We all know they are caught up in the warming meme, but the Met Office in the UK is now trying to spin the idea that they had truly forecasted a cold and snowy winter, but they just didn’t tell anyone. The rationale? We skeptics here (and elsewhere) are a bunch of meanies for making fun of the BBQ summer that never happened, so we’ll keep it to ourselves.
The spin you are about to witness is Maytag quality spin. It is shameless, stupid, and beyond anything I’ve ever seen. Both James Delingpole and Autonomous Mind take the Met Office out for a spin cycle that ends up in a full stop. The propaganda is shameless, the smell odious, and the public relations disaster is even worse than before. They apparently just don’t know when to stop talking.
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From Autonomous Mind:
This is a potentially huge story with a nasty smell of conspiracy about it. There appears to be a concerted effort to whitewash serious failings at the Met Office, with the assistance of a senior climate change propagandist at the BBC who is fully bought in to the Met Office’s warmist agenda.
The Telegraph reports today that: ‘The Met Office knew that Britain was facing an early and exceptionally cold winter but failed to warn the public, hampering preparations for some of the coldest weather on record.’ The article goes on to say:
In October the forecaster privately warned the Government – with whom it has a contract – that Britain was likely to face an extremely cold winter.
It kept the prediction secret, however, after facing severe criticism over the accuracy of its long-term forecasts.
October? That is the same month that this temperature probability map was published – for public consumption:
There is absolutely no logical or rational basis for the Met Office publishing the probability map above, yet ‘secretly’ telling the government a completely different story. The Met Office not only published the map, it had meterologists speaking publicly about the map and setting an expectation of a very high probability of warmer than average winter, as I will explain…
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The stench of deceit surrounding the Met Office, it’s disgraceful self serving effort to mislead the public and apparent attempt by a publicly funded BBC journalist to distort the facts is overpowering. There now needs to be an independent inquiry into this whole matter. A Freedom of Information request is being submitted to ask for this secret October forecast.
Read the whole post here at: Autonomous Mind
From James Delingpole at the Telegraph:
So apparently the Met Office isn’t useless after all. Just cruelly misunderstood.
It seems that the reason it didn’t provide an accurate forecast of this winter was not because it didn’t know bad weather was coming. It was because we were all so horrid last time it made a boo boo over the infamous “barbecue summer” that it decided it wouldn’t make its forecasts public any more.
Which means the real victim of this sorry story is not us (for having been misled about the extremity of cold we could expect this winter) but the poor old, much-put-upon, much-maligned, but basically splendid and well worth the £170 million it costs us every year Met Office.
Hurrah, Hurrah and Thrice Hurrah for those magnificent men (and women: let’s not forget the great Julia Slingo) at the Met Office!
Hmm. Is anyone else as unpersuaded as I am by this extravagantly implausible piece of spin? There’s a big clue in the identity of the fellow from whom it originated: Roger Harrabin. Yes, Roger Harrabin as in the BBC’s High Priest of Gaian Worship and Climate Alarmism.
Read the whole post by James Delingpole at the Telegraph.
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Surely the good people of the UK have to be sick of this by now?
If you are, here’s my advice: picket the Met Office.
Borrow the tactics shown by the greens at Ratcliffe and Kingsnorth and show the burea-weasels what it’s like to feel the brunt of public scorn. A few protestors with a banner outside the Met Office (shown below) would be all it takes to make the news.
Demand accountability, not GIGO spin.
If it is true that the Met. Office advised the government that it was going to be a very bad winter and the government did not pass on this vital information to the general public, then the government has to be held to account. Did the information get passed on to the Department of the Environment, The Highways Agency, The Department of Health, The Chief Medical Officer, The BBC, and the Press Association? If not why not. We need some explanations from government officials for a very serious failing in their duty if they just ignored the information they were given, a failing that has led to such widespread havoc across the whole of the country.
Piers Corbyn is forceasting ‘one of the three coldest January’s in the last 100 years’. It’s already clear he is wrong, that it isn’t going to pan out like that.
Why American fall for BS like that beats me – are all your clocks stuck? All his ‘deluges’ here and ‘coldest ever’ there, BS the lot of it.
On the other hand The Met office do a fantastic job, their forecast are excellent. Perhaps it is possible that they can be better judged from a distance of several thousand miles than by those who live in Britain. Maybe, or maybe it’s knee jerk right wing political attitudes that detests anything that’s even loosely connected to the state and will instead rather part with it’s money for any old codswallop if the anti AGW credentials of the salesman are right. Yeah, that’s it.
I’ve sent Freedom of Information requests to both the Met Office and the UK government’s Cabinet Office asking for this “secret warning” from the Met Office.
I’m also a UK Taxpayer. So Louise, tell us, whatever you think about the views on here, what do you think of the “solutions”? Do you support carbon trading for example?
Do you think the Met office is doing its job when its advice has led to the transport chaos in the extreme cold we’ve seen recently?
