Bishop Hill GWPF calls for inquiry into Met Office
Dec 21, 2010 Climate: MetOffice 
From Benny Peiser
LONDON, 21 December 2010: The Global Warming Policy Foundation has called on the Government to set up an independent inquiry into the winter advice it received by the Met Office and the renewed failure to prepare the UK for the third severe winter in a row.
"The current winter fiasco is no longer a joke as the economic damage to the British economy as a result of the country's ill-preparedness is running at £1bn a day and could reach more than £15 billion," said Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF's Director.
"It would appear that the Met Office provided government with rather poor if not misleading advice and we need to find out what went wrong. Lessons have to be learned well in advance of the start of next year's winter so that we are much better prepared if it is severe again," Dr Peiser said.
Reader Comments (63)
Off topic. Yesterday someone asked about the, "You are being premoderated", in red, on the Guardian weblogs.
I think it means you are banned from posting because I tried a few innocent posts on Moonboot's thread yesterday and nothing was published.
My mistake, and I'm guessing here, was to ask Toynbee how much it was to rent her Tuscany villa, why she sent her progeny to independent schools despite wanting them all outlawed and how many servants she employed in her UK mansion (she has servants). I addressed her as PollyAnna may have been construed as an insult.
Anybody with more info on this? I am anxious about my status over there, as you can imagine.
The Monbiot thread is just a litany of name calling and abuse. There is no debate and it is most unedifying.
Off topic. Yesterday someone asked about the, "You are being premoderated", in red, on the Guardian weblogs.
I think it means you are banned from posting because I tried a few innocent posts on Moonboot's thread yesterday and nothing was published.
My mistake, and I'm guessing here, was to ask Toynbee how much it was to rent her Tuscany villa, why she sent her progeny to independent schools despite wanting them all outlawed and how many servants she employed in her UK mansion (she has servants). I addressed her as PollyAnna may have been construed as an insult.
Anybody with more info on this? I am anxious about my status over there, as you can imagine.
The Monbiot thread is just a litany of name calling and abuse. There is no debate and it is most unedifying.
Cthulhu - "If the world actually started cooling. Hasn't yet."
Correct. Hasn't done much at all actually as CO2 have risen. Haven't calculated the R2, but it would be close to zero. Have a look at Lucia's recent post Cthulhu and
1. Note the OLS fit
2. Note the sign of the slope
3. Report back
Yes, yes, I know it's only for 10 years. Climate scientists are not interested in such short time scales of course because there's no temperature correlation with CO2. They're not interested in very long ones either because again there's no correlation with CO2. Except for that embarrassing lag.
I feel that this little problem that the MET has, has been blown up, out of all proportion.
Here in Sydney, we now have a standard weather forecast - 'fine with the chance of a shower"
I suggest the MET problem could be simply fixed by a slight change of wording -
"hot with the chance of bitterly cold winds, sleet and snow".
Repeat this each night before retiring (preferably permently).
There now - nothing to worry about - move on, problem solved.
(No unpleasant real enquiries needed now, or are they now needed? mmmmmmmmm).
@ golf charley
Met Office people said that 2010 was going to be te warmest year on record, as an appetiser to the Can con party. To have made that assumption must have implied some form of foreast about the weather in the remaining 6 (?) weeks of the year.
The mugs have actually been saying that in the usual places (RC, CiF) since at least August. They already knew it was going to be a hot year based on the first seven months. This would be either because there's been an El Nino event that moved the line upwards; or because in August they had already faked up the data for the balance of the year yet to come.
Regrettably, one must seriously entertain the second possibility.
An enquiry would be an excellent idea but only if chaired by someone who was undoubtedly independent and only if independent weather forecasters were invited to give evidence and Met Office scientists were asked for their response to specific criticisms. What would the Met Office people say if asked why they could not predict the extreme weather when Piers Corbyn did?
