The UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) was all over mainstream media recently with claims that Britain had to spend £11 billion a year to adapt to 4°C higher temperatures by 2100. Did nobody tell them that their fanciful claims are based on RCP8.5 computer model assumptions that have just been declared “implausible” by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)? Probably not, since it is a Government-captured nest of Net Zero activists led by a young Classics graduate. Step forward the Met Office, the real culprit behind the calamitous charge to Net Zero, whose UK Climate Projections report (UKCP18) is the foundation source for the CCC’s whacky weather witterings.
UKCP18 only used an RCP8.5 super-computer run and highlighted the absurd findings in bold type. The most notorious claim was that British summers could be up to 5.1°C hotter in just 50 years measured against an 1850–1900 baseline. All the other projections in the 2018 report are statistically derived from this one ‘garbage-in, garbage-out’ run. It is no exaggeration to state that its preposterous findings have given backing to most climate change impact regulations and rules since 2018. In the light of the IPCC’s recent damning declaration, surely the head of the Met Office Professor Penny Endersby should consider her position. She has been in post since 2018 and all these unnecessary rules, highlighted here in a recent Daily Sceptic article, can be traced back to the malign influence of UKCP18.
If the Met Office were a private company, swift dismissal would inevitably follow given the scale of the damage, wreckage even, visited on the British economy by this pumped-up pile of climate catastrophe claptrap.
Even in its day job of measuring temperatures, the Met Office under her command has gone from bad to worse. The percentage of junk stations in its 380-strong nationwide network has risen from 77.9% to 80.6%. Junk stations that come with internationally recognised ‘uncertainties’ of up to 5°C are now to be found in nearly a third of the network. The Met Office’s lame excuse that it is difficult to find open spaces to give an accurate ambient air temperature on a crowded island is laughable, given that 93% of UK land is rural. In many cases, the Met Office needs only to move a station a few yards and control surrounding vegetation to obtain a more reliable reading. On such data, the Met Office declared, to widespread mainstream media acclaim, that last year was the hottest on record in the UK by six hundredths of a degree Centigrade. Professor Endersby has also been in charge over the last couple of years when 17 new classified stations were added to the network with an astonishing 64.7% starting life as junk. Does nobody check this stuff?
When the closure of the Straits of Hormuz really bites and food prices rocket, fuel runs short and fripperies like foreign holidays are abandoned, don’t forget to drop a ‘Thanks Pen’ message into the Met Office. Great job in producing all that statistical BS that helped dunderhead Government ministers cut off the exploitation of our own local hydrocarbon supplies.
But all is not lost for the Met Office. On October 8th last year, the rising star of Net Zero and climate scepticism Kathryn Porter appeared on the Mike Graham Talk morning show and, quoting from Daily Sceptic and citizen sleuth Ray Sanders articles, said:
They’ve closed a lot of weather stations and then they say that they interpolate from other weather stations that are nearby. And then various people have gone round to investigate this and discovered that there are no weather stations nearby, and so they had to remove data because people have basically said “You’re making it up” and they have been. And the other thing is that some of these weather stations that do exist produce junk data… And then they will say, “Oh well, you know, it’s so much hotter than it was in the past.” Well you can’t say that if you made up the numbers.
Of course, regular readers will be aware of all these issues which we have covered in detail over the last two years. In addition, Ray Sanders on Tallbloke’s Talkshop has conducted a forensic examination of most of the individual sites and recordings, and to say he has been extremely critical of what he found may be considered an understatement.
The full arguments in this Ofcom case can be read here, along with the judgement that Talk did not take reasonable care to satisfy itself that material facts had not been presented, disregarded or omitted in a way that was unfair to the complainant. Also, the broadcaster was said to have not given the complainant a timely and appropriate opportunity to respond to the allegations made about it in the programme. This finding was made despite Ofcom accepting that the broadcaster had already given the Met Office an opportunity to contribute to Talk, “at a time of its choosing”. This occurred the month before when your correspondent appeared on the Julia Hartley-Brewer Show where similar Met Office matters were discussed. Talk noted that “the offer has not been taken up”.
Regarding the suggestion from Kathryn Porter that the Met Office “makes up data”, Talk noted that the phrase was a criticism of methodology, rather than an allegation of fabrication. In fact, this is exactly what the Daily Sceptic has long argued. If, for instance, you claim to use “well correlated neighbouring station” data to infill supposed temperature recordings, it would be helpful if the actual sites could be named. And if it is discovered that there are no such stations for many miles around, it would again be useful for further realistic guidance on the matter to be provided. Can a Met Office computer, even a highly expensive super-computer, provide an accurate ambient air temperature for a location up to 30 miles away? There are many who would suggest that this is highly unlikely.
