After the revelation: The Met office and the BBC- caught cold that the Met office had issued a forecast to the UK Cabinet office, and that forecast didn’t contain much of anything useful, the least of which was any solid prediction of a harsh winter, I offered BBC’s environmental reporter Roger Harrabin a chance to respond, to tell his side of the story. At first I didn’t think he would, because his initial response was kind and courteous, but not encouraging. I was surprised today to find this essay in my Inbox, which is repeated verbatim below, with the only editing being to fix some HTML formatting in the links he provides at the end. In his essay, he’s proposing a “weather test” of the Met Office, and Piers Corbyn has agreed to be tested as well. – Anthony
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From Roger Harrabin BBC Environment Analyst
The latest who-said-what-when saga over the Met Office winter forecast has created a stir of interest and understandable concern.
I offer some thoughts of my own on the matter in my BBC Online column. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12325695
But the row only serves to emphasize the need for better information on the performance of weather forecasters over the long term.
That’s why I am attempting with the help of the Royal Met Soc, the Royal Stats Soc and the Royal Astro Soc to devise a Weather Test in which forecasters enter their forecasts to a central data point, so they can be judged against each other over a period of time.
We’d like to compile records of daily, weekly, monthly and seasonal forecasts. The UK independent Piers Corbyn is the only person to have volunteered so far to be tested in all these categories, though we will be in discussions with others to persuade them to take part.
We, the public, need to know which forecasters and which forecasting methods we should trust for different types of forecasting.
We are progressing with a protocol which will ensure that all participants submit data in the same form. Hopefully we’ll be able to launch the project fairly soon, although it is proving time-consuming.
Before we settle the final protocol we’ll publish it on the web to gather comments from citizen scientists. When it is finally agreed by the steering group it’ll be handed to Leeds University to run the project, with no further involvement in the data from the steering committee members.
In the meantime I’m hoping to avoid further controversies like the Met Office winter forecasts. I have been accused in the blogosphere of having so many different motives that I can’t keep track of them all.
My real motive is to try to do a decent job telling people about things that are important and they probably didn’t already know. For instance I first led media coverage about the value of the Met Office seasonal forecast a number of years ago. (My other motive – for those of you who keep emailing me at weekends – is to have a life with my wife, kids and friends.)
I do need to scotch one particularly bizarre bit of blogbabble, though. Some bloggers depict me as a puppet for the BBC’s pension fund trustees trying to boost their investments in green technology.
This is definitely going in my book – it is the most entertaining and baroque allegation I’ve ever faced. The truth is that BBC bosses issue very few diktats and most programme editors are stubbornly independent. I offered the recent Met Office stories from my own contacts and knowledge. No-one else asked me to do them. I don’t even know the pension fund trustees.
There are some very clever and inventive people out there in the blogosphere. Some are laudably engaged in a pursuit of facts about climate change and weather. Others might serve more use by trying to locate Elvis.
If you want to measure my journalism, you could take a look or listen to some of the articles or radio docs below. And make up your own mind.
Uncertain Climate docs 1 & 2:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tj525
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tmcz3
Copenhagen doc http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w6pp4
Articles on Royal Society, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10178454
Met Office, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8462890.stm
Lord Oxburgh, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10507144
And Al Gore, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7040370.stm
@Dave Have you ever tried to comment on a bbc or gurndain website?
you’ll find there is no respect or tolerance for apposing views on man made climate change issues, in fact they are very fond of the big red delete button (No pressure!).
The fact of the matter is that the bbc often puts out a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and until I see reason to believe otherwise I will remain distrustful of these people,
you are all welcome to be seduced by yet another smiling assassin.
Yeah, sure.
Not like data kept in climatologists databases has ever been “adjusted” to make them look better….
Are certain forecasters going to be allowed to “seasonally adjust” their forecasts from a few weeks, months, or years ago? Wouldn’t surprise me one bit…
Ross McKitrick has it exactly right in his comment above. The weather forecasting challenge is a grand diversion, which has nothing to do with the accusation against Mr. Harrabin. I want to see that issue addressed, and what we have instead is a proposal to change the subject.
