Bishop Hill Boris on Piers
Jan 21, 2013 BBC Climate: Sceptics Boris Johnson, the shock-maned mayor of London, is waxing lyrical in the Telegraph about the virtues of Piers Corbyn and the possibility of a little ice age.
I am speaking only as a layman who observes that there is plenty of snow in our winters these days, and who wonders whether it might be time for government to start taking seriously the possibility — however remote — that Corbyn is right. If he is, that will have big implications for agriculture, tourism, transport, aviation policy and the economy as a whole. Of course it still seems a bit nuts to talk of the encroachment of a mini ice age.
But it doesn’t seem as nuts as it did five years ago. I look at the snowy waste outside, and I have an open mind.
I can't number myself amongst Corbyn's fans, having never seen any evidence to suggest that he can in fact weather forecast better than anyone else. A couple of years ago Roger Harrabin tried to organise a formal competition between the various weather forecasters, all of whom lost interest fairly quickly. This didn't encourage me to place any great weight on any of their claims.
Reader Comments (68)
I have been getting Corbyn's forecasts regularly for the last 3 years and I rely on them when booking tickets for test matches, arranging family get togethers etc. From my own observations he is right most of the time at about the rate found by Dr Dennis Wheeler's peer reviewed study in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics determined (85 percent).
FYI Corbyn didn't pull out of the Harrabin challenge for a head-to-head forecasting shoot out. The MO insisted the data used for verification was their own but Corbyn demanded another source be used because of conflict of interest. Can you blame him? So the MO bailed out.
I've just published an article addressing Corbyn's astonishingly successful winter forecast to date. No one comes close to him.
http://principia-scientific.org/supportnews/latest-news/105-uncanny-winter-weather-accuracy-of-britain-s-most-astonishing-forecaster.html
Jan 21, 2013 at 2:56 PM | Stephen Richards
The MO really only forecast 3 hours ahead. They adjust their forecasts right up until the forecast 3-hour block becomes present weather. I am in no doubt that accuracy will be measured by comparing the forecast that was published immediately before the 3-hour block started with the weather that occurred during the 3-hour block.
I await their refutation of my hypothesis.
I wonder if now we'll hear Boris voice thoughts on the "low carbon economy", including the need or otherwise for carbon trading?:
http://www.london.gov.uk/priorities/environment/climate-change/low-carbon-economy
@John o'Sullivan
so you relied on a 1:5 prediction. how much did you pay for that privilege? Remember, a company he might have been associated with, failed badly. And he has a record of being a free-loader on society. just saying.
Piers flagged up a test to his reputation when he predicted an increase in the frequency of
easterly winds in Western Scotland from April to October 2012.
We are so used to South Westerlies in this period that he was far out in a limb.
Yet Western Scotland had this unusual weather pattern.
So much so that there was a drought on Barra because of unseasonal low rain fall.
He also finds it easier to say Leningrad rather than Saint Peters burg so I suppose that's why Boris is a fan
@Billy Liar
"The MO really only forecast 3 hours ahead. They adjust their forecasts right up until the forecast 3-hour block becomes present weather. I am in no doubt that accuracy will be measured by comparing the forecast that was published immediately before the 3-hour block started with the weather that occurred during the 3-hour block."
So basically they look out of the window.
I guess this is what is called "fine-tuning of the parameters" in Met Office speak
owns a failed company, is a free-loader on society, wishes he could be so lucky as to live in North Korea...gets a few random weather bets right....is that the conclusion on Piers Corbyn?
i agree with the comment above -
Jan 21, 2013 at 10:33 AM | Justice4Rinka
"Up to a point anyone can do this. You'll have to make calls about whether the weather coming in from the east is going to shoulder aside that coming in from west, or whatever, but given access to satellite pictures, there are only so many possible outcomes over shortest horizons."
i may be off the mark to agree but in bad/winter weather situations in the UK we could all have a good punt at the coming days weather from sat pics i think (blockbuster has gone out of business for a reason).
anyway, good for Boris to state the obvious.
ps. why are our MO weather maps so cr*p with warning everywhere, oh for the good old days with isobars etc.
diogenes
Sounds about right.
The only outside analysis of his accuracy I could find gave him a 25% success rate.
Human nature being as it is, I doubt many people would admit to buying from a snake oil salesman and then admitting they'd been sold a pup.
I recently had a thought on the Julia Slingo comment that the Met Office long range climate model is the same algorithm/code as that used for the day to day forecasts (other than the grid cell resolution).
