Sunday
Feb162014
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill Deliberately or otherwise, Slingo has misled the public
Feb 16, 2014 Climate: MetOffice Climate: WG2 Climate: other Almost every scientist who has said anything about the floods has said that there is no way to link them to global warming - Brian Hoskins was fairly clear about this on the Today programme. The latest is Matt Collins from the University of Exeter, quoted in the Mail on Sunday:
Professor Collins told The Mail on Sunday: ‘There is no evidence that global warming can cause the jet stream to get stuck in the way it has this winter. If this is due to climate change, it is outside our knowledge.’
Only Julia Slingo has tried the opposite tack. When asked about a possible link she said
...all the evidence suggests that climate change has a role to play’
Reader Comments (87)
Surely in modern Britain the most important aspect of any boss's job is to make sure that the money keeps rolling in. Dame Slingo has played a blinder and showed the country exactly why she deserves her damehood/knighthood, whatever you want to call it.
I blame the government. Not for the floods but for not countering the lies. If Paul Homewood and his excellent posts can find out the we had far more rain in 1929-30, why can't the government produce those figures to counter the deliberate untruths being told about it?
The Met Office has been misleading the public about AGW for years.
Why should they change now!
It's worse than that because the models are not capable of any such prediction so this can only be a pessimistic gut feeling of hers, entirely opposite in nature to the predictions she made last time of course. Her idea of evidence is what others call personal opinion.
The real question is, is the government telling her to say such things or is it her own idea? At any rate its good to hear acknowledgement that the skeptics, once again, are correct. This notion, not only has no supportive data and no models it doesn't even have any theory at all behind it.
Slingo has presided over serial failure at the UKMO because being a cloud physics' expert, she has apparently got a strong personal interest in maintaining the status quo of this part of the fake fizzicks, ultimately based on Sagan's incorrect analysis. The internal struggle of the UKMO is now coming to public notice as far better and objective scientists, not promoted for political reasons, see there is a chance to recover the Organisation's reputation.
Just how did Slingo get to her current position?
Was that rise unprecedented?
As I said on Unthreaded, perhaps we're being rather naive about Dame Julia. Given her prominent position, when asked last week she had to say something about the floods. But that was difficult because clearly she and the Met Office don't know what's causing them. Had she been very brave, that's all she would have said. But the consequences would have been dramatic and especially embarrassing for her employer. So, as - like most of us - she's not very brave, she (I'm sure deliberately) issued an anodyne statement that really meant nothing - carefully phrased to let her off the hook if necessary in due course. Deplorable maybe - but human nature.
A reminder. Here's how she was reported by the BBC a week ago:
So far, so understandable. However, in view of the statements now being made by politicians (e.g. Miliband's "climate change was causing the storms and floods. ... The science is clear") and the likely consequences of such statements, I agree she now has a duty to clarify her statement. For a senior official not to do her duty would be deplorable.
Is there anything not caused by climate change?
Meanwhile the prize for the most stupid utterance of the week goes to Bozo in Chief John Holdren
“Weather practically everywhere is being caused by climate change.”
What he meant to say was "Climate change's greatest achievement was to cause no global warming for 17+ years"
Jake Haye,
No. You think of something and I will tell you its bad for you, getting worse, caused by climate change, caused by you but will all stop if you pay more taxes.
Roy has it.
"Surely in modern Britain the most important aspect of any boss's job is to make sure that the money keeps rolling in. Dame Slingo has played a blinder and showed the country exactly why she deserves her damehood/knighthood, whatever you want to call it."
Correct.
Put simply, this statement was scurrilous imputation by Slingo, it was also a calculated and deliberate act. Dame meddlesome, she is a civil servant first and foremost and she bats for her 'department' which is of course the Met Office. Thus, does a wet winter then become - Man Made Global Warming - as I said, a scurrilous linkage.
