Sunday
Sep152013
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Another climate splash in the Mail on Sunday
Sep 15, 2013 Climate: Models Climate: Sceptics Climate: Surface David Rose has a big splash in the Mail on Sunday, covering a leaked version of the Summary for Policymakers, Nic Lewis's report on the Met Office model and taking a well-aimed potshot at Bob Ward to boot.
They recognise the global warming ‘pause’ first reported by The Mail on Sunday last year is real – and concede that their computer models did not predict it. But they cannot explain why world average temperatures have not shown any statistically significant increase since 1997.
Update on Sep 15, 2013 by
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill
The Met Office has issued a holding response to the Mail article. Significantly, no mention is made of Nic Lewis's criticisms of their model.
Reader Comments (177)
I think David Rose's article seems to be fair comment with respect to this:
pg 12 SPM AR4 -
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-spm.pdf
Projections of Future Changes in Climate
“For the next two decades, a warming of about
0.2°C per decade is projected for a range of SRES
emission scenarios. Even if the concentrations of
all greenhouse gases and aerosols had been kept
constant at year 2000 levels, a further warming of
about 0.1°C per decade would be expected. {10.3,
10.7}
• Since IPCC’s fi rst report in 1990, assessed projections
have suggested global average temperature increases
between about 0.15°C and 0.3°C per decade for 1990 to
2005. This can now be compared with observed values
of about 0.2°C per decade, strengthening confi dence in
near-term projections. {1.2, 3.2}”
Here is a recent article by Naomi Klein where the realisation is dawning that the greens have been completely stuffed. Something I told Monbiot and others 5 years ago. The rifles have been cocked and the shooting is about to begin.
Sep 15, 2013 at 4:48 PM | eSmiff
====================================================
Monbiot it was who started the turn of this default believer to skepticism. I couldn't understand why he felt it appropriate to use the language he did about skeptics.
TerryS
And around we go again. David Rose claimed that AR4 had given a rate of warming of 0.2C per decade for the period from 1951. You own quote claimed a rate of 0.2C for the 1990s. Apples and oranges.
If you look at the 5-year means for 1951 and 2005 the increase is about 0.11C per decade. Do the same for 1990 to 2000 and the change is about 0.2C per decade.
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs_v3/Fig.A2.gif
Both statemnts are accurate, but they are distinct analyses of different time periods.
They over parametrised CO2 as a huge effect from the start. There was never a moment when the religion was doubted.
While denying (sorry) any role for natural climate shifts, all was well while temps kept climbing. Then nearly a decade of denying (sorry again) that the rises had stopped. Now the hiatus (in reality cooling in the UK) is explained by any manner of excuses including strangely a role for Natural Climate. Modellers in the field of meteorology have always been prone to believing that the model was the real thing, often behaving like a pilot in a "blind flying" simulator, but climate modellers really do think they are modelling the climate - absolutely amazing.
O/T - Surely the best comic bit of Ed Davey's speech was where he suggested that those against Wind Turbines were from the Stone Age!!!! No Mr Davey - that is where building them will send us.
Jeremy Poynton
Monbiot changed my life. His nasty, abusive antics turned me off the whole Green, back to nature, anti capitalist project.
"Why not move beyond the insult and explain to me how a computer model can do a Mystic Meg and anticipate events unpredictable at the time of its run.
Sep 15, 2013 at 4:59 PM | entropic man"
Ergo - policy should NEVER be based on computer models.
Thanks for clearing that up. Maybe the nonsense phrase that I have seen a number of times recently, "model-based evidence" can be junked as well.
EM. Your work is done. Retire with grace and enjoy yourself.
Next?
EM the argument you are making sounds much like 15th Century religious debates about "how many Angels can dance on the head of a pin?".
Does it really matter, just like "how many Angels" what the decadal temperature changes 0.1, 0.2, 0.3C?
No, because greater rates than these (positive and negative) have been recorded over the last 1000 years- and maybe over the last 200.
