Inside the new climate row as Mystic Met Office goes cool on warming

Britain's Met Office has come under fire for two pieces of crystal-ball gazing involving global temperature and British rainfall. On Christmas Eve, the Met's temperature prediction for the UK was quietly revised downwards, and only merited a press release this week after physics blog Tallbloke's Talkshop noticed the change. …

[Androgynous Crackwhore]

Not the Met Office's fault.

Other venerable institutions have been falling over themselves to disgrace themselves too. Notable and spectacularly jarring examples of this present some spurious and flawed modelling based on spurious and flawed data as indisputable scientific proof that we're all doomed epidemic include the BBC and The Royal Society.

I believe there are dark (i.e. probably political) forces behind this. I'd love to know who comprised the clique that informed the BBC it was to be the mouthpiece of this movement, but, alas, it seems to have been decided for me that such information is none of my business.

[NomNomNom]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

It's actually your fault. You generate a strawman and then tut-tut as you knock it down.

If I asked you for evidence to back up your premise that the Royal Society claim "indisputable scientific proof that we're all doomed" you won't be able to because the Royal Society does't claim that and so doesn't do the disgraceful act you accuse them of.

"I believe there are dark (i.e. probably political) forces behind this"

So it's a conspiracy theory...

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

El Reg reported recently on an appeal over a Freedom of Information request where the BBC tried to hide who had been present at a big meeting where the BBC decided to "go AGW". But then the names leaked out anyway.

So yes, the BBC is guilty of hiding its policy-making.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

"I believe there are dark (i.e. probably political) forces behind this".

Not necessarily - unless you believe (plausibly enough, I'll admit) that all political forces are dark. The trouble is that meteorology, like many other important fields of practical knowledge, is simply not well enough understood to serve as a reliable basis for large-scale political action.

I'll cite you another two fields of knowledge in which charlatans and blowhards have been sounding off officiously for decades, yet which no one really understands yet because they are just too complicated. Nutrition and economics. In both domains there are famous, well respected, very highly paid individuals whose voice is as the voice of God, and to whom everyone listens deferentially. Worst of all, governments act on those people's recommendations - whether naively or cynically is anyone's guess.

In nutrition, there is huge anxiety over the so-called "obesity crisis" in Western nations (and increasingly elsewhere, as Western lifestyles spread). Since the 1970s the prevailing orthodoxy has gradually set like concrete: overweight and obesity are caused by eating too much and exercising too little. A calorie is a calorie is a calorie, and so on. Well, in the last few years a growing number of scientists have started to notice that there was never any actual evidence to support the view that cholesterol and saturated fat are bad for you, and you must eat whole grains and vegetables to be healthy. The very scientists who stated those things in ringing tones - and eventually got governments to parrot them - were contradicting the results of their own experiments and surveys, which showed nothing of the kind. No one really knows whether the Atkins diet, for example, is good, bad, indifferent, or what. But if you look around, in the media and the interwebs, what you will find is huge numbers of completely unqualified "experts", all relentlessly preaching their particular dogmas.

In a recent radio talk, the estimable Will Self suggested that finance is actually a religion - and, what's more, the dominant religion in the West. What is certain is that finance and economics are other domains pervaded by arbitrary dogma, most of which is selective and partial at best, and flat wrong at worst. Fifty years ago I first heard the remark that, for every world-class economist who preaches a given point of view, one can easily find another world-class economist to call him a gold-plated liar. As well as the sentiment, with which we can all sympathize, that if all the economists in the world were laid end to end it would be a very good thing. Ever wonder why economists and financial gurus are always listened to with silent respect, even though they all disagree and none of them can predict anything? It's a religion! (And a very good living - see Norbert Haring's excellent book "Economists and the Powerful: Convenient Theories, Distorted Facts, Ample Rewards".

