In 2018, the Met Office published its ‘UK Climate Projections’ report (UKCP18) forecasting several weather extremes including a suggestion that summer temperatures could be 5.1°C higher by 2070. Needless to say, the forecast captured mainstream media headlines at the time, and to this day the report is a foundational source for most UK governmental and private company climate change regulation and spending. Just one problem – it is now officially junk. The Met Office only ran a RCP8.5 set of assumptions through its super-computer, the results of which it then proceeded to highlight. To retain scientific integrity, the Met Office must remove this deeply flawed work with a notification that any policies arising from its discredited figures should be re-examined.
The recent dismissal of the RCP8.5 pathway assumptions by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as “implausible” has sent shock waves through mainstream media and science. It has effectively destroyed trust in mainstream climate reporting since journalists for nearly two decades have been faithfully promoting BS arising from RCP8.5 findings. But it also casts doubt on much of the underlying science work that has whipped up a convenient Net Zero climate crisis psychosis. Among the ridiculous RCP8.5 assumptions was global population hitting 12 billion by 2100 (it is currently forecast to stabilise at around 9-10 billion) and more coal used than current proven reserves.
The Met Office’s UKCP18 is a real shocker. Bold type was used to highlight all the extreme findings based on RCP8.5 including massive rises in temperature within 50 years (5.1°C in summer and 3.8°C in winter) and significant drops and increases in summer and winter rainfall respectively. Sea-level rises in London up to 1.15 metres were forecast by 2100, and this compares with a current annual uplift of three thousandths of a metre today – less than a quarter of the rate. Given the recent “implausible” finding, it is ironic that the Met Office terms its bold-type numbers as “plausible”. That alone should be grounds to remove these hopeless guesses immediately.
There are a number of RCP pathways suggesting lower greenhouse gas emissions, but the Met Office used just RCP8.5 for its computer modelling. The high-resolution global modelling down to 60 km, the regional down to 12 km and local to 2.2 km used only RCP8.5 directly due to computational costs. Other results were available – not in bold type of course – and these were said to be statistically derived from the RCP8.5 runs. The phrase ‘garbage in, garbage out’ comes immediately to mind.
At the time, the Met Office noted: “The Government will make use of UKCP18 to inform its adaptation and mitigation planning and decision-making.” Of course, this is precisely what happened. Net Zero-crazed politicians leapt on the findings to pump new rules, requirements and regulations across both the productive (private) economy and the already inefficient public sector. In fact, it is not an exaggeration to say that since its publication, UKCP18 has become one of the most important climate tools shaping UK climate adaptation policy. It is often used by local government to assess risks on urban and rural infrastructure. It is of course wise to take future weather conditions into account, but exaggerated weather claims lead to higher than necessary expenditure. Money diverted to protecting new homes from 5°C higher temperatures is a colossal waste based on nothing more than a guess.
Infrastructure and engineering standards have been reshaped by UKCP18 findings. The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has highlighted how the projections are changing the way civil engineers approach long-term infrastructure design. They increasingly factor projected rainfall extremes, heat stresses and sea-level rise into the design of roads, railways, drainage systems and buildings. ICE has described UKCP18 as using “cutting-edge climate science” and promoting “a new way of thinking” in civil engineering practice. If all this is true, one can barely imagine the money being wasted on over-engineered projects awaiting an imagined British climate that exists only on the computer drives of the Met Office.
Private sector insurers and financial institutions have also integrated UKCP18 into risk modelling. Insurance companies increasingly use climate projection data when assessing future exposure to flood damage and bad weather losses. This affects pricing, investment decisions and corporate climate disclosures. Next time an insurance company jacks up your premiums, do remember to thank the Met Office for its help in boosting insurance company profits. It is perhaps no accident that general, or non-life, insurance in the UK has recently become more profitable.