I wonder if the Met Office retraining of the Met Office spokesperson has been completed yet. The one who, a few weeks ago, said that there was no evidence that recent rain was due to climate change (after the PM had said he felt in his waters there was a connection) and was then promptly contradicted by Sligo.
I wonder what the Greens position on Collins would be ? Believes in CAGW but makes a statement saying that SOMETHING was not caused by CAGW. Would he be half sacked, or maybe a lie detector test. Maybe he has secret banned thoughts when he wakes in the night, maybe they would sack him on the precautionary principle
(still fuming here)
After reviewing Dr Roy Spencer's analysis of climate model temperature predictions it can safely now be said that "97% of climate model temperature predictions disagree with actual measured temperatures". (The warmists love to quote this 97% number!)
The floods have ramped up the intensity of the climate debate. It is obviously tempting for the alarmists to blame climate change. Given the possible political response, for example, Milliband promising to clamp down on CO2 emissions no doubt at the expense of our energy and industry and our ability to warm our homes, the stakes are very high.
If Slingo is tempted to insinuate that climate change is to blame for reasons of advocacy then that is very serious indeed. Perhaps she is becoming desperate, given the criticism of the Met Office concerning the winter forecast, sea level rises and the general failure of long term forecasts over many years.
@sc
The floods have ramped up the intensity of the climate debate because they are bad news. If we have a glorious summer, Slingo , Millipede and the greens will be nowhere to be seen. Slingo will not be out there saying 'This fantastic spell is entirely consistant with climate change'
That is why they are called alarmists
Forester126
They have asked the experts on past rainfall events - used to be called The Meteorological Office and they have decided to obfuscate the issue by giving partial advice to suit the AGW religion found there these days. The recent report linked here -
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/media/pdf/n/i/Recent_Storms_Briefing_Final_07023.pdf
by displaying just rainfall for January (except in the maps) ignores the fact that, as Paul Homewood points out 1929/30 was a much wetter winter (Nov/Dec/Jan) than this winter - but honesty is not their policy. It is a form of negligence and might come home to roost as we have discussed before.
You can't really blame politicians - (hell that was hard to type).
What you are seeing now is the result of climate scientists exaggerating what they know to drive an agenda that will get politicians to notice. This was the aim from the beginning of the IPCC**. Now politicians are beginning to run ahead of even the IPCC, Cameron's statements on floods and tropical storms, Miliband's rant today about climate change, the Green Party going to put us all in prison. When you unleash a monster you always lose control of it.
Now it seems to me that climate science is starting to move to a more open view (you know doing science instead of religion), lowering climate sensitivity and at last realising that the world ain't warming despite "all time record" CO2 emissions (see what I did there?) and sea ice is increasing.
Thank you Prof. Collins for having the honesty to say we don't know and there is no real evidence and in reality he is not the only one. Sensible climate science should be advising caution about attribution especially as we now know that the flooding has been made much worse as there as been no rivers dredged in the affected areas since 1996 by order of the EU via the EA.
** I can thoroughly recommend Rupert Darwall's book "The Age of Global Warming" for an excellent historical perspective.
Eternal Optimist at 11.23am. Wrong! If we have a good (i.e.warm) summer she will be noting the signs that CAGW is resuming after a pause.
I think the Met Office has done much that is admirable and for the benefit of the UK. But all of that is from their work on organising and interpreting weather observations and providing forecasts for up to 100 hours or so. I am not aware of anything admirable or beneficial to the UK from their climate work. If anything, their warm bias has probably caused a great deal of loss to society. The legacy of having had climate alarm zealots such as Houghton and Napier in the topmost ranks of the Met Office management and governance is a burden that might be best addressed by making a clear, institutional separation so that never again will climate alarm campaigners be able to benefit by association with the Met Office name.
Robin Guenier: Thank you for the quote from Dame Julia. I was interested in parsing it in a slightly different way:
"But all the evidence suggests there is a link to climate change,"
I would like to know, was she speaking of the empirical evidence of the weather through the MO's windows or the model outputs from the MO's Windows(tm).
