Bishop Hill The point of the Met Office
Aug 5, 2015 BBC Climate: MetOffice The BBC has a programme on at the moment entitled "What's the point of the Met Office", a light-hearted, but critical look at this august institution. Apparently Peter Lilley and Piers Corbyn are featured at one point.
Bishop Hill
Interestingly, the Met Office's Helen Chivers agrees with host Quentin Letts that some of the Met Office's utterances on climate are "biblical" in their alarmism.
Bishop Hill
The vested interests are unamused:
Lord Deben: "UK Meteorological Office universally respected used by USA on its most sensitive missions. BBC broadcasts unfounded attacks. Right of reply?"
Tom Burke: "#BBC at it again giving wholly unjustified airtime to climate deniers on Radio4 right now. Egregious attack on the Met Office. Complain now"
Bishop Hill
Roger Harrabin has this to say: #Climate sceptics have demanded "their" programme. They just got it. Radio 4. 10.00. @QuentinLetts_ on @metoffice. @ECIU_UK @CarbonBrief
I think he's pulling our legs.
Bishop Hill
For overseas readers who want to listen to the show, it can be heard here.
Reader Comments (93)
I suspect a little dishonesty in play here. Harrabin is duplicitous at best. They just love to play the victimdon 'y they, implying the BBC really does have lost its impartiality in favour of sceptics on global warming! Difficult to tell whether they are CYA & hedging their bets, probably a bit of both! As said before, playing the "told you so" card.
The BBC's dam aimed at preventing discussion on climate modelling is breaking. One of the new facts emerging is that the predicted 'global warming' should be double what they presently claim. Therefore, the IPCC must withdraw all its modelling claims until the error is corrected!
Ah Tom Burke, I remember him well.... (H/T dennisa comment on BH A dampish squib post Aug 4, 2015 at 5:29 PM)
Piers is basking in celebrity limelight at the moment, and climate scepticism as well, thanks to his Bolivarian Brother.
Between the Rising Sun of Communist Utopia and the conformity of climate change alarmism, the BBC has a tough choice in their hands.
To the hard core of any 'faith' the idea that others can or even should be allowed to challenge that faith is something they find difficulty if not impossible to deal with. While in science challenges to claims are the norm, indeed that is the reason that critical review is seen has so important . so guess out of the two Deben & co are practising
Quentin Letts is "trending on twitter", whatever that means exactly, as the self-righteous authoritarians foam at the mouth over the fact that the BBC makes a tiny concession towards fulfilling it's charter agreement by allowing 30 minutes of an alternative to the constant stream of activist propaganda from Harrabin et al.
"The vested interests are not amused".
They don't like it up 'em, Captain Mainwaring!
And will someone please explain to that idiot Burke (and anyone else who is still stupid enough not to understand) the "two degrees" was a figure plucked our of the air by Ottmar Edenhofer and to talk about it as some set of dangerous threshold does not accord with any scientific fact and can only be a deliberate attempt to mislead.
And if Burke wants to sue me for libel for calling him a liar then bring it on!
Probably through fear of a programme called "What's the point of the BBC?", this was a fair balance of catastrophism vs realism and realism won. I particularly liked the bit where the Met Office had predicted global warming of 0.3 deg C by 2014 in 2004 and there has been zilch.
As for trending, last night the Fabius Maximus blog got infested by copycat comments by swarms of warmists (or the same person trying different personas - as some texts were truly identical).
It's unfortunate that people like Harrabin just don't have spine enough to resist this kind of pressure.
Quentin Letts is often hilarious in the DM, and to him nobody is off limits. These self-indulgent squeals of protest reveal how scared of criticism alarmists really are. I wonder if they're afraid for a reason....?
Oh, and Harrabin's sour-faced assertion that sceptics have now had 'their' programme, via a satirical, whimsical half hour on a Wednesday morning is as much a joke as Quentin Letts latest one-liner.
The squeals of protest just reinforce the point that the alarmist movement relies on constant propaganda and just one dissenting voice provokes massive retaliation. It doesn't say much for the robustness of their science.
This is the result of a punt on the web wrt one of our local (Oz) politicians who is in somewhat of a consistency spotlight right now
So your Tom might also consider
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=burke
SC
Doesn't say much for their sense of humour either. Further evidence that what we are dealing with is a cult.
