Bishop Hill Cold weather payments
Dec 20, 2010 Bureaucrats Climate: Parliament I was reading (I forget where) of concerns that the government's budget for cold weather payments to pensioners was being spent far faster than had been envisaged when the budget was put together. Was this, I wondered, something to do with a dodgy Met Office forecast?
So, as is my wont, I contacted the Department of Work and Pensions and got a swift response.
...this year's budget for Cold Weather Payments for Great Britain was based on the average number of payments made over the last ten years and with a payment rate of £25 for each week of cold weather. This year's budget is £76 million. However, Cold Weather Payments will be made to all those entitled to receive them.
The budgeting process does not include a forecast of winter weather.
I guess we should be relieved that the Met Office were not involved. Somebody at DWP probably deserves a pat on the back for keeping them on sidelines. That said, you wonder whether using the average of the last ten years is a sensible metric.
What do you think?
Reader Comments (31)
On the subject of the Met Office I was struck by this paragraph from an Article by Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times admitedly from January -
A period of humility and even silence would be particularly welcome from the Met Office, our leading institutional advocate of the perils of man-made global warming, which had promised a “barbecue summer” in 2009 and one of the “warmest winters on record”. In fact, the Met still asserts we are in the midst of an unusually warm winter — as one of its staffers sniffily protested in an internet posting to a newspaper last week: “This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
I try to follow the science as best as I can and a lot would be right over my head; but can someone please explain to me how pickinig the 15 warmest days during a winter can possibly represent an average for that season? Surely the whole point is you use all the data whether it fits your agenda or not?
I heard the Transport Minister on the BBC news yesterday, discussing lack of preparedness for freezing Britain.
He said something about setting long-term policy on the advice of the Chief Scientist, who tells him the several very cold winters in a row is "just a coincidence".
I wonder how many will be required to make it a trend?
Neuromancer : Surely the whole point is you use all the data whether it fits your agenda or not?
Oh dear, you have a lot to learn, my boy!
Perhaps the politicians will decide to set CO2 production targets, in order to prevent cold winters?
i think 76 million is a piddling amount anyway.
Slightly O/T but it surprised me last year to discover that my parents, who have lived in Spain for the last six years, still receive their Pensioners' Cold Weather Payment. They think it's barmy but, knowing the DWP, the bureaucracy necessary to fix that anomaly would probably cost way more than just paying it.
"i think 76 million is a piddling amount anyway."
What, they give you money for piddling in cold weather? Cool...
Not sure it's sensible, but if budgets have been increasing then the data's something else to pick warming or cooling trends from. In government terms, it's probably as sensible as any other metric. That may change as amounts increase to help alleviate fuel poverty created by rising subsidies and may also encourage means testing or a method of opting out. Peter Stringfellow was in the news a while back saying he gets the payment, doesn't need nor want it but can't pay it back.
Just to be clear, cold weather payments are different from the winter fuel allowance. Everybody over 60 is entitled to the winter fuel allowance, but only people on certain benefits get cold weather payments. I guess Peter Stringfellow isn't on benefits!
Wish I had the bucks to endow an annual Dr. David Viner Award for the most gormless AGW prediction of the year. Ten years ago, Viner famously said "snowfalls are now just a thing of the past" in the UK. Viner's position as a Senior Scientist at University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit gave his prediction widespread coverage in the mainstream media.
Very interesting. I think I may begin drafting a Freedom of Information request to find out exactly which parts of government forward planning ARE dependent on (or heavily influenced by) the Met office forecasts.
Will these payments increase to take into account the price rises caused by the carbon tax scams?
I had posted this at WUWT, on the article on grit in the UK. It also answers the Bishop's question: That said, you wonder whether using the average of the last ten years is a sensible metric.
I have a scanned pdf copy of a paper published in Nature, Vol 223, Sept 20, 1969. (I am pretty sure I got it from behind a pay-wall) The New Look of Climatology (H.H. Lamb)
Lamb was the founder of CRU, and the progenitor, if you will, of Wigley and Phil Jones.
One of the reasons Lamb founded the CRU, was concern about cooling of the climate, and the effects on weather and crop production. This concern permeates this paper.
Lamb talks of climatology in general. About the warmth of the first 1/2 of the 20th century, and of the cold period in the 1700s, solar influences, shorter growing seasons, and much more.