Does Sligo make her Cleveragh?
The real reason for the flooding seems to be much more down to earth:-
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/16/the-real-reason-for-flooding-in-somerset-levels-not-global-warming-the-only-pump-was-turned-off/
I’ve just watched ‘The Monuments Men’, where we regularly saw German officers stand idly back and burn some of the greatest art mankind has ever produced. They didn't flinch when doing it, so dedicated were they to the cause of their leader.
The parallels with supporters of CAGW and wind turbines are obvious; mass destruction of the British landscape all for a totally discredited cause.
As Christopher Booker pointed out this is the same UKMO who last November predicted that the coming winter would be DRIER than normal.
Somerset Levels flooding is down to the EA not opening the sluices that lets water into the sea. No amount of dredging will counter this monumental piece of folly.
(This report is on Wattsupwiththat by someone who worked on the sluices during the war)
Presumably Slingo agrees with Milipede that the correct response to the floods is to build more windmills to change the weather.
Slingo reflects the reality that those rise to the top of such organisations are much more likley to be political animals than good scientists, for given the 101 other things this type of role involves there is actual very little time in which or pratice your craft . And so they attract those that are much more motived by the idea of swimming political waters rather than scientific ones .
Just how did Slingo get to her current position?
Was that rise unprecedented?
Feb 16, 2014 at 10:32 AM | Unregistered CommenterTony Hansen
My grandmother found the same Dr in a packet of incontinent pads but decided not to use it.
Surely the recent weather experience provides concrete evidence that a policy of adaption, is preferable to a policy of mitigation. It is about time that the debate between mitigation verses adaption was reopened.
Leaving aside the issue that there has been no measurable significant increase in global temperatures for about the past 17.5 years and therefore it is rather difficult to pin recent events on recent warming (since there has been no recent warming), the fact is that any future steps towards mitigation will do nothing to reduce global temperatures. At best, they will restrict a rise in temperature to about 2degC (I am not suggesting that a rise of 2 or more degrees would in fact be a problem, but some people consider that to be a problem). Thus, if today's present temperatures are the 'cause' of the recent 'extreme' 'unprecedented' weather events, future mitigation will not reverse thiis; we will still be left to deal with increased floding etc, other recent 'extreme' 'unprecedented' weather events. Thus whatever the future brings, even if we seek to take steps to curb the rise in CO2, it appears (if current levels of CO2 and current warming is the cause of today's extreme weather etc) that the die is already cast, and we will have to adapt to these weather patterns in any event.
Accordingly, it would seem more sensible to spend money on adapting, rather than on mitigation (especially since it is probable that most of the steps to mitigate are doomed to faillure especially given the growing economies in China, India and the other BRICS). The further benfit of this approach is that mitigation could only work if CO2 is the deamon. Mitigation achieves nothing if climate change is natural, or due to some manmade activity other than CO2 emmissions. If CO2 is not the 'deamon' then we may end up in the position whereby we spend trillions of dollars on mitigation, only to find that it is a failure and then we are forced to spend trillions of dollars on adaption.
Adaption is the targeted response. Spending money directed at specific projects as and only if those projects become necessary to cope in a continually changing world.
After reviewing Dr Roy Spencer's analysis of climate model temperature predictions it can safely now be said that "97% of climate model temperature predictions disagree with actual measured temperatures". (The warmists love to quote this 97% number!)
Feb 16, 2014 at 11:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterD.M.
97% of models also had randomised net forcing variations more positive than actually occurred in the real world. It is noticeable that the models with the lowest net positive forcing from all causes match the actual temperature record best.
Richard Verney is right. When it comes to policy Adaptation makes sense under any circumstances. This is what should be the opposing view to the 'this is climate change' crowd. It takes all the dodgy science (yes, from both sides) out of it.