Most real scientists I know have quite a well-developed sense of humour.
ICYMI
Christopher Monckton & James Delingpole are to be R4 Today program guest editors.
Desperate times warrant desperate measures
I have yet to listen to the programme, but, if I might insert my tuppenceworth, the Met Office should do what it was set up to do: collect and collate meteorological observations in an attempt to predict the likely weather over defined areas within the near to middle future, thus allowing others to make appropriate plans. It is most definitely NOT to “advise” or lobby government or make any attempt to politically influence government policy.
Despite the ever-increasing amounts of data, and the processing power to deal with it, it has been quite comprehensively demonstrated that they cannot make accurate forecasts more than a few hours (24 is acceptable, though others might argue that 48 can be realistic) in the future. This might indicate several points: that there are faults in the data processing; that there are flaws in the data gathered; that there might be areas of potentially correlative information not being considered; that it is not possible to make anything other than short-term predictions on the chaotic system that is the planet’s atmosphere – or even that the entire tranche of data-sets is irrelevant to the process!
That the BBC is doing the funders of the Met Office (i.e. the tax-payers) a favour by holding it up to the light for examination has to be a credit to the BBC, and all the harrumphing clowns of the AGWista crowd can shout all they like, but they should have no more influence on this policy than those who question the new religion.
Piers Corbyn on R4? I nearly dropped my toast, imagining some dim researcher had picked the wrong brother from the BBC's hotlist.
Harrabin continues to wander even further into the realms of idiocy, though. One half an hour slot that hardly lifted the lid on the AGW scam (there was still a ritual 'this is very contentious' genuflection to The Cause) and he is seriously claiming it rights the vast imbalance in the BBC's coverage of the subject?
I'd say Harrabin was 'avin' a larf - but the steely eyed zealot doesn't seem the kind who has much of a sense of humour, does he?
tomo: "Christopher Monckton & James Delingpole are to be R4 Today program guest editors."
April 1st 2016 presumably.
Watching the BBC review the Met Office I think would be a bit like watching the BBC interrogate Saville or the Nazi party holding the Nuremberg trials.
"Nothing to see - move along".
Mike Jackson/Messenger: I wonder, when Burke says:
if he can try a little thought experiment and transport himself back to the LIA: would he then come to the conclusion that a two degree rise in GAT (whatever that is) would be 'dangerous for his children'?He needs to understand (perhaps he does...) that the world has survived changes in temp in the past and will do so in the future. However, his future is not going to provide any warming of the sort he scares his children with.
RR: I completely endorse your views on what the Met Office should be doing. It is becoming a scandal that their weather forecasts are so far out; where the element of doubt is so great as to make them unreliable. IIRC, this was commented on by Richard Betts in comments quite some time ago when he reported that the models the MO use for forecasting weather use the same - or similar - algorithms as they use for climate projections. The conclusions to be drawn are obvious.
The thing is repeated tonight (Wed 5th August) at 9.30pm radio 4, sceptics should get in the beer and popcorn, no need this time for the usual blood pressure pills when listening to R4.
RR
Or possibly thatJust a thought.
Harry Passfield
The idea that Burke might like to try experimenting with thought raises some interesting possibilities!
I do go on about "editorial guidelines" here since imho they drive alarmist AGW / Blobbie drivel into our media on a colossal scale - it now seems I have an ally....
Black Dick bleats that it ain't fair !! and rules are being broken (main whine at the usual place)
Expect more rattles flying out of prams.
@knr I'm sure BD dashed the piece off at 5:30am .... not.
Meanwhile Black , Harrabin's old side kick , has pop-up on the Guardian to add his condemnation to the R4 program, very quick that anyone would think that CIF have him and others on speed dial and such blogs are almost already written ready to bed pushed out at a moments notice.
That even such a mild suggestion that all it not well at the MET office , something which is clear you you consider they still fail to do their basic job despite bonus all around, attracts such quick ans extreme action is telling.
No doubt the poor producer of the show will now be required to do penance and reaffirming their unquestioning faith in 'the cause' let hope they can deal with the sack cloth and ashes that will be heading their way.
