Sunday
Aug232015
by 
Josh
Josh Leavers on the line - Josh 338
Aug 23, 2015 BBC Josh Met Office 
In the news today (The Sunday Times "BBC pulls plug on Met Office") we learn that the BBC is not going to renew the Met Office's contract to provide weather forecasts. Interesting. Maybe we will see a Corbyn giving us the weather in the future.
Reader Comments (99)
Piers could do their weather forecasts, and Jeremy could do their climate ones. A match made in heaven for the BBC.
Let's not intrude too much into private grief, but it seems the Met. Office's CO2 obsession and warming bias in the models at the expense of real weather forecasting has eventually rebounded on the MO's political activists. To lose a sizeable part of one's commercial income is not to be dismissed lightly.
Will the Met Office be replaced by Grantham, with Bob Ward presenting the latest dire warnings about global warming, and Lord Stern revealing fantasy devastating economic financial impacts?
PS suddenly realised that the BBC has just pulled off a master stroke. There are two major, public-facing UK organisations strapped to the fake CAGW mast as that pseudoscience goes into very choppy waters**. By shafting the other, the BBC has displaced to it at least part of the odium with which the BBC is perceived by politicians.
**A new paper shows zero effect of GHGs on rocky planet surface temperatures in the solar system: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/new-paper-confirms-gravito-thermal.html
The big papers really should be knocking at your door Josh.
It’s not uncommon for organisations to get too comfortable and spend operational money on pet projects. Customers see high bills for stuff they may not be using. The MET Office has a sideline in catastrophism that I’d argue the BBC was getting it’s money’s worth from but for those looking solely at the value for money of basic weather forecasting, it probably looks like a bad deal. The BBC accountants may reason that the MET Office will continue to give their alarming stories away for free and/or that other organisations are also giving away free content (eg NASA). There’s no charge to rewrite a press release and present it.
It’s interesting to note the BBC will still use the MET’s severe weather warning service. In other words, nobody will notice the drop in day to day forecasting quality but if a catastrophe happens they want to be able to point fingers at the MET or alternatively pat themselves on the back for warning the public.
They profess to accurately predict the climate decades in advance, but a year ago didn't see this coming!
Ha, ha.
I should add that 15 years ago I would have been outraged on behalf of the MET. I always thought they did a great job of analysing our terrible weather patterns. I still think they have much more credibility than the BBC or NASA. I even think that their over close connection to the BBC helped drive the MET towards catastrophism and exaggeration. Perhaps the MET Office should choose its allies more carefully in future.
Why would the BBC do that?
The weather predictions were not frightening enough?
Or, perhaps the BBC is ticked off that the Met Office wasn't able to make the scary predictions come across?
The BBC wants a weather forecast service that guarantees scary AGW predictions that actually happen...
Fantasy land BBC?
Better hurry and sign up a new weather service BBC, winter weather is knocking.
May we recommend Weatherbell Analytics?
I was always mightily puzzled by Slingos claim that 'she had never been wrong' just that she may have had incomplete knowledge (which is no crime)
I always wondered about the 99 other people who had the same incomplete knowledge and came up with 99 different answers. Was Slingo right and the other 99 wrong ? or were none of them wrong ?
The latter would explain why we get a spaghetti of model outputs and extrapolation in place of sound judgement and reflection
oFrom the viewpoint of a foreigner, the Met Office looks to me to be the UK's biggest enemy. It is a clear and present danger to the freedom and prosperity of the populous. This split is therefore most welcome.
Thanks NCC 1701E for pointing at:
New paper confirms the gravito-thermal greenhouse effect on 6 planets including Earth, falsifies CAGW
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/new-paper-confirms-gravito-thermal.html
It has a huge list of older supporting papers.
Top notch, as usual, Josh. Even the title took a little while to sink in, which always makes it even funnier, if you snow what I mean.
I do wonder if – indeed, I hope – a sense of reality is beginning to seep into the Beeb. Sadly, I fear it could be my hopeless optimism rearing its silly head, as the rot may be too deeply entrenched.
And thank you, Mr/Ms 1702E, for your link to a paper that supports a view that has been growing in my own mind for a while. Now I have supporting evidence to point others towards.
