From the organization that can’t forecast its way out of a paper bag, and then can’t bring itself to tell the public about long range forecasts anymore, it has come to this. OK, I’m not against citizen science, but when you start asking the “Chemtrail” watchers to do “science” to help check your models, there’s no hope for you. They apparently have no idea what they are getting themselves into asking for contrail watching. If they thought they were going to catch flak for long range forecast issues, just wait until the Chemtrail people start in on them.
Check out these statements:
Researchers are also urging schoolchildren to blow bubbles to measure wind speed and direction near the ground, to reveal how the built environment affects the wind, as well as watching cloud movement to record wind direction in the sky.
The Open Air Laboratories (Opal) survey also involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.
…
Scientists are also keen to discover what confuses people about climate change so that they can widen public understanding of the topic.
Dr Geoff Jenkins of the Met Office said: “We’re asking people to get outside observing and measuring the weather.
“What they see and record will be useful for checking the systems we use for forecasting weather and predicting climate.”
How hot or cold they feel? Sure that will reduce the “uncertainty” The only thing missing is tea leaves or tarot card readers.
Barking mad they are. Either that or this is simply a propaganda tool to engage children in the idea that they can do something supposedly useful to “change the climate”.
Full story here
Details on the project here: http://www.opalexplorenature.org/climatesurvey
The contrail submission page is here It’s a hoot.
WOW! A month too early!
If we thought that the SurfaceStation.org project revealed contamination of the data, what kind of contamination will this data entail?
GPlant
Maybe the “Folks” at the MET office should spend more time observing the Weather than their SIM Planet Models trying to create a climate scenario!
UKMET’s December three-month forecast to the government, received via FOI today, shows they forecasted the following:
—————-
Issued 22 December 2010
This forecast is for contingency planning purposes only.
It represents the Met Office’s assessment based on our current understanding.
The public should be directed to our monthly outlook and the continually updated 1-
5 day forecast information that can be found on our website
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/uk/uk_forecast_weather.html and via our
broadcast partners including the BBC
Outlook for January – March 2011
For the period January-March 2011, there is a 15% chance of mild conditions, a 30%
chance of near-average and a 55% chance of cold conditions over northern Europe.
—————-
In the event, the UK was very slightly cooler than 1971-2000 average in January and experienced its ninth warmest February in the last 100 years. Now they want us to count con-trails and watch bubbles float around. And they still want tens of millions of pounds for more supercomputing capability.
Aren’t we Britons lucky?
Where do they mention ‘Chemtrails’. Aren’t the Chemtrail watchers you are referring to a bunch of eccentric conspiracy theorists that seem to think that governments and scientists are working together to mislead us and get lots of fat research grants?
Now where have I seen something similar..oh yeah…oops
the Met may be secretly trying to increase skepticism by showing that in many ways, AGW true belief is not significantly different from believing in UFOs and men in black.
As for the propaganda tool for children that you mention Anthony, you need to look no further than the government sponsored site that went live yesterday after a written announcement in Parliament:
http://autonomousmind.wordpress.com/2011/03/03/the-war-on-co2-updated-2050-pathways-analysis-launched/
Enjoy.
UK taxpayer funds put to good use. How much are they paying these knuckleheads?
It’s a propaganda tool. They are just the worst scum bags ever closely followed by their government sponsors.
I wonder if they’ve ever considered focussing their attentions on forecasting the weather?
It seems to me that any politician worth his salt whose trying to make cuts in their department would have to ask him/herself why the public were paying for these games.
Let me get this straight. The powers that be appear so unconvinced regarding the accuracy of Joe and Suzy Public recording the temperature inside those white boxes, they feel they must “make stuff up” according to their own emails. But apparently counting chem trails and goosebumps will be the gold standard against their own forecasts?
At least some might question if all of them are actually vapor trails or chemtrails.
OMG! What a load of rubbish.
I am ex-RAF aircrew and when I flew on V-force we were told at what levels we would produce persistent, and non persistent contrails to help to keep a low profile. These were caused by varying humidity in the atmosphere and would vary every day not with climate. So as expected this ‘survey’ will bring meaningless answers especially with untrained observers.
I read this in swiss french newspaper too.
How can we call this science ? it’s only propaganda as you wrote. It’s unbelievable.
In the same way in switzerland we pay taxes to feed this kind of people that like to be called : ‘scientists’. The real climate scientists have lot of problems to find money to work correctly … in french we call this : ‘pensée unique’.
Excellent blog Antony.
My word, Sesame Street Meteorology! Booker and/or Delingpole should have a field day with this one.
JFK whom is secretly a lizard alien was spraying chemicals from a commercial airliner when he crashed it into one of the twin towers. Elvis was in the parking garage below setting demolition charges with Hitler.
I thought the Met always used soap bubbles to track wind speed. It’s the best way to model AGW since the bubbles contain high levels of Anthropogenic CO2. It’s all very organic and harmonius.
