Josh writes: In the news today (The Sunday Times “BBC pulls plug on Met Office”) we learn that the BBC is not going to renew the Met Office’s contract to provide weather forecasts. Interesting.
Maybe we will see Piers Corbyn giving the British weather in the future.
Better than his stupid brother.
I totally disagree with all of his (Jeremy’s) public pronouncements; he isn’t stupid, I would think he is rather clever, which can’t be said for the large majority of people who may vote for him. He knows exactly what his doing, and appears that he may get there, and if he does it will not be by accident. Both brothers are very consistent in what they do regardless what the rest may think, and have totally opposing views on the AGW.
Jeremy Corbyn IS rather stupid** for cosying up to every malign dictator in the world. What would the Republicans say about a US president whose greatest heroes are Saddam Hussain, President Armadinnerjacket, Yasser Arafat, Lennin, Stalin, Khaled Mashal of Hamas, Fidel Castro, plus a fine collection of Irish terrorists.
** There is another word for this kind of stupidity.
There is lot of difference between stupidity and misuse of intelligence. None of the people you mentioned were stupid, else they wouldn’t get where they were, it is the case of terrible misuse of ability in and for manipulating people and events, but obviously J.C. isn’t in their class.
We do not have to fear stupid people as such, but need to be cautious and even very concern when such people attract support and even worse the adulation of disgruntled masses.
Ralfellis: What would the republicans say in that situation? Usually it, “hello Mr. Obama.”
vukevic: perhaps the word needed when referring to dictators and their like is ‘cunning’?
That “news” item has a very low believability score. I’d be very surprized if it were to be true.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34031785
Oh dear. But now I am going to the bookies and place a bet on when the MET will be re-enlisted.
On BBC radio 2 this morning, it was stated that it is possible that whoever gets the contract to supply the BBC with weather forecasting could outsource it…..
… To the Met Office!
Yes, it is true. After 92 years the Met Office is not being awarded the BBC contract for weather forecasts
The Met Office often give wrong forecasts, not surprising given the variability of the British weather and it would be good if they admitted it more often. I live some 15 miles away and often think they might be more accurate if they looked out of their windows rather than at their computer screens.
Having said that, there is a lot of expertise and many fine scientists at the Met Office and they have a first class library and archive, so lets hope it wont have a long lasting effect as ultimately-despite their faults-the Met Office is a useful organisation, albeit one that tends to like models more than observations.
tonyb
Ah yes, but you will still get severe weather warnings from the MetOffice.
p.s perhaps they shouldn’t have listened to the bloging ‘crank’ and change the CET.
The Met Office’s predictions became more accurate, at least for 24 hours ahead, when they got a weather satellite. The (useful) weather computer extrapolated from the info coming in.
The rot set in when the Hadley Centre was set up forming HadCRU (with the East Anglia University Climatic Research Unit) whose job was to ‘prove’ AGW and a central plank of the scam. It is politically controlled by alarmist activists. It’s the Hadley Centre that makes the ridiculous longer term predictions that the scientists in the weather forecast part get blamed for. However THEY want to keep their jobs so they keep quiet.
The BBC probably got a new window and decided to do their own.
Every single weather forecasting organization in the world often give wrong forecasts.
It would appear that they may have to put the contract out to tender
http://www.bbc.co.uk/supplying/opportunities/tenderprocess
“Where the overall value is likely to exceed certain financial thresholds then the BBC is required to follow procedures laid down in the EU Public Procurement Regulations.”
It’s the LAW
For the benefit of our American cousins, Piers Corbyn is an astrophysicist and prominent global warming sceptic (skeptic.. . Nah, you guessed that’un). His brother Jeremy is a radical leftie and frontrunner in the race for the Labour Party leadership.
Thank you, sir. It’s hard to keep up when we have our own soap operas inundating us.
I thought Jeremy was that grumpy British car guy who punches people.
That’s a Jeremy who would make a great Prime Minister!
I’m not interested in cars but I’ve been a Top Gear fan for some time because Jeremy Clarkson and co are so mad – and very entertaining.
I can’t stand the new presenter so I won’t be watching Top Gear in future.
And, now, back to the other Jeremy….
Yes, dear Jeremy.
For readers across the Pond, Jeremy Clarkson runs one of the best political satire and P.C. satire TV programs of the last decade. A brilliant analysis of everything that is wrong with the modern liberal world.
Oh, and there are one or two pictures of cars too, for no apparent reason…. 😉
R
Maybe one ‘bar-b-que summer’ forecast too many.
