is one for the greens this time & we’re looking at a no-show! BTW, talking of shows, new line up on the BBC magazine show “the One Show” was good, they even had an environmental slot about Sea-Otters in Scotland, & didn’t mention Climate Change or Global Warming once, I think, I was doing the cooking at the time. Interestingly greenie/leftie Grauniad writer Lucie Siegle still turns up but she hasn’t done a AGW/CC bit for quite a while, did my three complaints really work?
Henry chance: August 16, 2010 at 12:32 pm
Hallliburton could buy it and hire the people. Send them to work in the oilfields of Iraq where it hits 125 degrees.
It’s only 124°F right now, but it hit 137°F a couple of times back in July. Most of the year, it’s a nice, comfortable 110 to 120°F.
John Whitman says:
August 16, 2010 at 5:28 pm
Don’t you think the poor Mets have enough problems already? Have a heart guy!
The MET is also The Metropolitan Museum of Art, or The Metropolitan Opera. But that’s going back to New York.
The WWF is the best organization to take over the Met. They already have two ex-employees in senior positions!
Robert Napier, Chairman of the Board of the Meteorological Office, was formerly at the World Wildlife Fund, which financed and procured many of the IPCC’s dodgy non-peer-reviewed “research papers”. He was also Director of The Climate Group until 2007.
Find his recent CV here http://www.englishpartnerships.co.uk/robertnapier.htm
Why should we be seeing this nexus of WWF, Meteorological Office, BBC and government pension funds and The Climate Group?
John Hirst, appointed as Chief Executive of the Meteorological Office in 2008, was ALSO head of the WWF before changing to “meteorology”.
Not all progress is productive. Let the MOD take them back and put them in uniform once again. Would certainly save a little on wages. And for 30 days each year, make them deploy and sleep on-board in the high Arctic, or in the field in –shall we say– Antarctica.
Could be for sale because things are much worse financially. See “UK Mired In £5 Trillion Of Debt” – Britain has sunk into a pit of debt which is five times deeper than previously feared, with the country now owing the equivalent of £200,000 per household. http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/a-lot-worse-uk-mired-in-5-trillion-of-debt-skynews-962ef3b83ad1.html?x=0
Could be for sale because things are much worse financially. “UK Mired In £5 Trillion Of Debt” – Britain has sunk into a pit of debt which is five times deeper than previously feared, with the country now owing the equivalent of £200,000 per household.
hey, didn’t royal dutch shell build that for them?
oh wait, my mistake.
that was the hadley center.
I am not sure I like the idea of a government selling its weather service to a private entity. It sounds a little like an attempt to evade responsibility for mismanagement.
I wonder how people in the UK might respond to news that their national weather forecasting in future would be provided by a subsidiary of Greenpeace International.