In other words, Grasshopper, nothing out of the ordinary.
"a range of SRES
emission scenarios"
Barry Woods
There is a mismatch between the CPIM5 models used to write AR4, and current reality.
The problem is that the global conditions since the CPIM5 models were compiled are not those its compilers assumed. Solar insolation is less due to a quiet sun, aerosols and volcanic activity are higher. The result is that the amount of energy entering the system is smaller and warming rate slower in reality than in the model scenarios.
Think of it as like your budget. You plan on having £X saved at the end of the year. The pay rise you expected failed to appear and you crashed the car. You end up with £X/4. Your wife then complains that you can't design a budget.
So much crap about trendlines and error bars. Whether 60 years, 20 years etc its all arbitrary in order to get a number for comparison. There is no correct changepoint because the linearization exercise makes no sense in the first place because it's a nonlinear process + noise with little understood cycles of various durations coming from unknown processes.
But the fact remains we were told by Hadley/Met office that AGW was now dominant over their presumed natural variation and that is why we would see a parabolic increase. The forecast, like much of the met office forecasts nowadays, was 100% wrong. Nobody said then that they expected various pauses because they just plain didn't. That is revisionism by the Met office. They got it wrong because their assumption about declining natural variation was wrong. All the rest is excuses which seem to rely on the assumption that the rest of us have short memories. Well we don't. We can smell the BS very clearly. Some of us smelt it before the pause happened.
One can readily agree with the one of the troll's comments above: "For all the hot air and speculation going on here, the only true test will be to look back at the temperature record from 2100."
Entropic, the future is indeed unpredictable - darn tootin,' you absolutely nailed that!
Now, there's that little matter about ruining our economy based on shaky speculation about that uncertain future.
jeremyp99, Don Keiller
Even in a supposedly stable 8000 years by world standards, you may have noticed that history is full of floods, famines and droughts. Numerous civilizations have failed because climates have changed.
The presumprtion that tomorrow will be always be like today is a dangerous delusion. Models are an imperfect means of forecasting future conditions, but not a useless one. By rejecting them you replace the probability of change with the dangerous belief that nothing will change because it hasn't happened to me yet.
Human experience to date suggests that "We're all right so far" is not a good survival strategy.
Several years ago my team - Man United, were top of the league and went into a tough home game with a strong lead over their rivals. United were close to winning the league but not home and hosed. The game was won, another 3 points secured, and life moved on.
A few weeks later the final league table showed United well clear of the rest. Only with hindsight was it possible to identify precisely when they secured more points than the second-placed side would end up with, and thus we could see the actual game we effectively won the league - though of course at the time we didn't realise it.
For me, this is where climate change 'science' is at this very moment. Right now the argument is being won comprehensively by the sceptics. It's not definitely over yet, but the sheer weight of failure of alarmists claims is building and building. Truly they are the ones facing a tipping point.
Having begrudgingly admitted the abject failure of their models, either to accurately predict temps or to even suggest at The Pause, and also to have been forced to revise climate sensitivity down not up, the IPCC is suffering a monumental challenge to its credibility, which of course translates to The Theory is facing a mighty challenge.
These recent admissions have surely caused acute embarrassment to those at the high table of warming. They know it, we know it.
All this on the back of NO 'ice free Arctic by 2013' - a dearly held wish by soooo many on the warmist side, (my God, they must be devastated!) - and a record Antarctic sea ice extent too.
Quite simply, their predictions of catastrophe are not coming even remotely close and for the next few years there's nothing but chilly stuff coming down the track - which will see the lack of any warming probably extend beyond 20 years and no 'statistically significant' warming go beyond 25 years.
They're failing, the theory is failing, right now, right before our eyes.
Model failures, sensitivity failures, the Pause, (Damn that Pause!), Antarctic sea ice records, Kev's heat still AWOL and both the sun and oceans appearing to be entering a cooler phase. What else is there for them? Seriously, what? The Arctic was the canary in the coal mine and not only is the bloody thing not dead, it's singing as happily and loudly as ever.