At first sight, this meets with ridicule from sceptics with suggestions that the hopeless "barbeque summer" long range forecast (for example) was wrong because of including "wrong physics" due to the pre-occupation with climate change.
However, the thought I had the other day was that Julia Slingo is cleverer than what might one think by stating the two are the same, and the Met Office is quite shrewd to be using the same model. The reason I say this is because by using the same model for both they imply a confidence in the climate change part irrespective of whether its wrong or not. If you stop and think about, if the climate change component would predict over a century a warming of say 2 degC, then the warming over 1 year would be 0.02 degC. This would have no effect whatsoever on the forecasts, even long range ones of 6 months or a year. The rural versus town temperature forecasts alone differ by many degrees, not hundredths of degrees. It would therefore be irrelevent in the everyday forecasts. Therefore they can safely include the "physics" of AGW without it ever making any difference to normal forecasting, I suspect, but they can then tell politicians etc they are the same physical model, implying a possibly undeserved technical credibility.
However, there is a further consideration about including AGW/climate change physics in the models: saying they do does not mean it does anything at all, because they would have to also include a model of the changing CO2 effect, entirely estimated, for the future in their models. If they had a parameter for CO2 going forward into the future but simply made it constant, then again the effect of including climate change physics in the weather forecast (because Julia Slingo told us they are the same model) would be effectively nil.
So here's a question for the Met Office: if climate change physics is included in the code, how do they input the CO2 model for the future, or is it simply a constant CO2 assumption when they run the forecast model?
Very curious: I was watching the box this evening (the 'one' show) and on it there was a female reporter/ forecaster discussing the recent weather events and how they were caused by a sudden stratospheric warming event!
-I wonder if the BBC/Metoffice secretly read Corbyn's forecasts?
I have said before that an ambitious politician with an eye for the main chance should currently be positioning himself on the sceptical side of the AGW argument, so that when it all goes belly up in a few years time, they are not so much able to say 'I told you so' (no-one likes a smart-arse) but will be untainted by previous statements coming back to haunt them.
If we were to get a winter akin to '47 or '63 in the next few years, and people were dying left right and centre because they can't afford to heat their houses properly (a not inconceivable scenario) then there would be hell to pay, and anyone tainted by previous pro-AGW views would be political dead ducks. Step forward our far sighted hero.....
Boris Johnson, an ambitious politician with an eye for the main chance? Surely not!!!
To all those who says Piers wouldn't be in the business if his forecasts weren't accurate, will any of you please show me an astrologer who's gone out of business because their predictions have failed? Anyone? The only reason I can imagine an astrologer would go out of business is that they are not able to lie convincingly.
The corollary to this is that any astrologer who has been in the business for long and achieved fame, money and notoriety on the back of their 'successful predictions', like Piers Corbyn, must be getting something right.
The eagerness of some otherwise intelligent people to believe charlatans just because they are plucky little entrepreneurs who live and die by the quality of their product is astounding.
It reminds me of an artist (perhaps a fartist also) who claimed that people would buy shit from him and then went on to prove his point by selling his canned excrement as Artist's Shit. One can was sold for 124.000 euros at a Sotheby's auction in 2007.
As I noted on Unthreaded, Alice Bell has some harsh words for Boris Johnson (and skeptical BH regulars, presumably), although I don't know who mistook her for part of the 'scientific community':
Alice Bell slams Boris Johnson
This is the same Alice Bell of the New Left Project, so the cordial and thoughtful engagement some are seeking there may prove beyond reach.
Alice Bell fuming on Twitter
Some of her recent heated tweets about Boris:
I know two farmers/agriculturalists who are paying Piers instead of relying on the free (sic) Met Office reports. As they put it to me, they don't expect him to be 100% accurate, just more accurate than the MO. They are satisfied enough with his results over several years to continue with their subscriptions.
Previously, on the Boris and Piers show :
“We’re very confident that there will be a lot of rain – a deluge, really – during the entire Olympic period, and we are 80 per cent sure that the Opening Ceremony itself will feature heavy rain, including hail and thunder.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/borisjohnson/9402260/To-avoid-the-Olympic-weather-forecast-please-look-away-now.html
Um, not quite.
Just a reminder that we can soon see the validity of Corbyn's prediction made weeks ago that there would be another Arctic blast around end Jan/early Feb - he seems very confident over at Weather Action
Please see my website themaverickman.com
It's about 3rd on the google search under "weatheraction analysis"
I carried out a 6-month detailed analysis of Corbyn's forecasts for May-Oct 2012. I reckon he's around 70% accurate, though this depends on how you would define "accurate", but I explain my thinking on it.
Thanks.