Blubbing to the broadcasting beak might have given the Met Office some help in keeping the mainstream media lid on its dreadful temperature measuring network. But the dam burst of RCP8.5 cannot be stemmed. Years of promoting a set of assumptions that were always implausible – an insult to the intelligence, some might add – to ratchet up the Net Zero fantasy requires at the very least a fulsome apology, followed by a withdrawal of all RCP8.5-corrupted data and major changes in the top hierarchy. If the current Labour Government does not insist on these actions – and let’s be realistic, it will not – it is possible that an electorally successful Reform administration will.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.
Bad timing to publish this one!
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/cz7220e44dgt
The recipe for the claims is to find the hottest reporting place in the country, than proclaim a new record. If you know anyone with a reliable thermometer properly sited you’ll find the temperatures are lower, a lot lower, than those claimed for the selected locations.
Yesterday for instance, when Kew Gardens was said to be almost 35°C peak, a thermometer on a shady north facing wall in an East Anglian garden never exceeded 28°C.
If you look at UK temperature trends, they are basically flat. The country, as I keep pointing out, is located with a large continental landmass to the east, an ocean to the west, the Sahara to the south and the Arctic to the north. Weather systems blow over it continually from the west, and depending on the configuration of highs and lows they drag in air masses from the surrounding areas.
UK seasonal temps vary wildly. You can have cold wet summers as well as hot dry ones, you can have snowstorms in March and April, winters with barely a frost, and others with deep drifts and weeks of freezing temps. All this is perfectly normal and if you look at the historical record for the country, you can see extremes happening over and over again, always greeted by cries of alarm and claims that they are unprecedented. There is no significant trend in either rainfall, wind storms, high or low temperatures. It is mostly temperate, but with some exceptions.
The other thing that happens even more regularly than the occasional extremes is the calms. Regularly a couple of times a year the weather systems produce a blocking high to the southwest. This results in a calm, cold and clear in winter, hot and dry in summer. Wind generation collapses to minimal levels for days on end, and the press then expresses astonishment that something so unprecedented is happening.
A bit like the UK railways which are regularly brought to their knees on some routes by the unprecedented fall of leaves which seems to have happened this October.
As for the variability of the UK weather, I can remember snow in Somerset in June and a year when the longest day was colder than the previous shortest day.
On 2 June 1975, snow stopped play at the cricket match between Lancashire and Derbyshire at Buxton. Legendary umpire Dickie Bird, who officiated the match, recalled that when he inspected the pitch, the snow was level with the top of his boots, making play impossible.
It was so hot so widely, there’s no reasonable doubt it was record breaking. I’m a climate skeptic as regards CAGW, but people that don’t think there is significant warming of the UK climate, that’s a soap box for nutters.
I wonder why this comment currently has 6 downticks. I thought it was “the consensus” among climate sceptics that we are still coming out of an Ice Age and that the Earth is warming as a result. If the Earth is warming then we would expect records to be set all the time.
Are you so dim witted that you use “climate sceptics” to this vast collection of intelligent individuals who know that the fraud, the scam, the delusion, the mistake being highlighted and demonstrated to be wrong is –
MAN MADE
FOSSIL FUEL USE
ACCELERATING
TOTAL PLANETARY
UNPRECEDENTED
CRISIS HEATING
A “significant warming” since when?
The UK climate fluctuates, it has warmer and cooler periods. At the moment there is a very warm couple of days at the end of a fairly cool spring. Nothing of any significance.
What exactly are you claiming?
Kew Gardens is in the middle of London (UHI) It has lots of large glass houses that reflect the heat as well as several tropical glasshouses that are heated to keep the plants happy. Ideal place for a temperature measuring station obviously!
I was surprised to find that the Kew Gardens weather station is Class 2.
Good grief. Just two weeks ago in the NW of England I was wearing a fleece top and was dodging torrential showers; cold, wet air was being drawn down from the north. Then in mid-May everything flipped and hot air is currently being drawn up from the south. Things are due to change again this coming weekend with next week forecast to be wetter and cooler again. If you want to believe that this weather is all evidence of “significant warming of the UK” then that’s up to you, but you are on your own soap box.
What has to be born in mind about all these supposed records is that they occur in a very small number of locations. What does it matter to all the people in the rest of the country if Heathrow Airport or Kew Gardens have a certain temperature.
“Yesterday for instance, when Kew Gardens was said to be almost 35°C peak, a thermometer on a shady north facing wall in an East Anglian garden never exceeded 28°C.”
It very probably could have been.
How close to the coast was it?
even 10 ml inland the influence of the N Sea could still be evident (I live in Lincolnshire).
Norwich was forecast to reach 30C FI
“They’ve closed a lot of weather stations and “then they say that they interpolate from other weather stations that are nearby. And then various people have gone round to investigate this and discovered that there are no weather stations nearby, and so they had to remove data because people have basically said “You’re making it up” and they have been. And the other thing is that some of these weather stations that do exist produce junk data… And then they will say, “Oh well, you know, it’s so much hotter than it was in the past.” Well you can’t say that if you made up the numbers.”
