Bishop Hill The weirdest year ever?
Jan 17, 2013 BBC Climate: MetOffice Roger Harrabin takes a look at the recent furore over the Met Office's climate predictions and finds that some within the Met Office are none to happy with the organisation's PR performance.
The damage to Met Office credibility, though, was exacerbated by a couple of blunders in its own communication.
The first was to put the decadal report on its website on Christmas Eve - the traditional date for burying stories that the authorities don't want publicised. I was initially suspicious. But the Met Office since explained that the scientist responsible was due to finish the work by end of year and was about to go on holiday. That sounds plausible.
The second error was in the caption to a graph comparing the new temperature forecast with one from the past. It was badly-worded and led bloggers to conclude that the Met Office were trying to cover up the disparity between forecasts. (They seem to have accepted later that this is not the case).
Interesting stuff. The article also includes the remarkable claim that this has been the UK's "weirdest year of weather".
Reader Comments (128)
Thanks for braving the rigours of BH again Richard. Could commenters please avoid piling on or demanding that Richard responds to you.
Thanks.
Richard Betts
Richard what happened to the challenge the Met office offered to Piers Corbyn to compare forecasts. As I understand it he was all for it.
So, the Met Office left one of their biggest climate stories of the year to a single 'scientist', who wrote his own press release and published it on what happened to be the best day of the year for burying bad news, just because coincidentally he was off on holiday?
Bullshit x100. How can any journalist worth the name swallow this crap?
Nice tweet from GWPF:
"Sceptics for some time have been calling this a "standstill" in warming" ... like Hansen.
Further to my previous post this from Climate Realists
http://climaterealists.com/
Hi Richard and thanks as always for your comments, I will try to comply with our hosts well meaning wishes with a couple of observations rather than questions
To the best of my knowledge there has only been 4 “Decadal Forecasts” posted “on the same place in the website”, 2007, 2009, 2011 and 2012. So until this year they were only posted every 2 years. Maybe I have missed 2008 and 2010 or maybe they were posted elsewhere. 2012 is the only one that overwrote and therefore removed the previous forecast. Somehow this year does appear to be different.
My comment about Harrabin was tongue in cheek. I am not connected with my local football team, doesn’t stop me being a life long fanatic and therefore sometimes irrational supporter.
Trust all goes well with your January deliverables.
HMMMM (whilst I would accept cock up over conspiracy, Met Office are not very consistent - no press release at all, for quite a major change - as the resulting press proves)
(just a note, I don't think any of this is anyways Richard's responsibility or fault, I'm just responding to the organisation)
However anoter time the Met Office were talking about decadal forecasts, and short term prediction to 2015 and a graph that prompted half of the years between 2010 and 2015 will be the warmest on record. There was a press release, Just before the Copenhagen, and it was all over the media...
Met Office - News - Global Warming Set to Continue - September 2009
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/releases/archive/2009/global-warming
"However, the Met Office's decadal forecast predicts renewed warming after 2010 with about half of the years to 2015 likely to be warmer globally than the current warmest year on record."
no mentions of experimental or ANY of the caveats we have now..
IN FACT the press release states this (note successfully):
"Computer models used to make climate predictions reproduce this intrinsic character of our climate because they successfully represent many of the necessary fundamental climate processes."
AGAIN - NO CAVEATS in that press release, just before the most important climate conference ever..
very strong statement, very easily interpreted into the models model the physic very well, by media, and everybody
that 'successful' model now seems to have been replaced because it didn't match observed temps....
activists were misinterpreting it, claiming accelerating global warming.
Was the Met Office making the response J Slingo made on feedback the other day... were they correcting it, saying just experimental... no
Issue is..
Old forecast vanished (and graph) from website.. yet the new forecast uses the same url.
why not, put a link on the same page to link, to an archive copy of the old forecast we are talking about (and ALL other old forecast)
If the Met Office say this is in literature, is shows itself cheap and mendacious.
Maybe the Met thinks this has gone away (but what do the media (and me) really think about the organisation now)
a clue: (The Sun's Environment Correspondent)
@benjacksonsun
BenJacksonSun The story the Met Office tried to bury on Christmas Eve. #notsurprised
BenJacksonSun
To describe the Met Office as in utter shambles on the issue of decadal forecasts, is to sugar the pill considerably..