If the met office issues a forecast with a 55% probability, as stated earlier.
This is just slightly a head of tossing a coin which is a 50/50 probability or 50%…….
Now the Met office has a vast supercomputer, but according to their own probability matrix, you might as well have got a Uk £1 coin. Wrote cold one side, warm the other and tossed it !
its also bloody freezing in the UK at the moment, for march with temps around 3 Degrees in Sheffield, where i live.
Well it was this morning according to my own digital weather station, upon which i’ve now come to rely.
i.e. Look outside, look at said thermometer and decided on the day ahead.
Its better than the met office………
When I used to hang glide, I often chucked grass up to gauge wind direction and speed. I can see how blowing bubbles would be even better. If this catches on I can just see glider pilots taking out their bubble solutions before climbing aboard. Maybe Heathrow will employ an official Met office licenced bubble blower to send regular wind readings to the tower.
Tower: Land at your discretion. Wind at 140 degrees and 15 bubbles.
@ madrigal says:
March 4, 2011 at 6:08 am
Where do they mention ‘Chemtrails’. Aren’t the Chemtrail watchers you are referring to a bunch of eccentric conspiracy theorists that seem to think that governments and scientists are working together to mislead us and get lots of fat research grants?
Now where have I seen something similar..oh yeah…oops”
It’s not chemtrails, it’s contrails. It says so right in the article:
“The research, led by scientists at the Met Office and the Royal Meteorological Society, will look at various aspects of how humans are affecting the climate, and how people may adapt to rising temperatures.
People are being asked to look out for aeroplane trails, or contrails, which may be contributing to climate change and which can only be recorded by the human eye. “
Early lessons have a lasting impact. They are obviously attempting to salvage the fraud through the next generation,
The formative years are important to the development of children and they intend to use that to further their agenda. Having children participate in a theory not proven may seem nutty but they know very well what they are doing. It is tantamount to corrupting their development. And it is at least a disgusting tactic.
Science projects in elementary school have to be based on proven science otherwise it is recreation or propaganda.
I believe that Anthony suspects that the contrail reporting will be overrun by the ‘chemtrail conspiracy theorists’ — who might very well see this as the perfect opportunity to report all those suspicious looking top-secret-chemical-laden faux-contrails sprayed by certain unnamed government agencies for very scary purposes.
I love this part, Dr Geoff Jenkins of the Met Office said: “We’re asking people to get outside observing and measuring the weather.” Is this so he can plug the results into a computer?
Absolutely and totally bloody mad. Cold I may be, but also ashamed to be an Englishman. Right out of the University of “You Couldn’t Make It Up”.
Robert Fitzroy, founder of the Met Office, and Charles Darwin’s Captain of the Beagle, was a brilliant surveyor and mapped much of the Cape Horn, Magellan Straits, Southern Chile area, in the most meticulous and precise way.
He must be spinning in his grave at the sheer idiocy of these folk.
One hears the sound of tumbrils in the distance!
On the survey site for youngsters:
Milder winters? Haven’t they learned anything from experience?
Autonomous Mind says:
March 4, 2011 at 6:11 am
As for the propaganda tool for children that you mention Anthony, you need to look no further than the government sponsored site that went live yesterday after a written announcement in Parliament:
The online game is at: http://my2050.decc.gov.uk/ where you can have minutes of fun.
I must call the wife tonight and have her break out the Ouiji board so the kids can help the Met model climate forcasts. Can’t be any worse that what they are doing now. Heck have thousands of kids set up a Ouiji network! Does anyone have the number for the Met office? I think I’m on to something here.
I think that the bubbles are an ‘advanced’ form of anthro. carbon capture.
The same kind of thinking that have us subsidising windmills that are sitting idle in this cold weather because there’s no wind…
Sack them, sack them all. Then we could start rebuilding the met office to be competent. Although god knows what use they’ll be in the real world.
They had a slot on Radio 4 couple of morning ago – Dr Mark McCarthy was eulogising on this subject and encouraging us all to get involved. He said that contrails can cause a slight warming – is the correct?
Even the presenter sounded a bit sceptical about the possible usefulness/accuracy of the data gathered and the subjectivity of people – Didn’t appear to put Dr McCarthy off at all we just need lots of people sending guff in.
Well, they do think that the failure of AGW to take hold is down to poor marketing. I’ll await the release of cute little climate change toys for the kiddies. I imagine the Mike Mann doll will sell like hotcakes.
This has nothing to do with science and everything to do with brain washing. It is straight out of the “how to con the public” handbook.
The principle is simple: you get the public to participate in “obtaining the result”, the effect has nothing to do with a better “result”, but that those people who are involved in the exercise will be very ready to accept the answer it gives, no matter how much the whole process is a fraud which was always going to get the same result.
