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.
The eternally and institutionally left/liberal BBC is naturally hoping that the FOI will provide a sufficiently robust stick with which to beat the Conservatives . . . in my opinion the MET Office will be the big loser here because their sorties into the world of political spin are lightweight.
Left, center or right the politicians have ruined meteorology specifically and science in general with their venal self serving ways. The BBC has just been the willing messenger.
The Government is proposing that the BBC, with its astonishingly bloated budget, should make some contribution to the public sector economy drive. Expected cuts in the range of 10-11% are what are required.
The revenue from the Government for paying the over-75s’ licence fee is £556 million.
The BBC say it could lead to a real terms decrease in its programming budget of up to 26 per cent – the equivalent of the entire budget of BBC2. They say the ‘only solution’ would be a £20 licence fee increase as it is quite impossible for them to find any savings.
It seems bureaucracy is sacrosanct. The 92 BBC suits on more than £150,000 a year are deemed untouchable. It is also absurd to say that when it comes to programme-making savings could only come from making fewer programmes or poorer quality programmes. The inefficiency and overmanning in the BBC’s programme-making is beyond belief. Yet the ratings buster continues to be Dad’s Army repeats.
The BBC is, at least, consistent in its policy on spending cuts for itself and the rest of the public sector. On its website it has an interactive section entitled Spending Review: What would you cut? It allows you to move a slide along for different Government Departments to reach £50 billion of savings.
But alongside, it gives you an ‘equivalent to’ section. The one on welfare only offers cuts in the basic state pension. According to the BBC, a one per cent cut in the health budget means leaving the hospitals empty for 10 days a year. Defence cut means ‘fewer service personnel’ – even though there are more civil servants in the MOD than soldiers in the armed forces.
The examples ‘are for illustration only.’ But how revealing that none of the examples ‘for illustration only’ involve cuts in the civil service, or the £40 billion spent on Quangos, or even our £14.5 billion budget contribution to the EU.
Read more: http://biasedbbc.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1079&page=1#ixzz1Al9ufljj
This gives you an idea of what a mud slinging match this could turn out to be. Stock up on the popcorn because it could turn ugly.
DaveF says:
January 11, 2011 at 11:01 am
This afternoon I saw a large flock of geese flying south. Since I live near the Solway Firth, not many miles from the Scottish border (as a goose flies), I thought it was interesting.
Good thing I got three bags of coal delivered not too long ago. And I’ve got a 4WD. 😉
Chris Huhne, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, is an AGW enthusiast. Back in September he was crowing over a new multi-billion windfarm off the coast of Kent – the same windfarm that produced next to zero power in December. Mr Huhne is best known for his equivocation over the Treaty of Lisbon – he said publicly that it was quite different from the EU Constitution; in fact, although its *format* was quite different, its *content* was identical. It’s noticeable that in his boasting about the new wind farm, he said nothing about the amount of power it would feed into the grid – but did go on about how many jobs it would (somehow) create. Such are the people who rule us.
Once more, the science termed ‘climate’ (inter alia) is being utilised by the political world as a 28 pound hammer (with the 4 foot handle) in an attempt to fracture other political factions, with the object of driving a wedge.
However, in this case, the UK Met Office and the BBC have their own agenda (which may be similar), so are these two bodies attempting to clarify the situation, or muddy the waters?
For once in their (recent) dishonourable lives, it would be real news to read that the government of the day has “come clean”, and told the truth to its electorate.
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.
Well we all know just how valuable those “enquiries” are anyway, don’t we.
But I don’t understand how the Met Office can get all high and mighty about this; they are charged with the responsibility of forecasting the weather and for broadcasting these forecasts on the BBC (the UK’s publicly-funded television service). The BBC weathermen and women who we see on our screens are all in the employ of the Met Office – they don’t just broadcast, they are the meteorologists involved in the actual forecasting behind the scenes. And now they are saying that they stood before the cameras and gave misleading and false forecasts because their collective arm was being twisted by some Government minister?
“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.””
As the Quarmby Report is a public document (placed in the HoC Library and made available to ALL interested government agencies well before the onset of winter), and as the government (under the direction of the Transport Secretary, Phillip Hammond) based its preparedness for the coming winter squarely on this report, accepting ALL its recommendations – I think its a bit rich for the notoriously left-wing biased BBC to be trying to direct criticism towards the government.