They've played every hand and they're all-but bust.
This is the moment of Truth, right here and now. We will all look back and say "from there on in (IPCC admissions of multiple failures when compared to observations) it was really all over".
Does it really matter, just like "how many Angels" what the decadal temperature changes 0.1, 0.2, 0.3C?
Sep 15, 2013 at 5:13 PM | Don Keiller
Yes. These changes cause drought and the starvation that follows. They also cause more extreme weather with the loss of lfe and property that follows.
Behind the political changes of the Arab Spring are two crises. Egypt's population deposed their government because rising grain prices due to climate induced shortages meant that Mubarak was unable to maintain subsidised low food prices. The resulting food shortage triggered the riots. During the ongoing chaos the underlying food crisis continues.
Syria went the same way. Behind the politics of the civil war is both a food shortage and a prolonged drought.
It is already mattering.
Mark Well -
"What would be the reason for weighting the data?" [with respect to ordinary least-squares linear trends] It's a matter of perspective.
In one respect, OLS is unweighted. That is, OLS produces the linear curve y=mx+b which minimizes the unweighted sum of the squares of the vertical errors, SUM (y- y_i)^2. All points contribute with equal weighting to the sum.
In the most common case, with equal spacing of the {x_i}, one can determine the formula for the slope of the OLS fit: it is a weighted sum of the {y_i}, with the weight being proportional to (x_i - xbar), xbar being the mean value of the {x_i}. From this view, the extreme values have the greatest weight, with the earliest value having the largest negative weight, and the latest value having the largest positive weight.
It is also possible, with a little algebra, to recast the formula for the OLS slope as a weighted sum of the successive differences of the {y_i}, that is, of {d_i = y_(i+1) - y_i}. [There is, naturally, one fewer element in {d_i} than in {y_i}.] The weights of the {d_i} form an inverted parabola, being maximal at the center of the series and decreasing to zero (well, almost zero) at both end points.
It is this final perspective to which I referred when stating that the OLS tends to weight central years. OLS produces the best estimate of the slope, when the underlying random process is a linear trend plus white noise. However, it seems apparent that the global temperature series is not so simple. We can see, for example, that there are periods of higher-than-usual increases (viz.,1930s,1990s) and those of lower-than-usual increases (viz., 1940s, 2000s). So I tend to think in terms of short-term differences. Year-on-year differences, which, although extremely noisy, can be smoothed (e.g. consider the 10-year difference). As pointed out above, when combining the differences, the central years have a greater weight than the ends.
A text-only format is not ideal for presenting formulas, so I hope that the above is legible.
Re: EM
aerosols and volcanic activity are higher.
I can find no references for higher volcanic activity, it seems to have remained fairly constant at around 56 per year. Can you point me to your source?
The only source I can find for aerosols is Mishchenko 2007 and that shows a slight decrease in the satellite measurements rather than an increase.
entropic man (Sep 15, 2013 at 4:40 PM) you say that "the CPIM5 models did not include 21st Century phenomena such as increased cooling by aerosols, reduced insolation and vulcanism. Nor did it anticiate the flat/negative ENSO".
Surely the best way to demonstrate that the only problem with the models is their lack of foresight (i.e. they cannot include unpredictable changes) is to simply re-run them today, from their original start point, with all of the known changes now included? Maybe I'm unaware of such an initiative but, until such evidence is provided, the only sensible conclusion would seem to be that the models are seriously flawed.
EM: "Numerous civilizations have failed because climates have changed."
And none of them had SUV's. Natural climate change is normal.
