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.
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, you think it is odious not because some of our across-the-pond cousins are suggesting what we should do or think, but because you disagree with their position. Did you think it was odious when Jim Hanson flew over to gave his support to the Kingsnorth coal power station protesters? Do you think we (in the UK) should stop giving support to Mugabe’s opponents in Zimbabwe ? And I bet you supported the students in Tienanmen Square. The best thing about the internet is that permits easy communication and exchange of ideas and information between individuals across national boundaries, circumventing our predominantly dodgy national governments. That’s what I like to think anyway. Think global and all that.
Apologies folks if this has already been covered more accurately above – didn’t have time to trawl through all your posts.
Unfortunately came in on the ‘tail end’ of an item on BBC News 24 relating to December 2010 being the coldest for 100 years, and some guy in their Oxford studio, was doing a not-very-good job of waffling on about: ‘Actually the world is getting warmer due to climate change and we can prove it IF ONLY THE MET OFFICE HAD MORE POWERFUL COMPUTERS…’ (I kid you not..)
The news anchorman was clearly unimpressed..!
Wouldn’t those firms that pay the Met Office for early weather predictions have a strong case for breach of contract if they weren’t told about the forthcoming cold spell?
It would be interesting to see the Met in court trying to have it both ways.
As far as I’m aware, Piers (Richard) Corbyn was the only person who predicted in advance the winter weather.
Post hoc predictions we can all do with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight
The Met Office’s slavish adherance to AGW theory prevents it from having a rational and objective position on a range of issues and almost certainly leads to the regular production of ‘regional probability map’ forecasts which always anticipate above average temperatures.
It is perfectly clear that the Met Office ran those maps and that they predicted a very low probability of a below average temperature winter all the way up to November. In other words, the long range seasonal forecast of the Met Office was the same as always (WARM!) .
BUT….they have not claimed to have given the government advance warning of the severe weeks long freeze that hit the UK. What the Met Office claims is simply –
‘In late October we informed the Cabinet office that there were early indications of a cold start to winter’
Winter hit the UK hard in November, so what is being claimed here is that perhaps as little as a week in advance the Met Office mentioned to a minister or ministers (in what context we do not know) that the onset of winter (ie a week or two ahead) would likely be cold.
This doesn’t make the claim any less irritating or stupid but does indicate that it does not provide the smoking gun so many seem to think.
The Met Office needs reform and it needs to be forced out of the political/propaganda business and back to focussing on what we pay it to do. This is not the ‘scandal’ that will provoke such a change though I’m afraid.