Given the above I call FOUL on the Met Office explanation and handling of this and previous decadal predictions and forecasts..
@Barry Woods 10:40 am
I agree with your view that the MO`s press office is there to propagandise the Met Office view of CO2 induced global warming. Inside the Met Office I imagine there are scientists searching for answers - not searching for "evidence" to support the "answers" they have already declared.
A few days ago someone quoted from the science section of TAR to the effect that the non-linear chaotic system that is our climate was unforecastable. Around 2010, it is said that a former President of the RS more or less confirmed this. Yet when I write to my MP he says they are guided by the scientific advice re CO2 induced global warming!
One potential benefit of this episode is the opportunity it presents us all to remind the political class how wrong they are to keep their heads in the sand. We need a few more scientists to publish their data, without the mediation of the Met Office press department, so that we all can poke a few more sticks up political backsides.
I note the Met have now changed the wording from "previous predictions" to "retrospective predictions".
No sign, though, of any graph comparing current actuals/predictions with previous predictions.
Who'll buy my scenarios?
Global 'weirding' is simply the latest collective excuse to help divert attention from the humilating lack of actual global warming.
Alarmists are now facing the ultimate catastrophe and by far the most serious threat to their theory - namely steadily increasing CO2 levels but a complete lack of warming. That is something they hadn't considered in their wildest nightmares as it was completely anathama to their religion. It's aleady causing them huge difficulties as they simply cannot explain it, not least because none of their models - upon which they've placed so much faith, predicted either a climate standstill, never mind a cooling.
It effectively leaves their theory in tatters. Shame.
"Since he knows that changes on 5-year timescales are dominated by natural variability and are of little relevance to long-term warming trends..."
That's got to be one of the funniest statements in a long time. Surely it is being made in sarcasm.
How does this person 'know' this? If a warming trend had shown up, I am sure he would have 'known' immediately that the global warming signal is showing up even in the 5-year timescale.
How does this colleague know that 'natural variability' caused the lack of warming in the model?
How does this colleague know that it was not CO2 that caused the lack of warming? CO2 could cause a long-term trend and yet cause short-term cooling. Given the myopic view humans have of the future (by virtue of necessity), the long term warming could easily be masked by short-term cooling set in motion by the same CO2?
When is the Met Office issuing an apology to David Rose?
Barry Woods indeed the pattern of prior realises tell us its was very 'lucky chance ' indeed that the 24 was used to realise for this new has there could hardly be a better day to bury it on . Has opposed to the efforts put into promoting other events . Its was of course just 'lucky chance . that no matter how you paint this change was bad news for those pushing 'the cause '
And the use 24th also meet no one was around at the MET to answer questions on it either , has it was a holiday , so even if people had spotted it at the time there would have no one that could have asked about it and by the time there was it would be 'old news ' , now just how 'lucky ' can you get.
If the MET is short of funds can I suggest given their luck they try the national lottery .
Jan 18, 2013 at 10:59 AM | oldtime
A few days ago someone quoted from the science section of TAR to the effect that the non-linear chaotic system that is our climate was unforecastable."
That would be me oldtimer I'll keep doing it over and over so that we don't forget. There it is right out of the horses mouth, the state of future climate cannot be predicted. Yet here we are risking destroying our economies and widespread fuel poverty on the back of the predictions of the future state of the climate. One scientist said, and I can't remember the name, that he didn't know what the weather would be like in the summer, but he knew that it would be warmer than winter, presumably to give weight to the forecasts of gloom catastrophe emanating from the stooges of the environmental movement inside the climate science community. Of course he, and I wish i could remember his name, failed to notice that we knew summers were warmer than winters because we had many thousands of years of observtions and evidence to support that view. However, such is the faith in the models that he appears to be arguing that because he can tell what summer's going to be like then the future state of the climate can be forecast accurately, when it can't be forecast at all.
Here it is again, send it to you MPs lest they forget.
"” … In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” IPCC
From the 3rd IPCC report, Section 14.2 “The Climate System”, page 774.
At this stage it is worth remember why the MET stopped making its mid-long range forecast public , becasue they were so wrong so often it became embarrassing. And once again the MET's 'luck' held for there were always wrong in a manner that favoured the AGW narrative .
