Has the Met Office committed fraud?

Well done, milord.
Related discussion over at Andy Revkin’s Dot Earth:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/09/shift-in-british-climate-analysis-blunts-governments-short-term-warming-forecast/
Kurt in Switzerland

The cagw crowd and the met are taking a huge gamble that temperatures finally start going up soon. By not being [straight] forward and admitting problems they are setting themselves up for more and more criticism, bigger and bigger charges of fraud as the trend continues or temperatures turn down. They’ve now realized that lowering their predictions and hoping that real temperatures exceed them might give them some relief from the bashing but what if temperatures don’t cooperate and they continue to be above the trend? The clamor will simply grow and they will be more guilty. That may not seem like satisfaction to us that know already that they have lied but I believe that we must continue to push for full transparency and not let them get away with the slightest subterfuge and let them escape eventual justice for academic dishonesty, censure, laughingstock.

No you are not! A fraud is a fraud, no matter who is behind the wheel. I really think that a worldwide NGO could be formed, based on the web, financed by individuals all over the world, chaired by trustworthy people like you, Donna, JoeNova just to name a few. And with a scientific body that could match IPCC.
We have an enormous army but it is scattered.
Just thinking out loud after a nice shoot of Kentucky Straight Bourbon

If it looks like a duck………

Can the journalist perhaps ask for compensation for damage to reputation?

Thank you for your efforts – but please post links for all assertions. One of the joys of the internet is the ability to immediately point to proof of an assertion as opposed to tracking down a footnoted article.

At our current rate, the earth will be a cinder in 100 years with an average temperature of 15 degrees Celsius.

“prestidigitation”… I had to look that one up.
But as to the question… fraud indeed!

Met Office lied repeatedly to do down a journalist
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is “to do down” an idiom I have not heard of?
can you clarify that for me please?
thanks.
as far as the rest of it, I love reading your stuff 🙂
It would sound to me like there is a real case of fraud but thats with NO working knowledge of the law over there.

Mark Nutley @ 12:10: “Big words?” What? “Prestidigitation?” “Heuristic?”
Cmon. If the half-wits who believe in global warming need to go to a dictionary once in a while, which is probably unlikely in this case since they will dismiss this report before even reading it, what’s the problem?
Most excellent piece, Lord Monckton.

George Tetley says:
January 14, 2013 at 12:37
The British government is already bankrupt. Tony Blair did to us from 1997 what POTUS is going to do for you until 2016.

Monckton of Brenchley says:

The least-squares linear-regression trend on the global temperature data is statistically indistinguishable from zero for 18 years (HadCRUt4), or 19 years (HadCRUt3), or even 23 years (RSS).

The trends are also statistically-indistinguishable from the long-term trends (i.e., the trends calculated from ~1975 onwards, whether you stop at, say, 1997 or include all the data from 1975 onwards). This is just a statement that trends over such time periods still have quite a large uncertainty in them.
This graph http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:1997.5/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1975/to:1997.5/trend makes it clear that the long term trend in HadCRUt4 since 1975 is essentially no different than the long term trend that one would have calculated 18 years ago (i.e., in 1997): As you can see, the slope of the linear trend from 1975 to 1997 is virtually identical to the trend from 1975 to the present. (In the case shown, where one stops in mid 1997, the trend using all the data is actually slightly steeper, although that detail is dependent on exactly when one chooses to stop in 1997.)

The NOAA’s State of the Climate report in 2008 said this: “Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability. The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”

Here is that report so that readers can see the full context: http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/cmb/bams-sotc/climate-assessment-2008-lo-rez.pdf The relevant page is p. S23. Note in the context of the discussion, the authors are talking about looking at trends after removing ENSO as described in the 2008 paper by Thompson.
Furthermore, the statement that “simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 years or more” means exactly that: The simulations show that the 95% confidence cone for the climate model simulations does not include a trend of zero. However, the trend over the time periods that you note has not been zero; It is true that it is not statistically-significant from zero at the 95% confidence level, but that just means that its 95% confidence cone includes zero. It does not mean the trend is zero. People who understand statistics will understand that the statement that the 95% confidence cone includes the possibility of zero trend is very different than saying that the measured trend is actually zero.
So, for both of these reasons, your statement about what the NOAA report says is wrong.

What about a straight out libel case?

A good article except for the last bit. I think accusing the Met Office of fraud is over the top, and it doesn’t help your case. Fraud means an intention to deceive. It differs from just being mistaken. I agree that the Met Office is mistaken, but clearly they believe their own story. So it isn’t fraud–intent is not there.
If I promise you a million dollars if you send me your bank account by return post, I’m likely committing fraud. But if I have an idea for a business scheme that will net us both money, and I really think the plan will work–all I need is your bank account to make it happen–then I’m not committing fraud.

What do you expect of the Met Office the so called worlds leading Climate group – – more of the same. They are the same group involved with the University of East Anglia Climategate crowd!!!!
I wonder how the BBC green pension investment fund are doing thanks in large part to the influence and predictions of the Met Office – Last time I checked it 2.5 Billion pounds in the hole — LOL Suckers!