The contract is being put out to tender, the Dutch and New Zealand met offices are apparently also in with a shout.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/pa/article-3207611/Met-Office-loses-BBC-weather-forecasting-contract.html
As long as it’s not the Australian BOM!
So the MO could still win it, if they bid highest?
I don’t believe they are tendering. It is almost assuredly going to the commercial arm of the Meteorological Service of New Zealand, Metra. http://www.metraweather.com/ ( with apologies in advance to our host if this link to a competing service is undesireable )
LOL! It’s government related so of course the highest bidder will win.
They should use the Norwegian Met Office. I use their ‘YR’ app and the forecasts are every bit as accurate as the BBC weather app, with more useful details such as hourly precipitation and wind speed/direction over the next 48 hrs. Very useful for fair weather golfers!
I use them too.
The Norwegians seem to be a lot more accurate than the UK Met Office, maybe they don’t have such an expensive, top heavy, bureaucracy which is more concerned about its own remuneration and perks than accurate forecasting.
As for the BBC, they would obviously like someone with their own business model, a top heavy bureaucracy concerned about its remuneration and perks, rather accurate reporting.
So this may not be the final chapter in the story.
yr.no are rather good. I have found them to be quite reliable over the past year or so.
I’m Norwegian. yr.no is a cooperation between NrK, i.e. the Norwegian exact equivalent of the BBC and Meteorologisk Institutt, i.e. the Norwegian exact equivalent of the UK Met Office. Actually, the Norwegian Meteorologisk Institutt base their long term predictions from computations in Reading, UK, performed by the UK Met Office….
Readers of WUWT will be familiar with one of the Senior Researchers at the Norwegian Meteorologisk Institutt…. Rasmus Benestad
http://www.met.no/Rasmus+E.+Benestad.b7C_wtHK0F.ips
Replacing the UK Met Office with Norwegian Meteorologisk institutt would be an interesting move….
…And is it true that ‘yr.no’ translates to ‘drizzle.no’?
(If so, it’s not the most encouraging site to visit when wondering whether to buy an engangsgrill and go på tur)
This isn’t really news. As mwhite points out above. The BBC, being a publicly funded body is required by law to put the contract out to tender as part of the charter. If the MO is not in the running it either means they are unwilling to be considered or that the BBC believes they can not offer the same quality of service and value for money that others can.
If the MO concentrated on its raison d’etre instead of squandering £millions on attempts at prognosticating on climate, maybe it’d have been competitive enough to retain the contract.
I can do nothing but concur. The money they have spent on Cray supercomputers in the last couple of decades would feed a few third world countries and it’s all been done partly, with my money.
it would not be so bad if the accuracy of forecasts had improved in the age of the supercomputer . however, anyone that spends any significant time in or around the sea knows the forecasts from the met have got less accurate.
I think it’s proof positive of GIGO. Nothing a Cray can do to fix that, except process their fudged data faster.
Having said that, pity that such a good piece of kit was wasted on them. Wonder if it will show up on eBay…
Definitely should use Corbyn. He is more accurate for a tiny, tiny fraction of the price.
Compared with Cameron, yes. But compared with Cooper?
Oh, sorry. Wrong Corbyn.
They’ll never use Piers Corbyn, as he, correctly, attributes weather on Earth to solar activity.That’s the last thing they’d ever want to admit.
What a hoot if the vikings got the contract. Would they be happy to give the shipping forecast: are they happy with the term “Viking”?
Or the Kiwis: would they work the expression “long white cloud” into every forecast?
As a chap of Danish heritage I can say that nobody would take issue with the term Viking. I think a lot of us that trace ancestry to those people are quite proud of it. Although the term ‘Viking’ was actually just a description loosely meaning ‘Raider from the sea’ A more modern term would be ‘Pirate’. It’s not descriptive of a nationality but rather that of all the Norsemen who came raiding the British Isles as well as Northern and Central Europe. They got around a bit. I think many are surprised to learn that they sacked Paris a couple of times and some still do not know that they settled Newfoundland long before Columbus showed up in the West Indies. I’ve always found it odd that America celebrates Columbus as they do given that he never set foot on the North American continent. I’m rambling now aren’t I? 😉
Not to mention leaving graffiti in the Hagia Sofia.
As I descendant of Flemish fishermen, somewhere have Norse roots (still has Scandinavia as favorite travel destination), as the Norse occupied a lot of coastal areas down to Normandy in North-West France. There the Norse adopted the French language, but in Flanders they mixed up with Flemish/Dutch which they influenced such that if one speaks slang, the Norwegians still can understand much of what you say or ask for…
Excellent point by Sandy up there. It had somehow slipped my mind. Although i think it’s fair to say that the world and his brother visited Konstantinoupolis between the fourth and eleventh centuries of the last millennia.