This is a quote:
…concern in Iceland over the regrowth of the Arctic pack-ice in the 1960s and the anxiety in New York, as well as Rhodesia and the Transvaal, about the the droughts of this decade and in East Africa over the rising lakes.
In England there have been debates about how much money should be spent by high-way authorities on snow clearing equipment and road salt, whilst the Scottish skiing centres have been developed in a run of years far more favourable to the enterprise than for long before.
This quote is telling too.
The more obvious pitfalls of planning for the future either on the assumption of climate remaining constant (that is, subject to only year by year fluctuations) or on blind extrapolation of some recent trend….
My emphasis.
If they started stocking up in 1970 based on the previous decade, they would have had a surplus after the 70s. Now they have too little, based on the trends of last decade or two.
Old H.H. was positively clairvoyant.
"you wonder whether using the average of the last ten years is a sensible metric."
I don't think it's daft, by any means. It'll always be wrong, but rarely significantly so, and the amount is small enough to make spending any sum on accurate prediction a bit pointless. Whether we predict it or not, the amount paid out will be the same. Bear in mind that unless winters consistently continue this cold or colder, the average will be higher for the next ten years.
@Neuromancer
While it's fun to have a laugh at Met Office forecasts, it should be based on what they say officially, not what someone claiming to work for them, without giving a full name, posted as a comment on a website.
Here's the original comment:
Good afternoon, I work for the MET office and am appalled by all the negative comments about us on this site. This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonly warm month, then all the data will come from those readings. And not to reveal too much , the data does show that the average over those 15 readings will make it a very warm reading. You cannot accept that a weeks snow will affect the outcome.
We at the Met , are already looking ahead until spring and judging by the winter results, we think spring could be ver dry this year, even possibly drought conditions.
- tony, norwich, norfolk, 3/1/2010 15:19
from daily mail website (go to comments, view all and it's on page 6).
It could be a spoof or it could be a troll, or it could be a non-scientist who has got the wrong end of the stick (Met Office scientists would be in Exeter, not Norwich, no?). Whatever it is, unless anyone can find an official Met Office (not "MET office") communication defending this, I think we can safely assume it is not genuine.
It would be reasonable to use the last 10 years' payment data, subtracting out whatever apparent trend is found and using the variability of the data to estimate an extreme upper bound as a budgetary figure.
Isn't Norwich somewhere near the CRU ? {;o)}
The message from Norwich may have been from the Monbiot fan club at UEA
Dave Sparrow
The rule is you have to be resident in the UK to claim the Winter Fuel Allowance but it continues to be paid if you then move abroad. I made the mistake of retiring early, not to sunny Spain, but to snowbound Normandy.
... but to snowbound Normandy.
Me too - but I do get the Winter Fool Allowance. And Normandy's winters are (I think) not as bad as Britain's.
The Bish wonders:
It seems fair enough to me. I'm not sure how else one would estimate the budget (apart from relying on the Met Office of course).
That said, one wonders why the academic acknowledgement of a probable link between the unusually 'quiet' Solar Cycle 24 and episodes of negative Arctic Oscillation during the NH winter are not more widely taken into account.
Misty, I agree.
It is unfortunate that the GWPF website has a page giving the same
http://www.thegwpf.org/uk-news/2073-warm-bias-how-the-met-office-mislead-the-british-public.html
",,,It could be a spoof or it could be a troll, or it could be a non-scientist who has got the wrong end of the stick (Met Office scientists would be in Exeter, not Norwich, no?). Whatever it is, unless anyone can find an official Met Office (not "MET office") communication defending this, I think we can safely assume it is not genuine."
But the fact is, after Harry_readme, all the shoddy "inquiries" into Climategate, millions wasted on wind power, abysmally inept Met Office predictions, and so on and on and on, even the outrageously stupid method described above sounds authentic. The UK bureaucracy continually fail to live up to our mediocre expectations. It's like awakening and finding yourself trapped in a gigantic Monty Python sketch....
And the 15 coldest temperatures, after averaging, will reveal........
We may have set a new record where the warmest and coldest winters occurred at the same time. Now that would be climate disruption!
Should be looking at the slope, not just the level.
Misty, Q
As far as it appears from the links to the Express and Telegraph given on the GWPF site, the 2010 winter prediction was not based on an anonymous blog comment. The Express article explains precisely what it was based on and even quotes a conversation with a Metoffice forecaster.
It's probably a slightly wrong metric. Whereas using predictions will be very wrong.