I LIKE IT!
A good, old fashioned ‘shoot out’ at the ‘Let’s See Who’s OK Corral’!
It’s the W(y)att’s Earp With That posse vs the UK Met Office TerraFlops and the AGW gang!
To all of those suggesting that a public contest of predictions is a good idea:
Do you pay attention sportscasters who predict the winners of big games? Do you bet on what they offer as a prediction?
Now, consider your answer yes/no, and realize that predicting the outcome of a football game (American or otherwise) is far easier than predicting the weather 3 months from now. Now realize that the public perception of our understanding of climate will swing on the results (valid or otherwise) of the contest. Yes, this path is perilous, which is why it shouldn’t be trod.
Re: “Anyway, I think it will be an exercise in futility since the climate is too complex, much less the weather! Anyone ever heard of chaos? I don’t know why people think they can be helpful with weather prediction beyond a few days.”
I’m very intrigued by this notion that chaos places a dominant role in weather. But, that seems rather simple to me. There remains a possibility, in my view, that Earth’s weather beneath the magnetosphere is principally a product of heliospheric and even interstellar electrical activity that originates on the other side of the magnetosphere. Once one understands all of the electrical legs of the system, from space to the Earth’s surface, then perhaps weather becomes a bit less mysterious.
It’s somewhat perplexing that this ideas is not taken more seriously, as it represents the switch of cause-and-effect between electricity and weather. After all, if the matter we see with our telescopes is indeed 99.999% matter in the plasma state, then the Earth is by far the exception. And very possibly, it is the fact that we exist within this tiny bubble of non-plasma that is really the cause for our inability to understand electricity’s role in space.
I think that this suggestion of the Weather Test is perhaps a turning point in the climate change debate. And, even though the idea is really quite simple, it is really quite revolutionary that we would finally start judging weather theories on the basis of how well the models perform.
This is arguably good news for the Electric Universe paradigm. In theory, this might offer them a long-term strategy of circumventing the peer review obstructionism that’s been going on for so long now.
I humbly submit that the EU crowd needs to generate its own weather model for the Weather Test. And I suspect I already know a way to make it happen.
Back in May of 2010 on Radio 4 you accused the Heartland Institute of being funded by “Big Oil” even though you apparently have no evidence that this is so. How can you blame people for suspecting that you’re in the pay of “BBC’s pension fund trustees trying to boost their investments in green technology”? You’re certainly in the pay of the BBC.
Poor baby. It’s tough to get back what you’ve been dishing out to honest scientists with honest doubts.
You hypocrite!
BBC “programme editors are stubbornly independent”??? My arse. Independant in this context must mean militantly socialist.
How else are we to explain your all toeing the party line, i.e. that
And as to your being “a puppet for the BBC’s pension fund trustees” it is _AT_LEAST_ as likley as claims that sceptics receive funding from big oil. If you have no vested interest – as you claim – why then were you caught publishing and promoting such an obvious lie (again)?
STRAWMAN
Roger I know you will be monitoring this blog so I will address this directly to you.
The idea that you present is a good one it is well worth setting up and handled by the correct people should be beneficial to all involved especially the British public. The problem is that you are not the right person because you are tainted, the Royal Society has lost credibility and I fully expect the BBC and the Guardian newspaper to enforce their involvement at some stage probably with exclusive reporting rights in their own medium.
You write ” We, the public, need to know which forecasters and which forecasting methods we should trust for different types of forecasting.” You sir, are not the public, you are a part of the post modern establishment, you are a part of the problem.
If you were to address the questions posed by those on this blog and others following the debacle of the winter forecast provided to the cabinet office as reported by yourself, then you may regain some respect even though you may find your position within the BBC untenable.