TerryS
Try these. Sorry, but the original article is still paywalled.
http://www.colorado.edu/news/releases/2013/03/01/volcanic-aerosols-not-pollutants-tamped-down-recent-earth-warming-says-cu
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/grl.50263/abstract
Paul Matthews
"They say their Hadgem2 model is fine, because its ECS is within the IPCC range - nice circular argument. http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/met-office-in-the-mail-on-sunday/"
But the ECS of HadGEM2-ES (4.59°C per Forster et al 2013) lies outside the IPCC range (of 2 to 4.5°C)! I have submitted a comment pointing this out (currently in moderation). The Met Office seems determined to make itself look foolish.
David Salt
AR5 will have been based on model versions developed and run up to about 2011. Another few weeks and we'll both see what five years of development has wrought.
@EM "Even in a supposedly stable 8000 years by world standards, you may have noticed that history is full of floods, famines and droughts. Numerous civilizations have failed because climates have changed."
Exactly my point. The climate has always changed and always will and will do unpredictably, despite your touching faith in the IPCC, The Met. Orifice and climate muddles.
JamesG says-
"But the fact remains we were told by Hadley/Met office that AGW was now dominant over their presumed natural variation..."
Hansen caterwauled the same thing-
“As we shall see, the small forces that drove millennial climate changes are now overwhelmed by human forcings.”
Hansen et al., 2003 activist bulletin, Columbia University
But even The Hansen has rescinded his 2003 dead-certainty:
"The longevity of the recent protracted solar minimum, at least two years longer than prior minima of the satellite era, makes that solar minimum potentially a potent force for cooling."
Hansen et al., "Earth's energy imbalance and implications", 2011
Nic Lewis
Do you have 95% confidence limits for that 4.59C? If they exceed +/- 0.09C then the HadGEM2-ES and IPCC figures will overlap and the foolishness will be less apparant.
Don Keiller
Natural climate change does not preclude AGW. Our current problems are coming from piling AGW on to of natural variation.
entropic man,
What is a "climate induced shortage"? Is it a shortage that takes place over 30 years? Is it different to a weather induced shortage?
Entropic, man-
"30 years of local weather does indeed define the local climate."
In 1981, Hansen relied on 15 years of temperature change as his ‘dramatic evidence’ of global warming aka climate change-
"They have found that the Earth's average temperature rose 0.2 degrees Centigrade from the mid-1960s to 1980."- Eleanor Randolph, in The Pittsburgh Press, August 15, 1981
Besides the fact that Hansen incorrectly used 15 years to define climate change, there are other problems with this. From 1965 to 1980, the re-historized versions of HadCRUT gives 0.06C rise, GISS gives 0.12C rise and HadSST gives 0.02C DROP. Hansen also concluded that anthropogenic forcings overwhelmed natural variations way back in the mid 1960's.
So, Hansen expelled this CACC based on a temperature increase that is smaller than the noise in the measurement. You have to admire the grant-seeking chutzpah.
We now have 15 years of almost zero temperature increase, while annual CO2 emissions are 2.5 times higher than 1980. But 15 years is no longer a long enough period to declare that the quest is at an end.
And so it goes.
Sep 15, 2013 at 5:35 PM | Unregistered Commenterentropic man
=======================================================================
For heaven's sake. Nobody is denying that changes in climate can cause havoc. What we are taking to task is the notion that human activity has had a significant effect on climate since CO2 concentration started to rise. And now there is more and more evidence that it is natural variability rather than human activity that rules the roost. Your argument is utterly spurious misses the point. Please do try to keep up.
The 'science' produced by the IPCC was never sound. CO2 never drives climate change/temperature increases. Look at the Ice Core record, some of which goes back 900,000 years.
Now it has been caught out ; If its own models do not match what has actually happened, then the 'climate scientists' who are committed to AGW ideology cannot claim 95% 99% etc whatever nonsense they try to push as confidence in their predictions.