Peter H says:
January 5, 2011 at 9:17 am
Ahh, Peter, do you think maybe you’re being just a tad too subtle here?
Stuart Huggett says:
January 4, 2011 at 6:41 pm
We have to remember in this astonishing story that the head of the Met Office – one Napier – has just been awarded the CBE for services to the nation. I understand that he is an ardent AGW activist and his role in this event must have been interesting!
Napier is a former CEO of WWF UK. Obviously must have a CV which emphasised his scientific abilities to be worthy of UKMet. (sarc/off)
Louise says:
January 5, 2011 at 6:07 am
I’m a British tax-payer and I think it is odious that this USA based site should feel that it has a right to advise us to picket the Met Office.
Also – I too have written to my MP (and e-mailed before his election to ensure I knew his views) and the day that he starts to spout any of the skeptic nonsense I see trotted out here (e.g. Easterbrouke’s debacle) is the day he loses my vote.
I am also a UK taxpayer. I believe the sooner the Met Office is shut down the better! If they won’t shut it down it should be sold-off to private industry where they would HAVE to get their forecasts more right than at present to keep their jobs.
Presumably you are a supporter of Huhne (the so-called Energy Minister). Do you support his efforts to drive up inflation by all this “carbon credit” nonsense? Do you support his efforts to redirect what remaining industry we have in this country overseas e.g. to India and China, by the “carbon credit” nonsense?
Have you made any attempt whatsoever to research the Climate Change arguement for yourself or do you just believe the BBC?
David Jones says:
January 5, 2011 at 11:40 am
While Louise can do nothing about the UK government or the Met, I see no harm in expressing her disgust with it. While you may have never expressed such disgust with a foreign government, I have seen many comments from non-Americans and non-Australians criticizing those governments. Clearly they are “railing at windmills” in doing so, but I do not get outraged by their comments, informed or not.
Wonderful. Pantomime season in the UK?
Peter H says:
January 5, 2011 at 9:17 am
“or maybe it’s knee jerk right wing political attitudes that detests anything that’s even loosely connected to the state and will instead rather part with it’s money for any old codswallop if the anti AGW credentials of the salesman are right.”
Wrong on all sorts of levels, but particularly so with regard to the free will parting with their right wing money , as opposed to the confiscation through taxes of monies for economically illiterate left wing and green projects in the name of saving the planet codswallop.
Seems clear to me that as the govt funds the MET, the MET decided the most politic thing to do when they realised how cold it was going to get in the runup to Cancun was to tell the Govt and leave it to them to inform the public… or not…
savethesharks says:
January 4, 2011 at 7:36 pm
Palin Smith says:
January 4, 2011 at 6:15 pm
“Is there none but Daniel Hannan who will stand and fight for what’s right?!”
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I see the fire in his eyes and I know there are many on here who share the same fire (but not necessarily the eloquence).
Truly, the world needs more actual REAL leaders…. like this guy.
Yes. He says (at 0:50) “The truth, prime minister, is that you have run out of our money. The country, as a whole, is now in negative equity. Every British child is born owing around twenty thousand pounds. Servicing the interest on that debt is going to cost more than educating the child.”
(at 1:45) “We are now running a deficit that touches 10% of GDP, an almost unbelievable figure. More than Pakistan, more than Hungary(!), countries where the IMF has already been called in.”
As a Hungarian, I can tell you, you’re in deep trouble indeed. In a situation like this the first thing to do is to regain some backbone. As soon as it’s done, the actual REAL leader would pop up from nowhere fast enough. And then, your main concern would be more like how to control the guy than anything else. It’s never easy.
People of Britain would be much better served by the 85% accurate, extremely long range predictions of Piers Corbin at Weather Action armed with only his laptop computer than with the inept Met Office with all its bloated budgets and supercomputers that cannot forecast their way out of a paper bag.
One particularly aggrieved person right now must be Laurence MacKenzie, CEO of Northern Ireland Water. He is being required to stand down as his handling of the burst pipe water shortage throughout Northern Ireland has been seen to be less than outstanding. One comedy comment from the Stourmont Assembly was “Heads will roll, and it isn’t going to be a politician”, according to the BBC; odd as NI Water is a government organization, unlike the rest of the UK which is in private hands.
It begs the questions;
“Was he informed of the Met Office’s ‘secret’ prediction and if not why not?”
“If he was informed then why did he not take sufficient steps to ensure the obvious results of the deep freeze were mitigated?”
“If he was informed did the government insist he carry on as normal to prevent any ‘leakage’ of the secret?”
Possibly now would be a good time to ask him; he is due to leave office imminently and surely in the right frame of mind to set the record straight.
Louise says:
January 5, 2011 at 6:07 am
“I’m a British tax-payer and I think it is odious that this USA based site should feel that it has a right to advise us to picket the Met Office.”
Louise, don’t forget that Global Warming is a global problem! (or global non-problem, depending on your point of view.)