Dave says: January 14, 2013 at 12:42 pm “prestidigitation”…
Yes, hence prestigious which has completely changed its meaning from negative to positive. Quite appropriate for this discussion. Origin: mid 16th century (in the sense ‘practising conjuring tricks’): from late Latin praestigiosus, from praestigiae ‘conjuring tricks’. The current sense dates from the early 20th century
To Lord Monckton, what about ‘Misconduct in Public Office’? The penalties are quite severe I think up to life imprisonment. ‘A public office holder is an officer who discharges any duty in the discharge of which the public are interested, more clearly so if he is paid out of a fund provided by the public.’

As the Fraud Office is not interested…. how about the Consumer Dept
They took the Banks to court for miss-selling Payment Protection Insurance
So get them to pursue miss selling / implimentation of CO2 based taxation VED Road tax would be a good test case.

Let’s not forget the Met Office chief scientist Slingo who claimed that the ‘record 2012’ rain fall in England was due to increased ocean temperatures and melting Arctic ice but did not explain why the rain fall in adjacent Scotland was well below average.
(Last week the Met Office produced the 2012 rain fall statistics which show that rain fall in 2000 was slightly higher than the much hyped pre=Christmas MET report that 2012 rain fall was the highest for a hundred years!)

Here in the UK rather than rely on the predictions of the gazillion pound Met Office computer, it would have been more accurate, and less costly, if the Met Office had just looked out of the window in the morning.

THEY are talking about prosecuting bank employees for manipulating the LIBOR interest rate – why is manipulating the temperature record, and the predictions upon which public policy is made, any different?

Here’s some more detail on the fraud and general spin around this October reply to Rose on the Met Office blog. It is a cut and paste of a comment I made at the time so please skip past if you recognise it. I made it at the time so that I could present the most detailed and balanced overview possible (IMHO) of the claims and counter claims both by Rose and the Met. Rose comes in for some criticism (after all, it is the Daily Mail, guys and gals) but as Lord Monckton says, Rose was completely correct in his main arguments. I would say the Met gets 90% of my criticism, Rose, 10%. The comment was as follows:
Thanks to Mr Bliss’s link to the Met Office reply on their blog I have now pieced together the claims and counter claims by toggling to and fro between article and blog as well as links given by the Met Office blog post.
I’ve laid out my findings below. It wouldn’t be facetious to liken their claims and counter claims to a hackneyed Hollywood sword fight in a banqueting hall where, instead of a straight duel, they upend tables, grab candelabras and slash down curtains to thwart and deflect the thrusts of the other party. Except in this case it is very far from being chivalric.
That said, the main thrust of the Mail article is correct. This is despite the mealy mouthed wording, stretching of the truth, no source cited for the graph and “smoke billowing” from cooling towers in the picture. It’s a shame that despite being on the high ground, David Rose resorts to these measures.
Firstly, the first paragraph of Rose’s article implies right off the bat that there was a written report by the Met Office which stated that global warming stopped 16 years ago:
‘ Global warming stopped 16 years ago reveals Met Office report…’
This is a typical ploy, putting what looks like a quote at the beginning of a sentence, followed by the word ‘reveals’ (not ‘says’). BTW the quote marks above are my quotes of Rose’s article. Therefore Rose is the one making the claim. Although this is correct, he is trying to imply that the Met Office are admitting to it and doing so by making it the central point in a special written report. Furthermore, he implies that this is embarrassing because it was “quietly released”.
The Met Office blog post reply says there is no such report and that Rose must be referring to the HADcrut 4 update. This is probably the case. They say that they had reported that they were working on it six months before and that they had published it on their website. This was in order to counter the claim that it was not quietly revealed. However, Rose says later in his article “…with no media fanfare…”. That, along with the ‘quietly revealed’ earlier on clearly should be taken together and can only mean that it was not trumpeted to the media as it would be if the new data had shown a rise. Therefore, the Met Office were answering the bare bones of the first charge and not the full accusation in the round.
The Met Office go on to say:
“Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.”
However Rose did ask, during their email exchange:
“Q.2 Second, tell me what this [new data] says about the models used by the IPCC and others which have predicted a rise of 0.2 degrees celsius per decade for the 21st century.”
This question is really a two part question: firstly, what does the new data say about their models? Secondly, albeit implicitly, what does it therefore have to say about their decadal climate predictions. The Met Office chose to answer the first of the two in its email reply but not the second. The implicit nature of the second is hardly obscure and
still less so for the Met Office because they are quick to link us to an earlier blog post “on the same theme” (their words) in Jan 2012, publishing an email exchange with Rose on the exact same subject of decadal projections where they answer at length, a question from Rose about the projections. In this earlier post they go onto complain that they were misrepresented because their rambling reply to Rose , citing projections as probabilistic and conflating temperature values with temperature trends, was cut for Rose’s (January) article.
Returning to the October article, Rose says (of the Met Office email exchange spokesman)
“Asked about a prediction that the Met Office made in 2009- that three of the the ensuing five years would set a new world temperature record- he made no comment.”
There is no specific reference to this in the email exchange which is cited as being reproduced in full by the Met Office blog post writer. Neither does it appear in the January exchange. That ‘3 out of 5’ so-called prediction was almost certainly a ‘probabalistic projection’ and not a prediction. Nevertheless it may have constituted part of the decadal projections which the Met Office knew were being implicitly referred to. This is the only piece of speculation in my comment. I would like to know if this is the case. Still, David Rose could have made it a bit clearer instead of implying that he had asked a direct question and got no answer.
In summary, there was no specific report, the Met Office didn’t declare that global warming had stopped. They didn’t bury anything. They did release new HadCRUT data that now ‘reveals’ that there has been either no warming or statistically insignificant warming in the last 16 years. They did not trumpet this as they have done for warming trends. They implied that they hadn’t been asked about decadal projections which they technically had but chose to ignore that technicality. Rose implied that his questions were direct and clear whereas they were implicit and thereby included a technical get-out if that implication was ignored. If this was a deliberate trap, the Met Office fell into it. However, it is impossible to know if it was deliberate but Rose definitely capitalised on their failure to acknowledge the obvious question of projections needing to be rethought, based on well-trodden ground in previous email exchanges.
Scute