If your “real motive is to try to do a decent job telling people about things that are important and they probably didn’t already know” then I would suggest that you start by making amends to those of us who pay your wages and provide some truth to the matter of why British institutions would try to influence public opinion of a democratically elected British government, even if that means you are ostracised by your colleagues and the previous government. Until that time my advice to you would be to report the headlines instead of trying to create them.
Sincerely
Nigel Brereton
I agree with my fellow Canuck Ross.
This is a deflection. Instead of admitting there was clear attempts to mislead the public, we are being offered a substitution in the form of a test. How long will this test take? 3, 6, 12, 48 months? If everyone agrees with the test, you will just hide behind it when people ask about this issue, saying you are waiting for the result.
There is one thing the alarmists are very good at is the deflection of criticism to the future. Point out how a result doesn’t match a prediction and you will be treated to a thousand reasons as to why you just need to wait a bit longer before comparing:
– Just need to wait a bit longer for that last bit of data.
– Just short term noise, wait a few years and it will come back.
– We are only just seeing the start of the effect, wait until it gets bigger.
Better yet, why wait. We already have a history of predictions from both parties and the data to check them. A motivated individual could have a result in a week. Lets check their quality right now. Why wait?
Then can we get back to the real issue of political influence and corruption of a scientific organization. A scientist, would issue a forcast and then admit if it was wrong and learn from the mistake. All this back room, super-secret, stuff is just political bulls—t. They are only showing they are not interested in truth or accuracy, they only care about the political slant. Does anyone, including Roger, really believe that the October issued probablity(forecast) wouldn’t have been shoved down peoples throats if it had right? Would you ever hear the end of it if it had been a warm winter? Everyone on both sides knows the truth of that.
Reality is, that their models are not working and need to be fixed. Trying to endlessly spin them so you don’t have review your stand on CO2 forcing, is just getting ridiculous.
Everyone can see this. The MET knows this or else they wouldn’t be trying to spin it.
Does climate science not realize that this is why they are losing the confidence of the people? Saying it will be warm, and it is cold, but then arguing you were right looks no different to the average man than wearing tin-foil on your head. Saying for 20 years there will be less snow and then arguing you said all along there would be more snow, looks down right crazy.
If a few of these climate scientists would have said, “We didn’t expect the cold and snow, we will be reviewing the data to see what we missed”, they might have some credibility left. But did any of them say that? Anyone?
I accepted Mr. Harrabin’s invitation to read and/or listen to some of his past offerings. The bias is so obvious and consistent that anyone with an open mind can’t fail to see and hear it. What he says is too often about politicians , too seldom about relevantly qualified scientists, almost invariably derogatory about AGW sceptics, regardless of therir qualifications or lack of funding by the fossil fuel industry or other supporters, and almost never about details of climate history or about currently observed facts and the massive differences between these and the disastrous scenarios depicted by the models so beloved of the consensus and more particularly the most alarmist members of the scientific community.
Hello Roger – thanks for engaging.
Is there really no system already in place for assessing accuracy of forecasts made? In an age where people pay for weather forecasts (short term and long term), there must be some way of seeing who is turning a profit through being more accurate?
Even if we do have to wait until a protocol is defined, can we backfill it with predictions already made to date? Then we can see straight away whose model is better, rather than waiting yet more years before results come in.
I can even help with the backfill – “Arctic to be ice free in 5 years – Maslowski / Gore (2007)”.
A mere 0.1ºC separate the coldest Central England Temperature CET for December with the 2010 result (records back to 1659). An anomaly of -5.3ºC is not described by ‘a cold and wintry start’. Phrases like ‘abnormally cold’ or ‘bitter cold’ or ‘this is one for the record books’ or ‘Dickensian start to winter’ or ‘this’ll use up your salt stocks in a fortnight’ might be better phrases. The November anomaly at a mere –1.4ºC might be covered by ‘a cold and wintry start’ but since that was less than a month after the prediction it was hardly a skillfull seasonal forecast and didn’t hint at a very prolonged period of freezing temperatures and snow. The October anomaly itself was –0.3ºC and despite a few weeks of warmer temperatures, the coming downturn would have been well within the normal weather forecasting range. If late November or December had been warm then the ‘a cold and wintry start’ would already have been in the bag.
