By Christopher Booker (excerpt from his Telegraph column)
First it was a national joke. Then its professional failings became a national disaster. Now, the dishonesty of its attempts to fight off a barrage of criticism has become a real national scandal. I am talking yet again of that sad organisation the UK Met Office, as it now defends its bizarre record with claims as embarrassingly absurd as any which can ever have been made by highly-paid government officials.
Let us begin with last week’s astonishing claim that, far from failing to predict the coldest November and December since records began, the Met Office had secretly warned the Cabinet Office in October that Britain was facing an early and extremely cold winter. In what looked like a concerted effort at damage limitation, this was revealed by the BBC’s environmental correspondent, Roger Harrabin, a leading evangelist for man-made climate change. But the Met Office website – as reported by the blog Autonomous Mind – still contains a chart it published in October, predicting that UK temperatures between December and February would be up to 2C warmer than average.
So if the Met Office told the Government in October the opposite of what it told the public, it seems to be admitting that its information was false and misleading. But we have no evidence of what it did tell the Government other than its own latest account. And on the model of the famous Cretan Paradox, how can we now trust that statement?
Then we have the recent claim by the Met Office’s chief scientist, Professor Julia Slingo OBE, in an interview with Nature, that if her organisation’s forecasts have shortcomings, they could be remedied by giving it another £20 million a year for better computers. As she put it, “We keep saying we need four times the computing power.”
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I still say picketing the Met Office with this banner is the way to go:
Read the rest here:
All the computer power in the world isn’t going to help as long as it is making its billions of calculations on the basis of incorrect assumptions…..
“We keep saying we need four times the computing power.” — Julia Slingo
All that would mean is that they could produce the same faulty forecasts four times quicker. Garbage in – garbage out…
The problem is not the computer power, but the programming. Garbage in, garbage out no matter how much computer power one has available. The problem is the models, the lack of knowledge and understanding of the climate system meaning that many factors are simply ignored or prescribed a wrong feedback, the biased input data, the false assumptions and the fact that one cannot predict a chaotic system.
If we were to spend less on modelling and more upon observation and accurate and detailed record keeping, we would have a much better understanding of what was truly going on.
Computers are nothing more than amplifiers. If you are smart and clever, they can make you very smart and clever. If you are stupid and dishonest, they can make you very stupid and dishonest. I will leave it to the reader as to which category I place the MET in.
Ah yes, the Cretan Paradox, attributed to Epimenides of Knossos, who may or may not have actually existed, and who allegedly claimed that “all Cretans are liars.”
Can we believe anything the Met office says anymore? What about when they contradict themselves? Surely one of two 180° conflicting statements must be true?
If they did in fact warn the Cabinet, and the Cabinet demurred from passing that warning on to the unwashed masses, can we really condemn the Cabinet, who can always claim that they (the Cabinet) were well aware that Met officials are pathological liars? Indeed, as are the Cabinet. They are all Cretans, metaphorically. The paradox is labyrinthian.
As Booker rightly noted, the Met Office – by telling us “we lied to you, honest Guv” – has dropped itself in a right little paradox. If indeed they did lie to us, then why should anyone trust them now? And, if they are lying now, then – erm – why should anyone trust them now?
Well better computers does mean they can be wrong quicker, but as the old saying goes
garbage in garbage out , if their basic assumption are loaded in favour of one desired outcome that is what they will get. But remember in climate science if reality fails to agree with the model , its reality which is wrong.
Jim Cripwell says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:43 pm
I still believe the Met. Office is two different organizations. The short term forecasters, who are among the world’s best;
The UK met office forcasts short or long have always been a joke,
http://s446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/?action=view¤t=Spike2.mp4
crosspatch says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:47 pm
I think you are absolutely right in that modelling has taken over the asylum. When I started sailing in the 70’s, all we had was a marine radio weather forecast from which we had to draw our own chart and synopsis, etc. You would look at a chart and say (in your head) this low pressure area is gonna move this way, and that high is gonna go over there, etc, etc and make up your own forecast, based largely on the collection of marine forecasts you had built up over the last few days AND your own obervations. I don’t know how many folk out there have actually had to do this – but the point I want to try and make is that the human brains interpretation of current observations is quite reasonable – i.e. without massive computer models, we can have a good guess at short term weather! But as the October storm of whenever (1987?) proved, in the MetOffice, observations were ignored in preference to ‘projections’! I suppose for older classically trained Met folk, its a bit like a detectives instinct, based on experience and observations, a detective tends to ‘know’ who the suspect is likely to be and so Met forecasters tend to be able to look at a chart and instinctively know what will happen. But instead of carrying on with such ‘gut’ feelings in forecasting, we now have detailed temp predictions, probability of rain at 30%, etc, etc – all of which has been calculated by computer model and, in the real analysis is no better than the weather forecaster of old who simply say ‘take your umbrella’ and a scarf!
Sad really – but even more annoying is that the 1500 or so employees of the Met office are paid for by the public to do something that really a handful were doing 30 yrs ago!
Actually, following my last comment, I’ve had another thought, which Booker missed: if we are to believe that the Met Office lied to us with a false prediction, whilst secretly giving the UK Government the genuine one, then that implies that the UK Government also lied to us by association, when it withheld the information.
So much for the first responsibility of government to protect its citizens. This is more serious than many are appreciating.
I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun here, and I am as flabbergasted by the statements of the MET office as the next guy, but since when are we able to predict months ahead what kind of weather we are going to have? I am serious here, is that possible at all?