Remember the screen saver models to calculate global warming …. result! Most people who ran the screen saver then believed in global warming. Remember all those competitions to spot the “early flowers” … snap … everyone who entered is now firmly convinced that they really did spot early flowers (despite the fact they just looked for flowers coming out at the same time … it’s just they went out to find them)
And this is just the same con. No doubt they have already written the press release of: “the study shows overwhelming evidence of global warming – this time proved by citizen (non) science”.
Fool the people once, shame on you, fool the people twice, shame on us!
The Met Office and the UK government are a continual source of wonder, amazement and mpre than a little worry about their collective sanity. They make me laugh, too, but in a rueful this-can’t-be true sort of way. My back-yard max-min thermometer tells me the dasytime max near Heathrow is usually around 40% lower than the Met Office forecast, while night min temp is also usually around 40% lower than forecast. I say ‘usually’ advisedly as just occasionally the Met Office forecast is very nearly accurate!
Any bubbles my grandchildren have blown in the same back yard are driven in wildly unpredictable directions by strange wind eddies, over fences and around buildings etc. which usually has a very casual relationship with actual wind direction.
Unless this corruption is stopped, we in the UK are all doomed. Thank God I’m no longer young.
Bubble-blowing?
If you have kids (or grandkids) of a certain age, then you will understand what I mean when I label this “SpongeBob Science”. While they’re at it, they might as well measure biodiversity whilst out jellyfishing.
Scientists are also keen to discover what confuses people about climate change so that they can widen public understanding of the topic.
Dear Dr Jenkins et al,
Over the past 15 months or so I’ve become increasingly confused about how anything said by “The Team” can be taken at face value.
As a former (mild) believer in AGW I’ve found the almost continuous revelations of what, to me as a humble BSc, appear to be undeniable abuses of the scientific process not only unsavoury but also seriously detrimental to their credibility in everything from predicting future climate to telling me whether the sun is likely to rise tomorrow.
Please can your group lessen my confusion by educomunicating me in the finer points of why climate science should operate on entirely different principles to any other scientific field?
Yours confuzzledly,
JH
Kay- My point exactly, the article refers to contrails whilst Anthony decides for whatever reason, though we can have a reasonable guess, to put in ‘Chemtrails’ in his intro.
If contrails are only visible to the human eye, what is that picture on the right showing?
Are these the same people who complain that they do not have enough time to respond to FOIA inquiries? And yet, they apparently have time to collate data from bubble-blowing kids and contrail watchers?
In the words of the Great Fezzini: “Inconceivable!”
Also this is the equivalent of standing on a golf t, and chucking some wood into the air to try and gauge speed / direction.
Actually maybe i should do that when i’m on the 1st of my local course and send the results to the met office…….
Well at least it might be fun looking at the poor crazed hippie crowd running around trying to blow, what they can afford in this green economy, snot bubbles.
Just keep yer distance or risk getting splattered with yuck from bursting green bubbles.
/Sarc . . . err, I’m not too sure actually.
My fraternity had a cat called “Trails” as he had a white-tipped tail which left “trails” in the air for the brothers who were taking mood-altering drugs.
“Oh, WOOWWW, man! Check out those trails!”
When it’s subzero outside, soap bubbles freeze really quickly. When they pop, they deflate and drift as a large film to the ground. It’s really cool!
[Snip . . Off Topic . . post to Tips & Notes please, as it seems very interesting]
I’m not sure about the bubble part – but the contrail idea is rather neat. Given enough participants – and a degree of calibration from 3 or 4 expert sites – the fractional amount of cirriform cloud produced by contrails over the UK could be determined quite accurately. This can be a tough issue to forecast on some days – knocking one or two degrees off the maximum temperature on a particular day can, for example, significantly affect the available energy for thunderstorms.
In Australia there is a storm spotter network that reports in, on a volunteer basis, severe storm information to the weather bureau. Community particiaption in weather reporting can make a difference.
I submitted 10 “adjusted” contrail data points. Sure, I made them up and I don’t even live in the UK, but, hey, I’m a scientist! It’s more about what I believe, and not what the real facts are. Funny that the “survey” doesn’t even verify IP location in general.
I have already posted comments on the site concerned pointing out that in the week following 9/11 there were no planes in the skies over the USA but instead of the temperature dropping as the AGW’s would expect what happened was just the opposite.
With more sunlight getting through the USA was warmer.
A trend seems to be emerging: they’re going from talking about ozone depletion by man-made chemicals to global warming by etc. to man-made aerosols causing climate degradation and cancer (probably). They’re going to ramp up the aerosol talk along with the Glory satellite (oops!) to change the subject. It’s the standard modern left-wing tactic, sorry to say.
Our (UK) govnmt is sadly stuffed with greenies. I wrote Huhne (the energy change minister) pointing out that windmills don’t turn when the wind drops and forwarded the news item about the Netherlands ceasing installation of the things and invited his comments on those matters specifically. Might as well have saved myself the effort. Here is the reply I recieved; do read it, it shows just how far British politicians have their heads up their and their paid advisers’ fundaments.
