By Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link. Image modified.

UK Government’s T̵o̵r̵c̵h̵w̵o̵o̵d̵ ̵I̵n̵s̵t̵i̵t̵u̵t̵e ARIA to Provide Early Warning of the End of the World

Essay by Eric Worrall

“… We empower scientists and engineers to pursue research that is too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere …”

Wanted: An early-warning system for the end of the world

Some experts believe we could hit catastrophic climate ‘tipping points’ in a matter of years. The U.K. government, with a bit of help from Dominic Cummings, is trying to prepare.

DECEMBER 30, 2024 4:21 AM CET
BY CHARLIE COOPER

LONDON — The U.K., along with the rest of the world, may be on the brink of climate disaster.

If the worst happens, Whitehall is going to want a little bit of warning. 

So it is turning to scientific experts for help — and to a government-backed center for innovative research which also happens to be the legacy left by one of the most controversial figures in recent U.K. political history.

The £81 million, multi-year scheme could deploy robots — dubbed WALL-E by some experts, in honor of Pixar’s robotic environmental hero — to monitor the impact of climate change in the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic. The cash would also be used for supercomputer models of historic climate data.

It will all be led by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), an independent body funded by the government …

Read more: https://www.politico.eu/article/wanted-climate-early-warning-system-for-the-end-of-the-world/

From the ARIA website;

From climate change to AI, society faces challenges and opportunities that can be uniquely addressed by science + technology.

Who we are

Created by an Act of Parliament, and sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation, and Technology, ARIA funds breakthrough R&D in underexplored areas to catalyse new paths to prosperity for the UK and the world. 

What we do

We empower scientists and engineers to pursue research that is too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere. ARIA’s programmes are shaped and led by our Programme Directors, scientific and technical leaders with deep expertise and a focused, creative vision for how technology can enable a better future.

Read more: https://www.aria.org.uk/about-aria

Imagine a scientific body dedicated to making climate science even more speculative.

Normally I would be in favour of a major pure research initiative. Sometimes giving scientists a big handful of money and instructions to explore the road less travelled can produce genuinely useful results. Who could have guessed back in the early 1900s that all that unworldly Einstein theoretical physics would lead to nuclear power, modern computers and near perfect GPS systems.

But more often giving people a big handful of money without clear direction on what to do with it leads to pointless waste.

In my opinion this new ARIA body sadly seems hopelessly compromised. The brief appears to be heavily biased towards exploring the non-existent climate crisis. But let’s be optimistic – there is always a possibility someone who receives money from this new government body will produce research of genuine value.

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KevinM
December 30, 2024 10:12 am

“… We empower scientists and engineers to pursue research that is too speculative, too hard, or too interdisciplinary to pursue elsewhere …”

The cash would also be used for supercomputer models of historic climate data.

Nobody has done that elsewhere?
Also- why is a supercomputer required?

Reply to  KevinM
December 30, 2024 11:27 am

The cash would also be used for supercomputer models of historic climate data.”

So they are going to “model” historic data, instead of using the actual historic data that was recorded.

How Met Office of them !!

The past will get colder and colder. !

MarkW
Reply to  bnice2000
December 30, 2024 4:48 pm

If they can build a GCM that successfully replicates historical data without having to use 100+ parameterized variables, would be an improvement over we have now.

Reply to  MarkW
December 30, 2024 5:48 pm

Real historic data or “agenda-adjusted” historic data ?

Reply to  bnice2000
December 31, 2024 5:19 am

Yes, there is a difference.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  MarkW
December 31, 2024 8:19 am

“If”

old cocky
Reply to  KevinM
December 30, 2024 2:30 pm

Also- why is a supercomputer required?

Just because

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  old cocky
December 31, 2024 8:19 am

Give them toys to play with, of course.

December 30, 2024 10:15 am

“Wanted: An early-warning system for the end of the world. . .

It will all be led by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA),
an independent body funded by the government …”
______________________________________________

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !

Independent so long as they find what the government wants them to find.

Curious George
Reply to  Steve Case
December 30, 2024 12:59 pm

What a racket!

Reply to  Curious George
December 31, 2024 2:47 am

Yep.
Arias usually result in a racket which few folk can understand unless they have the music score including the libretto in front of them

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Steve Case
December 31, 2024 8:23 am

Ok. For the purposes of exercising grey matter, assume an early warning system can be devised with sufficient accuracy. Unstated is how much advanced warning would it provide?