One of the clearest links between UKCP18 and government regulation is through the UK statutory Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA). Under the Climate Change Act, the Government must periodically assess climate risks and produce adaptation policies. The third CCRA, published in 2022, relied heavily on UKCP18 climate projections to evaluate future risks from heat, flooding, drought and sea-level requirements across infrastructure, housing and transport. The resulting National Adaptation Programme (NAP3) uses UKCP18 findings to justify stronger resilience measures for what is usually described as climate resilience. Again, one can only despair at the vast sums of public money likely to have been thrown at a computer-invented problem drummed up by activist Met Office wonks.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the Met Office is heavily screwed up by its attempts to promote the Net Zero fantasy. UKCP18 might be regarded as a foundational source of climate ‘evidence’ by influencers and governing elites, but the IPCC “implausible” ruling renders it largely junk. It must be withdrawn as soon as possible before it causes more financial damage in the wider economy. Junk, of course, is a word that also comes to mind when assessing the Met Office’s unnaturally heat-ravaged nationwide temperature measuring network. This is getting worse, not better, and the network is obviously overestimating the rate of current warming. Similar concerns surrounded the US weather service NOAA while Democrats held government sway. However, a recent Trump-inspired budget cut of 25% seems to have concentrated minds and persuaded employees to forget the Net Zero wind-up and return to basic meteorological science.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
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And how many is that, and does anyone think that’s going to happen and if it does will the media outlets print retractions?
0, no, no
Ignoring empirical reality and data is fundamental to the propaganda campaign. That’s not going to change.. Climate psychosis is a mental illness that can only be cured one victim at a time.
According to the BBC, Guardian etc the newly official junk status of RCP8.5 – never happened. To pinch their implausible yet oft quoted phrase, it’s business as usual.
I didn’t see this coming…
Net Zero Labour Eases Sanctions on Putin to Buy More Russian Crude
Rather than open up the North sea they are going to ease sanctions on Russian oil and blank out what that money will be funding – the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
The state of play is this:
Ed Miliband has directed the government to shut down all North Sea oil via the King’s Speech. A decision on Rosebank is still delayed. Refineries are being closed down and the windfall tax on oil and gas remains at a record high after Labour hikes. Last night Labour MPs voted against a Tory motion to ease action on the North Sea and British refineries…
He and Labour MPs are utterly determined to destroy the economy.
It’s so irrational as to be suspicious. Makes you wonder who he’s really working for, doesn’t it? About time our security services started to do some digging, methinks.
It’s the same thing with food. Rather than get the energy costs for firms and people down…
Reeves Moves to Force Food Price Caps on Supermarkets
Welcome to North Korea.
Signs point to lower demand for weight loss drugs.
Hmm, rather than tell kids to go out and play etc – ie get exercise…
Ministers are considering giving obese children as young as 12 weight-loss jabs in a bid to tackle the UK’s spiralling childhood obesity rates.
But… all the schools around here have a distinct lack of fat kids. And it is not unique here. This is the Public Health brigade flexing its muscle.
Starve the plebs. It isn’t insanity it is deliberate and the outcome is known in advance.
Assuming that you mean Secret Services,
I may have bad news for you.
“Mi6 GREEN SPYING on world’s biggest (co2 ) polluters”.
The Strndard, April 24th, 2021
Now if the Mi6 is monitoring foreign nations to stay in the co2 line.
What will it do in its own country?
Just like Miliband, at one point they turned into climate experts – sitting in the same boat, you are not in.
I wouldn’t trust either MI5 or MI6. They are not in splendid isolation.
White British students not being allowed to apply for a summer internship programme launched by Britain’s intelligence services is “downright offensive”, security expert Professor Anthony Glees has fumed.
“This is completely bonkers. When I first saw this story, I thought it was a joke. I thought it was made up.
There is a reason our secret services are secret and to open them up to an internship programme represents a real and present national security risk.
The paid 10-11 week scheme, offered by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, is exclusively open to students from Black, Asian, mixed heritage or ethnic minority backgrounds who also come from socially disadvantaged circumstances. – GBN
Carruthers isn’t sure if he’s a boy or a girl.
His hair’s alright
This is very similar to what Newsom has done to California. Refineries in California dropped from 40 to 6. Pumping from the 3rd largest oil reserves of the 50 states has almost stopped. California is now importing not only crude oil, but also gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from half way around.
It’s bonkers
It’s worse than bonkers. It’s almost as if Newsom is dyslexic and can’t read. Oh wait.
Ed Milliband and his enablers, the Climate Change Committee, along with the mendacious UK Met Office will completely disregard the IPCC ‘Mia Culpa’ and continue to push net zero with all of our tax money.