The only conclusion we can make is that their 'understanding' of the world climate system is wrong as a means of hind casting or forecasting climate in the future. Remember this is what is programmed into the computer models, and that is what they have used to 'frighten' the worlds decision makers into this anti-CO2/fossil fuel religion. If this is wrong then we can use fossil fuels without the religious guilt, oil, gas, fracking for the aforementioned, deep sea Methyl Clathrates ( so called Fire Ice ). We can use Nuclear Power as good base line capacity for electricity - Oh and remember the Greens protested endlessly about that as well, until they found another, bigger opportunity to influence decision makers into following their beliefs - without being elected or a referendum.
James Evans
Not easily answered yes or no. Crop failures tend to be induced by extreme weather; heat, cold, drought or floods
If you look at them one by one, they are weather events. If their frequency increases due to climate change, then their long term effect on the viability of that region for agriculture can be regarded as climatic.
Syria, the US southwest, northern Mexico and Zambia have all experienced long-term reductions in rainfall. So far these are weather events. If they continue beyond 30 years, they become climate events by definition.
Re: EM
Your reference does not point to an increase in volcanic activity. They use a couple of computer models to decide that the SO2 in the atmosphere comes from volcanoes rather than industrial activity and therefore volcano activity has increased. I'm looking for an actual reference to increased volcanic activity. There hasn't been a volcano of VEI 5 or above since Pinatubo in 1991 (that was a 6). The recent Icelandic one (which I won't attempt to spell) was a 4, but that was in 2010. Generally, there have been somewhere between 50 and 60 active volcanoes per year, consistently, for quite a while.
Here are some graphs of the aerosol optical depth (which is what your references use) and they do not show anything exceptional.
The Met Office has issued a rather half-hearted response.
Most of it is just background waffle.
They say their Hadgem2 model is fine, because its ECS is within the IPCC range - nice circular argument.
http://metofficenews.wordpress.com/2013/09/15/met-office-in-the-mail-on-sunday/
Sep 15, 2013 at 2:57 PM Paul Matthews
For an organisation whose principal product is propaganda, the Met Office still has a lot to learn, if only about the principles of its business.
One of the fundamental rules of propaganda is not to respond directly to what your enemy says with counter statements.
EM @ 6.29
"Natural climate change does not preclude AGW. Our current problems are coming from piling AGW on to of natural variation."
I don't follow you. Can you justify your assertion. Which particular "current problems" are exacerbated by AGW and how do you know?
The Met Office is in a very serious position. Their unscientific approach to climate change led them to develop their programmes according to their deeply held beliefs. They rejected all the possible natural climate drivers and as a result, their models are now useless and should be scrapped. However, the situation is complicated because the minister of DECC and his officials seem to live in a fantasy land where they firmly believe and spread, with all the authority of government, the most ridiculous warmist claptrap.
If the MO put their hands up and admitted that they had got it all wrong, instead of closing the Hadley Centre, Green Ed would probably tell them to issue dire warnings of extreme weather and the end of life on earth.
So what should the MO do? In my view, the game is now up. They need to sit down with Ed and explain the reality of the situation. Temperature and CO2 do not correlate. The earth may even cool. They don't know what will happen next, no one does. The longer they insist that the warming is continuing, the more stupid they may look.
The problem for the MO is that Nic Lewis and David Rose and many others will analyse every word they utter and the climate world will watch and make judgement.
Most of the public will remain unaware because the MSM generally is warmist and the MoS is almost alone in publishing the reality of the global warming scare. The BBC will never broadcast any climate stories with a sceptical theme. The silence of the BBC on stories they consider to be negative to their agenda is a most powerful tool because many important matters are concealed from those who trust the BBC to supply their news.
However, particularly if global cooling becomes a reality, the MO and Ed will be finished. The story will become too important to conceal, even for the BBC.
If they continue beyond 30 years, they become climate events by definition.
Sep 15, 2013 at 6:44 PM entropic man
(T < 30 years) = weather
(T > 30 years) = climate
By totally arbitrary definition by climate priesthood fiat.