I wonder if the people at the MET office still think their manager is doing a 'good job' in making sure the MET office puts much of its efforts into supporting 'the cause ' rather doing the job it was supposed to do. While after a possible big income loss, and its still not certain yet , they may change their views as jobs are lost .
Brilliant, Josh, as always!
And in what may well be the fastest response time evaah (particularly on a weekend!) from the U.K. Met Office aka "the jewel in the crown" ... one finds:
Amazing. Simply amazing.
New book to be released in time for Christmas 2016 "The Met Office, why we got it wrong about Global Warming".
The long list of authors is yet to be finalised, but there is a strong incentive for many to salvage their careers, and regain credibility, in the forgotten science of forecasting tomorrow's weather.
Hopefully some preview extracts will appear before December 2015.
I am assuming they fell at the first round of bidding, probably due to a too high a contract price, perhaps they are trying to recover the cost of their new super computer too quickly?
It seems that, as far as the BBC is concerned, the Met Office is at Exiter...
I wonder what will happen to Betts...
Betts works on Climate impacts. I hope he survives. after all climate impacts can be 100% natural and they need studying
What happens when you chop a worm in two?
Re. the OT chat about the gravito-thermal GH theory reminded me of this other recent post at the Hockey Schtick which starts with the following claim.
"Physicist Richard Feynman proved the Maxwell gravito-thermal greenhouse theory is correct & does not depend upon greenhouse gas concentrations
The great physicist Richard Feynman adds to three other giants of physics, Maxwell, Clausius, and Carnot, who have explained the "greenhouse effect" is solely a consequence of gravity, atmospheric mass, pressure, density, and heat capacities, and is not due to "trapped radiation" from IR-active or 'greenhouse' gas concentrations. "
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/physicist-richard-feynman-proved.html
Astonished!!!! I never ever thought this would happen. This suggests a parting of the waves in attitude, but this doesn't reflect immediately upon the BBCs greenalist programmes, which have been aired, recently & in the past, & I dare say in the not too distant future. It will be interesting to see if programme content, Horizon, Country File, et al, will similalry change! Will some presenters lose their jobs, or will their comments change?
Much as I hate to pour cold water on the celebrations, why assume that an alternative organisation will be less in thrall to AGW?
That said, any relief from the Met Office's useless predictions is to be welcomed. I use the BBC's weather app, though heaven knows knows why. It has been significantly wrong for my (coastal) area on almost every day for the past fortnight. I have just checked to see how it is doing today. Oh dear - wrong again!
"why assume that an alternative organisation will be less in thrall to AGW? " Uncle Badger
The problem with the MET is not its weather forecasting, it's how much time it spends generating and disseminating alarmism. If the BBC isn’t splashing the cash their way, the MET will have to spend more time on priorities. While it might increase the opportunity for other organisations to stray into AGW, a) it will be less money and b) it won’t be here.
The Met Office have created the conditions for a 'Perfect Storm' or 'Death Spiral'.
Unfortunately for the Met Office, this time it is for real.
Obviously if the Met Office were only broadcasting the propaganda that the BBC required, how long before the finger of blame gets pointed at the BBC?
If it involved rigging projections about the future financial markets, for personal benefit, it would be called fraud, and prison sentences would not be ruled out.
Youtube animation for everyone at the Met Office
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__hEdP1fN4A
Lapse Rate is determined by a virtual work argument: constant sum of potential plus internal energy, not dependent on any GHG except water in its various forms. To put this on topic, the problem with the MO is that to overcome the obvious mistake by GISS in early modelling, to assume physically impossible negative convection, the MO pulled the IPCC's nuts out of the fire by a Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation argument. But this required them to 'massage' cloud physics to give the necessary 'Down IR'.
They got away with it until Mother Nature asserted control with the 'hiatus'. The warming bias apparently made the weather forecasts wrong because of the heuristic overlay. By replacing CO2 with solar, they had hoped to extricate themselves, but the unnecessary scientific overhead from backing the wrong horse apparently made them too expensive.
Could be (please note the word 'could'!) an opportunity for both sides to wind down the volume a bit. If pressed they could each blame the other for the excesses of the last few years.