They will say ‘Well, it’s already obvious that severe climate change is happening – just look out of the window’. Milliband is pitching to be the next chancellor, which he believes will allow him to speed up our destruction unfettered.
The climate change committee instructed councils to clad their social housing. Their instructions led to Grenfell. Yet they were never mentioned.
Grenfell: clad in climate-change politics
Now we have the leaseholder cladding crisis, they will have to find the money – somehow – to have the cladding removed.
As London marks the eighth anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, thousands of leaseholders remain stuck in unsellable and potentially dangerous flats
Their simple solution has caused untold harm and tragedy – yet again.
More Muslim immigrants ought to help.
They are causing an exponential number of problems.
A non-expert but intelligent person might start asking awkward questions. Was RPC8.5 not based on the widely proclaimed settled science? If 8.5 is now junked that must cast an unfavourable light on that ‘settled science’, perhaps that is junk too? Maybe, just maybe, IPCC has unwittingly pushed the first domino in the chain that will lead to its own demise?
I have been studying music and the guitar for many, many years and I would never call myself an expert – I know the difference between my elbow and my fundament – there is always more to learn. That’s what [climate] science and has lost – a wee bit of humility.
Ed:
Exactly!
The Alarmists have been lying for 15 years about the plausibility of RCP8.5. Now that the lie no longer works, the current lie is we can retire RCP8.5 because of all the benefits & emission changes from our climate policies. Hah! They just ignore the Keeling Curve and the miniscule amount of total energy wind/solar provide (and the hideous costs!).
Next up will be the lies associated with “attribution science”. A co-founder of the World Weather Attribution [WWA] group [Friedericke Otto] has been named lead author of the upcoming AR7 report on extreme weather. The May 2026 edition of Physics Today interviewed her.
Here are two quotes:
“She is motivated, she says, by wanting to show that “climate change is here and now and not something that happenes somewhere else and sometime in the future.” ”
“I also work with legal scholars on how to translate scientific evidence into legal evidence…”
Seems to me her bias is showing [probably why AR7 picked her], and an underlying reason the WWA was formed [to foment lawsuits against the energy industry. Roger Pielke has written on “attribution science” in his The Honest Broker substack blog. Well worth a look].
The old King is dead [RCP8.5]. Long live the new King! [Attribution].
The WWA is flush with pseudoscientists pushing false attributions that media presents as the gospel. They need to be exposed as lying propagandists and completely discredited. It’s as phony as RCP 8.5.
I take objection to the use of the word “findings” to describe the results of calculations using RCP8.5. or any other RCP for that matter or any other calculations that have no confirmed physical reality. A “finding” implies a concrete fact that has been uncovered, not some unproven calculation.
Just mentally insert “fantasy” everywhere you see the word “findings” in “climate science” and you’ll retain your connection to reality.
Climate Alarmists have been mixing up speculation with established facts since the beginning.
Speculation, assumptions and unsubstantiated assertions are not established facts and that’s all Climate Alarmists have had, or have now.
I think you missed the word “deliberately” between the words “been” and “mixing” there, Tom
I like your version better! 🙂
State it factually, without qualifiers, and it is accepted by the masses as factual.
The majority of the people have been trained not to think (or never trained to think).
“I take objection to the use of the word “findings” to describe the results of calculations using RCP8.5.”
Pure fiction is the accurate description.
This is a fine illustration of the utter bullshit that typifies “climate models.” The data, as bad as IT is, clearly shows that the vast majority of the increase in AVERAGE temperature is due to nighttime LOW temperatures not getting as COLD, NOT daytime high temperatures getting hotter.
And yet, the model tells us exactly the opposite outcome will occur.
The idiots pushing this crap really are The Lysenkos of the West.
My understanding is that polar temp rise exceeds tropical temp rise, winter temp rise exceeds summer temps rise, and night time temps are exceeding day time temp rise.
Why do you think they average “temperature anomalies?”
The left had a lot to answer for in UK , climate change , importing millions of Muslims who do not respect British values or culture and the multiple gender trans movement despite the fact that everyone reading this is here solely because of a union between a biological male and female. Never forget the Tories went wholesale along with this with The Net Zero act Un Migration Pact and increased third world immigration. Parts of the city I live in look closer to Kabul or the Congo than the UK , we never asked for this or voted for this .