Dear Mr Cxxxx
Thank you for your email of 18 February to Chris Huhne, attaching various articles on wind power. I have been asked to reply.
General Statement of Policy on Onshore Wind
The Government is committed to the development of wind energy in the UK. As an island nation, we have outstanding wind resources and wind energy is an indigenous source of energy which is needed to meet our renewable energy and climate change goals. The wind industry can be a key player in creating the investment, exports and jobs we need to bring back economic prosperity, and the UK is already a world leader in offshore wind.
The Coalition Programme made clear this Government’s commitment to Renewable Energy. The Government also want communities and individuals to benefit from the increase in renewable energy, including wind power, and to own a stake in our collective low carbon future. This is why the Government committed in the Coalition Programme for Government to encouraging more community-owned renewable energy and allowing communities that host renewable energy projects to keep the additional business rates they generate.
Contribution of Wind Energy to Climate Change and Energy Security Goals
The Government believes that climate change is one of the most serious threats we face; the two major energy challenges that the UK has to tackle are carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions that contribute to climate change and the need to deliver secure, affordable energy supplies. The UK has the best wind opportunities in Europe, with the potential to supply a significant portion of our energy needs. Wind farm generation grew by nearly a third in 2009 against the previous year. Onshore wind generation rose by 31% over the same period.
The UK is one of a small number of countries to have reached 5 gigawatts (GW) of wind power (onshore and offshore). We are also number one in the world for offshore wind power, overtaking Denmark in October 2008.
Moving to renewables will enable us to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by over 750 million tonnes between now and 2030. Onshore wind could provide around 10% of the electricity we consume in 2020.
Contribution of Wind Energy to Renewable Energy Goals
Wind will be a key component in meeting the UK’s 2020 target for energy from renewable sources and onshore wind could deliver around 15% of the required total. However, the precise breakdown between technologies will depend on how investors respond to the incentives put in place. [1]Renewable generating technologies more widely could provide around 30% of our electricity (compared to around 6.5% today), with some two-thirds of this coming from onshore and offshore wind.
The Office for Renewable Energy Deployment (ORED) was set up in October 2008 in order to catalyse deployment of renewable energy to deliver the UK’s 2020 target. More information about ORED is available from:
http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/what_we_do/uk_supply/energy_mix/renewable/ored/ored.aspx
I hope this is helpful.
Yours sincerely,
John McCulley
DECC Correspondence Team
“the public is being asked to watch for contrails which can only be recorded by the human eye”
Huh? Cameras are more sensitive and can even see in frequencies which the human eye cannot perceive. Morever, eyes don’t “record”.
Where do they find the people who write these things?
Ha! Go to the “My 2050” site and have a play. Once you have ‘built’ lots of nuclear power plants and demolished all the windmills by using the slider bars, and have got under the magical 20% bar, you get to another page. Here you can state how happy you’d be to live in a world such as the one you have just created, amongst other amusing questions. When asked why I’d arrived at the 2050 site I had some more (very clean) fun!
Try it and see! It’s bound to cause as much confusion as whirling bubbles!
I much prefer the Weather Stone, which you hang from your fence..
Stone dry – sunny weather.
Stone wet – raining.
Stone covered in white stuff – snow.
Stone swinging – windy.
Can’t see stone – foggy.
Far more reliable than bubbles…
Obviously they have heard about the “Jet Stream” and that it may influence the tropospheric weather pattern so now they want to get to the “bottom of it” by studying what comes out of the rear end of jet planes. – Well, anybody who believes in the Hockey Stick ……….–Yes we’re doomed mr. Steeptown. We’re all doomed!
My son keeps getting upset because the bubbles keep bursting before he can measure the speed they’re travelling, and when they don’t burst, he doesn’t know how to measure the speed. I’ve tried to explain to him how easy it is to do it, but he still doesn’t get it, which I suppose is understandable, after all he is only 19.
The only thing missing is tea leaves or tarot card readers.
David says:
March 4, 2011 at 9:03 am
I much prefer the Weather Stone, . . .
I have one of those. It works great. However, it does not forecast.
You need one of these, also:
http://www.new-potato.com/wstick/Science/science.html
The Search for the Why and How of Weather-sticks.
In the lee of the Cascade Mountains these sometimes seem to fail. I’m studying the science and trying to work out an adjustment. Please have your children go out and observe sticks and send comments to the MET Office. Use the links in the posted article.
Do you have a question about climate change?
Perhaps there’e something you don’t understand, or would like to know more about. Who better to ask than the climate experts at the Met Office ?
http://www.opalexplorenature.org/ClimateQuestions
(Their spelling!)
I’m a public confused….I’m supposed to watch the weather to help me understand climate?
On the up side, we now know that the overpaid scientists at the MET can be replaced by a bunch of 7yr olds with Mr. Bubble and a crayon.
“Daddy, daddy!!! I saw a contrail!! It was from a 2 engined jet flying at 24,500ft AGL, doing 400knots. I’ll give you the specifics on RH, windspeed, temperature, and all the other factors just as soon as I finish my 3rd grade report on butterflies!”
Metoffice? – they’re as Mad as a box of frogs, the lot of ’em!
You all may be missing an important point…
Children blowing bubbles and watching clouds may actually be an IMPROVEMENT over MET’s current methods of gathering data. 🙂
Of course, all of this data will likely be protected by privacy agreements with the children, so don’t expect to be able to download it without a legal battle. The legally binding agreements protecting all data and methods will be written in crayon.
Hmm, speaking of methods – I wonder if the bubble-liquid recipe will affect test results? I may have to go out into my backyard and test that… LOL
Ha, ha, ha, priceless, ha, ha
Weather stone.
Based on the Met’s recent behavior, maybe they are Chemtrail people already.
Ah ha, I’ve it!
Get the kids to invent solar powered soap bubble blowers. Gold stars all ’round I’m sure …
Then solar powered soap bubble vehicles, homes and etc., the sky’s the limit!
Hear Ye, hear ye massive amount of soap bubbles released into atmosphere is very good for our planet, good for the children, cleans both CON and CHEM trails whilst restoring the ozone! Hear ye, hear ye.
( heh anything goes with the MET office so they should buy this as well – and where can I get those lucrative grant applications again? 😉 )
@Evan Jones, nicely done! … and the money being stolen from the public for the very fact that our weather/climate changes. Like to say that this will go down as the biggest con job of all human history, but I’m sure they’ll be more as people are not good at learning from their own history, as a whole, to me.
I a waiting for golfers to start using the bubble approach. Much more accurate than tossing a pinch of grass. But then, I could never figure out how knowing the wind a foot or two in front of your face could determine what happens a ball over 200 yards away falling from over 100 feet in the air. However, it does look good and portrays yourself as “knowledgeable” so I always do it.
I wonder if they would consider giving me a job analysing the drifting bubbles? I’d come complete with my own two year old great grandson to do the blowing. I don’t think that he is quite ready to calculate wind speed just yet. As to how hot or cold I feel, I should be pretty good at that having had a fair measure of practice over the years. I see a whole new future opening up.
How on earth are they going to co-ordinate the data? Suppose I am standing in my garden and a jumbo flies overhead on its way to Heathrow and I note down the contrail (+date and time), then Fred 10 miles up the road spots the contrail a couple of minutes later and notes it (+date and time), and so on all the way from Lands End to Heathrow, will the Met Office have the nouse to know that this is just one ‘plane, or will they deduce that there have been, say, 25 contrails?
Why don’t they just ask the airports for their flight info?
Am I just being thick?
Will the Met Office pay for my physio to sort out the crick in my neck from all this contrail watching?
I think the bubble-blowing will be us all foaming at the mouth as we go quietly insane.
As school children already know how to measure wind speed:
http://www.ciese.org/curriculum/weatherproj2/en/docs/anemometer.shtml
the MetO now stand to loose their junior audience too.
I think they are asking the wrong segment of the public. If they had any brains they would restrict their “aquisition” of “climate data” to women in the 45-70 year old age group. As that population segment experiences frequent “personal summers”, they should be a far more reliable temperature proxy than even siberian larches.
My own wife says she feels frequently far hotter in the last 2 years than in the 30 years average before, thus experiencing her own “Hockey Stick”. However, she is too smart to think that it is a global phenomenon.
“involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature change.
Scientists are also keen to discover what confuses people about climate change so that they can widen public understanding of the topic.”
We could start with the met office’s confusion about the fact that how hot and cold people feel has nothing to do with global temperature changes.
Blow bubbles for climate change. Hop on the left leg for climate change. Wear a ribbon for climate change. Wear a green shirt for climate change. Etc.
I suspect that the Met Office’s suggestion of blowing bubbles in the wind is a nicer way of pointing out to young children that they might as well p**s in the wind as use their weather forecasts.
Only older children are capable of studying the contrails left by climate scientists in the CRU emails. -I wonder if the metoffice will issue any teacher guidance on how to do this?
“The Open Air Laboratories (Opal) survey also involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.”
Being here in Minnesota, I’m well out of the Met’s balliwick and I’m not sure if they’re interested in my input, but given the chaos that ensued over there from what I and most Minnesotans would consider fairly modest weather events, I think they could use my help. From the AccuWeather archives I found the range of local temps for Dec, Jan,and Feb. They are respectively 46 to -17, 30 to -19, and 50 to -14. All temps are in Farenheit. We don’t do Centigrade here because we have a certain pride of place and tend to find it irritating when folks minge on about “below zero” temps when it’s barely cold enough outside to put a skin of ice on the puddles in the street.
I think I can safely report that through most of the last three months most everyone here felt cold, although on that day in Feb when it was 50F with a bluebird sky many of the young local lovelies were out and about in shorts and tank tops. Providing that annual inspirational moment that folks in places like San Diego and LA, who have to deal with SYTs floosing about in bikinis virtually year around, will never be able to appreciate. That moment each year when womankind, after months of trundling about cocooned in parkas and sweatpants, suddenly emerge like butterflies in an explosion of alabaster feminine flesh has never failed to provide a thrill and I hope it never will.
But I digress. Though the temps I quoted may seem extreme to those who inhabit more benevolent climes, they actually represent a fairly mild winter, though the excursions above normal were briefer and less frequent than usual and the overall average was well below normal, it has been all in all a rather typical season.
The point of this now long winded wheeze relates to the Met’s supposed interest in how people will “cope” with temperature change. For thousands of years human populations have occupied places on the planet far more extreme than where I live. From the subArctic to Saharan deserts there have been relative few environments on the planet where humans have not attempted to make a home. Warmer Temperature has almost never been the determining factor in whether they succeeded or not. Advancing ice and persistent droughts over decades have lead to societal breakdown and abandonment of locales by human groups in the past, but even in those cases not all the humans left.
I think a more productive use of your time can be made if you forego worrying about the coping capacity of humanity, which is more than adequate, and try to focus on your real job i. e. attempting to provide weather forecasts that people can actually have a little faith in.
[Snip. You know why. ~dbs, mod.]
HFC @ 8.52 am
Fellow brit here. I hope you responded by saying “Wrong Answer! Remember who is the public servant here! Yes – You, Mr Huhne! You do what we tell you, not the other way round, and if this questionable (to say the least) policy is not reversed, guess who will be joining the dole queue. And as for the despicable Mr Holliday (see Willis’ latest), there are any number of punishments I would be willing to impose.”
We need to turn this around, and make these career politicians afraid. Very afraid!
On both sides of the pond!
M
Planespotting! Gotta love it. UK climate science at its finest.
Pure marketing genius at work, I tell ya. Contrails/entrails/chemtrails…reminiscent of “parts is parts”.
Grab the popcorn, folks, because Humpty Dumpty is going to try to jump the Grand Canyon on a moped.
SandyInDerby, thanks for the link to the online emission reduction game. I reached the goal mainly by ramping up nuclear power to one notch below max and switching to 80% electric vehicles (hey, it’s the UK, every destination is one battery charge away, right?). No onshore wind turbines at all!
Muahahahaha!
What a superb story – you couldn’t make it up. I usually check the Telegraph of a morning, but was running late today and missed this one. I must stay in more …
Thanks to a pair of UEA researchers the citizens of Norwich will soon have extra contrails visible over the city centre:
http://www.edp24.co.uk/what-s-on/model_planes_to_fly_above_norwich_during_festival_1_816167
I here by nominate weather stone David for the noble climate peace price in observable physics for which automagical properties makes Met Office completely superfluous and who’s removal would save the poor tax payer of the down sized British empire quiet the sum, which would be very beneficial to the rest of the union de fortress Europa and therefor the rest of the populated world since EU would require less import tax.
Some might think this to be all BS, so I kindly remind them holes in the big A that the government of fortress Europa has already decided upon even how many trees one can legally have growing on ones own property of legally designated grazing fields (and this is per field basis and not per field size.) So more ‘an what can be constituted as 60 trees, it’s a god damn forest (so, OMG don’t break the law, apply instead for forrest subsidies.)
I wrote to my MP in February to complain that the Met Office failed to predict the bad winter just passed, and could he comment on the fact that the Cabinet Office seemed to know about it, according to Harabin at the BBC, while the public didn’t.
He wrote back with input from MP Robathan from the MoD, who claimed that the Met Office had warned the Cabinet Office that there was a 40% chance of a cold winter in 2010/11 (So there!). He did not have a good reason why this had not been publicised outside of the Cabinet Office, other than that, apparently, surveys showed (the MO) that the public did not want long range forecasts more than a few weeks in the future!
As I pointed out to my MP, a 40% chance of a cold winter was the same as saying there was a 60% chance of NOT a cold winter. I guess I shall not get a response to that.
I can just see the next story a year from now:
“Kindegarden children report a +3.23 m/s wind increase from warming”
LMAO…these jokes never end!
Ulric Lyons says:
March 4, 2011 at 9:46 am
Do you have a question about climate change?
Perhaps there’e something you don’t understand, or would like to know more about. Who better to ask than the climate experts at the Met Office ?
————————————–
I found this one interesting:
“Q: Isn’t the recent warming due to the growth of our towns and cities?
A: No. The climate is warming everywhere because of carbon dioxide emissions. Temperatures in cities are unnaturally high because of the warmth from heating homes, heavy traffic, high concentrations of people and heat stored in buildings and concrete.
Our observations come from urban and rural arrears on land and from the sea, which covers 70% of the Earth.
We manage data from cities carefully to ensure they do not skew our understanding of climate change.”