Unfortunately, most human beings are very bad indeed at suspending judgment. We don't want tentative hypotheses, ongoing experiments, cautious suggestions. Instead, we want certain, concrete knowledge followed by fast, decisive action - right now! Businesspeople and politicians are among the worst offenders in this respect: they like to do stuff, not ponder while credibility and votes trickle away. As George McGovern notoriously told doubtful nutrition scientists back in the 1970s, "we Senators don’t have the luxury that a research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in". So they hastily and superficially sample opinions - foolishly giving more weight to the "good and the great", scientists who have long passed their sell-by date and no longer do much (if any) active research, and whose ideas have fossilized as a result. And, of course, those scientists who are shrillest and most insistent in presenting their conclusions are all too often the ambitious rather than the talented and persistent.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Blimey, a post on El Reg with which I agree entirely! Whatever next? A squadron of fquadraped, even-toed ungulates flying majestically overhead? Well I never!

You're quite right, the orthodoxy on nutrition is complete and utter bullshine. High cholesterol doesn't cause high blood pressure, it's a symptom of inflammation which is itself caused by various vitamin, mineral and essential fatty acid deficiencies. I know of what I speak because I had "high" cholesterol, heart problems and much else besides and I've reduced it by taking vitamin, mineral and EFA supplements alone. I'm still the same fat lump I've been for some time but I'm now fit and healthy. I came within a year or two of turning up my toes and now it looks like I might get my holographic centennial message from Old King Willie.

They say that politics is showbiz for ugly people and I reckon economics is politics for the permanently confused and bewildered. The only thing that keeps it from being exposed as a complete sham is the terminology which makes it completely impenetrable to all but the adepts but then the same can be said for most "profession".

Numerous scandals have been exposed in parliament, press, police and banking over the last 6 years but they are as nothing compared to the scandal that is modern medicine and the pharmaceutical industry. They have been raping and pillaging the tax payers of the globe for 100 years or more and then letting them die of entirely preventable diseases which they then pretend to research at vast expense when the answers are as plain as the nose on your face. If most people, in addition to a reasonable diet, supplemented themselves with a multivitamin and some EFAs, they'd barely spend a day of their lives ill; heart disease, diabetes, cancer, dementia, Alzheimer's, etc. would be wiped out in a matter of generations. Not to mention the money we'd save on psychopathic/sociopathic doctors and their drugs. This is why doctors don't hand out vitamin pills because if they did, we wouldn't need them any more. Think on that as you swallow the same kind of bullshit that is AGW.

[Fatman]

Re: ...I reckon economics is politics for the permanently confused and bewildered.

Would you extend that sentiment (permanently confused and bewildered) to W??

[Giles Jones]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

How else do you explain the extreme weather we've been having?

Floods almost every single year and in places not built on flood planes.The weather in the whole world is getting more unpredictable and crazy. Landslides, floods, droughts and so on.

You can choose to ignore it, but perhaps you will come around to climate change when it affects you directly.

[Davie Dee]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

im not going to proclaim I know the answer to this debate, but (AN) answer to your questions about flooding in "new" places is basic GCSE geography knowledge

you build flood defences in one place, you shaft someone else. Its quite simple, we've been passing the buck all around the country for decades, coastal and river defences will all help protect one area at the expense of another that is what they do.

Id also be interested in seeing which places got flooded that were not in a flood plain or in a location of possible flooding? water follows the same fluid dynamics and laws of physics in any location, its not political motivated, its not following some master AGW plan, its relatively basic stuff, you dump a shed load of water in one place and its likely it will go somewhere else or not as the case may be

If you have been affected by flooding then I am truly sorry, but before you start blaming AGW, God, Aliens and the number of cows farting in the fields you might want to consider all the other folk around you that have all been saving their own arses and all the while been passing that water quicker and in much large quantities towards you.

much of our flooding issues are down to ourselves, over countless generations of "flood defending" acts and measures

[TkH11]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

That's not entirely right. Whilst flood defences along one river will protect one town it may result in a higher than normal river level height which may affect another town further downstream, so I am prepared to accept there is an element of truth in what you say, but the fundamental problem is the change in the nature of the rainfall events, which are a) longer in duration, b) over a wider area, c) higher in rainfall rate (expressed in millimetre's per hour).