Yes, beyond doubt. Furthermore it is clear that those responsible for the fraud plan to continue. The real problem is what to do about it. That is the big ugly elephant in the room… The government is not planning on policing the government, and our hapless citizens are circling the drain created by the unimaginable cost of this fraud.

Clear, lucid presentation as always. What a team you and Willis make.
It certainly seems like fraud to me. The Met Off responses are designed to mislead and confuse people who do not have a strong scientific background.
Mark Lynas in the Sun. Times yesterday (changing his position with regard to GM farming) exposed the level of understanding exhibited by the environmental movement. Not only the M.O. but all the scare mongers could be accused of fraud costing us so much via the renewable energy scams.
George Tetley (12.37) has a good suggestion. I would happily contribute but I suspect the chance of success would be slim.

Item. Christopher Monckton has stepped up to the plate and publicly used the word fraud. If I am not mistaken, by doing this he is taking things to the next level. Go. Fight! Win!!!

Lord Monckton is entirely correct about the misrepresentation by the Met Office – but of course that’s typical of what has allowed AGW theory to be so influential for so long; the ‘evidence’ is politically motivated, not scientific.
He’s also entirely correct about the Guardian’s policies on ‘Comment is Free’. A week or so ago Suzanne Goldenberg had an article with a screaming headline about how 2012 was the ‘Hottest Year Ever in the US’.
I obligingly posted the WUWT article on NOAS NCDC possibly having 2 sets of data and how Anthony had stumbled across a discrepancy between the raw data (cooler) and the public-facing data (hotter, obviously!)
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2013/01/06/does-noaas-national-climatic-data-center-ncdc-keep-two-separate-sets-of-climate-books-for-the-usa/
Firstly it provoked a small storm of sneering protests, then it was deleted altogether. How about that, deleted for posting the truth that La Goldenberg had conveniently omitted to include in her piece.
One more thing: perhaps Lord Monckton could have some fun asking various warmist organisations how great the news is, that global warming has stopped and Mankind is saved! There could be some interesting mileage in that one.

Dan King says:
January 14, 2013 at 1:00 pm
—
While it may be true that the nitwits at the Met actually do believe the twaddle they propagateregarding global warming, Lord Monckton gives a list of claims made by the Met that are quite clearly counter factual. Either they are frauds, or they are incompetant at their current positions.

I very much agree with Ingvar Engelbrecht (see above), who said this:
“I really think that a worldwide NGO could be formed, based on the web, financed by individuals all over the world, chaired by trustworthy people like you, Donna, JoeNova just to name a few. And with a scientific body that could match IPCC.
We have an enormous army but it is scattered.”
We are BIG!
We could even establish our own newspaper or T.V. station, since the MSM are all controlled by the Leftist/Warmistas.
We just need better organisation and I think we could be very effective in getting the truth out there.
(Great piece by Lord Monckton, as usual.)

Clear and concise as always. What a great team willis and Chris. make.
I love George Tetley’s suggestion but I would have no faith in our supreme court in Strasbourg!
The M.O. statements certainly seem to be designed to mislead and confuse politicians with the consequence of them following economically suicidal energy policies.
May not be legally ‘fraud’ but a more pertinent word escapes me.

[snip. Nice try. However, any further such replies will be deleted without comment. — mod.]

The real problem is the stupidity of those who have faith in the cause. Against all evidence, they believe in the product of the climate models, i.e., projected warming. When you point to the temperature record of the last sixteen-eighteen years, they say “cherry picking”.
When you say observations refute the models, they point to the models and say “the models say that cannot be”. When you point out that that the models simply elaborate AGW theory, they say the models prove AGW. They commit fraud because they have a need to sustain their beliefs.

they are still [pedaling] the fraud in Australia http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/rising-temperatures-make-mockery-of-rising-scepticism-20130114-2cpnz.html

Dscott,
Re: CFCs and ozone, Susan Solomon (of later IPCC notoriety) made her name in that issue in the mid-80s:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Solomon
If that science is re-assessed she will be most distressed. She was one who gave Steve McIntyre a very hard time in the IPCC review process for AR4, when he had the temerity to ask to examine data and codes. Solomon somehow ‘knew’ this was unnecessary, and came down hard on the side of Hockey Team obstructionists.
Btw, what is that about her Wikipedia entry listing her as a winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize?? Surely Wikipedia could not be so inaccurate (/sarcasm).