And as for Harribin – the BBC’s chief AGW propagandist – to say “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.” just makes it so much clearer whose side he’s on. He’ll back the Met Office against the hated Conservative-led coalition all the way. No hint here, you notice, as to why the Met Office issued a ‘severe’ warning for the Quarmby report and a ‘mild’ forecast on it’s website and press releases.
Don’t let them muddy the waters – the Met Office is the guilty party here and we, the British taxpayers, demand an enquiry into why this publicly-funded organisation is suborning its scientific principles in its obsession with keeping the AGW scare running.
http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/interim-report/press-release.php
http://www.dft.gov.uk/press/speechesstatements/statements/hammond20100726a
AJB
The quote relating to the Met Office predictions was not in the final Quarmby report (nor the misleadingly named “Interim Report” – in fact, the Interim and Final Report together constitute the Quarmby Report). Rather it is found in a report commissioned by the Transport Secretary as an urgent inquiry into how the country’s transport system had fared in the face of the severe weather conditions at the end of November – beginning of December.
From section 1:
“On 1st December, I was asked by the Transport Secretary to carry out an urgent audit of how well the highway authorities and transport operators in England have been coping with the unexpectedly early and severe spell of winter weather, having regard also to the Review into winter resilience carried out by the Panel I led earlier this year and our Recommendations.”
The quote appears in both the “Executive Summary and Recommendations” segment (in section 6, as noted by another commentator), as well as in the body of the report, in section 2.4, under the heading of “The weather”.
The report can be accessed at: http://transportwinterresilience.independent.gov.uk/docs/audit/winter_resilience_audit.pdf .
Cheers.
I still say whitewash. Neither the BBC, the Met, or the Liberals want to discredit Climate Change (or disruption or whatever the latest is). So nothing will come of it. Besides, as we learned with the statute of limitations there – by the time they get around to saying “no”, it will have expired.
Nigel Brereton says
“Defence cut means ‘fewer service personnel’ – even though there are more civil servants in the MOD than soldiers in the armed forces.
You are talking rubbish. UK Armed Forces number around 178,000
http://www.dasa.mod.uk/applications/newWeb/www/index.php?page=48&pubType=1&thiscontent=160&PublishTime=09:30:00&date=2010-12-02&disText=1%20November%202010&from=listing&topDate=2010-12-02
MoD civil servants number about half of that. The Coalition’s cuts will reduce civil servants by 25, 000 and Armed Forces by 17, 000 by 2015.
“Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.”
No a milder than average prediction was not made. The Met Office made that clear at the end of October that they were not predicting a mild winter.
Y’all, this might simply be the Met office trying to save face by shifting some of the blame. If you were in their situation, with that kind of mud on your face, would you have a better way of getting back some lost credibility?
There is another element to this, the MET office has a commercial side to in which its supplies forecasts to industry , if these forecast where equally worthless as the one given in public , there may be ground for these companies to take the MET to court.
But I would caution that there is an awful lot of ‘what do you mean by…’ in this story, for example what do you mean by ‘cold’. I can see wriggle room coming into play here over these definitions both from the MET office and the government, 3-1 both parties will end agreeing that there is ‘room for improvement in commutations’ and the issue will be kicked into the long grass so quickly it will break the sound barrier.
Nigel Brereton January 11, 2011 at 11:59 am
Jeremy Crick January 11, 2011 at 1:24 pm
Thanks chaps, at least that much is now clear. So we’re talking about a couple of weeks in November before “nowcasting” started and oblique aspersions being cast on the strength of a purported phone call to a press office. To what end? This post seems to sum up the situation quite well:
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/met-office-smokescreen-confusion-or-conspiracy.
This is like watching a playoff game, where John Madden is heard to say: “When the wheels come off, they don’t just fall off, they come flying off.”
I have a theory based on many years of experience in the faculty lounge. This story has the ring of a faculty lounge story. My theory is that at the MET office, the “climate people” and the “weather people” hate one another and do not speak to one another, though they might yell at one another. The “climate people” told the government that the winter would be mild. The “weather people” told the government that the winter would be disastrously cold. The government is owned by the climate people and accepted their report while ignoring the report from the weather people. The report that the government was informed about the cold winter is coming from the weather people. That is the background. The remainder is politics.
The comments are interesting, but nothing will occur.