Jim @ur momisugly 3:27 pm:
The Myth Office?
The BBC News weather forecast did not mention snow for our area of the Cotswolds on Monday night, but we sure had snow! Tuesday morning our local side roads were lethal and there was a traffic accident nearby. Thanks for the warning Met Office…I don’t think.
Long range forecasting by the Met Office only ever gave a forecast based on “Lower than Average”, “Average” or “Above average” for Temperature, Precipitation, Sunshine hours.
They actually managed to get a worst result than you would get just having a random guess. With a random guess you would expect about 33% correct, the Met office were actually worse ! Amazing!
So my Theory is that the Piers Corbyn method is just guess exactly opposite to the Met Office forecast and you will be on a winner.
I tried it for a blissful few years, and ended up about 70% correct, strange the Met Office never answered any e-mail from me on the subject.
kzb wrote in a comment at:
January 5, 2011 at 4:40 am
“Er….the map is quite accurate -October 2010 WAS exceptionally warm in the UK. However I agree with the main sentiment on here, the Met Office should stick to predicting the weather, not spending half the budget on Climate Change sorry Climate Disruption.”
October was not warm in England – the Central England Mean Temperature for October 2010 was 10.3 celsius – 0.3 below the 1961-90 mean!
I think The Met should have never come up with this. Because as a government agency, if they did sit on such a forecast, and instead forecast a mild winter, they should be held legally accountable for all the death and damage of citizens who were told one thing would happen but got hit hard by a different thing.
To tell people winter would be mild when you knew it would be cold seems to be a criminal act.
If this story is true then there has to be criminal charges following.
This just in:
Dateline, Mexico City, January 10, 2110
Climate scientists have confirmed that the glaciers now covering Canada and moving into the northern United States are consistent with global warming. “You can’t confuse weather with climate” said one climatologist who asked not to be identified for fear of being lynched. “The accumulation of so much ice on land is limited to the northern hemisphere, and is just an example of the temperature extremes that result from global warming” cautioned another climate scientist, also requesting anonymity. One unnamed progressive academic, channeling the spirit of James Hansen, reassured this reporter that Hansen’s predictions of catastrophic global warming were accurate, it’s just that his timing was off by a number of millennia.
Further demonstrating the accuracy of the consensus predictions of impending doom due to anthropogenic climate change, Michael Mann, IV just published a paleo reconstruction of global temperatures in Nature. This meticulously peer reviewed paper shows conclusively that the adjusted global average temperature in the years from 1970 to 2010 was actually much colder than previously thought, thus making 2110 the warmest year in recorded history. His paper includes a graph showing that the “2nd Millennial Warm Period,” from 1970 to 1998, was grossly exaggerated. “Anecdotal evidence of liquid lakes in Canada, the U.S and Great Britain during this period should not be used to ignore the science” warned Mann.
In other news, the British Met Office, having relocated to Sao Paulo, Brazil due to the 10 meters of ice now covering Great Britain, forecasts a warm winter ahead.
“Green Sand says:
January 5, 2011 at 1:42 am
If you have a look, please see if you can reconcile the monthly numbers with the “annual data” on the same page, I can’t! Maybe time will tell?”
I cannot see it either. So that leaves two options. Add all 11 numbers and divide by 11. Or note that the 0.499 was for 10 months, so multiply 0.499 by 10 and add 0.431 and divide by 11. This gives 0.493. Now just for the fun of it, UAH went down by about 0.09 from November to December. and should Hadcrut3 do the same, its December value would be 0.34 and the yearly anomaly would be 0.480 and it would end up third warmest on the Hadcrut3 data set.
In the meantime, we wait, and wait.
TIME AND TIDE WAIT FOR NO MAN, BUT WE ALL WAIT FOR HADCRUT.
In the US I would imagine something like this would be a civil matter. It seems to me it would be difficult to craft a law to make such claims illegal (technically, I don’t think any government agent is actually required to tell the truth unless under oath.) A nice hefty lawsuit, however, since such an act could easily be considered negligent given the weight of their words…
Mark
UK John says:
January 5, 2011 at 3:51 pm
“So my Theory is that the Piers Corbyn method is just guess exactly opposite to the Met Office forecast and you will be on a winner.
I tried it for a blissful few years, and ended up about 70% correct, strange the Met Office never answered any e-mail from me on the subject.”
Likewise, I discovered that 8/9 global forecasts were high … which is about as likely as tossing a coin 9 times and getting heads each time which I think is 1 in 512. But what’s worse is that no one cares that the Met Office are completely useless. Try to tell a politicians and they totally ignore you. Try to get the Met Office to admit their forecasts are useless … and they hide the forecasts. The Met Office, which was once something to be proud of are just a joke these days.
Anthony writes: “They apparently just don’t know when to stop talking.”
The CAGW boffins don’t know “The First Rule of Holes” which is stated as:
1. When you find you’ve dug yourself into a hole: stop digging.