They would probably say that it is impossible to assess Corbyn's methods since he has not published a fully detailed explanation of them (and had it peer reviewed). However since Corbyn sells forecasts to businesses and other organisations to make a living he would lose his livlihood if he did publish full details without being offered some sort of official position, e.g. head of a new unit for long term and medium term forecasts.
When railways were new a competition was arranged by the Liverpool & Manchester Railway which was won by Stephenson with his "Rocket" (which is why Stephenson is often given the credit for the invention of the steam locomotive even though Richard Trevethick had built and used one in South Wales 25 years earlier).
Perhaps the British government should arrange a similar competition for long term weather forecasts, a season or more ahead, and extreme weather forecasts, a month or more ahead. To be fair the competition would probably have to last a couple of years or more otherwise it might be possible to win it with a lucky guess. It would be open to all comers and the winner would get a cash reward and be offered the job of re-organising the Met Office's forecasts or alternatively if he/she did not want that job permanently would be employed as a consultant to advise on the re-organisation of the Met Office.
Another precedent for such a competition would be the one set up by the British government for a method of reliably determining longitude after the loss of four ships from Sir Cloudesley Shovell's fleet off the Scilly Isles in 1707.
Corbyn has had his results independantly verified:
Early Weather Action (Solar Weather Technique) skill was independently verified in a peer-reviewed paper by Dr Dennis Wheeler, University of Sunderland, in the Journal of Atmospheric and Solar-Terrestrial Physics, Vol 63 (2001) p29-34.
and by Weathernet Solutions
http://www.weatheraction.com/pages/data/WAcoverletter.pdf
How about taking away some of the Met Office budget and using that money to pay Weatheraction. Both could then be independently audited.
"I studied mathematics as a young man and know that complex non-linear systems can not be modelled. I’ve no doubt that flat statement will be challenged but it is really self-evident. If Einstein could curse turbulence, Lord knows what he would have said about the climate system since it is a set of interacting complex subsystems. He once said that before he died, he’d like someone to explain Quantum Theory to him and after he was dead, he’d ask God to explain turbulence to him."
http://thepointman.wordpress.com/2010/12/21/the-msm-and-climate-alarmism/
Whether you're using an abacus or a computer, modelling something inherently predictable is a complete waste of time.
Pointman
Doh! "inherently predictable" s/b "inherently unpredictable"
Pointman
@dung
'Doug Keenan openly acuses Mr Alder's son Phil of fraud, no response'
Not guilty! My son is, of course, Phil Anderer. The Phil you mean is somebody else altogether. Ciao.
Why does it seem that the AGW Dogma is doing far more damage than a little bit more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Jsut be pleased that with the advent of the web and sites like Wiki the AGW religion will be recorded in history and your childrens, children will read about such false scientists as Hansen, Mann and Jones. They may be enjoying short term advantages to there careers and bank balances through there un-scinetific method but they will be 'Judged by History'. ('Doing a Mann,' showing your results without replication due to with-holding your data).
Child of discredited scientist does such and such (Once the red top rags finally replace there brain washed science editors).
According to the Met Office press release on November 2 they hope soon to be able to forecast a severe winter literally decades ahead - so by 2016 they should be able to tell us whether it will be a severe winter in 2036. Don't believe me? See here for what these delusional idiots have stated:
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/corporate/pressoffice/2010/pr20101102.html
"The Met Office science strategy, published on the web, will focus on meeting the increasing demands for seamless prediction systems across all timescales from hours to decades, and for the atmosphere, oceans and land surface.
The new five-year strategy takes this agenda of seamless science and prediction and focuses our research around four major challenges:
* Forecasting hazardous weather on time scales from hours to decades;..."
Note: this is about PREDICTION and FORECASTING of hazardous WEATHER, not climate projections.
I hope that the postings here by cthulhu will be better informed and somewhat more polite than the intolerant comments he leaves at that disgrace of a site called Wotts Up With That. My feeling is that Bishop Hill makes some sort of progress in its debates so I would like to congratulate cthulhu on his taste and look forward to his measured observations.