“The left” only got into power in the UK less than two years ago, ‘Net Zero’ was introduced by “the right”.
“Third world immigration” rocketed after Brexit which was introduced by the Conservatives and net migration to the UK has fallen since “the left” took power.
Did the uniparty set-up pass you by?
Immigration increased because Europe wanted it to. Look what the EU has done to Eire. Shocking, appalling – and unforgiveable.
You could say immigration for Ireland is… TheFinalNail in their coffin.
Right. Europe forced Britain to vote for Brexit.
Such power they have.
What an utter simpleton you are.
The Climate Change Act, which is the legal foundation of Net Zero, was passed in 2008, put to Parliament by the then Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, Ed Miliband. He was and is a Labour Party Minister. This was during the Labour Party Government of 1994-2010. It received almost unanimous approval.
The Act was strengthened in 2019, by the Climate Change Act 2008 (2050 Target Amendment) Order, which replaced the target to reduce greenhouse gases by 80 per cent by 2050 with a target of 100 per cent. This was passed under a Conservative Government headed by Theresa May, with no vote.
So no, the left has not only been in power for two years. But yes, the craziness is Labour, Conservative, Liberal, Plaid, SNP, Green. It was, until the arrival of Reform, unanimous among the UK political and media classes. And it still is an article of faith in the BBC and Guardian/Observer.
No-one can explain why the UK is doing this. The expense is colossal, the effect on climate negligible. Its a sort of group madness on the part of the political class. But then, look at what else they have come to believe in recent years. Their latest idea is that you can lower the cost of living by freezing some supermarket prices. Having raised supermarket costs by taxing employment and energy.
Yes, but it was the Conservative party, then in government, that added the 2019 amendment that effectively set the ‘net zero’ target.
According to ‘Northern Bear‘, “the left” now has to answer for that decision which was made by the Conservatives…?
No one has even tried to defend his nonsense argument that “the left” in the UK caused the massive post-Brexit influx of non-EU migrants that was the result of the ever-idiotic and conservative-inspired Brexit vote.
Reality really is a sort of ‘fever-dream’ for most posters here, isn’t it?
You’ve got it wrong again. The Net Zero policy originated with the Labour Party, and Ed Miliband in particular, during the Labour Government of 1994-2010, in the form of the Climate Change Act of 2008, proposed by Miliband in his position as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.
At that point it had a target date of 2050 for 80% emission reduction. The 2019 amendment, which as I said occurred under a Conservative Government, only changed the target from 80% to 100% The Net Zero project really did start, and got into law, in 2008, and that really was a Labour Government.
You are trying to claim that the Net Zero project only started with the 2019 Amendment. That isn’t true, the only thing the Amendment did was strengthen the commitment in the original Act.
Is it a left project? You would have to say yes, on the evidence. Though it has been supported by the entire UK political establishment, as the almost unanimous approval of both the Climate Change Act and the amendment strengthening it shows.
Any objective look at UK politics must conclude that it started as a left project, though with cross party total support, it then attracted Conservative support in the form of the amendment, and it then lost Conservative support and attracted explicit opposition from Reform. The Conservative Party now seems to have moved against it, and Reform is explicitly and clearly against it.
The result is that it is now a project supported only by the left (Labour, Liberals, SNP, Plaid) and opposed by the right (Conservatives and Reform).
So its history has been checkered, but it started as a left wing project and is at the moment a left wing project.
I think its interesting that as it becomes clear just how useless and ruinous the project is, activists are starting to try and distance the left from it. Won’t wash. Miliband, Labour, started it, and Miliband, Labour, is now finishing it. Labour PM Starmer has been unable to fire him, despite trying, because Miliband is the darling of the left. This is a left wing project, and it has every prospect of turning into a significant ingredient in what will be written up by historians as ‘The Stranger Death of Labour England”. Coming to a publisher near you.
Rather than open up the North sea they are going to ease sanctions on Russian oil and blank out what that money will be funding – the Russian war effort in Ukraine.
The only point to paying any attention to England whatsoever is to see what is wrong with civilization.
The Germans will not forgive you for that.