I think a ten year average + say 10% or so, would be more consistantly a better guess. But I'm sure they have a system set up where they ask for more funds when the winter sets in harsh. Its not a bad metric at least.
Clearly the statisticians who advise the government have never heard of cyclical climate patterns and take the current 'climatology' as gospel. H.H.Lamb would turn in his grave if he was not frozen at the moment.
The same stats guys must be the same as those who support windmill electricity (check the recent figures) and never defined business cycles.
G Watkins suggests that we check the figures for wind generation.
Wind contributed 0.2% to the UK grid over the last 24 hours.
See the 'Generation by fuel type' table here: http://www.bmreports.com/bsp/
Luckily, there isn't much capacity and we aren't depending on it. Yet.
“This will be the warmest winter in living memory, the data has already been recorded. For your information, we take the highest 15 readings between November and March and then produce an average. As November was a very seasonally warm month, then all the data will come from those readings.”
This quote comes from at least a year ago. I and another poster queried it then - I think it was here - and we were told firmly then that it was a hoax.
That seemed plausible, but whatever the truth this was certainly not said about this winter it was about last winter.
An excellent post I just came across over at Anthony's on the chances of 3 severe winters in a row (based on the Met Office's statistical analysis):
WUWT - http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/20/warm-bias-how-the-met-office-mislead-the-british-public/ (currently about 12th last comment)
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ScientistForTruth says:
December 20, 2010 at 3:57 pm
The Met Office were consulted by the UK Department for Transport in a report out in October concerning preparedness of the transport infrastructure for winter. In October they were projecting a warmer than average winter with around 70% confidence. The Met Office advised that there was a 1-in-20 chance of a severe winter this year, or any year. In 2008, then, there was thus a 1-in-8000 chance that we would have three consecutive severe winters. The Met Office complain that the general public don’t understand risk and statistics, but I have to say that I don’t favour 1-in-8000 odds, i.e. the likelihood of three severe winters in a row only likely to occur once every 8000 years. I’m afraid these are actual Met Office statistics. If THEY understand statistics and risk, they should be repenting in dust and ashes by now because those odds are just way too long. Something is driving the weather/climate that they have absolutely no idea about. Now, we know that the models that the Met Office use for climate change projections are the very same models as they use for weather forecasting – you might think they’d be different, but they categorically claim that they are the same.
With odds of 8000:1 I’m prone to question whether there is some bias or tomfoolery going on, and with the Met Office that’s a dead certainty. They are headed up by an eco-fanatic and are part of the UK Ministry of Defence.
Here are some extracts from the DfT report ‘The Resilience of England’s Transport Systems in Winter’ (July and October 2010):
“We have discussed these issues in some depth with the Met Office and their climate research team at the Met Office Hadley Centre…we are advised to assume that the chance of a severe winter in 2010-11 is no greater (or less) than the current general probability of 1 in 20…The probability of the next winter being severe is virtually unrelated to the fact of just having experienced two severe winters, and is still about 1 in 20. The effect of climate change is to gradually but steadily reduce the probability of severe winters in the UK…we need to understand and accept that the chance of a severe winter is still relatively small…the probability of next winter being severe continues to be relatively small.”
Remember – based on the Met Office models (on which the whole climate change scam is based), three severe winters in a row has a probability of 1-in-8000, or 0.0125%. Or, put it the other way, in 2008 the Met Office would have been 99.9875% certain that we would not have three severe winters on the trot. Start looking at these probabilities stacking up and understand that the global warming mantra is a scam.
We are always being reminded that weather is not climate. Fine. But when once-in-8000 year ‘weather’ events turn up you really do have to start asking questions. When the Met Office in their UKCP08 report were projecting much warmer summer and winter temperatures in UK to 70% and 90% confidence, that same year they would have put 99.9875% confidence on there not being three extreme winters on the trot.
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Clearly their statistical analysis is based on conventional gulf-stream westerlies predominating. I am reminded of Peter Taylor commenting a few years ago that he phoned up the Met Office to ask to speak to an expert on the jet stream - they replied they don't have one but gave him a telephone number for someone at NASA. Considering the impact the jet stream 'blocking' has had on the UK's weather and economy in the last few years this to me is gross incompetence. As another commenter on WUWT says, the Met Office used to be joke we all had a laugh at, but now they are downright dangerous. Their adherence to linear models, and faith in half-baked advocacy science has cost us all dear, and heads need to roll.