(Wonder when anyone will be along to defend Slingo...)
MyChickensGotNoHead,
That Holdren quote appears to be a misquote: see this discussion which links to a verbatim transcript of the briefing in which Holdren doesn't say what he is reported to have said.
Richard Verney
Adaption will perforce become part of future strategy, as most Westerners have decided that mitigation compromises " business as usual".
To paraphrase the old phrase "If you think education is expensive, try ignorance!"
"If you think mitigation is expensive, try adaption!"
The less we spend now on mitigation, the more we will have to spend on adaption in the future.
That is like maxing your credit card and leaving your children to pay the bill.
Climate change cannot CAUSE the weather to be different because 'climate change' is merely a way of summing up what a run of many years of observations of weather patterns, within a region, has made manifest. Unless, that is, one is making a bold, because detailed and refutable, conjecture about future weather patterns and ranges, or conjecturing about some putative cause of change.
Slingo is the unique and exciting combination of classic favorites Bingo and Slots. It was first developed as a traditional 5-reel slot machine in 1995 but now you can play this unlimited climate model on your computer! Spin the reels to try to fill up your bingo card and match patterns but be sure to watch out for the jokers, dust devils, and angels along the way!
Slingo n. Combination of 'slang' and 'lingo'. One's own personal vocabulary of words exclusive to them.
e.g. Floods are caused by climate change
Given the likely consequences of politicians' (especially Miliband’s) current assertions about the science (more subsidies for more “renewables”, increased fuel costs, increased risk of power outages, loss of jobs, etc.), the overriding objective now surely must be to persuade Dame Julia to issue a simple clarification of her earlier statement – which, if you read them both carefully, is not really at odds with Professor Collins’ statement. The worst possible way of achieving that is to insult her:
Such statements may make the authors feel good. But they’re not going to achieve anything useful.
BTW I wholly agree with Richard Verney and rhoda. For the reasons that, rather surprisingly, I've been allowed to develop here, the UK should be considering the abolition of wind and solar power subsidies and the reallocation of the money saved to reducing fuel bills and building stronger defences against the anticipated climate chaos.
Don't forget that it was Slingo who, last April, said "climate change was loading the dice towards freezing, drier weather.”
http://www.itv.com/news/2013-04-10/met-office-investigating-arctic-link-in-record-low-temperatures/
@richard verney
"Adaption and adaptation are different forms of the same word, and they share all their meanings, which include (1) the act of changing to suit new conditions, and (2) a work of art recast in a new form or medium. But the longer word, adaptation, is preferred by most publications and is much more common. Adaption is not completely absent, but it usually gives way to the longer form in edited writing.
Both forms are old. The OED lists examples of adaption from as long ago as the early 17th century. Adaptation is just a little older, having come to English from French in the middle 16th century. Adaption has never been the preferred form, though, and in fact has grown less common relative to adaptation over the centuries.
It’s possible that some English speakers now view adaptation and adaption as separate words each with their own uses, but any such emerging differentiation is not yet borne out in general usage. For now, at least, adaption always bears replacement with the more common form."
Joseph Sydney
Global warming is the cause; climate change is the consequences.
EM
Sorry, but you've got it back to front. Spending vast sums of money on mitigation when we don't know what we are trying to mitigate, how to mitigate it, how much to mitigate it or even whether we can mitigate it is what will leave our grandchildren with a mountain of debt.
The lessons of history tell us that mankind has been exceptionally successful at adaptation. He has persistently improved his living conditions, has increasingly gained knowledge and understanding of himself and his environment and his place therein, and has been incredibly ingenious in discovering and inventing ways of enhancing his life, his health, and his general wellbeing.
I see no reason to assume that our grandchildren will suddenly put this process into reverse.
Provided that we have not impoverished them by pouring their wealth into insane projects such as the idea that we can maintain our civilisation with unreliable energy sources or by spending it on trying to prevent something when we don't even know to any extent what it is we are trying to prevent nor — unless you are privy to some learned papers that have escaped my attention — have we the slightest idea what actions we need to take that will result in the mitigation you refer to. Whatever that is.