Roger Harrabin is becoming more and more out of touch with reality and I suspect less and less tolerated by his peers. He recently suggested on twitter that a newly elected government with a majority mandate was out of touch with the public by tweeting: "Is govt out of step with public on #energy? why are renewables affordable in U.S. But not UK?"
Perhaps he is starting to realise that the people that 'he is so in step with' are rapidly becoming the minority. The BBC environmental department could do with attention in the cost cutting exercise.
There is the opportunity to ensure that "their" views are presented to the BBC Trust so that a balanced mandate is set up for future which may just entail that "their" as a portion of society that pays the wages of the arrogant bastard actually gains the same level of respect as the minority sections of society that Marxists like Harrobin gladly support.
We want your views on the BBC and what it should do in the future.
From viewing the Wet Office's forecasts in the past, (I haven't really bothere for several years now), especially the 5-Day forecast, I have noticed that say, Monday to Friday, by Tuesday to Saturday, it changes ever so slightly! Now the Wet Office would say that is merely fine tuning, but I would suggest that it may be a case of "fine correction"! I definitely think there is something afoot, certainly as a result of their recent announcement re the reduced Solar activity affecting the climate for the next 30 years, something they have claimed it couldn't possibly do!
"Harrabin is duplicitous at best"
He certainly is - the programme started at 9:00, not 10:00!
As for Lord Gumboil and his request for the right of reply, what does he think he's been enjoying all these years?
Radio 4's Feedback programme inbox will no doubt be buzzing with emails from just your ordinary Joe Bloggs and Jane Smith from down the road, who upon recourse to Google will turn out to be representatives of various climate activist and renewable energy organisations.
The MO's real scientists are replacing incorrect CO2 based warming with solar effects. It's being done because it's obvious to any professional that a key assumption made in the heat generation coding, apparently by the late husband of their Chief Scientist, is diametrically wrong. This is to assume the absorptivity of the upper atmosphere for OLR is unity hence by Kirchhoff's Law of Radiation justifying down |OLR|, an adaptation of Hansen's original idea in 1981 introduced to offset exaggerated modelled lapse rate. They explain it by yet more imaginary physics but it causes the warming bias and is a risk to the reputations of the competent. Solar effects are being substituted.
The BBC's blurb:
'From it's origins after a sea disaster 150 years ago, its importance during World War II, to its daily weather predictions, the Met Office has been part British life for a long time but as Quentin finds out it's future is part of a complex debate involving a £97 million super-computer, the accuracy of long term weather predictions and the science of climate change.'
Next week: what's the point of apostrophes?
I can tell Lord Deben that my experience of modern weather forecasts when I lived in the USA was that they are often better than the Met Office from this consumers point of view. TV tools like Doppler-Radar detailing individual storm cells as they track across a region are common, but seem not to have made it to the UK yet.
If they have, then why don't the paying public get to see them on TV? Perhaps it is the fault of the BBC, not the Met Office. My experience is that UK weather forecasts on the BBC have been dumbed down during recent decades, like we're a bunch of morons who can't understand isobars. Who the morons are that can't understand climate, I'll leave as an open question.
iirc the MO's forecasting on the basis of peering at computer monitors showing $upercomputer model outputs while slouching in £2K Aeron chairs was woeful - and the only way they managed to actually improve things was to install ocean met buoys up-wind the prevailing weather patterns.(rarely mentioned)
The place seems to be run by "status intoxicated" corporate communicators and bureaucrats - with the actual tasking as a public service coming in a very poor third. Political pawn-ery also figures - as in the move from Bracknell to Exeter.
What's not to like there eh?
A blog post elsewhere quotes a 19th Cent. observation (The Crowd - Gustave le Bon 1896 - BBC started the historical thing!) on the subject of prestige which Deben in particular should be compelled to write out 100 times.
I've listened to a few of Letts's programmes in the past, and the formula has usually been criticism and a bit of pig-sticking for the first 20 minutes, followed by a more conciliatory view and the conclusion that whatever it was is OK really and may even be a Good Thing. Not so this time, though, and hearing Piers Corbyn, Peter Lilley and Graham Stringer in succession made a very pleasant change!