The media chooses government, not the “voting public”. They also choose policy. There are a sufficient number of “floating voters” who can be swayed beyond any political ideals when an incumbent party has lost its popular support (such as the previous Labour government and the post Thatcher Tories).
We live in a post democratic Rupertocracy. Enough young, disenfranchised and non-critical folk can be found and persuaded that “change” will be a “good thing” and that they have “the power”. The power to vote for whomever the controllers of Sky, the BBC and the “news”papers decide they should “vote” for.
The young have not yet had it beaten out of them however, as the disturbances surrounding the tripling of student fees bears witness. They will learn (pun intended) that there are no real promises, or honesty, in politics. Those most wanting to govern are least fit.
The rest of us are so jaded we sit back and allow it all to happen.
If BBC have a contract with the Met Office for paid-for weather forecasts, they must have been given the severe cold weather prediction. Why did BBC not pass this in to the public in their weather reports?
If the Met Office withheld and did not give the severe weather warning to BBC, then what are BBC paying for on the five year contract?
If the Met Office arbitrarily withheld the weather warning from its paying customers, just how reliable is this institution? Will this happen again?
Looking at the link to the Quamby report, it says:
“We can’t know when such a severe winter will hit us again, but we can take steps as a nation, to ensure that when it does, we will cope better. This report highlights the short-term need for national Government and local councils to ensure that they have plans in place, and enough road salt, to deal with the possibility of another severe winter in 2010/11.”
This does not indicate that there was any specific forecast made by the Met office to precipitate this recommendation.
I haven’t found any other stories from any respected media sources including the BBC, about the UK Met office being gagged by a minister, and being forced to change ist forecast about a cold winter. This seems to me an unconfirmed rumor which is making the rounds of the GW skeptic web sites.
Can anyone find any independent confirmation of this story?
Poor Met. First they can’t forecast weather. Now they can’t keep the closet shut.
Australia is next to ask these questions with our devastating cyclical floods:
“IT MAY be time to stop describing south-eastern Australia as gripped by drought and instead accept the extreme dry as permanent, one of the nation’s most senior weather experts, the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis, David Jones warned yesterday. January 4, 2008.
Readers of WUWT will recognize that name from Climategate emails.
“There is absolutely no debate that Australia is warming,” said Dr Jones. “It is very easy to see … it is happening before our eyes.”
The only uncertainty now was whether the changing pattern was “85 per cent, 95 per cent or 100 per cent the result of the enhanced greenhouse effect”.
“Certainly, in terms of temperature, that seems to be our reality, and that there is no turning back.”
Tax policies, city planning & engineering are being formulated on this information.
The results are there for all to see.
[ http://www.smh.com.au/news/environment/this-drought-may-never-break/2008/01/03/1198949986473.html ]
We have a number of parties here, each anxious about their position in this rather unfortunate affair.
Perhaps the MO did warn the government, but perhaps not in the starkest words possible.
Perhaps someone in government saw the warning but were busy with many other issues, and “knowing” that the globe was warming, discounted what the MO had said.
Perhaps in the government and the upper layers of the public service, there is not completely complete sweetness and light on all issues.
Perphaps too, the BBC has some issues with the government (threatened budget cuts).
Perhaps the MO has these issues as well.
Perhaps the BBC is sore at the MO office too, with or without just cause.
Well
now read on!
We may have a multi party dog fight brewing.
Everybody striving to prove they did no wrong.
Perhaps wiser heads will prevail and then this will all be swept under the carpet.
It worked so well with climategate.
Perhaps it may work well again.
But then, perhaps it will not.
Watch this space.
There is much at stake, both in the UK and internationally.
I should have added – what is happening seems to be for very high stakes.
The MO and the BBC seem to be playing a high risks game.
May I suggest reading Janis “Groupthink” particularly the chapter on the Bay of Pigs episode where Kennedy & Co played a very high risk game.
A faulty feeling of invulnerability led them to make choices, without realising how risky these were.
And how unreasistic their assumptions and analysis.
Watch this space.
It could get interesting.
Reminds me of my kids when I discovered my grandmother’s plate had been broken and glued back together again. Fingers pointed in every direction. Even the cat was pointing paws.
The BBC joins the bum forecast CYA extravaganza!!! If those folks had any brains, they would sell tickets to their cage-match-clown-circus. Imagine the receipts from the popcorn booth alone!
Apropos literary quote: