By John O’ Sullivan
The BBC serves Freedom of Information request (FOIA) on UK Government over weather forecast failures secrecy in worst winter for 100 years.
In an almighty battle to salvage credibility three British government institutions are embroiled in a new global warming scandal with the BBC mounting a legal challenge to force ministers to admit the truth. Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart?
Last week the weather service caused a sensation by making the startling claim that it was gagged by government ministers from issuing a cold winter forecast. Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.
With the BBC appearing to take the side of the Met Office by seeking to force the government to give honest answers, untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.
Rift between BBC, Met Office and UK Government Grows
Speculation in newspapers and the blogosphere has festered for the past week as Chris Huhne, minister in charge of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) stubbornly remain silent. I contacted the BBC’s Environment Analyst Roger Harrabin, one of the world’s senior journalists on such matters to ascertain if the Beeb had a better handle on the story.
Harrabin advised me, “I phoned the Met Office about this statement and the Met Office press office told me they’d given information to the Cabinet Office that we were facing an early cold winter.”
Mention of the ‘secret’ cold winter forecast appears in the Quarmby Report (Section 2.4) which states, “The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.”
Giving a strong hint that a major rift appears to have opened up between Met Office chief executive, John Hirst and Climate Minister, Huhne, Harrabin further revealed, “The Beeb now has an FoI [freedom of information request] to Cabinet Office requesting verbatim info from [the] Met Office.”
In what may well be an orchestrated manoeuvre between the Met Office and Mark Thompson, Director-General of the BBC the freedom of information demand will heap huge embarrassment on David Cameron’s gaffe-prone coalition government.
Ministers Facing Accusations of Malfeasance of Public Office
If the Beeb succeeds in forcing Cameron’s government to come clean it looks probable hat government ministers intentionally conspired to withhold vital severe weather forecast information placing both lives and jobs at risk. So far losses to the UK economy linked to this year’s severe winter weather are estimated to be above £10 billion.
MP’s Call for Official Parliamentary Probe
Dr. Benny Peiser of Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF ) reports (January 10, 2011) that Liverpool MP Louise Ellman, chairman of the Transport Select committee, is angling to be appointed to head such an official parliamentary probe.
“The current winter fiasco is no longer a joke as the economic damage to the British economy as a result of the country’s ill-preparedness is running at £1bn a day and could reach more than £15 billion,” said Dr Peiser, the GWPF’s Director.
But if the coalition government gives in to demands for a full inquiry, which is as likely as turkeys voting for Christmas, then no doubt heads will roll in high places.
Wait one minute… Am I to believe that any major government would actually do anything different preparing for winter, or any season, based on weather forecast?
Oh, oh, the Met said it is going to be a warm winter! Lets completely forget the fact that it is still going to be WINTER! If anyone prepared differently based on the Met Report (real or not) than they were idiots in the first place.
Now, if the Met did actually predict record breaking cold snap that would bring the country to its knees, then the real story is that the Met might actually have a predictive model that is semi-functional, at least on a 6 month out window, which would be a pretty big deal.
I find the prospect of the BBC, the MET office and the government -CAGWers all – fighting amongst themselves, quite delicious.
May this one run and run.
This is quite intriguing. If the AGW obsessed Met Office did indeed forecast a very cold winter, that would be surprisingly out of character. Harrabin is a complete warmist as well, so I would expect him to be supportive of the Met Office. So perhaps the Met Office did forecast that the winter would be a tiny bit cooler than BBQ standard, after all.
If, as it is claimed, the Government gagged the Met Office, that was a particularly stupid thing to do, so maybe the BBC is motivated to help out their mates at the Met Office and maybe they feel sore that, as a customer, they did not receive the true forecast. The cabinet minister ultimately in charge of the MO would be Liam Fox as defence minister, but the windmill fanatic Huhne is a much more likely culprit. It would be good for the country if this scandal cost Huhne his job.
However, we all know that the establishment is expert at wielding a whitewash brush, so I won’t hold my breath.
Is this mere conjecture or something Harrabin is reputed to have said? There is no section 2.4 in the final Quarmby report and the words “The Met Office gave” do not appear in the entire document. Correspondence with the Met Office is documented under the Evidence section of the WEB site. Has anyone found any such statement anywhere relating to the Quarmby Report?
Posturing to try to protect the Met. It’s trying to prove a negative. Since the Met did not provide any such forecast, no evidence of them having done so will be forthcoming as a result of the FOI request. The conspiracy theorists will then claim the government is hiding the smoking gun documents. That the debacle is all the government’s fault and their just trying to cover it up. Voila! The Met comes out looking like the good guy regardless of the fact that they never provided the government with any such dire forecast.
Just more spin, span, spun.
Well, it’s clear that the Met and the BBC are in cahoots on this, otherwise Harrabin wouldn’t have been allowed to run the story in the first place. It’s also clear that the purpose is to exonerate the Met, at least in part, and shift its share of the blame for its repeated winter failures onto the Government. The Conservatives have never liked the BBC and, I think, would be quite willing to screw them over if the chance is there – so there could be a nice little dust-up, however green the coalition claims to be. Huhne’s utter silence is indicative of some sort of government cock-up or, more likely, indecision on how to play this sideswipe (hardly surprising with this egregious narcissistic twit) but I’d be willing to bet that if there really was a government cover-up, some low-grade civil servant will face the chop after a token enquiry for ‘failing to process’ a memo or some such bull. It’ll all disappear because they’ve all, Beeb, Met, Gov, got too much invested in the scam.
Steeptown says:
January 11, 2011 at 9:29 am
“Where did the Met Office gets its forecast for a cold start to winter?”
