Excerpt from Bishop Hill (plus a cartoon from Josh) showing that the claim of a statistically significant temperature rise can’t be supported, and the Met office is ducking parliamentary questions: (h/t Randy Hughes)
Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable
This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.
It has been widely claimed that the increase in global temperatures since the late 1800s is too large to be reasonably attributed to natural random variation. Moreover, that claim is arguably the biggest reason for concern about global warming. The basis for the claim has recently been discussed in the UK Parliament. It turns out that the claim has no basis, and scientists at the Met Office have been trying to cover that up.
The Parliamentary Question that started this was put by Lord Donoughue on 8 November 2012. The Question is as follows.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government … whether they consider a rise in global temperature of 0.8 degrees Celsius since 1880 to be significant. [HL3050]
The Answer claimed that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”. This means that the temperature rise could not be reasonably attributed to natural random variation — i.e. global warming is real.
…
The issue here is the claim that “the temperature rise since about 1880 is statistically significant”, which was made by the Met Office in response to the original Question (HL3050). The basis for that claim has now been effectively acknowledged to be untenable. Possibly there is some other basis for the claim, but that seems extremely implausible: the claim does not seem to have any valid basis.
Go read the entire essay here: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/met-office-admits-claims-of-significant-temperature-rise-unt.html
Josh has a go at them:
@Margaret hardman
The Met Office certainly has commercial obligations to recoup some of its costs. And the ‘trading fund’ model it operates under assumes that it will be able to cover more than half of them from outside sources. But that arrangement merely covers how it is funded, not its governance
It is still responsible and accountable for what it does to Parliament.
@Latimer Alder
I agree it is accountable. Some of the media criticism has been justified in recent years but a lot of it has been whipped up to fill space. I was responding to the tax payer coughs up for it side.
This outlines its governance (I assume it is the most recent version, 2007)
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/6/4/Met_Office_Framework_document.pdf
Page 13 outlines parliamentary accountability of the Met Office.
And before anyone asks, I don’t work for either parliament, any political party nor for the Met Office.
@Margaret hardman
I agree that the Met Office covers a lot of its operating costs by selling its services. But it is not a truly commercial operation.
1. The guarantor/stakeholder of last resort is the government – it does not have the same commercial discipline or risks as a private organisation. It cannot go bankrupt.
2. Operating costs are not the same as total costs. We pay for the buildings and computers and a whole lot of other stuff.
Nick Stokes says: May 29, 2013 at 11:15 pm
Sure, I could to try to help you – although I have absolutely no idea what difference it might make to the price of tea in China, nor how it will assist you in responding to the many questions you’ve already ducked and/or to which you’ve pretended to reply with your typical non-responsive lack of clarity and context. You would probably be better off doing some research into the relevant parliamentary procedures and traditions.
But before we even consider going down that road, let’s review the bidding, so to speak.
I know that context is not a concept of which you are particularly fond, so I trust you’ll appreciate the brevity of the quotes I cite below. Your opening “bid” was:
[Nick Stokes May 27, 2013 at 11:48 am:]
As snotrocket reminded you (May 27, 2013 at 12:34 pm):
I don’t recall seeing any Hansard citation from you to substantiate this allegation of “confused discussion in the House of Lords”. So, rather than admit that you were wrong, you claimed:
[Nick Stokes:May 27, 2013 at 12:47 pm:]
So you have no citation from Hansard regarding any “confused discussion”. I agree; however, that the first of the SIX questions asked could well have been interpreted as “simply asking if the rise was significant”. Which, of course, is what precipitated my initial request [May 29, 2013 at 9:18 pm] that you explain what you do not understand (or what confuses you) about Lord Donoughue’s (May 29, 2013 at 10:31 am):
But I digress …
Rather than admit that you had absolutely no evidence whatsoever of any “discussion in the House of Lords” (“confused” or otherwise) you simply ducked the question (as snotrocket correctly observed in his comment of May 27, 2013 at 1:05 pm) while moving your goal-post under cover of a shroud of self-serving Stokian fog, with the utterly non-sequitorial [May 27, 2013 at 1:27 pm]:
As snotrocket subsequently asked [May 27, 2013 at 1:47 pm]:
Consequently, Lord Donoughue was entirely correct when he (parenthetically) noted [May 29, 2013 at 10:31 am]:
And as Lord Donoughue had also noted:
All of the above transpired long before your most recent exercise in pure unadulterated “revisionism” to the effect that you:
Nonetheless, the indefatigable, evidence-and-context-avoiding Nick Stokes, indisputable master of the arts of obfuscation, misdirection and diversionary nit-pickery chose to respond to Lord Donoughue as follows [May 29, 2013 at 2:16 pm]
Which brings us full circle, doesn’t it?! In short, there was no “discussion in the House of Lords” (“confused” or otherwise) – nor were there any “confused” questions.
But, not to worry, Nick. I’m sure that with your demonstrated skills in “add a word here, change a word there” mode of doing “debate” and “discussion”, David Irving would welcome you with open arms into the fold, as a foot-soldier in his particular blight brigade.
The Met Office response to Doug Keenan’s post is here.