The business-planners at the Met Office are probably meeting over the weekend to step up their efforts to tap into the trillions of dollars out there in and around climate alarm:
Source: Greeniewatch
Sympathetic financier Soros might have some cash to spare when the profits start rolling in from his new coal investments: Jo Nova
Similarly the wealthy Steyer might be tapped for a few bob. He supports such foolish and wasteful ventures that surely our Met Office could offer him a safer bet.
But Jeremy, Grantham this time, not Corbyn, might be their best bet of all. Keen to be seen as a planet saviour, and no doubt embarrassed by his Ward and chums in London, a link to the Met Office might help him look a bit more respectable.
So, free of charge, there's a few things for the post-its in the brainstorming that even now may be underway in some plush retreat.
Ironic for Quentin Letts the Theater Critic of the Right Wing Daily Mail is used for the Hatchet job on the Met Office by the BBC just before they off loaded it
The BBC and the Met Office Public all the makings of Shakespearean tragedy, intrigue and machinations of modern day Public Sector politics and funding.
NCC 1701E They backed each successive steaming pile of fresh Green Bovine Manure, and have not sprung up smelling of roses.
Dame Julia will have more time to spend on her garden, enjoying her fat pension, as the other former employees count the cost of her follies. Her equally gullible predecessors will keep their heads down, and hope to get away with their part in the Met Office's fall from grace.
If he is unexpectedly short of cash, "The Met Office, My part in it's Downfall" by internationally celebrated and self proclaimed Nobel Prize winning Climate Scientist Prof M. Mann, could be an entertaining read.
I'm claiming credit for this news - I sent this email to Countryfile (the BBC's ghastly sanitised fluffy-bunny hoppity skip cuddly wuddly aren't badgers lovley weekly programme on rural matters) on Friday.
'Is there any chance of repeating last Sunday's weather forecast, and giving us all a good laugh? We arable farmers are all mid-harvest, and the utter ocean-going weapons-grade wrongness of Tomasz Schafernaker's 'weather for the week ahead' has had us all chuckling, as we struggled to clear sopping wet crops from inside bunged up combine harvesters.
'In fact, there's a move in the farming community to name the third week of August 'Schafernaker Week' in his honour.
Best wishes,
Charlie Flindt'
Charlie: I like it! Rather like schadenfreude, 'Schafernaker Weather' could become a cause.
The CO2 obsession has infected and damaged not only the Met.
By the way, that kook pushing his delusions about the non-existent "gravity effect" and made up papers on it is using new sock puppets to post under at your website.
It is rather startling news, I must say.
Indeed, the major promulgator of the great scam has booted out its consensus pseudo-scientists. Next, we need George to cut off its oxygen and slash the MO's public subs' - to be rolled up and all the to be stuffed turkeys down Exeter way, are a warbling or, whatever it is the sound that turkeys utter.
A bitter chill, its icy fingers grip and tighten, the cold wind of financial reality blows straight down from the north and freezes hard. All-in-all, a bit like the climate's going...even, in the midst of a 'super El Nino'.
@Mick J 1:12 PM
Hockey Schtick: "Feynman demonstrates that an atmosphere comprised solely of the non-greenhouse gases N2 & O2 (99.94% of our atmosphere, but 100% in Feynman's demonstrations) ...."
not true - Earth's atmosphere has approximately 1 percent Argon, and variable amounts of water vapour.
"Feynman proved" - I think not.
Charlie Flindt, the BBC's Countryfile is a programme designed to make townies think they understand how the countryside should work in accordance with Green Blob Diktats.
Please go back into your fields and plant some more vegetarian turkeys. Nice fat vegetarian turkeys are required to keep the BBC's upper management positions stuffed full.
We've had a year of it.......................
It's the opposite up here in rain shadow land [Yorks] - they [the MO] promise days of rains and we get nowt but dry days - cock up in the algorithms and incoherent alignment to false premise = BS simulation runs = Garbage in, Garbage OUT!
And now the weather forecast with the lovely, always cheerful George Monbiot.
I admit living in a volatile, weather area, but my gardening schedule was heavily disrupted by weather forecasts that were very often wrong this summer. Aaaargh !
@NCC 1701E 11:17 AM
Hockey Schtick:
An important new paper published in Advances in Space Research determines that the Earth surface temperature (as well as the surface temperatures of 5 other rocky planets with an atmosphere in our solar system) can be very accurately determined (R2 = 0.9999! & tiny standard error σ=0.0078) solely on the basis of two variables:
1) atmospheric pressure at the surface, and
2) solar irradiance at the top of the atmosphere,
Isn't that just a re-statement of Charles's Law?