I feel like I am dealing with a moderator who is 16 years old. Does Anthony Watts know how disgracefully you are carrying out your responsibilities as a moderator? I plan to tell him if he does not know.
REPLY: I know, and if my moderator said you were making an ad hom that needed a snip, I’ll tend to believe him.
For now, I’m going to put you in permanent moderation, because you are using a fake email ( grappa@xoxy.net) which checks out as bad here: http://verify-email.org/ Site rules require a real email address. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony

“REPLY: I know, and if my moderator said you were making an ad hom that needed a snip, I’ll tend to believe him. ”
You better think about that. He is sticking a knife into your credibility.
“For now, I’m going to put you in permanent moderation, because you are using a fake email ( grappa@xoxy.net) which checks out as bad here: http://verify-email.org/ Site rules require a real email address. Be as upset as you wish. – Anthony”
I sent you an email via the contact form. I am not upset, just disappointed.

Dan King says:
January 14, 2013 at 1:00 pm
A good article except for the last bit. I think accusing the Met Office of fraud is over the top, and it doesn’t help your case. Fraud means an intention to deceive. It differs from just being mistaken. I agree that the Met Office is mistaken, but clearly they believe their own story. So it isn’t fraud–intent is not there.

You are naive. Why the heck did they release their graph on Xmas eve, or was it Xmas day? They are milking the public purse. Fraud is too mild a word.

alex the skeptic says:
January 14, 2013 at 2:25 pm
@joeldshore says:
January 14, 2013 at 12:54 pm
Note in the context of the discussion, the authors are talking about looking at trends after removing ENSO….
——————
Why remove ENSO? Isn’t ENSO part of the global climate equation or is it an alien induced phenomenon? Isn’t this analogous to someone being told by his doctor that if his heart problems are not taken into consideration, then he is in perfect health?
===================================
Joel Shore is one of those who thinks that data should be altered to fit the theory.
He also maintains that the product of the GCM’s (projected warming) prove AGW.
If you show him the temperature trend of the last eighteen years, he calls that “cherry picking”
You get the picture, I’m sure.

“Near-zero and even negative trends are common for intervals of a decade or less in the simulations, due to the model’s internal climate variability.
The climate models do not model internal climate variability. The models have incorporated into them an amount of (psuedo) randomness that approximates to what the climate modellers think is the amount of natural variability in the climate.
Therefore, if the models (simulations) show no warming for a decade, a century, or a millenia, this is evidence of absolutely nothing, except that the modellers have increased the amount of randomness in their model.
It is thoroughly deceitful to pretend that any period of no warming in the model simulations actually means anything.

To their credit it is definitely not money they are stealing, just numbers on bank accounts, created out of thin air by commercial banks, by lending more than the amount of deposits they have, licensed to do so by corrupt political bodies, utterly failing the general electorate that was tricked to authorize them to set up the largest Ponzi scheme of history.
The climate fraud is only a minor part of this dirty business, designed to let it go just for another while, as the bitter end is inevitable eventually anyway.

Steven Mosher says:
January 14, 2013 at 2:44 pm
as with climategate skeptics harm themselves by overcharging the case. Reserve the word fraud for better cases than this.
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or just take them to court in Italy

Guest post by Christopher Monckton of Brenchley: “The Fraud Act 2000 defines the serious imprisonable offence of fraud as dishonestly making an express or implied representation that the offender knows is or may be untrue or misleading, intending to gain money or other property (here, grant funding) or to cause loss or risk of loss to another ($30 billion a year of unnecessary “green” taxes, fees and charges to the British public).”
=============================================================
Although I am absolutely not an expert on the Fraud Act 2006, I doubt very seriously that grant funding can be considered to be a gain and unnecessary “green” taxes, fees and charges can be considered to be a loss.
My guess is that loss or gain should be direct to qualify. Grant funding is not a gain actually, it is a payment for a work/scientific research. If some scientific research has been conducted and salaries paid, then it would hardly qualify for “gain”.
Anyway, before writing such articles one should better consult a competent lawyer.

Dear Lord Moncton:
Yes, this is clearly fraud on the public – and there is something you can do.
If you can crash a climate conference, you can crash the House of Lords – after all, thepeerage still exists and law excluding you is not that clear. Since the house still has a post-judicial function: making your appeal there could force the judiciary to take note – and the government to support you. Underline “could”, of course.
Good luck!
Murph

How much of society’s resources have been wasted on a hunch and a personal belief system?
It wll be up to $ 1 trillion soon since the burn rate is up to $100 billion per year now.
Somebody has to pay for causing that amount of waste/loss at some point.