Clearly the message here is never play poker with anyone from the MET , they may not be able to forecast worth a dam but boy are they 'lucky '
Can anybody offer a coherent explanation as to how this this alleged weirding happens? Clearly, given the Hansen and Met Office acknowledged decade-and-a-half halt in global warming there's a lack of evidence for additional energy in the atmosphere - also backed by the IPCC's acknowledgement of a reduction in probability of extreme weather events in the second order draft of AR5.
So, where's the weirding, why is it weird, and what's the mechanism?
Jan 18, 2013 at 9:20 AM | Paul Matthews
Try here I had the fleeting inspiration to make copies of the predictions previously.
Ross Lea
I believe that although Piers was up for the comparison test with the MO
their areas of expertise were so different (ie Piers-Long Range/MO-Short Range)
that comparison was impossible as the MO have pulled out of long range forecasting-
except AGW for the end of the century of course.
@ theduke
Personally I'd favour an approach whereby climate scientists are given a less complex system than the weather and invited to model its behaviour over a span of say a year.
The complex system I have in mind for this test is any five-year-old child.
Once they have that modelled to a tee and can accurately predict the moods, behaviour, condition etc of 5-year-old children a year hence, they can have a go at the climate; when they show, over 20 or 30 years say, that they have that down pat, then their 100 and 1,000-year forecasts start to look more reliable.
This seems very fair to me and may even help to prevent a recurrence of the likes of this:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
@ theduke
"...the idea that trained climatological experts can predict climate is ridiculous. That's been the pretense for over a decade now and it's time to let it go."
There was no such thing as a "climate scientist" until about a decade ago. It certainly wasn't on the list of careers available to me when I went to University in 1985. Mind you even if it had I would still have chosen Geology.
Children aren't going to know what climate psyence is.
At least let's hope so.
The big mistake was letting them change its name from "aeromancy".
It's such fun to troll a troll. What a mug!
Here's another spin on the story:
http://liberalconspiracy.org/2013/01/10/global-warming-is-not-at-a-standstill-despite-ignorant-claims-in-uk-press/
Can these people really believe what they are saying?
Paul Matthews (9:20 AM): "Did anyone save the old version of [the decadal forecast URL]?"
The Wayback Machine did. Here's a snapshot from Feb 2012, noting "Last Updated: 14 December 2011." (Some formatting has gone missing.) It also has a snapshot from Oct 2011: "Last Updated: 6 June 2011."
To repeat myself from another thread: even if the temperature drops as if off a cliff by 2020, the alarmists have already covered all bases: “In October 2003 U.S. Pentagon released a controversial report, ‘An abrupt climate change scenario and its implications for United States national security,’ that explored how global warming could lead to rapid and catastrophic global cooling.”
http://climateviewer.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/06_fleming_pathological-geo-eng-history2.pdf
So, even if the world plummets into another ice age by 2020, it is still the fault of AGW!
The fascists are going to abandon their CAGW positions only slowly and with great reluctance because the great advantage of claiming the sky must be managed is that it's not practicably falsifiable. You probably could falsify their lie but only by waiting a hundred years and by implementing their nasty agenda meanwhile, which of course is what the miserable little moral incompetents are playing for.
The hilarious Independent article is gold dust because it's the exact equivalent of the Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford photo Winston Smith comes across in 1984. In the book it disappears down the memory hole and we can see quite clearly from the rage of out little pet troll how angry the fascists are that the same can't be done with that article.
I do hope Andrew will be back from lunch shortly.
Trying to navigate through this thread without stepping in cockroach shit is getting quite tricky.
DNFTT, J4R, you vile person, you! ☺
@Jan 18, 2013 at 9:06 AM | Denier666
Fair play - the Met's satellite forecasts are on the whole pretty reliable. E.G. They forecast heavy snow where we are - Frome in Somerset - from 3am this morning to midday. I was up betimes, and watched the snow start at 3.30am, and it has just petered out @13:30pm. A good 6 inches. Their "written" forecasts are less reliable, but the satellite is I suspect as good as it gets...
Back from lunch.