The Met Office specialises in predictions that are so vague that they are almost impossible to get wrong… and yet, they manage it.
Using the MetOffice technique, my predictions for every day for the next 12 months is 33.3% colder than average, 33.3% warmer than average, 33.4% average. Ditto for precipitation. Prove me wrong.
Wonder how the hatchet job on Piers Corbyn will look like.
Be cynical. Think about who this is. The guy that organised a skeptic v Scientist debate last year because he felt it was time and then proceeded to ensure the skeptics didn’t get the floor.
He’s a serpent in worm clothing. Be very cynical.
If all the stuff that people keep telling Mr Harrabin about, is so funny, then why is he doing them?
He didn’t say anything about his story that his own FOI request proved to be wrong. He just threw in a few distractions.
If he’s a genuine journalist, he should investigate why his sources fed him BS. It might make an interesting story.
Mr Harrabin states..
“I do need to scotch one particularly bizarre bit of blogbabble, though. Some bloggers depict me as a puppet for the BBC’s pension fund trustees trying to boost their investments in green technology.”
That is not and never has been the primary accusation or even a minor one levelled at Mr Harrabin, the primary accusation is that Mr Harrabin is altogether too close to the met office and his reports do strongly suggest a sympathetic understanding he is not keen to highlight, it also suggests that there is a symbiotic relationship between the met office and the BBC and the lack of critical analysis of met office mistakes and errors seems to confirm this idea.
Mr Harrabin goes on to state,
“When it is finally agreed by the steering group it’ll be handed to Leeds University to run the project, with no further involvement in the data from the steering committee members.”
Now this is very interesting in itself and would point to a biased outcome from a biased panel, as we know Leeds university is a well known centre of CAGW fanaticism and can hardly be judged as impartial, it would be a show trial in a kangaroo court, guilty until proven even more guilty. Unless a review of panel members and interests and credentials can be ascertained then I would have little confidence in it.
Now this paragraph is a classic escape and evasion technique,
“In the meantime I’m hoping to avoid further controversies like the Met Office winter forecasts. I have been accused in the blogosphere of having so many different motives that I can’t keep track of them all.”
Now why would an impartial reporter want or desire to avoid controversies at all? Surely a reporters job consists of investigating NOT avoiding controversies. There is a major story of great interest to the public that not only pays the wages of Mr Harrabin but also funds the met office. It is his job to find the causes and reasons behind scandals like these, it is not his job to avoid them UNLESS he is working with the met office to suppress the story.
The following technique is to deride and snigger at accusations that Mr Harrabin has no intention of discussing in any depth,
“This is definitely going in my book – it is the most entertaining and baroque allegation I’ve ever faced. The truth is that BBC bosses issue very few diktats and most programme editors are stubbornly independent. I offered the recent Met Office stories from my own contacts and knowledge. No-one else asked me to do them. I don’t even know the pension fund trustees.”
What book? We know from Peter Sissons that an unspoken narrative rules BBC behaviour, is Mr Sissons lying? When Roger states that most editors are stubbornly independent he knows that they support the CAGW narrative and are much more likely to be sympathetic to a story that aligns with their own political beliefs but he obviously wishes us to understand his words mean something else entirely, if he had done a highly critical story exposing the met office then what would the chances of that report making it past the editors? Little to none I think.
The last sentence is misleading because he does not have to know the trustees to know that pension funds that he depends on are in fact themselves dependent in large part on green eco investments and its hardly likely that he would not know how his pension is invested and what the consequences would be if CAGW theory were to be disproved and the resulting collapse in green investments.