Utterly irrelevant, posts like yours show you don’t understand what you are spouting about. They don’t make up or infill daily reported temperatures instantly, that’s a background process for general climate trends.
Hottest May day recorded in Kew Gardens in the middle of London for 82 years and 104 years respectfully.
The article says nothing about the rise in the population of London and the infrastructure that goes with that population rise.
A lie by omission is still a lie.
Hearing that the temp record had been broken for the second consecutive day at Heathrow, I was prompted to check what the nearest ‘good’ site showed. This was always listed as Chertsey in Surrey, at least until a few years ago when they surrounded the site with a solar farm. In the certain knowledge the data would be tainted, I was curious to see what the difference might be anyway. Below is a screenshot of the Met office page for Chertsey. Apparently leafy rural Surrey is now as hot as Europe’s busiest airport. You couldn’t make it up. But they can.
The most notorious claim was that British summers could be up to 5.1°C hotter in just 50 years…
The most ridiculous thing about this is that even if it were to be +10°C, it would not justify the UK Net Zero program. Whether the forecast is +5°C, +10°C, whatever, the Net Zero program is not going to make the slightest difference to it.
Its amazing that people are still trying to justify UK Net Zero by claims about future global climate trends, when UK Net Zero will have no more effect on them than if all the Brits stood on their heads for five minutes every morning.
If it really is going to be 5°C warmer in summers (not that there is any sign of such a trend) then this would justify things like modifying houses and apartment buildings, maybe installing air conditioning, providing better ventilation, external shutters etc.
Changing the technology that the country uses to generate electricity isn’t going to help in any way. In fact, it will make things worse, because it will mean less reliable power available. The power you need to run the extra air conditioning!
The current direction of UK climate and energy policy can be summarized like this: reduce electricity supply by moving power generation to unreliable intermittent and high cost technology, wind and solar. At the same time raise demand by moving cars to EV and home heating to heat pumps. And do all this because you think summer temps are going to rise, thus requiring you to raise electricity demand still more than the cars and heat pumps, because of the need for air con.
Its an energy policy run by lunatics. And whatever Miliband and the Met Office and BBC/Guardian say, it has nothing to do with climate.
With the current fuss being made about yesterday being the hottest day in the UK since 1944, it seems that it has slipped their notice that in 1944 there were extreme storms a few days later that almost caused the cancellation of D-Day.
It was Group Captain James Stagg who provided the accurate forecast that enabled Eisenhower to go ahead.
One wonders what James Stagg would think of the current lot of meteorologists.
His comment would be unprintable.
Indeed, we can be sure the weather will change. The first 3 weeks of May were coolish with some frost’s. No one was posting that the MO made that up!
Yep, that’s true.
However, the Met Office reporting of night time minima was well off the mark both where I live in Perthshire and also where my brother lives in NW Highlands. Minima were significantly lower than reported both here and in the NW.
” ………….. witterings indicate Met Office should be closed down.”
There, fixed the headline for you.
And if you think that is cruel for the employees, the good ones would soon get jobs elsewhere.
A classic WUWT comment from a denizen entirely focused on climate, as though that is all the MetO do – whereas it is but a tiny part.
I presume you have flown?
Are you aware that in that case your pilot was very likely briefed and planned his/her route with UKMO forecast data?
They also serve the military – I myself briefed RAF pilots (for low level flying) and am proud of the savings that were made and lives kept safer because of that.
Are you aware that the MetO’s brief is to provide a service to UK citizens re daily weather, and not to conspiratorially inflate temps to fit some sort of narrative?
As I did they turn up every day and do what they trained for without fear or favour.
That you don’t like it is your problem and not theirs.
Also, there are very very few jobs for Meteorologists outside the MetO.
I take all your points about the ordinary Met Office folk but if the current now politically infected Met Office were closed down properly managed private replacements staffed by the good guys (like you) would appear almost at once. I was a Pilot for 22 years (not an airline pilot) and we had a contract with a local Met business who would give us 24/7 an accurate wind forecast up to 3 hours out for every berth in the estuary.
Even more reason to take drastic measures against a service which gives INCORRECT data and by implication advice to those controlling aircraft movements.
“(The Climate Change Committee) is a Government-captured nest of Net Zero activists led by a young Classics graduate. “
The current Chair of the CCC is Nigel Topping. St John’s College of the University of Cambridge says he has an acadenic background in Mathematics and Topping says he has a Maths degree. He is an Honorary Professor of Economics at Exeter University.
He seems to have been at University in the 1980s so that would make him in his 60s. Not exactly “young”.
Very nice, this is my kind of reporting. Lying and cheating is not acceptable. Lying and cheating on my dime (government) is criminal. I say send the scoundrels to the hoosgow.