They looked outside their window.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but I’m suspicious of what the game plan is behind the FOI request.
I’d feel more comfortable if a true skeptic filed the FOI request, in his own words.
AJB
Refer to EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AND RECOMMENDATIONS, item 6] under WEATHER.
I can’t find anything to back up the claim that the Met Office was told by the Government not to release the cold winter forecast. The Met say that public research caused them to discontinue their [rubbish] seasonal forecasts. So, they will probably say that they knew it was cold and warned the Government, but also they were observing the wishes of the public as identified in the market research.
I hope this analysis is wrong and that the Government did gag them. That would be much more interesting.
It’s a little over the top to talk of the worst winter in 100 years, as this article does. Winter’s not half-way through yet, and although it was the coldest December in Britain in a century, it’s perfectly possible that January and February will be no worse than average. That’s more or less what Joe Bastardi predicts, whereas Piers Corbyn reckons it will be one of the three or four coldest winters in a hundred years. We’ll know in March, of course, but I think my tuppence is going on Bastardi.
Interesting, and it could be true.
The main suspects are the ultra-Green prime minister Cameron, who began his leadership by petting huskies in Antarctica and pronouncing on AGW being the government’s biggest challenge. However, he has gone rather quiet on this subject lately, presumably recognising that one cold winter may burn his fingers.
Then there is Chris Huhne, the eco-loon, minister of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).** He was wanting to sell a great package of new offshore windelecs this winter, and the last thing he needed was a prediction of freezing weather.
Did Huhne apply pressure to the Met Office, to suppress that cold forecast, so he could get his bill through parliament? If he did, then he should go immediately. And if he did, then the government is liable to £billions in claims from companies and councils, who were caught out by the falsely warm forecast.
** About time they dropped that stupid title, for what used to be the Department of Energy.
.
Jim Cripwell says:
January 11, 2011 at 10:08 am
Harrabin, Haribin, or dustbin you still cannot trust this guy to write or print the truth. He is as slimy as a snake. It is even possible that he has created this story completely out of thin air in an attempt to move the problem out of public view. How that? I hear you say. Look, he prints the story, no facts in it at all, everyone runs around trying to find out if it is true. He, the BBC , the MetOff and the Gov say nothing. We all wait the FOI to bring results. 6 months later, nothing. We think, oh all FOI in the UK take forever and after 6 mths the offence is out of time and voilà, the cock up is forgotten and the MetOff et al can get on with their spin on AGW supported by the BBC and Harribin/Harribin/Dustbin whomever. See, simples.
“Chris H says:
January 11, 2011 at 9:17 am
Huhne is the archetypal water melon and one of the least impressive Liberal members of the government. Quite why he was given the role as minister to DECC is unclear unless he was being set up for a fall. It’s quite likely the Met Office’s warnings didn’t get past his Department which is stuffed with dyed in the wool AGW believers. If so, he has a lot of explaining to do.”
The claim is that UK MET Office passed their secret severe winter weather warning to the Cabinet Office. This is The Prime Minister’s office. Huhne would only get involved if the matter was passed directly (and only) To him. He would only be able to suppress the warning with the connivance of The Cabinet Office. I would have thought such an action unlikely unless The Prime Minister (Cameron) was also involve and, therefore, also part of a conspiracy to suppress if indeed there is such a thing rather than bungling. In any event only time will show what actually happened and who did what, if the information can be levered out into the public domain. That remains to be seen. This is The UK folks.
Ralph says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:13 am
Ralph, I think you will find Cameron did his petting in Svalbard (Spitzbergen).
Go here for your commemorative photo:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Photographic-Print-Cameron-Driving-Dog-sled/dp/B001NHBNGE
I’m wondering if there’s more to this than meets the eye. John OSullivan is going to need to shine some light on this……..
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/met-office-smokescreen-confusion-or-conspiracy/
………..who said the met office was gagged? Was it Haarabin?
Another interesting aspect is that Harrabin of the Beeb started all this stuff, then appears to have added to it, then there is the alleged Beeb FOI. The only thing missing is that the BBC appears to be totally silent on the entire matter.
If the Beeb and the Met go at it in public it will be all good for sensible Britons who smelled something slightly off about climate alarmism and will consequently be outraged by all of the tax money wasted on placating the eco-lobby. If one or both organizations unwittingly opens Pandora’s Box the scandal will be bigger than Climategate.
matt v. says: January 11, 2011 at 10:53 am
Sorry to be pedantic but what page in which document? I am referring to the final report, the PDF file at:
http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/final-report/wrr-final-report-2010-10-22.PDF.
On page 31 under the heading “Weather and climate change” I find the following:
To what are you referring?
The Government, the beeb and the Met Office all have strong warmist agendas and have unashamedly flaunted them for years.
Maybe at long last the Green Revolution is starting to devour it’s own offspring.
Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.
This could be fun.
Apart from anybody else supressing a weather forecast (if it happened) is insane. It’s like keeping it a secret that there will be a wednesday next week. It is bound to come out!
I wonder if this is one of the first indications of what will happen now that the BBC is in opposition.
Of course, saying the government is liable is the same as saying the taxpayers (or voters) are liable. Accountability ultimately lies with those that continue to vote these people into office. Until this behavior changes, the public will continue to get hit with the bill.
Mark
AJB
See http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2010/12/21/the-quarmby-audit.html
Dear Anthony/Mr Moderator
The following link to Paul Hudson’s web site shows a great graphic of power generation from wind during the severe cold weather.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulhudson/
I did try to post in tips?
Wait. First “BBC analyst” Harrabin writes a piece, and then the BBC issues a FOI request to find out whether he’s been right? That’s a funny way of doing investigative journalism.