Here we have fake pathos, making the reader empathise with the author, but what he doesnt say is more interesting than his ‘Im just a regular kind of guy’ patter,
“My real motive is to try to do a decent job telling people about things that are important and they probably didn’t already know. For instance I first led media coverage about the value of the Met Office seasonal forecast a number of years ago. (My other motive – for those of you who keep emailing me at weekends – is to have a life with my wife, kids and friends”
These few words are to my mind the most telling of all, he has never ever broken any story critical of CAGW and the institutions that support it, ever! Now Roger has reacted to breaking stories AFTER others have and in many cases long after the story has broken, the climategate scandal for instance. This was ignored until the counter story was cobbled together by the UEA and not once did Roger investigate full the emails he refused to even publish them and all we saw from him was a concerted effort to downplay and then cast doubt on critics and their motives. From the outset of climategate Roger followed he never led and he never ran a critical emerging story that contradicted CAGW dogma and those who pimped this dogma.
Mr Harrabin has run away from doing his job as and when CAGW has been threatened and criticised, he has protected those involved and has expended great effort in supporting and protecting them, I have yet to read a story critical of CAGW that he has broken.
The nub of the matter has nothing whatsoever with the forecasting abilities of the Met Office but the politicisation of the Met Office. When a scientific organisation becomes a standard bearer for a cause then it is inevitable that it’s standards drop.
The BBC has always been accused of political impartiality and though I never have believed it, I do know for sure it has never campaigned for a political party. However it does campaign for the Global Warming/Climate Change Cause something the Trust needs to stop.
Mr Harrabin and the BBC need to consider, that on global warming and climate change I and many others trust the output from this site, Steve McIntyre’s and Ross McKitrick’s sites much more than the BBC. That should not be the case. The exception on the BBC is Paul Hudson who tries to stay away from alarmism.
I would have thought Roger, that a newsworthy story would be the President of the Royal Society saying that man made CO2 emissions are seven times natural CO2 emissions?
When will the BBC allow Professor Robert Carter to give his views on catastrophic global warming? I suspect when hell freezes over.
Thank you Mr Harrabin for your sensible post and certainly stay away from emails at the weekend.
Darkinbad the Brightdayler says:
February 1, 2011 at 11:15 am
Gullible!! Go look at Roger Haribin’s history§ Read his past articles, look at his actions.
You know, actions speak louder than words. Ross McKitrick got it politely and smack on the head of the nail. Read his comment.
Oh, displacement activity?!
I was expecting his side of the Met Office forecast story.
Just another hack that either thinks everybody is stupid, or skeptics are stupid. Whichever does not matter, he is incorrect. His deflection has been uncovered. Balance is clearly not this man’s goal.
Mark
There seems to be much dispute over who at the Met said what to the government.
In such cases it is often instructive to consider what the government was prepared to hear. Whatever a servant may know, they tend to tell their masters what they want to hear, so what did the UK government want to know about the chances of a cold winter – given the spending implications and risk of looking like sensationalist fools if they acted on an 80% certainty of a very cold winter ?
On that prediction front, the government could have ignored the Met and gone with a forecaster who claims far better success rates. He DID forecast an exceptionally cold December, and has also forecast January with an 80% certainty it would be the coldest in 100 years. :-
http://www.weatheraction.com/displayarticle.asp?a=290&c=5
31-12-10 New Year message! from Piers Corbyn, WeatherAction
This winter is the Stalingrad in the ‘Climate War’; it will be long and hard, those who understand this winter will win.
|…
1. Our forecast for an exceptionally cold and also snowy January in Britain & West Europe stands and despite its unlikely occurrence according to standard views we expect with 80% confidence that much of Britain (eg Central England) to be in the three coldest Januaries in the last 100 years.
So one right and one wrong.
equal to coin tossing for accuracy…..
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.” Mahatma Ghandi.
This was not just a statement, but a correct prediction as events have proved.
Climate realists have been ignored and ridiculed by AGWers for years, so I don’t see why we should be grateful to Mr Harrabin for deigning to appear on this site.
If you substitute the word ‘engage’ for ‘fight’ it seems to me that Mr Harrabin’s offering comes (loosely) under the third stage in the above quote.
One more stage to go!