So… just as we suspected. They *manage* (ie. “adjust”) data from cities, not to ensure that it does not skew the proper temperature record, but to ensure that “they do not skew *our understanding* of climate change.”
This type of wording does not happen by accident. It goes through several levels of approval with bureaucrats revising it at every level to make sure that cover their backsides.
This was just the laugh I needed before calling it a day and going home for the weekend.
This is an obvious attempt, as stated above, to indoctrinate the children. There can’t be any valid scientific reason for this; it is 100% public relations nonsense.
This reminds me of the day last year when my daughter came home with PETA brochuers. I asked why and she explained that her teacher had taken the day off so that she could go protest the Ringling Bros. Circus and one of the PETA people had volunteered to be a substitute teacher for the day. These whackos will do anything they can to get their fingers on our children. It helps if you think of them like you would a sex offender, and take the same precautions to keep your kids safe. 🙂
The Open Air Laboratories (Opal) survey also involves the public recording how hot or cold they feel as part of efforts to see how people might cope with temperature changes.
Oh My God. Just loony toons…
I once had two employees, with a third seated between them.
Roughly every day, the woman would complain that it was too cold, the man that it was a bit warm, and the guy in the middle said he didn’t notice anything.
After a few months of calling facilities and / or adjusting warm (guy complains) colder (woman complains) I went to the local hardware store and bought a “recording thermometer” (that, sadly, I’ve not seen in the garden departments in a while).
It was LIG and had little colored bits that moved to the extreme of temp on both the hot and cold columns.
Hung it on the middle cube.
Every day I’d look a it. 72 F +/- 1 F.
Every day the first few weeks, the man and woman would ‘sneak a peak’… then return to their cubes.
Complaints ceased….
The first recorded instance of the boiling frog metaphor morphing into its dialectical opposite. Say hello to the freezing frog metaphor.
biddyb says:
March 4, 2011 at 10:34 am
You’re being thick. They don’t care.
All they are interested in is getting you to read the propaganda that accompanies the ‘games’. Your data will be plotted on the maps and thereafter never be referred to again (by the Met Office).
It will end up in the big bit bucket in the sky.
I’ve just been out side walking with my dog, it’s freezing!, I felt very cold, could someone pass this very important information on to the met office.
As for the contrails don’t they hang around longer when it’s colder up there in the atmosphere.
And “Chemtrail” is this the same as cloud seeding and geo-engineering?
And Conspiracy? sometimes you just have to call a spade a spade!
Ooo! look at the pretty Bubbles!
So now instead of “garbage-in-garbage-out” we have “bubbles-in-hogwash-out”. I believe we’re making progress in the conversion process here. No telling what horror story a bubble-fed computer model that constitutes the largest single source of electric power consumption in all of London might generate. Possibly the oceans will explode into a cloud of CO2 filled bubbles that will salt down all the arable lands, rendering the planet a barren waste-land and leaving only sea gulls on a salt-shrimp diet and a bubble-fed supercomputer left to inhabit the earth.
I’m embarrassed to be british. (small ‘b’)
The most idiotic of scientists could devise a simple method for counting & measuring contrails. Just point a camera at the sky, take a piccie every minute or so, and get a computer to count.
As has been pointed out, how can you differentiate reports, especially when the timing will be off by several minutes.
It is pure propaganda.
I nominate this blog post as the best headline of 2011!
Uri Gellar, the famous “psychic” of the ’70s, used to do a variation of this. On his TV appearances he would bend a spoon “with his mind,” and then tell the people watching at home to check their cuttlery drawers and notice how many spoons were now bent out of alignment. Even though the shows were pre-recorded, hundreds of people would watch the episode, check out their cuttlery, and write back in amazement at how many of their spoons were now bent.
Come to think of it, where is Uri these days? He isn’t consulting for… . No. Surely not.
I am going to have to be much more observant in the future. I am 67 years old and have been watching contrails since jets became common, but I cannot remember ever seeing a contrail that became as dense as close to the plane as in the picture at the beginning of this post.
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air,
They fly so high,
Nearly reach the sky,
Then like my dreams
They fade and die.
Global warming`s always hiding,
I’ve looked everywhere,
I’m forever blowing bubbles,
Pretty bubbles in the air.
When shadows creep,
When I’m asleep,
To lands of hope I stray!
What better way to get people educrated about climate than having them do pointless busy work and fooling them into thinking they are making some sort of objective measurements? Then they will feel included in the scientific process and become personally and emotionally invested in the main-scheme skyence para-diggum.
Can I write off my bubble soap and the laser range finder that we will all use to determine the distances these things are so as to calculate speed? There has to be a tax deduction for that.
Seriously. This makes blood-filled, exploding skeptic commercials seem sane. This is a cry for help.
The only reason for using bubbles is that the children are too young to be allowed to throw darts, the usual method for weather and/or climate prediction by the Met Office.
Must say I missed this in the Telegraph.