As I posted on a different thread after you had said ...the list of those who cant tell the difference between "short term variation" and "long term trend":
EM -
I know that in the gospel of "climate science" one of the tenets is:
(timescale < 30 years) = weather variation
(timescale > 30 years) = climate trend.
I can understand how such idealisations might appeal to someone who had spent a lifetime presenting simplified models as physical reality.
But, in reality, if you have no physically based model for the statistical variations of a system (which seems, in reality, as likely as not to be fractal-like in its time variations) then it is nonsense to claim to be able to discriminate between "short term variation" and "long term trend".
Sep 12, 2013 at 7:21 PM Martin A
Sometimes, I think that the poets say it best. As per Robert Frost from 1920:
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
That's what the logic of their situation says they should do.
But the character of an organisation cannot change abrptly - it just does not happen.
They are, to be charitable, professional bulshitters and their instinct and ethos will lead them to think they can bullshit their way out.
entropic man (Sep 15, 2013 at 6:15 PM), you say "AR5 will have been based on model versions developed and run up to about 2011. Another few weeks and we'll both see what five years of development has wrought."
That may be so but, as AR5 is supposed to be based upon already published results, I'd have expected that such data would have already been presented to quash any doubts about the models... unless they're deliberately hiding it enhance some dramatic revelation they'll be making in AR5?
entropic man,
"Not easily answered yes or no."
Well thank goodness I came to the authority on such matters then.
"So far these are weather events. If they continue beyond 30 years, they become climate events by definition."
So, "weather induced shortages" then.
Proceed.
EM
If I didn't make any contingency plans for the pay increase not materialising and then make the necessary adjustments when it didn't, then she'd be right.If I carried on pretending that the increase, already well overdue, was just round the corner (MIcawber-like) and that the crashed car would right itself if I just waited long enough then she would probably have me sectioned.
And just exactly what would those current problems be?
Arctic ice? Nothing to see here. Part of the problem (if it is a problem) is due to wind and currents and there is plenty of evidence that ice cover in that part of the world is cyclical.
Rising sea levels? Nothing to see here. Fairly consistent increase that will take more than several lifetimes to have any effect. And like the so-called "global" temperature it's almost impossible to measure accurately anyway.
Ocean acidification? Oh, you mean the minor reduction in alkalinity that has become the panic du jour recently. Nothing to see there either, I'm afraid.
What about the increase in hurricanes? Nope. Quietest hurricane period in living memory and longer.
But keep trying, EM. You'll find something in a minute. Or not.
I'm getting BBDéjà vu here.
Equally when HadGEM2-ES is evaluated against many aspects of the observed climate, including those that are critical for determining the climate sensitivity, it has proved to be amongst the most skilful models in the world.
From the Met Off reply.
So, that means that their model is among the better ones of a bunch of rubbish.
Most of the public will remain unaware because the MSM generally is warmist and the MoS is almost alone in publishing the reality of the global warming scare. The BBC will never broadcast any climate stories with a sceptical theme. The silence of the BBC on stories they consider to be negative to their agenda is a most powerful tool because many important matters are concealed from those who trust the BBC to supply their news.
This for me has been the overriding issue that has prevented, if not, blocked all debate. IF and when this farce is finally over there should be a massive head chopping session throughout the british establishment but history tells us that the slimeballs will slime their way out into safe and profitable retirement. The debate (serious, honest, open and unpredjudist) cannot not happen until the media is turned and in that I include the BBC. They have been piling on the propaganda over the past month in a quantity that I have never witnessed before. They have had their children running hither and thither.
Does Bob Ward do any homework at all? He's just tweeted Roger Helmer, who tweet-linked the Rose article, quoting the Times article by Walport, Beddington et al., hoping that will bring him back to the 'faith'.
Does he suppose that Helmer, an MEP for the E Midlands who as a Conservative MEP tore his hair out trying to get Cameron to see sense and eventually gave up and defected to UKIP mainly due to climate policy, and had been blogging and lecturing at every opportunity and organising and chairing seminars and lectures by leading sceptics for at least 10 years in the EU parliament building itself, was born yesterday?