For a start the argument that "we must keep temperature increase to less than 2C" is just one more hand-waving soundbite. 2C is about as meaningful as 5-a-day or 21 units a week or any of the other figures that "advisors" feed government in their attempts to pretend that they know what they're talking about and keep themselves in a job.
You yourself said upthread that " It is noticeable that the models with the lowest net positive forcing from all causes match the actual temperature record best." which itself at least implies that at this stage there is no evidence of anything that warrants mitigation. Adaptation, maybe, but as Latimer Alder (I think) pointed out that might be as simple as adding another brick to the flood defences.
If the worst that is going to happen to the UK is that the sea level is going to rise by three or four inches by the end of the century then I'm sure my grand-daughter and her friends will have plenty of time to take what action is needed.
Meanwhile money that might usefully have been spent on preparing for a downturn in global temperature (which seems more likely on the basis that the severe weather we are seeing is more likely to become more frequent with lower temperatures than higher ones — history tells us!) or for research into long-term reliable and affordable forms of energy generation is being used to fill the coffers of the likes of the PM's father-in-law.
And if you and Ed Miliband and Natalie Bennett get their way even more is to be spent on .... doing what precisely?
Natalie Bennett was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, reviewing the papers:
Interesting to see which story she chooses to discuss and which she (predictably) doesn't.
Jake Haye @ 10:42am
Pregnancy?
Bennett is a seriously disturbed individual. Milibrain isn't far behind.
Andrew Montford:"Almost every scientist who has said anything about the floods has said that there is no way to link them to global warming"
You made that up.
https://twitter.com/mat_collins/status/434961295025381376
One good thing that may come out of all of this , is that if they cannot pull the 'climate doom' game off now they little chance of pulling off in the future. For the chances of such a ironic 'prefect storm' of weather events , and tides on such a wide scale is unlikely to occur again within the political life span of 'the cause . And this they know , so the all out push from the Greens,with the Guardian is doing its part by cluster bombing of articles 'proving the link, to get policies in place before things get better and their 'opportunity' is lost '. However , to date its not really being effective and once the weather gets better there seems to be little chance of any lasting impact for all their efforts outside of the true believers who already are fully and unquestionable committed to 'the cause'
In the end people do get tired of BS and if their is one weakness in the greens , in fact there are many , its that they consonantly underestimate the intelligence and abilities of those whose make up the majority of the population that don't follow green manta and so can think for themselves. And for that we should be grateful.
Inside the EA have updated news of £300k spent on staff bonuses, six-figure redundancies (even thought staff increased from 10,000+ to 11,000+), £250k on expensive private venues, £30k on a gay parade, etc. Real eye-opener.
The prime minister said "while no single event can be ascribed to climate change, we should expect more of the same'
So in one breath he contradicts himself to get the message across, same as Julia, so it looks like these people are involved in a propaganda campaign.
Dr Roger Pielke Jr describes a deliberate conflation of current and future effects in order to promote a point of view, in his humorous reminiscence of an appearance before a Senate panel..
On this morning's NBC show Meet The Press, the moderator quoted Slingo, showing a picture of a Guardian newspaper, saying the UK flooding was caused by climate change. Even if she "corrects' what she said, the dishonesty will be widely quoted and believed.
The Environment Agency, a quango designed purely to celebrate 'social diversity', of humankind, flora and fauna and run by equality and diversity insects. Oh btw, farmers and landowners, householders on; flood plains, riverbanks, coastal settlements be damned, that's clearly not what the EA is designed for.
@ Entropic man
I assume that your facts are correct and therefore I conclude that if we are to use any models for forecasting future climate change over the next decade, say, we should use those which match the actual temperature record best and abandon the rest. Do you agree? If not, why not?