We have had 10 years, adjusted annually to 10 years, rinse spine repeat.
All of the end of the world pronouncements over the past 50+ years have been false.
Unstated is the criteria for determining the end of the world is imminent.

Baseless waste of money if those two criteria are not formalized.

dk_
December 30, 2024 10:21 am

Do ARIA use the same publicity agency as Sierra Club?

Scissor
December 30, 2024 10:25 am

It was much hotter before and much colder than before but certainly a bear could eat Goldilocks.

December 30, 2024 10:34 am

 “The cash would also be used for supercomputer models of historic climate data.”

err.. hello, what happened to the other one?

17 February 2020:

  • £1.2 billion investment confirmed for state-of-the-art supercomputer to improve severe weather and climate forecasting
  • the latest supercomputing technology will unleash the full potential of weather and climate data for the UK
  • data from the supercomputer will be used to inform government policy as part of leading the global fight against climate change and meeting net zero emission targets

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/12-billion-for-the-worlds-most-powerful-weather-and-climate-supercomputer

J Boles
Reply to  Alpha
December 30, 2024 10:40 am

Yet another way for the elites to suck the government teat at the expense of the little people they think that they are helping. Disgusting.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  J Boles
December 30, 2024 11:01 am

1992. Maurice Strong
“We may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.”
— and —
“quest of poverty . . . reduced resource consumption . . . and set levels of mortality control.”

It’s not like we were not warned.

Timothy Wirth:
“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”

Richard Benedick:
“A global warming treaty must be implemented even if there is no scientific evidence to back the [enhanced] greenhouse effect.”

These are just the US politicians weighing in, a third of a century ago.

cgh
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
December 30, 2024 11:11 am

Maurice Strong was Canadian. Pierre Trudeau appointed him to the head of the state oil corporation Petro-Canada. Much later in the early 1990s, Bob Rae appointed him head of Ontario Power Generation to demolish Ontario’s nuclear power fleet.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  cgh
December 31, 2024 8:25 am

I could have been clearer. The second 2 were US politicians.

J Boles
Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
December 30, 2024 11:42 am

And you know, when I was young and naive I used to kind of think the same way (soak the rich) but time and experience and lots of thought showed me to be wrong and I am glad I changed my mind.

Reply to  J Boles
December 30, 2024 3:41 pm

Winston Churchill is often credited with saying that if “you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.”

Reply to  Sparta Nova 4
December 30, 2024 3:37 pm

Just remember,

… this is what AGW-cultists and trolls are supporting !

Reply to  J Boles
December 30, 2024 11:58 am

Yet another way for the elites to suck the government teat at the expense of the little people they think that they are helping. Disgusting.

Fixed it for you.Too wordy.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Phil R
December 31, 2024 8:26 am

Little people = deplorables.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  J Boles
December 30, 2024 12:51 pm

In no way are elites tying to help anyone except themselves.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Alpha
December 31, 2024 8:24 am

Oh, you need to understand. That 2020 technology is so out of date it can’t possibly be adequate to the new task. Furthermore, it is used. Need bright and shiny new.

December 30, 2024 10:44 am

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”, P. T. Barnum

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Ed Reid
December 30, 2024 12:52 pm

No evidence he said that.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 30, 2024 1:50 pm

But lots of evidence it’s true.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Gunga Din
December 30, 2024 5:14 pm

True, but not the point I was making.

CampsieFellow
Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 31, 2024 3:20 am

That point seems to have eluded whoever gave you downticks.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 30, 2024 3:52 pm

The REAL Story Behind the Quote “There’s a Sucker Born Every Minute” | by Ryo Mac | Skeptikai | Medium

Rather, it was likely that a banker named David Hannum from Syracuse, New York who actually said it”

D. J. Hawkins
Reply to  bnice2000
December 31, 2024 9:47 am

Somehow, that seems even more appropriate.