I have a touching faith in the English legal system – the courts that is, not the police.
After all, it was an English judge who declared that there were multiple falsities in Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth – and who caused the UK Department of Education to require teachers to put some balancing information alongside any showing of the film to schoolchildren. Yes, the UK school curriculum is still full of AGW bilge, but at least that judge took his decision on the FACTS of the case put before him.
And 30 years ago Tom Denning, a superb top judge said “You may be high and mighty in the land, but the law of England is above you” – when slapping down a Secretary of State for Trade He was upholding the Magna Carta idea that we should all be equal before the law.
So I have hope that little by little, the AGW case will be challenged before courts of law. Only the judges are capable of stepping aside from the groupthink that has seized the bulk of the UK political class and most of the UK media for decades now. Especially the BBC, which has an overarching impact on public debate in the UK, and which marches in lockstep with the Guardian on most issues.
Lord Monkton is correct to say that the Met Office has been defrauding us. Just as some of the ClimateGate enquiries in the UK were largely fraudulent – taking public money but blatantly failing to conduct proper enquiries. .But it won’t be a large and dramatic action for fraud that does the damage, because the Serious Fraud Office is traditionally supine. Private individuals and private bodies cannot bring a fraqud action. It is more likely that the AGW juggernaut can be slowed by smaller actions involving other aspects of the law, such as before the Freedom of Information Commissioner, or – as suggested by some commentators earlier in this thread – possible actions for libel by sceptical journalists traduced by the Met Office or other AGW zealots.
In particular, some of the recent statements by Slingo and the Met Office have been personally aimed at individual journalists, and have been so misleading and aggressive that at the very least a couple of stiff letters from lawyers for the journalists or their newspapers ought to be shot across the bows of Sling and the Met Office.
……………………
As regards the House of Lords, it has very limited powers. But Their Lordships also have more room for independent thought than the lobby-fodder politicians in the House of Commons. Lord Lawson and latterly Lord Donoughue are now asking more pertinant Parliamentary Questions than any we have seen in the Commons. Lawson was formerly a Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer, and Donoghue was chief policy advisor to two Labour Prime Ministers. I am sure they will be weighing in with further questions about the Met Office.

Monckton, I agree and suggest that you get a writ of mandamus to compel the crown to lay charges.

So what do the other climate prophets say where the global climate is heading after 5 years ?
This is from the various articles that they have posted . The figures are either eyeballed or calculated from their data.
Forecasts of global temperature anomaly [hadcrut3] at the end of 2017 [after next 5 years]
JAMES HANSEN 1.4 C for A, 1.2 C for B and 0.6 C for C
IPCC 0 .750 C [A2, A1B, B1]
CLIVE BEST 0. 55 to 0 .7 C BASED ON AIB and B1 SCENARIOS]
N.SCAFETTA 0.450 C HARMONIC MODEL [RANGE 0.3 C to 0.55 C]
MET OFFICE 0.430 C [ RANGE 0.28 C to 0.59 C] WAS 0.76 C last month
G.ORSSENGO 0.226 C[ Calculated from GMTA statistical model]
D. EASTERBROOK -0.1C, 0 C and 0.4 C [made three predictions based on 1790-1820, 1880-1915, 1945-1977 past trends]
LAST 12 MONTH TREND OF HADCRUT3 EXTENDED TO THE END OF 2017 0.350 C

I suppose that some will get away with this fraud by simply arguing, “It wasn’t me that lied; it was my computer model. All I did was report what the model told me. I am, after all, obligated to report these things, since I have been paid all of this public money to do this research. The public has a right to know what it shows.”
If it was my tail caught in this ringer, that’s what I would say. They’ve got a pretty good gig going.

joeldshore:
The point with my graphs was to show that, in 30 years time, I may be able to make exactly the same point as you have made about the trend starting from 1975, as with any of the three alternate trends I plotted (i.e. for trends beginning in 1994, 1997, or 2002). The point may also still be valid for the trend beginning in 1975, of course.
The fact is that no-one knows what the future will bring. Being as how science is attempting to predict future outcomes of a chaotic system, and since what we do know about such a system is always likely to be outweighed by what we don’t to an infinite degree, I would not be at all surprised if the extrapolation of any of these four trends came to closely resemble the future 30 years of climate change or stability…or none of them at all.
With this point in mind, I think it more constructive to evaluate the data which does exist rather than the data which doesn’t yet. In so doing you will note that the rate of global warming appears to have decelerated in recent years.

Scute says: January 14, 2013 at 1:51 pm
I would say the Met gets 90% of my criticism, Rose, 10%.
========================================
Rose deserves no criticism whatsoever. In fact he deserves plaudits for forcing the Met into a public posture of defending their “frauds”. This was an important contribution and we owe unreserved thanks to David Rose.

The Wet Office seems to be trying to soften up the world community to a new element of the CAGW doctrine – Weather of Mass Destruction. WMD has got its own poison gasses viz CO2 & CH4. Ordinary people can’t see them, but Govt. experts know they are there – hidden in the atmosphere and burried beneath the permafrost. Its worse than the experts thought – WMD.

5. “The models exhibit large variations in the rate of warming … so … such a period [15 years without warming] is not unexpected. It is not uncommon in the simulations for these periods to last up to 15 years, but longer periods are unlikely.”
The Met Office used to say
“We found about one in every eight decades has near or negative global temperature trends.”
It would appear that they adjust their possible period “without warming” as the errors of their model get exposed more and more. This period of “without warming” will eventually become another embarrassment as the actual or observed period extends into decades as it did in the past.These past periods of no net rise in tempertaures lasted 3-4 decades[see 1880-1930 and again 1940-1940

mpainter says:

Joel Shore is one of those who thinks that data should be altered to fit the theory.

Please don’t put words into my mouth. What I believe is that it is sometimes useful to reduce the noise in a data set if you can easily do so and if tests of the method show that it does indeed reduce the noise without producing a series bias.
And furthermore, I believe that if someone says, “If you do process X to a data set and observe Y then Z is true,” then it is not logically correct to conclude that Z is true if you observe Y in a data set without having done process X on it. I am surprised that anybody, let alone someone like Monckton who prides himself on logic, would contest this point.

