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.
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!