May 4, 2013 at 11:03 AM | Martin A

what is needed is to replace the current bloated organisation with a small efficient team of meteologists and the climate research bit can be privatised and left to sink or swim.

The Met Office is a Trading Fund, which means it is a government-owned organisation but has to run itself as a self-contained business and generate revenue from other sources in order to give better value for money to the taxpayer.

So, it does not receive direct funding in the same way as government departments. All government funding is essentially a subcontract from other departments, and increasingly there are new sources of revenue such as commercial contracts with the private sector, which are competed for against other organisations (including commercial consultancies). This includes a growing areas of climate consultancy and climate services (ie: advice on climate variability and climate change sold to other organisations and businesses who see a business benefit in being able to make informed decisions on aspects of their operations which are sensitive to climate.

Presumably if these customers find this information to be not worthwhile, they'll stop paying us for it. However, on the contrary, this is a growing area, and we get a lot of repeat business. Some of these customers include industries which invest very heavily in long-term infrastructure - eg: energy sector (non-renewable as well as renewable), transport sector, utility companies, mining and oil companies. Opening a new mine or marine oilfield is a massive investment and they want to know about potential risks of, say, reduced water supply or changes in sea conditions.

Profits from this are re-invested in the underpinning research, again to ensure that ongoing climate research is not funded purely by the taxpayer, but also by the private sector whose business benefit from improved climate advice.

Incidentally, My Climate and Me is not "propaganda". They also did an article on rainforests may be more resilient to global warming than previously thought. Interestingly, that didn't receive any comments at all.