He also maintains that the product of the GCM’s (projected warming) prove AGW.

Again, please don’t put words in my mouth. You are doing a very poor job of it. I don’t even believe it is possible to prove anything in science, since science is inductive. Just because you don’t understand how science operates, don’t foist on us your incorrect interpretations of what people who do are saying.

How is the employee retirement fund for the Met Office set up? Have they signed the priniciples of responsible investing? If so, they have a vested interest in people believing in the global warming idea to the point that the population generally does not gt upset about the govt devoting lots of money to green and combat-global warming activities. These data should not be that difficult to find.

Dan King says:
January 14, 2013 at 1:00 pm
If I promise you a million dollars if you send me your bank account by return post, I’m likely committing fraud. But if I have an idea for a business scheme that will net us both money, and I really think the plan will work–all I need is your bank account to make it happen–then I’m not committing fraud.
=============
So, the difference between fraud and bad business is belief? How can one ever be sure what the other person actually believes versus what they say they believe? For example, does Gore believe in global warming, or does he just see it as an easy way to make money? If he takes money without checking the facts it is OK, but if he checks the facts and takes the money anyways he had committed fraud? So, on this basis it is better to never check the facts and take the money, because ignorance is not fraud, it is bliss. Only someone that knows what they are talking about can commit fraud, because only they can separate fact from fiction.

The threat of legal action is a great tool to shut people up. If he was still alive you could ask Jimmy Saville. You definitely could ask Lance Armstrong.
So if you don’t want a robust discussion of global warming, then threaten your opponents with legal action.

All the world’s a stage, as the Shaking Speare team declared.
We simply watch the actors and the fake events, and chatter nervously.

In this video you can see another prominent fake, a Greenberg acting the part of warmist agitator “Max Keiser”. And of course the rest of the crew would be mere actors as well. “Nothing is real” as Theodor Adorno’s lyrics inform us.

There is another Met Office matter that has received relativey little attention. It is my understanding that the Met Office has been selling forecasts to private parties. For those forecasts to have value, they should obviously contain better information. For this to be so, the Met Office would have to withhold knowledge that they posess from the public, who paid for it. Is this not a conflict of interests?

If anyone is interested in evaluating Joel Shore, I refer them to this thread: “Wrong Prediction, Wrong Science; Unless It’s Government Climate Science” posted by Dr. Tim Ball on Jan. 8.
On that thread I engaged Joel Shore in an attempt to show that the GCM’s are simply an elaboration of AGW theory. Now, this might seem obvious to most of those who read this, but not to Joel Shore. First he denied that there was any such thing as AGW theory:
January 11, 2013 at 12:01 pm Joel Shore says:
“There is no special “AGW theory” to incorporate into the climate models.”
Then, he contradicts this statement at 8:37 am: “I did not say that there is no theory of AGW… but that this theory is formulated / supported on… evidence from climate models.
I tried to point out that climate models elaborated AGW theory and hence to refer to GCM’s as confirmation (or proof) of AGW theory was simply circular.
Joel Shore would have none of that. He finally went back to denying that GCM’s incorporate AGW theory. Thus Joel Shore.
And yes, Joel Shore would remove the effect of ENSO because he does not understand that to do so is to adjust data. Thus Joel Shore.
And, yes, Joel Shore has characterized references to the temperature record of the last sixteen years as “cherry-picking”.
And yes, Joel Shore, refers to the models as confirmation of AGW, and ignores observations which refute the models.
In addition, Joel Shore made claims that the GCM’s were in agreement on “climate sensitivity”, except for clouds, showing his unfamiliarity with the discrepancies of the GCM’s.
And yes, the GCM’s project indefinite warming because they are devised to, and in fact, can project nothing else. But Joel Shore would dispute this, too.

Willis Eschenbach;
Today, in climate science we have skeptics and AGW supporters.
>>>>>>>>>
Hmmm, in my humble opinion, no. When I call myself a skeptic I mean I am skeptical of CAGW. As soon as you take the “C” out of the acronym, I don’t know what I’d call me. (Lot’s of people call me lot’s of things but let’s restrict this to climate, shall we?). I think the first order effects of CO2 increases are positive in regard to surface temps. I think magnitude is unknown. I think sign and magnitude of feed backs is unknown. I think there is no evidence of “C”.