I do like blowing bubbles and watching them fly about, some drop quite quickly and some float up high there doesn’t always seem to be any reason as to which do what so I had better get me a grant and a research team together. (might be useful in the current financial “climate”)
James Bull.
Since people exhale CO2 and the kids are using their exhaled breath to blow bubbles, aren’t the Met Office encouraging kids to pollute the air with greenhouse gas?
Oh noes!
This is pure indoctrination to convert people to the religion of CAGW. The “experiments” aren’t in the least scientific and the organizers of the site wouldn’t recognize scientific rigor if they tripped over it. Everywhere is the implicit message that humans are causing climate change and human activities are bad. There’s the usual inane “studies” demonstrating flame retardant contamination of pond mud without a single mention of the concentration of the chemicals (with our ability to detect chemicals at concentrations of parts per billion or trillion who should be surprised at this finding).
The reason for sponsoring activities like these is to make people more ready to go along with far more repressive government “climate change” policies in the future. One book which should be a must read for everyone is Cialdini’s Influence which is a catalog of subtle ways in which people can be influenced in a particular direction. The one study that Cialdini described that has a bearing on this British project was to have psychology students go door to door and ask people to sign a petition on some obscure topic. Then, the psychology students went door to door again and asked people if they would put up a large sign on their lawn in favor of the subject of the petition they’d signed. Such individuals were far more likely to agree to putting up the sign than a group of people who had never been exposed to the petition. Perhaps WUWT should sponsor a surface stations project for elementary school children to go and photograph local weather stations and describe all of the factors that can make the station record temperatures higher than they actually are. Also, pupils could be asked to grow plants in jars with differing initial concentrations of CO2 to see if CO2 is toxic to plant life or not.
About a month ago I called Governor Rick Scott’s office on a heavy day of chemtrailing they were doing in SW Florida. I didn’t call it chemtrails over the phone rather I called it geo-engineering, weather modification, and radar enhancement the air force was doing as there are not nearly that many commercial plane in our skies that can do all that spraying. I told his office we sell sunshine in our state and the tourists don’t want the sun blocked out making our skies disgusting with all that pollution of barium aluminum mixture.
Two days later the chemtrails stopped and have not come back to SW Florida since. I bet the Governor made some inquires about the air force activities. I’ll find out tomorrow when my brother talks to him. USA Today had an article on the 27th about geo-engineering and now this Telegraph article, are telling. I think the jig is up and you will be hearing a lot more about this stuff soon.
And we British taxpayers have to pay about £200 million for this drivel! They should be privatised and have to compete in the open market…………At least it would knock a little chunk of our national debt!!!!
Watching Gardeners World last night, weatherman Peter Gibbs turned up in Carol Klein’s garden with a portable weather station AND a bubble blowing machine to show her how the wind blew around in her garden. Bubble machines are obviously the new toy du jour. Sad, isn’t it? UK is the laughing stock of the world.
I’ll guess this has nothing to do with the Met Offices curiosity about their systems or what confuses people about climate.
I detect the hand of some psychology consultant employed to come up with ways “to engage” the public about climate, to draw them in, get them “on side”, feeling cosy and warm about the Met Office, who can then play them and make them more susceptable to the climate change propaganda. It is a ‘rope-dope’ manoeuvre.
Shouting and arm waving did not work as it scared the herd which bolted, so now entice them back into the pen; whisper softly and gently and often in their ears, get them eating out of your hand, then slam the five bar gate firmly closed on them once you have them lulled and trapped.
well look where sticking to the peer reviewed process has got them. Don’t you rather think it’s the Met that are confused, but at least re-connecting with well meaning amateurs will get them more credibility right now, now that their cred. Is in the shredder.
Children blowing bubbles is probably more accurate than their computer programs.
Propaganda tool, but it will be self-defeating in the end. Cult priests should never invite people to use their own senses and make their own measurements. People in touch with Nature can tell when it’s cold and when it’s hot.
When you know from your own records that it’s getting colder and colder and colder, you can’t listen to nonsense about the Dark Warmth that keeps on getting hotter and hotter and hotter, just waiting to BUST THROUGH THE DOOR AND ROAST US ALL! JUST YOU WAIT, SINNERS!
As a farmer in NW England and directly under a major flight path to N. America, I’ve ‘used’ contrails to predict the weather for years..
Basically, if the planes leave a very short trail, the weather will stay dry for the next day or two, if the trails are long (or last for a long time), rain is imminent. In no way can they be used to predict next week/month/year/decade’s weather.
Of course, in NW England, you cannot see the trails most of the time because it usually raining anyway. sigh
At least it gets people watching the weather and hopefully making their own minds up..
It makes a joke of the ‘weather is not climate’ meme, unless it suits your purpose, of course.
So lemme get this straight: they’ve finally admitted that the most accurate scientific meters are unable to record credible data records, so they are falling back on eyewitness reporting, which any fool knows is completely unreliable?