What's supposed to determine atmospheric pressure?
I don't think any ex Met Office Employees are going to switch sides over to us,but once the Public Sector Squeeze and the redundancies hit Exeter the bitterness and the recriminations will .Unquestioningly towing the party line on Climate Changed just hastened the Met Office arrival in the dole queue.
Bitter Irony not only is the Daily Mail Theater Critic cast in the role of convenient executioner,but for a group of public servant trained Scientists whose actual job is to forecast the weather who put their ultimate faith in Supercomputers and Super Computing Climate Models .The main pillar of Climate Change is Computer Models and computers are designed to replace office workers.
The Boss at the Met Office used her public funding to buy in Super Computors in the basement of their Building in Exeter to conclusively prove Manmade Climate Change for the political whims of her Westminster Masters and Dame Julia rewarded with a Knighthood and a huge Public Sector Fat Cat Bonus. Instead she could have hired extra staff and not mugged the rest of them out their jobs.
If you can use a Super Computer and a Satellite Link in Utah or Iceland to predict the weather and the Climate in northern Europe in 50 years time you can use a supercomputer to predict the weather in the North Sea in 5 hours time and then upload it straight to Twitter.
As funny as Josh's cartoon is (again) and the small hiccup between our dearly beloved MetO and Aunty, surely the paper linked to below is of MUCH greater significance?
**A new paper shows zero effect of GHGs on rocky planet surface temperatures in the solar system: http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/new-paper-confirms-gravito-thermal.html
Aug 23, 2015 at 11:17 AM | Unregistered CommenterNCC 1701E
This appears to fall in-line with Harry Huffman's 3 years and counting claims along very similar lines, and if correct really ought to put the CO2 Bogeyman to bed once and for all. Perhaps our host would consider giving that paper a thread all its own so it can be discussed accordingly?
"Feynman proved" - I think not.
Aug 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM | Unregistered Commenter rotationalfinestructure
Thanks, the Hockey Schtick does have a tendency to apply some largesse to their summaries of published papers which is not helpful. The document itself does indicate that other factors have been ignored for the purpose of the thought experiment. Just wish that I had a better grasp of what he (Feynman) is presenting. :)
Great cartoon Josh.
Do the 2 Corbyns speak to each other? I am too remote to say, but if Piers has any influence then the BBC might have foreseen the end of political consensus about the value of the BBC, and jettisoned the rats.
The BBC basically copies the Guardian ..
Online the Guardian doesn't seem to have a weather forecast
For weather comment they use the MeteoGroup ..Their climate stance ?
Well they seem to have started a Climate Blog in 2008 and have since disappeared it.
Meteo Group was part of the Press Association, but in 2013 they floated it off to General Atlantic.
Probably doesn't look good in front of their other commercial customers. I could imagine a foreign customer thinking "well, if even the BBC doesn't think they are cost competitive then maybe we also should look a bit harder elsewhere."
Do we know who the preferred candidate is, or is it just that the MO hasn't made the cut? IIRC, the BBC threatened to give the job to the Kiwis not so long ago, so maybe they're favourite. It will be interesting to see who they wheel out in place of Dame Julia when they need their biases confirmed - they may get a shock!
I must say that it seems a bit rich for the Beeb to ditch the MO for being too alarmist but, as with the death of Little Nell, you'd need a heart of stone not to laugh.
Breakfast without the BBC's whingeing background soundtrack of Marmalade Global Warming on decarbonised toast, won't be the same again, if it is not brought to us by the Met Office.
It might bring the 'feelgood factor' back to an improving economy.
Aug 23, 2015 at 4:21 PM | Registered Commenter jamesp
Do we know who the preferred candidate is, or is it just that the MO hasn't made the cut?
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In other reports, the BBC say that they will be putting it out to tender as required by their rules. The weather channel might try their hand, the horror! They have also been losing viewers allegedly due to excessive CC coverage with lots of disaster orientated programming and an absence of actual weather reports.
The Met Office will now ramp up its alarmism to obtain more funding from the Government.