Alex
I think we should all write to Feedback, telling them what a great job the BBC is doing allowing some balanced debate...
Charlie :-)
Both the BBC and Met Office seem more interested in the Political Climate Change that may cause unprecedented damage to their pay cheques.
Neither organisation has questioned their own part in their downfall.
Remember that in BBC/Met Office jargon, two or more warm days constitutes a 'heatwave'. How will they describe a permanent freeze in their subsidies?
Be fair chaps!!
If we did not have the Met Office, who would there be to fiddle the data?
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2015/08/05/hadcrut-cool-the-past-yet-again/
Peter Lilley's demolition of Julia Slingo ..... priceless.
Michael Hart:
http://www.raintoday.co.uk/ is available on a 5 minute resolution if you pay £25/year, and with map zooming to a very local level, and pixels smaller than a golf course and a 3 hour forward forecast. I make do with the 15 minute free version. I think the BBC only offer hourly resolution. I almost got tempted to buy the full version to try to guess how they implemented the forecast. A neural network/cellular automata approach suggests itself, perhaps supplemented by some observational data to steer it a little.
"used by USA on its most sensitive missions" (Deben)
Isn't that classified..?
IDAU
5-minute resolution here.
Why does Imperial College associate itself with this Burke?
The Guardians below the line frothing's are pricelessly hilarious. Question the Met Office and the gospel of Climate Change? Even slightly, with wit and repartee? Heresy! The effrontery!
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/05/whats-the-point-of-bbc-editorial-guidelines-climate-change
It would be nice if some of the qualified commentators on here would organise complaints the way that CiF does. Frankly, Richard Black's piece should not have been commissioned and the CiF editor should be made to explain and apologise for it and to withdraw the piece on the grounds of obvious hypocrisy. The CiF crowd is busy organising entirely unjustified complaints to the BBC which will waste public money. This blog could organise a letter or similar to Tony Hall formally requesting that he instruct the Complaints department to ignore any complaints about Black's article.
I read this site because it is a voice of sanity but you are nowhere near as well organised as the CiF crowd. For instance, the 97% column should have been dropped for hopeless inaccuracy long ago by the Guardian but is still there. Largely it has to be said because the contributors to this site do their complaining and debunking here rather than to the Guardian's editor en masse.
Black and Harrabin should have been sacked by the BBC rather than allowed to retire, but that didn't happen again largely because contributors to sites like these didn't use the BBC's own rules to force the BBC to address Black and Harrabin's repeated breach of those rules.
@ jamesp, good idea - they shall shortly be receiving an email from "a delighted listener in Hounslow"!
This comment under Richard Black's extended moan was swiftly deleted. I wonder which guidelines it failed to follow? Insufficient reverence?
"This quirky opinion piece seems to have incensed the catastrophic warming crowd. No heresy is permitted in the True Church.
Were those the editorial guidelines on AGW that were agreed upon in the famous covert meeting of "experts" at the BBC so long ago?"
Lord Beaverbrook: "Perhaps he is starting to realise that the people that 'he is so in step with' are rapidly becoming the minority. The BBC environmental department could do with attention in the cost cutting exercise."
That's why I now refer to them as "climate extremists".
Andais
"It would be nice if some of the qualified commentators on here would organise complaints the way that CiF does."
I have made probably well over 100 different complaints including many where the statements were easily disproven.
Not once has any been upheld. There would have been more chance getting a Nazi Newspaper to print a correction about the Jews than getting the BBC to admit it is wrong on climate.
In short - nothing short of scrapping the BBC will solve this problem.
CHarlie:
Next week: what's the point of apostrophes
Week after: what's the point of catastrophes
Ah, the BBC's back to normal with its account of evil America dropping atomic bombs on plucky underdog japan...http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-33754931
I wonder what the Corbynista view on global warming will be post September. Brothers do not always agree of course, but I cannot remember Jeremy Corbyn distancing himself from his heretic sibling. Could be interesting if the radical left ally themselves with the tea party right of the USA. We live in interesting times.
Andais, the Guardian is part of a well organised conspiracy, intent on telling anyone who disagrees with their collective Groupthink, that they are conspiracy theorists.
There are multiple flaws in their logic processing powers, which may be due to CO2 acidifying their brains.