Met Office Science Chief Attacked For Climate Claim
Britain’s winters are getting colder because of melting Arctic ice, the Government’s forecaster said yesterday. Met Office chief scientist Julia Slingo said climate change was “loading the dice” towards freezing, drier weather. –Ben Jackson, The Sun, 11 April 2013
Bungling weather bosses predicted a drier than usual winter, it has emerged. The Met Office’s staggeringly inaccurate forecast was made at the end of November last year – just a month before the record-breaking deluge began. –Tom Newton Dunn, The Sun, 11 February 2014
The chief scientist of the Met Office has been criticised for claiming that “all the evidence” indicated climate change had played a role in the recent storms and flooding. Some scientists are said to be concerned that the remark has been interpreted as drawing a strong connection between climate change and the exceptional winter weather when the evidence is incomplete. Her speech came after the Prime Minister said he “very much suspected” that there was a link. “What Dame Julia says goes, at least by implication, beyond what most climate scientists are willing to say,” one academic said. “I find it very hard to look inside her mind as to what made her think that was a sensible thing to say.” –Oliver Moody, The Times, 18 February 2014
Instead of defending Julia Slingo’s statement on the floods the Met Office have defended the original report. This is very interesting: it seems that the Met Office is unable to come up with any defence of its chief scientist’s public statements. Yesterday I suggested that Slingo’s statement had misled the public. This clarification doesn’t seemed to have changed anything at all. It looks bad. Very bad. –Andrew Montford, Bishop Hill, 17 February 2014
A study by the Met Office and Centre for Ecology and Hydrology concluded that “it is not possible, yet, to give a definitive answer on whether climate change has been a contributor or not.” At the launch of the report, the Met Office chief scientist, Dame Julia Slingo, seemed to go a bit beyond what appeared in print. She said: “All the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change.” Not some of the evidence, but all of it. The Met Office scrambled to produce a statement to assert that there was no disagreement. It also confirmed the “uncertainty” about the storm track in the North Atlantic but did not address whether the chief scientist had gone beyond the conclusions of their own report. Does this leave us any wiser? No. In my experience scientists always disagree – that’s how research advances. –David Shukman¸BBC News, 18 February 2014
In the row over whether climate change is causing the current floods and storms, the sceptics are the ones who are sticking to the consensus, as set out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — you know, the body that the alarm-mongers are always telling us to obey. And it is the sceptics who have been arguing for years for resilience and adaptation, rather than decarbonisation. While the green lobby has prioritised decarbonisation, sceptics have persistently advocated government spending on adaptation, so as to grab the benefits of climate change but avoid the harm, and be ready for cooling as well if the sun goes into a funk. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 17 February 2014
Most of the climate sceptics operate on self-employed shoestrings and cost you nothing: Andrew Montford, David Holland, Nic Lewis, Doug Keenan, Paul Homewood, Fay Kelly-Tuncay. There is only one professional sceptic in the entire country — Benny Peiser — and he is not paid by the taxpayer. –Matt Ridley, The Times, 17 February 2014
Extreme weather events being taken as signs for the coming end unless sinful ways are repented is as old as civilization. Today’s climate panic is merely just the latest relapse to a very old mental disorder that has afflicted mankind for thousands of years. The only antidote is reason and knowledge. –Pierre Gosselin, No Tricks Zone, 17 February 2014
This Newsbytes is from The GWPF and Dr. Benny Peiser
Terri Jackson:
At February 20, 2014 at 1:22 am you say
Sadly, the issue is not as clear-cut as you suggest.
There are people (e.g. the IPCC and Ferdinand Engelbeen) who assert that the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration (measured at Mauna Loa since 1958) is accumulation of man-made emissions. Their assertion is clearly wrong for several reasons one of which you cite.
There are other people (e.g. Bart) who claim the cause of the CO2 rise is a response to the temperature rise from the Little Ice Age (LIA).
And there are others (e.g. me and my co-authors) who say the available information cannot resolve the true cause or causes of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration as measured at Mauna Loa.
The problem is that the system of the carbon cycle seems to have altered its equilibrium state and is adjusting towards a new equilibrium. Some mechanisms of the system have long time constants so they take years and decades to adjust to a new equilibrium. Using that understanding we were able to model the atmospheric CO2 rise as having a variety of causes both natural and anthropogenic (i.e. man-made).
(ref. Rorsch A, Courtney RS & Thoenes D, ‘The Interaction of Climate Change and the Carbon Dioxide Cycle’ E&E v16no2 (2005) ).
Each of our models matched the empirical data for each year without any need for ‘adjustment’ such as the unjustifiable 5-year smoothing which the IPCC uses to obtain agreement between its Bern model and the empirical data.
So, the issue is;
What has changed the equilibrium state of the carbon cycle?
The most likely cause of the change is the temperature rise from the LIA, but it could be several other things including the anthropogenic CO2 emission.
Importantly, the sources and sinks of CO2 – which you cite – provide no answer to that question.
What can be said is that the IPCC’s understanding of the cause of the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration is falsified by much empirical data including the satellite data which you cite.
I have written this post to avoid this thread being disrupted by debate of the carbon cycle. The issues have been debated repeatedly on WUWT – notably between Ferdinand Engelbeen and myself – and there is no purpose in debating the issues again here. If you want to see some of the previous discussions then use the WUWT Search facility for Salby and read the associated threads.
I hope this is helpful.
Richard
With the AMO plunging now, the MET office will wrong at accelerated rates going forward. This assumes they stick with certain underlying warming biases in their predictions.
With the AMO plunging now, the MET office will be wrong at accelerated rates going forward. This assumes they stick with certain underlying warming biases in their predictions.
Hung out to dry? How, with all that rain?