I hear the pattering of tiny little deletes. ;)
Its all beginning to go 'our' way, if you are a Climate Realist. Slowly the tide is turning. Reality is beginning to bite, as I predicted it would in the mid 00s. When people like Harrabin and Hansen and the UKMO start qualifying their public output you know that in private they are running around like headless chickens trying to make sense of it all. The next step will be the politicians. Slowly they will cotton on to the fact they've been had, and are imposing penalties on the electorate for no good reason. And no politician can resist the siren call of a popular policy that will garner lots of votes for very little effort, even if it does entail a complete U turn in public policy. Politicians are used to U turns, they will swear blind they were always in favour of X despite having publicly supported Y for years. Plus political careers are much shorter than those of public officials. So in 5 years time there can quite easily be a completely new set of faces who have no commitment to past policy. If I was an ambitious junior politician right now I'd be making sceptical noises about the whole AGW scam. Getting my views subtly on the record so as to be able to say 'Look I was always against it' when the time comes.
Rob (Jan 18th; 10.14 a.m.) - you have hit the nail squarely on the head..!
Gosh - he must be jolly important, this scientist - that he can just 'publish and be damned' just as he snaps his laptop shut and heads for the door... Er - what happened to 'peer reviewing'..? Before I retired I was a humble health & safety consultant in the construction industry - but no documents went to clients without being 'peer reviewed'..!
Harrabin concludes
'Take last year's weather, for instance. With global temperatures ranking "only" ninth in the record we suffered dreadful extremes. We can't be sure yet which, if any, were made worse by manmade climate change, although a study from researchers in Germany suggests that heatwaves are five times more likely due to current levels of heating. But let's not forget that the extremes were produced on a planet that has warmed by "only" 0.7C in a century. Even the arch climate sceptic Richard Lindzen agrees it will warm by one degree or so, but maintains we can be fairly relaxed about that. Based on current patterns others may disagree. And what if the world warms at least 2C, which most scientists think likely - or 4C which the World Bank thinks probable on current trends. If we get more and more years like 2012 we face serious challenges.'
The linking of disparate occurrances of bush fires, cyclone damage, a wet summer after a hose pipe ban or anything else you regard as unwelcome but do happen quite regularly but randomly in each of these cases and in each of these locations is unscientific and irrational. To proceed to apply emotive descriptive terms like extreme or weirding and such like, and to imply that as CO2 emissions rise and global temperature rises these events will increase in severity, without a shred of explanation or proof is pure mischievous rubbish. By that reasoning, summer is a season to fear, and winter to welcome.
Geronimo
thank you for re-posting this
'"” … In climate research and modelling, we should recognise that we are dealing
with a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore that the
long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” IPCC
From the 3rd IPCC report, Section 14.2 “The Climate System”, page 774."
Perhaps a representative of the Met office would pop in and explain why they believe otherwise and why we as a country spend a single penny on attempting the impossible.
Or on the other hand will they sponsor me to complete my time travel machine. £30m should get us going.
Sorry I can't stick around, got my own deliverables for end of Jan coming up fast....!
Jan 18, 2013 at 9:32 AM | Richard Betts
My 8 yr old grand daughter will do those for you, Richard.
So let's have some practical suggestions for reform rather than the carping that, if it achieves anything, will merely make Met Office staff sigh, feel uncomfortable or laugh according to temperament.
What about an inside view from Richard Betts?
Jan 18, 2013 at 3:09 AM | Ecclesiastical Uncle
It's easy. We know their climate forecasts are rubbish. We know their 5 day forecasts only work well when the weather is in 'predictable' mode and we know that their 12 hr forecasts are reasonable. We also know that no matter what the climate does there is nothing we can do to change it and we know there is nothing we can do to change the weather, therefore, shut down all climate work (save £150m), reduce the 5 day studies to experimental (save £10m), sell Exeter and buy a smaller building (save £1 m), reduce the staff by 80% (save £10m). Voilà. Better forecasts for less money.