And they, like us, have been influenced by the US for decades. What is wrong emanates from Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Caltech, Berkeley, MIT, Stanford, Columbia ad bleedin’ nauseam.
In a word, woke.
When the Marshal plan was introduced the receipiants were forced to upon up their countries to US influence and ” culture”
Forced??? In 1945 it was open up or continue starving to death. The Marshal Plan saved millions from dying from the deliberate starvation policies of Nazi Germany.
California is right there too.
What trust?
Money diverted to protecting new homes from 5°C higher temperatures is a colossal waste based on nothing more than a guess.
Yes. But it was an educated guess.
Humor – a difficult concept.
— Lt. Saavik
Reminds me of a paraphrase of Orwell:
“An idea that is so stupid that only an intellectual could believe it.”
and
“All tyrannies rule through fraud and force, but once the fraud is exposed, they must rely exclusively on force.”
Hoodwinked, shall we say. And a very very expensive HOODWINK! Dum.
Is that the MET Office headquarters? The use of low R glass walls reminds me of the Clinton’s push for glass buildings as part of their ill conceived environmental push sans any brain cells. Everyone who ended up occupying one of those glass monuments responsible for paying the bills knows how expensive they are to heat and cool. The savings from “natural” light was a joke as LEDs became standard while the HVAC costs remained. Of course the biased media never caught on and never knew the difference anyway. Add it to the book of Party secrets not to discuss along with the huge warehouse set of volumes of other secrets.
Very nice. It is clear, the reach and power of government is out of control.
Have to say, as a lukewarm ‘warmist’, this article makes a few fair points.
The devil is in the detail. As the article says:
To be fair to the UKMO, they did admit this in their paper; also, (not mentioned in this article) they released the more realistic 2.5 RCP projections, at the same resolution, a few months after their first paper was published.
But I agree that the UKMO should have made it clear that RCP8.5 was an extremely unlikely pathway, even using data up to 2018. By not clearly doing so, they gave newspapers carte blanche to scaremonger and they should publish a clarification.
Be careful. That can lead onto the harder stuff, like watching Amelia videos 🙂
“Infrastructure and engineering standards have been reshaped by UKCP18 findings. The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) has highlighted how the projections are changing the way civil engineers approach long-term infrastructure design. They increasingly factor projected rainfall extremes, heat stresses and sea-level rise into the design of roads, railways, drainage systems and buildings.”
Why has no-one discussed the above statement from the article?
Isn’t it accepted that failing to protect all infrastructure from the repetition of extreme weather events that have occurred in the past, is the real cause of so much damage and loss of life, rather than AGW.
Trying to fix these problems by reducing CO2 emissions is obviously foolish. It is far more sensible to “factor projected rainfall extremes, heat stresses and sea-level rise into the design of roads, railways, drainage systems and buildings.”
In Australia, whenever there is an extreme weather event causing much damage, I check the historical records and usually find there were a number of worse events in the past, in the same location, when CO2 levels were lower.
On the rare occasion that a recent flood, for example, really is the worst on record, my research has discovered that the real cause is due to poor planning, such as building an elevated highway across a flood plain, preventing the flow of water from one side to the other, resulting in unprecedented flood heights on one side of the highway.
It’s not just UKCP18. It’s every government report and policy on
“climate change”global warming and every study based on RCP8.5, which is all of them. All of them. I dare anyone to find a report, policy, or published study related however tangentially to“climate change”global warming that isn’t based on RCP8.5. They could have based it on more “plausible” (actually still completely implausible) scenarios like RCP6, 4.5, or 2.6 but they didn’t. They all chose the most alarming and utterly ridiculous scenario. Thousands of papers should be retracted and the climate policies of every nation should be rescinded because the premise upon which they were based has been publicly refuted by the high priests of climate change. But it’s not going to happen. Too much power and grift at stake.Oceans have been rising at +0.3% a year for how long? The math is 1.18″ in 10 years, 3.06″ in 25 years, 6.35″ in 50 years, 9.81″ in 75 years, and 13.77″ in 100 years. How does that square with real-world observations over the past century? If levels were to rise at 0.3%/year from now on, would this not be quite a problem in 50 years if not sooner?
I am skeptical of the +0.3%/year rise mentioned in the original post. What do the data say?