Reply to  Jeff Alberts
December 31, 2024 1:35 am

I’m not sure why people vote you down for stating a truth

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Redge
December 31, 2024 7:23 am

Beats me. Likely just the person who posted the comment.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Ed Reid
December 31, 2024 8:30 am
Sparta Nova 4
December 30, 2024 10:52 am

Story Tip:

https://21sci-tech.com/Articles%202007/20_1-2_CO2_Scandal.pdf

From 2007. How Ice core data was manipulated.
How cosmic rays and the sun rule the climate.
How IPCC rewrote the science reports to match the political report:

” In the words of the IPCC, this delay is needed for adjustment of the main text, so that “Changes . . . [could be] made to ensure consistency with the ‘Summary Courtesy of Zbigniew Jaworowski Spring/Summer 2007 21st CENTURY Science & Technology for Policymakers.’”

Temperatures.
Sea levels (Maldives) for the past 5000+ years.

All with a couple hundred references, some of which are the papers published in the early 19th century.

“CO2: The Greatest Scientific Scandal Of Our Time”

And this was 17 years ago.

Ed Zuiderwijk
December 30, 2024 11:08 am

These people should go out more and get a life.

Bob
December 30, 2024 11:17 am

Surely they could find a more constructive use for 81 million pounds.

MarkW
Reply to  Bob
December 30, 2024 4:52 pm

Since most of the money will be going into their pockets, for them it will be quite constructive.

December 30, 2024 11:24 am

catastrophic climate net-zero ‘tipping points’ in a matter of years.

Now that would be a safe prediction, as it seems to have already started in the UK.

Reply to  bnice2000
December 30, 2024 5:43 pm

Maybe these “scientists” will discover that the UK may tip over. I’m still waiting for Hank Johnson’s prediction that Guam will tip over–NOT!

December 30, 2024 11:56 am

It will all be led by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA), an independent body funded by the government …

If you’re funded by the government, you ain’t independent.

strativarius
December 30, 2024 12:22 pm

too speculative

Modelling; in other words. With a go faster computer.

Reply to  strativarius
December 30, 2024 10:58 pm

Often a faster computer gets you to the wrong answer quicker.

Reply to  strativarius
December 31, 2024 1:37 am

Probably just go-faster stripes and pocket the change

Reply to  strativarius
December 31, 2024 6:52 am

There is an outfit that ranks computers by a Gflops/W rating, i.e. “green supercomputers”:

https://top500.org/lists/green500/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green500

***flops = floating-point operations per second

December 30, 2024 12:26 pm

So it is turning to scientific experts for help — and to a government-backed center for innovative research which also happens to be the legacy left by one of the most controversial figures in recent U.K. political history.

Experts are amazing! 😉 This sounds like another shush fund that will mysteriously vanish in a few years.

Reply to  Paul Hurley
December 30, 2024 11:01 pm

Even as engineering students we laughed at the concepts of experts. Our definition of expert was: “a former drip under pressure–x-spurt.”

strativarius
December 30, 2024 12:31 pm

Story tip

Vegan men ‘frail’ and more likely to die young, new analysis of British data suggests – with unhealthy plant-based foods to blame

a reliable indicator of early death. 
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-14236003/vegan-diets-plantbased-frail-early-death.html

Scissor
Reply to  strativarius
December 30, 2024 2:05 pm

Say it isn’t so, Bill Nye.

Reply to  Scissor
December 30, 2024 11:03 pm

Bill Nye: the non-science guy.

Reply to  strativarius
December 30, 2024 11:02 pm

Yet, you hear statements that the health of vegans is superior to meat eaters.

Jeff Alberts
Reply to  Jim Masterson
December 31, 2024 7:28 am

Certain aspects might be. They likely won’t develop gout.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Jim Masterson
December 31, 2024 8:33 am

But it’s true.

On the other hand, it’s not true.

2hotel9
December 30, 2024 12:32 pm

So they are going to tell us when they are f*cking things up instead of letting it be a surprise, like Chinese Disease was supposed to be until Little Tiny Fauci screwed the whole thing up.

Duane
December 30, 2024 12:42 pm

What’s crazy is that the only “climate disasters” known to have occurred in Earth’s history are when it gets colder, not when it gets warmer. And when they do happen, the changes take place over hundreds to thousands of years, plenty of time for humans to adapt.

Yet they’ve gotten themselves so worked up such that they have to use Hollywood films to try and scare people with fake disasters … which after years or decades later, people look at the Earth now and say to ourselves, “WTF? Where’s the disaster?”, which of course just fully discredits the end of the worlders.