Between April 08 and March 09, 1,325 cases of fraud and theft were identified within UK Government bodies amounting to £4,219,500.
The types of fraud were such things as theft of physical assets, including cash; frauds that involve falsely creating or diverting payments; theft of incoming cash or cheques; fraudulent claims for payment of expenses or the creation of false payroll records; using the assets of the organisation for other than official purposes and/or supplying information to outsiders for personal gain; fraud involving contractors, sub-contractors, crown servants or any combination of these.
One particular incident involved a member of staff in a Government department creating false records and authorising fraudulent repayment claims totaling £357,100.
The Home Office has an executive agency called the National Fraud Authority which sits “at the heart of government with access to key decision-makers and ministers across a range of key departments.” The City of London Police was recognised as the National lead force for fraud under the Fraud Review in April 2008. The UK’s national fraud reporting centre is Action Fraud which is run by the NFA.
In the EU, €67.9 million was recovered as a result of the European Anti-Fraud Office’s (OLAF) cases. €351.2 million was also recovered in respect of financial follow-up cases. National courts sentenced fraudsters to a cumulative 125 years’ imprisonment during 2010 and imposed financial penalties amounting to nearly € 1.47 billion as a result of the Anti-Fraud Office’s cases.
However I think Monckton of Brenchley was simply using fraud as a way of drawing attention to the Met Office’s perverse climate prediction activities. No complaint against the Met Office will be followed up by the authorities unless it was for specific fraudulent actions such as those mentioned above by known individuals.
I would echo Willis’s comment that I believe the post by the Viscount is ‘stage management’ and can delight in how it eloquently draws attention to the way taxpayers money has been swallowed up in pursuit of a gargantuan red herring.

davidmhoffer says:
January 14, 2013 at 7:16 pm
Willis Eschenbach;
Today, in climate science we have skeptics and AGW supporters.
Only self-deluding BAU boosting arrogants have the temerity to arrogate the term ‘skeptical’.

Climate Ace;
Only self-deluding BAU boosting arrogants have the temerity to arrogate the term ‘skeptical’.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I think we should start the running for the WUWT Troll of the Year starting the first of this year and to be awarded this time next year. We could even have categories. Here’s how I would score it thus far:
Most determined to remain ignorant: Pat Ravasio for jumping into one thread after another and asking the exact same question, “what’s wrong with cleaning up the environment?”
Most irrelevant: whatsis name van Etten for posting the video of the pig suffocating to death in a gas chamber filled with CO2
Most ignorant: Joe (?) who proposed reducing the world’s population by releasing a virus that would render most people sterile.
Sorry Climate Ace, you aren’t leading in any category, but I will suggest that you are running a close second in all three.

I would like to point out to those who still rely upon the myth of “democratic institutions,” a.k.a the “rule of law,” that Lord Monckton’s very instructive exercise in civil obedience clearly shows how all those wonderful things — laws, institutions, justice, accountability — simply do not exist any more for us mere mortals.
Call it whatever you want — oligarchy, dictatorship, plutocracy — but elimination of so called “democracy” (a.k.a the “rule of law”) from our language and from our thoughts is long overdue. These words don’t mean anything any more. The very idea of democracy has failed tremendously — culturally, socially and economically — and if you pretend that it still continues and works, you merely support the myth exploited by our unconscionable rulers.

Mosher says “You see, the mistake you made when you tried to read my mind. ( i know the print is small)”. Nah, Steve, I don’t try to read your mind – I read what you write. As months and years pass, evidence for CAGW wanes, yet you seem to wax eloquently for it. Could be wrong, but probably not. So you don’t distrust published scientists, eh Mosher. Not even Mann. Wow.

@ Alexander Feht 8:38
Sadly sir you are correct.
Every institution is corrupted, rule of law is blatantly selective and deceit from our staff is the norm.
On the bright side, competent people do not need the regulatory class,common law is still salvageable and as the economies crash, we can’t carry the weight of our current helpers much longer.
It is worth reminding ourselves that our government authorities have all the power we grant them.
Our cooperation is necessary.
And authority abused is soon lost.

Alexander Feht;
The very idea of democracy has failed tremendously — culturally, socially and economically
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Absolutely, could not agree more. For example, if you make a list of the top 25 countries in the world by per capita income….OK, bad example. But look at disparity between rich and poor….OK, another bad example. But take middle class wealth, if you ranked countries by that….OK, never mind that, it isn’t about money it is about quality of life….darn, bad example again. Education levels….no, something else….I know, human rights, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, on measures like that the top 25 countries in the world would mostly be…. OK, let’s talk longevity, who lives the longest, that list of countries would be….
GOT IT! If you list the top 25 countries in the world based on over weight problems, they are almost ALL democracies! There, that proves it. Democracy is a failure.

joeldshore says:
January 14, 2013 at 12:54 pm
It does not mean the trend is zero. People who understand statistics will understand that the statement that the 95% confidence cone includes the possibility of zero trend is very different than saying that the measured trend is actually zero.
However the average of the satellite data does in fact show that the trend is 0 over 15 years. WFT does not enable us to just combine UAH and RSS, so I did things differently. See the result that the average slope is 0 since December 1997:
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/rss/from:1997/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/plot/uah/from:1997/plot/uah/from:1997.9/trend/plot/rss/from:1997.9/trend/detrend:-0.0735/offset:-0.080/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/plot/esrl-co2/from:1997.9/normalise/offset:0.68/trend

davidmhoffer,
I understand your irritation, the more so because the evidence of failure in question is all around you. Yes, there is always Zimbabwe, if you want to feel good about your special backyard. Please note that I was talking about democracy, not about a Republic where the right to vote must be earned.
Per capita income? Excellent example: it stopped growing among working people a generation ago. Middle class wealth? Depends on what you call “middle class” but in any case most of it goes to taxes, which are wasted in so many ways, and in such amounts, that Robert Mugabe won’t dream about it in his happiest hour… Quality of life? Darn, what an excellent example again! I’ve seen people in rural Turkmenistan enjoying a quality of life American suburbanites have no clue about. Education levels??? You must be kidding. There ain’t no such thing as education any more, while something they call “higher education” is so expensive, while useless, that it indentures people for life. Human rights? Ignored whenever the ruling elite needs to ignore them. Freedom of religion? As long as you believe in some BS that makes you a safe mooing milking cow, yeah, sure, go ahead and build your mosque. Freedom of speech? Only for retired professors, as Milton Fridman gracefully remarked. OK, let’s talk longevity, who lives the longest? Georgians, Bolivians, and Lebanese.
Enough?