I wonder if others have seen a comment by Robert Brown of Duke University at WUWT - I think it was on the post by Willis Eschenbach entitled 'Why El Niño and not the AMO?' In the final part of the comment RGB touches on the subject of energy poverty. To my mind, this is the 'evil' that the West should be using all its financial muscle to combat. So while this may well be slightly off topic, I hope it puts the machinations of our revered national meteorological office in perspective. The relevant extract is as follows:
"In the meantime, prudence suggests that we concentrate on the ongoing disaster of global energy poverty first as it is a certain disaster that is happening now and forces 1/3 of the world’s population to live in near prehistoric levels of poverty and misery. Even if CO_2 were precisely as disastrous as the worst-case CAGW scenarios suggest — which few people believe any more, including climate scientists — the impact of a 2.5-3.5 C rise in global temperature by the end of the century will be smaller than the impact of a century more of global energy poverty, even if the ocean does rise a full meter or more, even if storms do actually get discernibly worse eventually, even if there is increased desertification, none of which are currently observible.
Somewhere in the world, as I type this, not one but hundreds of millions of people are cooking a sparse day’s meal on animal dung or a small charcoal fire. Their children are breathing in particulates and smoke and suffering from malnutrition and diseases. Their clothes must be hand washed, if they are washed at all. They have neither fresh, clean water nor anything but the great outdoors as a sewer system. Some two billion people will light their homes — if one can call a tin shanty or mud or grass hut a home — with an oil lamp or nothing at all tonight. The children of those two billion people will not go to school tomorrow, cannot read or do simple arithmetic, and will go to bed hungry (indeed, live always hungry, as they do not take in enough food to support their growth). They will grow up stunted in stature and damaged in their brains, all because they lack access to cheap electricity, running clean water and sewer facilities and clothes washing and refrigeration and schools and houses and adequate supplies of fertilizer-grown food that electricity enables. Many will die young, or live to become “criminals” as they do what they must to stay alive, or will become cannon fodder for anyone who promises to give them a better life if they will fight and die for them.
They, not the threat of a supposed apocalypse that might or might not happen in a century, are the moral imperative of the twenty-first century. There is no need for 1/3 of the world’s population to live in squalid misery — not any more. We have the technology, we have the wealth, to utterly eliminate global poverty within a few decades. What we lack is the will and the vision to do so.
And we will never succeed in doing so at the same time we make energy more expensive and discourage its use. The poverty in question is energy poverty. Fundamentally. With enough, cheap enough, energy, we can make the deserts bloom, create jobs in the heart of Africa or India or South America, bring medicine and electric lights and running water to the world. Cheap, clean energy solves all problems; it is the fundamental scarcity."
Diogenes (12:06 AM), Yes, I agree, Piers Corbyn gets away with it because of not being in the public eye so much. I've never seen a proper, systematic, ongoing evaluation of his forecast skill, but the Met Office does do this for its own forecasts, see here
This is rich coming from someone who doesn't make forecasts, only projections, so far out that he will be retired before they are checked and if he cocks up he doesn't lose his house and his living and can retire on a nice civil service pension.
The MO checking their forecasts is the same as the wolves counting the sheep.
Jan 18, 2013 at 4:10 PM | Dolphinhead
This is something that many commenters here are passionate about and you can count me as one of them. It is the reason I get so angry when MO and AGW supporters come here to defend their witchcraft. They have forced the poor of europe to freeze to death by their actions and by supporting their governments' actions with their wailings about how good their useless models are. Aaaaaargh !!!
Jan 18, 2013 at 2:59 PM | Pharos
"The linking of disparate occurrances of bush fires, cyclone damage, a wet summer after a hose pipe ban or anything else you regard as unwelcome but do happen quite regularly but randomly in each of these cases and in each of these locations is unscientific and irrational."
"If your are going to phrophecy catastrophes, then prophecy the commonplace and say it's going to be worse. That way your prophecies will always come true."
Brother Alban, De La Salle Grammar School, Liverpool circa 1958 when discussing Matthew 24 6-7:
"And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars. See that you are not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be famines, pestilences, and earthquakes in various places."
So now we have weird weather as a symptom of global warming then every time the commonplace arrival of weird weather occurs the faithful can roll their eyes and pull their clothes at the signs that have been foretold.
"Earthquakes in various places,,," such as the absolutely enormous one of 2. 5 reported to have taken place in the Midlands. Was that really worth reporting in awed tones, BBC? Or reporting in any tones at all, come to that.