Of course, religionists have been preaching for many millennia, or even tens of millennia, about a coming cataclysmic end of the world, whether mainstream religions like Christianity or more cult like groups from Mormons to Heavens gate to do different things from mainstream Christianity. Indeed, all religions from the dawning of human religious thought and practice have preached that the end of the world is coming, perhaps soon, perhaps some day.

Warmunists are just today’s latest version of the religious end of worlders.

Curious George
Reply to  Duane
December 30, 2024 1:05 pm

They are simply taking a long-term point of view. Astronomical models show the Sun turning into a red giant and engulfing the Earth. And that will destroy all evidence of government waste. No pardons or sentence commuting needed. 🙂

Reply to  Curious George
December 30, 2024 11:05 pm

I hope we have a billion or two years before that happens.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Jim Masterson
December 31, 2024 8:34 am

Let me fire up a supercomputer model and see if it can predict when that will occur.

Rud Istvan
December 30, 2024 1:16 pm

’some experts believe could hit catastrophic ‘tipping points’ in a few years’—so we
“Fund research that is too speculative, too hard, too interdisciplinary”

Yup, since there are no climate tipping points in evidence over the past few million years. A mere alarmist detail. O’Leary’s WAIS paper claiming otherwise was provable scientific misconduct concerning a Quobba Ridge earthquake, caught out in his SI.

So ARIA will fund stuff that is otherwise too speculative, too hard. Explicit waste of funds. Concrete example of why DOGE in US is necessary and will be fruitful.

abolition man
December 30, 2024 1:54 pm

As the one of the only remnants of the Enlightenment still in existence, the Climate Reality movement is going to have to do the heavy lifting when it comes to correcting the mal-education of the West! It is readily apparent that it is possible to “educate” someone in such a manner as to make them not only more stupid, but also intensely narrow-minded (ideological!)
Reversing the destruction of the once hallowed Western education system will require massive infusions of the hard sciences like physics, chemistry, and geology. These are especially helpful because they require dealing with REALITY, not some GIGO computer model for data! I personally prefer geology, but they all are helpful for finding the limitations of each individual’s abilities while reconnecting them back to the physical world from which they have become estranged!
The next year or two will be make or break on whether we can vanquish the neo-Marxist hydra that is threatening the prosperity, freedom, and very existence of humanity. Climastrology is merely the largest head of that hydra, but they can all grow into deadly threats if we don’t remain vigilant and informed! I hope you will all join me in pledging to redouble our efforts in the New Year to speak out against Scientism and groupthink, while keeping ever skeptical; the very basis of true science!
A huge “Thank you!” to Anthony, and all the editors, authors, and posters here at WUWT! Without all your influence over the last decade, I doubt we would poised on the threshold of a potential, new Golden Age; as we appear to be right now! That is all!

Art
December 30, 2024 2:26 pm

“…we could hit catastrophic climate ‘tipping points’ in a matter of years.”

What?…wait..haven’t we already passed numerous tipping points and climate deadlines?

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Art
December 31, 2024 8:37 am

Like with the nearly defunct main stream (aka legacy) media, nothing previously said is to be considered. The only “truth” is what has been published within the last hour.

December 30, 2024 3:40 pm

The only tipping points these people are ever going to hit are in the pubs.

MarkW
Reply to  karlomonte
December 30, 2024 4:57 pm

Wouldn’t that be a tippling point?

observa
December 30, 2024 5:20 pm

We just need more virgins to stir things up a bit-
Scientists finally reveal cause of 1831’s global cooling event

Reply to  observa
December 31, 2024 1:42 am

It’s been nearly 200 years since a global cold snap led to widespread crop failures and devastating famines. 

No further comment required

Westfieldmike
December 31, 2024 2:41 am

I think you will find that it’s going to get colder.

Sparta Nova 4
Reply to  Westfieldmike
December 31, 2024 9:00 am

And if it doesn’t get colder it will be the same or warmer.

CampsieFellow
December 31, 2024 3:16 am

innovative research
Anybody know of any research that isn’t “innovative”?
It’s like “forward planning”, much-loved in the teaching profession. Anybody know of any “planning to go backwards” or “planning to stay where we are”?
Maybe it’s like “iconic”. It doesn’t have to mean anything but it sounds good.

rtj1211
December 31, 2024 5:25 am

The end of the world in the UK happens every time a wokester is chided for spouting ‘a load of bollocks’.

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