Bishop Hill Homewood on the Met Office
Apr 9, 2013 Climate: MetOffice Paul Homewood has a must-read article describing a Met Office briefing paper he obtained under FOI. You should definitely read the whole thing, but here's a taster.
There have been many attempts recently to blame just about every bit of bad weather on declining Arctic sea ice. Julia Slingo, herself, told a Parliamentary Committee last year:-
“There is increasing evidence in the last few months that depletion of ice, in particular in the Bering and Kara seas, can plausibly impact on our winter weather and lead to colder winters over northern Europe".
(This, of course, came a few months after previous predictions of warmer, wetter winters, and a few months before Slingo decided Arctic ice was responsible for heavier rainfall).
The private briefing document totally demolishes her argument and that of others:-
It has been suggested that the decline of Arctic Sea Ice may drive low pressure over the UK, although this remains very uncertain at present.
And
In the long term, most climate models project drier UK summers – but it is possible there could be other influences of a changing climate which could override that signal on shorter timescales.
If low levels of Arctic sea ice were found to be affecting the track of the jet stream, for example, this could be seen as linked to the warming of our climate – but this is currently an unknown.
The Met Office Hadley Centre, working with climate research centres around the world, is making strides in determining how the odds of extreme weather happening have been influenced by climate change. However, it is very difficult to do this type of analysis with such highly variable rainfall events, so it may take many years before we could confirm how the odds of this summer’s wet weather happening have been altered by greenhouse gases.
So why did Slingo give the testimony she did to Parliament?
Reader Comments (18)
There could be no firmer evidence for the politicisation of our once respected Met.Office. Slingo should make a statement retracting her previous claims and then resign.
Well done Paul H.
The one thing that comes shining through is that those politicians who told us 'the science is settled' and other such crap were talking out of an orifice beautifully crafted by the Met Office.
Translation of Slingo speak.
Climate change will mean colder winters in Northern Europe .........on the other hand it may mean warmer winters!
That is why we need a big new supercomputer to help us make up our mind.
Climate science is an observational discipline pretending to be a predictive science. As a consequence (of the necessity of keeping up the pretension
a) you always through out the worst outcome that matches your theory, as a prediction, with support from the precautionary principle
b) you always offer post-hoc explanations for every actual outcome, explaining how it matches your theory
More excellent work by Paul Homewood. As that old gardening song has it (http://www.arlo.net/resources/lyrics/garden-song.shtml) slightly modified,
Inch by inch, row by row
Gonna make the rascals go
All it takes is to check don'tcha know
For their claims are so unsound.
One cheering aspect of these past decades of climate foolishness and over-reach by so-called climate scientists and those who have exploited their excesses, is that a goodly sprinkling of incisive analysts has sprung up and shows signs of increasing. Thus the work of a Mann or a Model, a Lewandowsky or a Gergis or a Marcott or, for that matter, a Slingo, or a Met Office or an IPCC, is being examined and found wanting. Seriously wanting. So seriously wanting that no serious politician, nor honest financier, nor wise senior civil servant, or sincere NGO, nor indeed man-in-the-street would want to take them seriously ever again.
Surely, it is just a matter of time before better sense starts to prevail?
John Shade (Apr 9, 2013 at 5:41 PM), your (modified) gardening song doesn't rhyme and doesn't scan. As to the rest of your post, time to sleep on it perhaps?
Its been "just a matter of time" for nearly a decade. Any chance of geeing it along in the near future, cos I'm getting mightily peed off with "just a matter of time"
simon, it does actually work quite well to the tune. I've given you a link to the lyrics, here's one for the whole song sung by Arlo Guthrie. I wish we could sing it together.
As for the rest of my comment, I think it has stood this test of time rather well. But I do agree with you Martyn, I wish the other stuff would speed up. Enough harm has been done by the alarmism already, and we may not yet be at what the eco-folks might well call Peak-Harm.
Fred Singer identified this disease way back. If it is always "worse that you thought", doesn't that mean that your thinking was *wrong*?
If you predict a factor X, according to your theory, to have a value of A, and X actually ends up with a value different than A, your theory is wrong. But not in climate science.