@dolphinhead - But whats in it for the CAGW supporters? With CAGW true they get a warm superior feeling over the lower human beings.
Ah, I see Hector Pascal has got there before me.. see Unthreaded.2.18 pm
Dolphinhead
In general I have concentrated my fire on the question of fuel poverty at home — an abysmal state of affairs for a civilised country — but you are quite right to raise the question of what is happening in the rest of the world.
The two biggest causes of disease and poverty in the developing world are a lack of clean water and all that follows from that and a lack of affordable energy, whether for heating, lighting, cooking or any other of the purposes for which we can flick a switch without giving it a second thought.
The enviro-extremists who have battened onto the whole concept of climate change are determined to ensure that not only will that state of affairs continue but that the developed world will, so far as is possible, be dragged back to the same impoverished level.
As usual the Ehrlichs and their adoring, if slightly disturbed, hangers-on fail to understand or refuse to acknowledge that the best way to reduce the population of the world is to encourage the development that will result inevitably in a reduced birth rate (it always has done so why should Africa and East Asia be any different?) and a stabilising of the world population, something which even the UN envisages happening by mid-century.
And even if the earth's population doesn't start to shrink, there are a few statistics worth looking at:
You could give every person currently alive ¼-acre of land in Australia;
The oceans contain around 49000 gallons of water for every person on earth.
It is estimated that our search for raw materials, be it fossil deposits for fuel or raw materials for industry has so far touched barely one per cent of the earth's crust let alone what we might find when technology lets us dig into the mantle — and it will, always assuming the doom-mongers don't put a block on it.
Sudan could provide sufficient crops to feed all Africa, given goodwill, technology, and a bit of peace, which means if the UN and western donors (and NGOs) would stop sucking up to corrupt dictators and kick their backsides out of there and the other countries they are set in ruining the whole of Africa could become prosperous within a generation.
So why isn't it happening?
Stephen Richards indeed if Corbyn keeps getting it wrong he loses his living , if the MET keeps getting it wrong that get millions more for 'computing power' so next time they get it 'right '. That is quite a difference in mental outlook.
Dolphinhead
Terrible of course no doubt about that. I must have missed the time before we started worrying about global warming when our brilliant free market energy system made everybody in the world got all the coal and oil and food they needed.
What was that? You can't afford it? What a shame!
God forbid we let you have permanent and ultimately free energy by learning how to harness the solar energy that is continually available all around you.
David, 2:27: I totally agree. No disrespect to Richard Betts, but as a retired scientist who used to work for another Govt Executive Agency, this story does not ring true. There simply was no way that an individual could post an item onto 'our' website without peer-review, senior management approval and prior notification of press officers. This is standard for all EAs and other devolved sectors of the Civil Service.
Salopian
But Slingo was most annoyed. This tells me it did slip out without the management sign off. While they were all drinking sherry and mince pies.
Dear Mr or Madam Great Cynic:
The point you seem determined to miss is that in very general terms human life has always been a struggle – nasty, brutish and short, etc. But then about 300 years ago, what you might almost call a miracle occurred. It's commonly called the Enlightenment. And its impact, fitful and uncertain though it was, was gradually to extend the benefits of a new rational understanding of the world and our place in it.
Among its many consequences was a growing embrace of the scientific method and the realisation that the free-market was by some way the most certain method to raise living standards.
That said, our is a very imperfect world. Two steps forward, one back, etc. Nothing pre-ordained. But you would have to be obtuse indeed to deny that overall the impact of such thought – can I call it progress? – has been overwhelmingly positive. That's why the average citizen of Britain today, to take just one obvious example, enjoys a vast higher standard of living than his predecessor 100 years ago.
And do you know what? Little by little, these advantages have been spreading to more and more people across the globe. Again, I stress that the process is far from straightforward. But its reality cannot be denied.
Except that a vast number of people are now seemingly determined to do precisely that by denying exactly those benefits to those most obviously deprived of them.
You might to think about this.
Agouts:
OK - I don't necessarily disagree with that.
So why, as I said earlier what is stopping us developing the science to allow people in appropriate regions (which are often very poor regions) to have permanent and ultimately free energy by learning how to harness the solar energy that is continually available all around them.