P.S. Obesity is a sign of poverty (poor quality of food leads to overeating). People born in rich families are usually lean. Many obese people (including me) are obese not because they eat to much but because their metabolism was disrupted by hunger and terrible food in their childhood.

Gary Pearse says:
January 14, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Note that the ocean (SST) has faithfully not warmed since 1997 either and this is a Norwegian graph. Ignore the 37 month running average.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/NCDC%20SST%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1979%20With37monthRunningAverage.gif
I think you exaggerate slightly. The graph shows that the sea continued to warm after 1997 but has not done so since about 2002.

When I plot the SST figures from HadSST2 for 1998 to 2012, the linear trendlines give:
NH SST y = 0.0044x + 0.3421
SH SST y = -0.005x + 0.3299
Global SST y = -0.0003x + 0.3359

Graham W,
Infinity does NOT exist. Not in any physical reality. Infinity is a mathematical construct. It is so unreal, that when infinities start appearing in equations governing physics, it sets alarm bells ringing.
Solutions to general relativity, for example, give rise to black holes having infinite gravity at their centres. Although the black holes are plausible enough, nobody believes that gravity becomes infinite at the singularity, and for that reason simply say “Einsteins equations break down at the singularity.” Some conjectures propose ring like structures instead of a singularity, but unfortunately we can’t observe whats inside the event horizon.
Infinity is not real.

david m hoffer, thanks for putting alex straight on the ‘death of democracy’ meme. His subsequent post, about how he is obese because of things out of his control when he was a child, kinda says it all.
We are all aware of the shortcomings of democracy, in its various forms, and they are discussed here and elsewhere every day. But, the sirens who promise us Nirvana if only we would give up our individual rights are truly to be feared.

In case you did not get the information I sent via the contact form, here it is again.
one of your moderators plays fast and loose with the messages he moderates, mis-representing what the sender tried to post.
I tried to post in the ‘has the met office committed fraud’ thread.
My first try said, close to verbatim:
Maybe Lord Monckton should make a speech in the House of Lords on the rascality of the Met office.
This was blocked by your moderator with the comment:
[snip. Take your ad-hominem comments elsewhere. They are not welcome here. — mod.]
I tried again with:
All I did was suggest that Lord Monckton should make a speech in the House of Lords.
Blocked again with the comment:
[snip. Nice try. However, any further such replies will be deleted without comment. — mod.]
Your moderator, who sounds like he is about 16 years old, is acting disgracefully and scarring an otherwise sensible site.
[Reply: Your original comment – which was not as portrayed above – was clearly an ad hominem attack against LM regarding his standing in the House of Lords. It was snipped based on that. The decision has been made, and any further discussion of the matter will be deleted. — mod.]

“which checks out as bad here: http://verify-email.org/ ” – Cool! Thanks for the link. Not bad, come for an education on Climate and get some tech tips to boot!

In the UK we have these other options:
Misconduct in public office:
http://www.cps.gov.uk/legal/l_to_o/misconduct_in_public_office/
and a judicial review:
http://www.judiciary.gov.uk/you-and-the-judiciary/judicial-review

Of course they have committed fraud. The real problem is like Saville …. the establishment just don’t see what is wrong with their behaviour.
However I notice the post above refers to the charge which I think is more apt “misconduct in a public office”. I don’t think you’d have any problem getting any jury in the land to convict … but there’s no chance at all the establishment can allow the public to hold them to account in this manner.
As you said – the law only applies to us not them.

richardscourtney says:

But you claim one has to remove the 1998 ENSO peak from the data to compare the result to climate model ‘projections’. Your claim is wrong, and you know it is wrong because I explained the matter to you on a previous WUWT thread.
I repeat the explanation now for the sake of others who may not know you are repeating what you know to be a falsehood.
….

Your argument here is wrong for several reasons:
(1) The reason that ENSO is removed from both the data and the model runs is so that one can increase the signal-to-noise ratio and hence get a better estimate of the trend, which means it takes fewer years to detect whether or not the observed trend differs from the range of trends that the models as possible. Hence, by skipping this step, you are ensuring that it will take more years to determine whether or not there is a discrepancy. It is as simple as that.
(2) The authors of that NOAA report did not report how many years of a trend that is not different than zero with 95% statistically-significance are necessary for there to be a discrepancy. They reported how many years for which the trend would have to actually be ZERO when you measure it one needs so that the trend lies outside the 95% confidence cone for trends as predicted by the models. Saying a measured trend is actually zero and saying that the uncertainty in the measured trend does not exclude zero with 95% confidence are two different things.
Either of these points mean that you (and Monckton) are misapplying the NOAA falsification criterion. You can’t just take someone’s criterion and change it because you don’t like it and then use the changed criterion to justify the conclusion that you want to reach.