1) A>X : Worse that we thought
2) A=X: Just as we predicted
3) A<X: Our theory can explain why it turned out low
Other sleight-of-hand moves are possibilities too:
1) X is actually equal to A. It is an illusion that it looks to be not. -> Skepticalscience trick
2) X is actually equal to A. A part of A has gone into the deep ocean and if you add this part up, everything matches. -> Trenberth trick
3) X is actually equal to A. The instruments that measure X are old and corrupt -> The anti-Spencer trick
Between these six positions and a range of other possible contortions, you can go for *years* before the temperatures actually go up, at which point, you can simply resume the old song-and-dance (and 10:10 snuff videos etc).
My view is this will all get overturned once there is enough anger out there in the general public. As the MSM wakes and stirs, more people are learning what is going on, and yes, getting angry about it.
I hate how long this is taking, too, but it's a giant beast on the best funded life support, surrounded by bodyguards. It's dead, that fact is just not being reported and billions are still being piped into its veins.
In 2010 the BBC reported Mike Lockwood's finding that the cold UK winter was due to jet stream blocking, which in turn was related to low solar activity. Solar activity again has been quite weak over this NH winter, with the Ap index below 5 same as in 2010.
Unfortunately Dr Slingo's allergy to the Sun is turning her brain to mush.
Apr 9, 2013 at 10:24 PM | A.D. Everard
"My view is this will all get overturned once there is enough anger out there in the general public...."
///////////////////////////////////////////
The anger will rise as people begin not to be able to pay their energy bills.
This is a real problem for those who owe money to energy suppliers since energy suppliers are often heavy handed and relatively quickly will apply to Court seeking redress, and the costs of this will add to the amount that the customer owes. Further, when the customer falls behind with payments, the energy supplier frequently moves the customer to less favourable tarriffs, alternatively installs pay as you go meters both of which result in an increase in the unit price of energy, making matters even more difficult for the consumer. On top of that, there is the risk and hassle of being cut off. As energy prices increase, this situation can only get worse, and consumer anger will increase.
Latest surveys suggest that up to 20% of customers are in debt to their energy supplier. See : http://news.uk.msn.com/families-in-debt-to-energy-firms-2
Just a few days ago, Mr Davey (see the post on the nuptocracy) was telling the public that their energy bills would go up by only £32 in the next 5 years. So much for that assurance. The CoOp are increasing their energy bills by £100. Perhaps CoOp customers should send Mt davey a bill for £68 to cover the excess over his assurances. See:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-2306270/Co-operative-Energy-price-hike-adds-100-year-100-000-household-gas-electricity-bills.html
I envisage substantial backlash within the course of the next year as the effect of higher energy bills which will increase by considerably more than inflation begins to bite on people whose living standards are being squeezed by below inflation pay rise.
It is surprising how little anger there is yet about our ever increasing energy bills, for which climate alarmists must take a large share of the blame. When Ian Duncan Smith made his foolish remarks about living on £54 a week (or whatever the figure is) in response to criticisms from a member of the public who, it actually turned out, was living on considerably more than that figure, a few hundred thousand people signed a petition calling for him to go.
Contrast that with the apathy shown towards the Climate Change Act. Sometimes I despair at the attitudes of the British public as well as those of the political class.
Missing Link in 'Apr 9, 2013 at 10:03 PM | John Shade'.
Here 'tis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QTj45cTB4U
I invite people to sing along to it with the words in 'Apr 9, 2013 at 5:41 PM | John Shade'
In other words, they (the Met Office) haven't got a bloody clue...
Watch Lawrence McGinty's full report on ITV News at 6.30pm and 10pm tonight.
http://www.itv.com/news/update/2013-04-10/could-arctic-climate-change-be-causing-extreme-weather-here/
Phew!
MET are on the case.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2307333/Is-UK-heading-Arctic-winters-Met-Office-calls-urgent-meeting-discuss-melting-ice-causing-Britain-freeze.html
different issue but I just noticed this CA post from March 2010 on totally evasive and unresponsive statements given by Julia Slingo, first to committee of Parliament, and then to Steve McIntyre when he tried to follow up and get citations:
Slingo to McIntyre in March 2010
This is simply embarrassing (and worse) for any scientist, never mind one in such a prominent position on the public payroll. She could say (of paleo issues) "sorry, not my specialty" but to deflect and distort the issues, pretend to have a knowledgeable answer, then to continue to stonewall when asked for scientific references, is disgraceful.