As far as my information goes, it is possible for maximally 5-9 days, and even then the reliability drops radically. And if my information is correct, the whole discussion is superfluous, and the MET office is as useful as a the famous groundhog from Punxsutawney, and they should simply put a sock in it. And we (including politicians) should simply not listen to them, whatever they say. Or am I missing some new developments here?
On the other hand, “winter” didn’t start until December 20. Today is January 9 and the UK is now expected to be warmer than normal for the rest of the winter. So it could turn out that winter will actually be above normal. They actually had a very cold autumn.
latitude says:
January 9, 2011 at 2:32 pm
Booker left out a big one…..
Australia had a white Christmas…..in the middle of summer
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Uh, not really. 99% of Australia had no snow whatsoever – it never does. There was a dusting here and there (mainly on the high peaks) around Christmas, but that is just unusual, and far from unprecedented. It happens every 8-10 years, and is quickly gone.
Not having a go at you, Latitude, but we don’t want to give ammunition to the warmies by overplaying our hand!
A faster computer only leads to the same result quicker and they already have that result and it is wrong. Why making it faster is not going to improve the prediction, unless the parameters are changed in the orignal computer. Only where else they could improve that and would need more computer power (maybe) is by including regional changes, but they even have less a clue about these demonstrated with so many contradictions and recent cool Summers/cold Winters not predicted. Don’t forget only December doesn’t make the Winter, there is still January and February to go yet. Though the second coldest December in England since 1890 does have some influence.
A bit off topic but this shows what total crap MSM, in this case the UK Telegraph are printing, total utter rubbish.
Elsewhere in the state, some 40 towns already affected by the “BIBLICAL ” floods are anxiously waiting for the waters to subside.
BIBLICAL, I don`t think so, note that the living areas appear to be built well above this biblical level flood.
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Ausralianfloodlevels2.jpg
http://i446.photobucket.com/albums/qq187/bobclive/Australianfloods3.jpg
River levels have stayed stubbornly high and the latest rains also brought flooding on the Mary River, whose waters in the towns of Gympie and Maryborough were threatening to inundate scores of homes.
More than 200,000 people and more than 10,700 properties have been affected by the floods and the repair bill is estimated to reach $5 billion (£3.2bn).
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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/australiaandthepacific/australia/8248995/Australian-floods-Brisbane-threatened-by-rising-waters.html
johanna says:
January 9, 2011 at 4:00 pm
Uh, not really. 99% of Australia had no snow whatsoever – it never does. There was a dusting here and there (mainly on the high peaks) around Christmas, but that is just unusual, and far from unprecedented. It happens every 8-10 years, and is quickly gone.
Not having a go at you, Latitude, but we don’t want to give ammunition to the warmies by overplaying our hand!
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Johanna, I didn’t think that at all.
About the snow, the news here said 2 – 4 inches and some of the ski resorts opened.
That a light dusting was unusual. I don’t know what you guys call a light dusting.
2-4 inches can shut some of our cities down.
We wouldn’t call 2-4 inches a light dusting.
What makes it worse, is that deep down, you know that they are not proper English Chip Shop beef dripping fries!
No, they are effing euro, fried in sun flower, mayonnaise covered excuses for fries produced by cheese eating surrender euros, each one modelled on a wind turbine blade
About the snow, the news here said 2 – 4 inches and some of the ski resorts opened.
That a light dusting was unusual. I don’t know what you guys call a light dusting.
2-4 inches can shut some of our cities down.
We wouldn’t call 2-4 inches a light dusting.
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Meh, the biggest falls were around 10cm, and that was only on the high peaks (where no-one lives except for a few residents of snow resorts) and it was completely gone within a week. Skiing on 10cm of soft snow is not advisable. Oh, and the resorts never close – they do a brisk trade in mountain holidays in summer.
Just another MSM beatup, I’m afraid.
Met Office Notice to public at large:
If it cooling and it we said it would warm, then we secretly meant it would be cooling. If it is warming and we said it would be cooling, then we secretly meant it would be warming. If it is snowing and we said it would not, then we secretly meant that it would snow, but that snow is certainly a warmer kind of snow than it would be without AGW, and it freezes a bit differently than snow of the old type when the earth was colder. If all of this seems a bit confused and muddled, it is because the warming or new kind of warmer snow, is affecting our computers and if you give us a few million more in funding a year to buy warming-proof or warmer-snow-proof computers, we’ll unmuddle it for you.
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Full disclosure: I’m a warmist (at least 75% so) but I can’t resist a bit of fun…
Johanna
I partly agree with you.
We definitely had no snow in Sydney
Or if we did, then I just slept through and it was gone.
But we have had a little rain.
Or perhaps a tad more than a little.
I thought AGW theory is that rain, rain will go away in Australia
and come back, never more.
Dang it – another mistake.
Oh well – I need a more expensive computer, that’s all.
@crosspatch says:
January 9, 2011 at 3:58 pm
“On the other hand, “winter” didn’t start until December 20. Today is January 9 and the UK is now expected to be warmer than normal for the rest of the winter. So it could turn out that winter will actually be above normal. They actually had a very cold autumn.”
Well just watch it go below normals for at least the second half of Feb and most of March.
For the pedantic.
The rainfall in Sydney has been quite trendless fro 1859 to the present.
R squared = 0.0001, whatever that means.
(I think it means that there is NO trend
Matt Briggs where are you when we need you?)
““If you look at the whole picture across north west Europe, there’s a higher chance of a cold winter than a warm one.”” – Met Office Spokesman, 28th October 2010.
source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8090325/Met-Office-data-suggests-mild-winter-but-dont-forget-last-year.html
Kev-in-UK says:
January 9, 2011 at 3:52 pm
Unlike my comment which is missing a close blockquote after 30 years ago!
DaveE.