Also as an aside: Is anyone else having an issue remaining logged in to wordpress? I’m having to log in for each comment. Although this might have something to do with this new addon ‘Privacy Badger’ I am trying.
Craig…this is a test with WordPress. I don’t have ‘Privacy Badger’, and I use Firefox..
Thank you Kokoda. I have resolved my problem. Except now I am logged in with my pseudonym rather than my name which I previously typed. It was indeed the addon privacy badger which was treating the wordpress login cookie as a tracking cookie. All sorted now, thanks.
The Met probably didn’t pay their TV license fees. That’ll learn’em
You would have thought the met office would have checked before they paid £97m for a new computer last year.
That was spending so they could continue developing more and more accurate models to predict warming whilst they were still getting a fat cheque from the Licence payers.
Why is it always 97?
An-thony should put in a tender for WUWT to take over, with little bit of local denizen help
Looks like MSM Jamaica has copped on
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/The-global-scam-called-man-made-climate-change_19222999
Now if only we, as taxpayers, could stop the funding both the BBC and the MetO through taxation.
Please don’t turn them commercial, having sorted out how to get all the beeb for nil$$ from elsewhere and crack their excellent DRM so i can keep the copies i like – leave it alone please
The BBC are under pressure to stop wasting money so perhaps this time they couldn’t ignore cheaper quotes to stick with their global warming mates at the MetO. I wonder if any other taxpayer funded organisations such as councils might look elsewhere for weather services following this historic split.
This is nothing short of astonishing if true!!! No national broadcaster would ever fail to use a national weather forecaster! This really is incdredible!!! I am shocked as I never thought it would happen!!! I am up for Corbyn getting the job, if it could happen! Still in disbelief! Alan Hannaford.
I find it somewhat ironic that the BBC thinks actually getting the forecasts accurate is of much importance. Surely if the Met Office are well intentioned that would be sufficient – that is what the BBC (as most left wing organisations) usually finds to be of paramount importance. Believe in AGW and sound all the right alarms – who cares if your forecasts are crap?
Or has the BBC been the recipient of a backbone and/or brain transplant?
Agreed. Accuracy is not required of government entities.
So a little bit of British heritage will now disappear from the airwaves:
A great institution fell among climateers.
I hope greenpeace get the contract. Every year will be warmer than the last and I wont have to shovel snow in July ever again. The sea level rise might be a bit of a bummer, but I’d rather swim in warm water than shovel snow
If Greenpeace did the weather forecast 😉
Chris Waddell
If they are not forecasting for the BBC, they can spend more time homogenising.
You’ve heard of schadenfreude. Now we have chaudenfroid – a warm feeling engendered by seeing those connected to warmism left out in the cold.
Very clever. I do wish there was a ‘favourite post’ option à la Twitter.
I thought ‘chaudenfroid’ was the earth’s climate prediction from the True Believers when they realized the warming part wasn’t cooperating.
So, the BBC recognizes that the Met Office can not provide accurate weather forecasts,
but continues to accept that the Met Office can provide accurate climate forecasts!?
Sumthin’ ain’t right.
Met Office is an abbreviation of Meth Office. So why would you expect anything weather related?
Anything delusional goes though, like the ability to forcast climate.
Hope that answers your question! 🙂
A flock of Phil Jones’ deceit coming home to roost, […] far and wide and providing fertilizer for a new crop of standards?
defecating?
The BBC and the Met Office are partners (along with FoE, WWF, etc) in the Great Global Warming Swindle, that seeks to enhance The Blob at the expense of private sector wealth creation, so how delightfully ironic it is that competition rules have caused this minor upset to the Gravy Train.
Whilst they’re at it, perhaps three of the BBC’s ‘science And environment correspondent’ job roles currently occupied by David Shukman, Roger Harrabin and Matt McGrath need putting out for immediate tender as well . . . .
Wouldn’t it be just wonderful to see the likes of James Delingpole and the mighty Christopher Booker brought in instead.
Hmmm … !
Queue “Crack In The World.”
Let’s see who at the BBCCCP will put their head in who’s crack!
Quote from the UK Ministry of Science, “Now THAT is a mighty crack.”
You know of course that the EU will be frightfully envious and launch a left-flank counter.
Ha ha
Really enjoy Sci-Fi movies from this era…more robust that climate science.