Roger Helmer@RogerHelmerMEP1h
IPCC scientists in full retreat over climate change: http://is.gd/4F7AmI . And about time too. Let's scrap our daft climate policies.
Bob Ward@ret_ward1h
.@RogerHelmerMEP You need a chief scientific adviser to help you see through the nonsense in 'The Mail on Sunday': http://is.gd/mIx8cA
The MO can't change. Logic will have no effect on the true believers, and power is deaf to criticsm.
Even those who never ever bought the ideology are now too compromised by their silence. It's probably past the point an insider can speak up. All believe they will hung if the natives find out how wrong they've been. The question will always be: "Why the HELL did you stay silent so long?"
This will only end with public disgrace. And probably in the courts.
The silence of the BBC on certain matters is akin to censorship. It is rampant yet difficult to detect unless you look out for the deliberate omission. Look out for the absence of negative stories about the EU, for example, the failure to mention that the EU is totally responsible for all forms of transport, (HS2, the removal of train fare subsidies); postal services (removal of subsidies leading to closure of Post Offices, opening the market to all EU companies = loss of Royal Mail's most lucrative market); the control of food safety, (but doing it badly leading to the horse meat scandal).
The BBC has caused huge damage to the public interest by being a key promoter of the global warming scare and failing to report on the stupidity of Green energy policies.
I do enjoy watching the poor foot soldiers of the cAGW movement tying themselves in knots trying to defend the indefensible.
The IPCC is between a rock and a hard place. According to the Daily Mail article, “governments have tabled 1,800 questions and are demanding major revisions”. The IPCC can wave these away, issue the report as scheduled, and find themselves defunded by Christmas. Or they can take them on board – in which case the report will not see the light until at least next Christmas. Doubtless some of those 1800 questions have been purposefully crafted to occasion the maximum of consternation and delay (and then there is Donna Laframboise and her Team(tm) to pick over the bona fides afterwards).
EM
I love having a look at the internet to confirm things I remember from school or my childhood and youth. Your assertion that droughts will get worse triggered my memory and some the results of my research are here. I don't think anything in the weather is doing anything different globally than it has since biblical times. Human stupidity (believing computer models created by climate scientists for instance) and using food to create fuel might not be helping the situation though.
Agriculture in Ereẓ Israel was dependent on irregular rainfall, but drought and consequent famine were of frequent occurrence.
The most famous, the seven years' famine predicted by Joseph in Egypt, included also the Land of Israel – Gen. 41:54, 43:1
Amos 4:7
Jeremiah 17:7-8
1st Kings 17:1
Ruth 1:1
and droughts elsewhere
The infamous Bengal famine of 1770 was the first to have occurred under the regime of the British East India Company, Bengal was struck by famine again in 1866, The year 1918 is remembered as the year of the great Indian famine. In 1943, there was yet another major famine.
The earliest settlement of Ur dates back to the Ubaid Period, or about 5300–4000 BCE. Droughts brought about the consolidation of several small farming villages into larger settlements. This led to the need for large-scale irrigation, in order to support the larger farms and populations during the drought periods.
There is at present plentiful evidence for extremely low flood conditions that lasted for more than a generation, more than what was available when Bell (1971) concluded that the end of the Old Kingdom was caused by droughts as a part of a climatic event of global dimension.
Dionysios of Halikarnassos (1.23.2-3) on the Pelasgians
The first cause of the desolation of their cities seemed to be a drought which laid waste the land.
If you have a look yourself you'll see there's nothing new under the sun, and AGCC doesn't come into it, natural changes do of course.
That Met Office response is a corker. A textbook example of a 'holding response which says nothing, but says it with an air of great authority.
FWIW, my general impression is that the certainty among "leading" climate scientists has been 100% right from the start, and that the steadily increasing "likeliness number" is just added for dramatic effect.