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

I'm afraid I have to disappoint you here. Back in one of the early recent major floods (2002/3?) there was a guy interviewed on the TV News for Sussex who made an a statement of blinding obviousness but, due to his alliegances, it was completely ignored.

He said that the bulk of early stage flooding was due to changing from 'soakaway' to 'run-off' on uphill land. It made the land accessible much faster for the farmer who didn't have to suffer from tractors bogged down etc but it collapsed the timescale for rainfall to enter the river systems to a matter of hours.

I know that with the current situation with the water table at maximum this would make little difference but it would curtail a lot of these flash floods where the water hits the ground and then within minutes has been guided into a river. This is also a contributing factor to the droughts which got no better despite some rain.

Oh yes, the alliegances which caused the problem? He was from 'Friends of the Earth' so of course had to be spouting rubbish.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

"a statement of blinding obviousness"

"He said that the bulk of early stage flooding was due to changing from 'soakaway' to 'run-off' on uphill land"

"land accessible much faster for the farmer"

"tractors bogged down"

"so of course had to be spouting rubbish"

Yes I think your last statement is right. He was spouting rubbish , unless of course you can point me to the source of the research which shows that the "bulk of early stage flooding" is caused by these devious farmers.

However, living in a rural community and having spent many years on the mountains, including for voluntary work, I must say that I have never seen these farmers digging up whole hillsides to place plastic sheeting down to stop the rain soaking into the ground. In fact you don't often see tractors on the hills at all. getting bogged down or not.

How do you guide water into a river? The rain falls uniformly across the whole hillside. Unless you had a massive plastic dome over the hill or built trenches 6ft deep every 30ft (thus destroying the ability to farm the land) you can't do that. The land is far more effective at channelling itself into rivers than humans can (we can divert the course of an existing river or dam it though).

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

A lot of the evidence is from the work done by the Environment Agency when they changed their river management from County based to catchment based. They were able to track a lot of problems to their source and in a large number of cases, farmers (and other landowners) had 'improved the drainage' of their land to get water off it more quickly. This can come in a variety of methods such as substantial ditches around fields to direct the water or adding channels of buried gravel where land is not ploughed.

Surface water can drain to the edge of a field faster than it can soak into the soil in most instances and so by adding a good sized ditch you clear the water faster than just letting it soak away.

You seem to have missed the bit where I mentioned Sussex, this was rather relevant as whilst you are generally correct in your comments about upland farming my comment was about the impact that changes to land management can have when a large volume of water enters the river system more rapidly than the system can cope with.

I may not live up a mountain but I believe that doesn't preclude being in a rural environment.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

"A lot of the evidence is from the work done by the Environment Agency"

Source? Citation?

[Marshalltown]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Blindingly obvious move is to run trenches or berms across fields to increase drainage rates. In arid lands this is done to concentrate run off on field areas in wadis - the Negev is a good example where migratory Bedouin farmers and herdsmen have practiced this for centuries. In regions that are better watered, the same methods is sometimes employed to limit and collect sheet run off and direct it to channels more quickly. That reduces erosion on sloping fields that are already ploughed. Once saturated the entire slope might move, which would be bad. The strawberry growing areas around Watsonville in California are occasionally designed this way if there are serious sloped to deal with. Much of the area is short on clay and has an unfortunate vulnerability to gravity when wet.

[Intractable Potsherd]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Flooding and drought both have the same answer - build more reservoirs. Make some of them power hydro-electric generators and that is another box ticked.

[Demonix]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Well said Sir. Just ask any one along the Thames estuary who suffers when the London flood barriers is closed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

Easy, its not extreme.

It is the easiest thing in the world to think that every time we see an event that's mildly out of the normal that there has to be a reason and there is a pattern.

Just like every young person thinks they discovered cool, or music or sex, and nobody ever had those things like we did.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

"It is the easiest thing in the world to think that every time we see an event that's mildly out of the normal that there has to be a reason and there is a pattern".

The same syndrome, broadly speaking, that caused Schiaparelli to think he saw canals on Mars when the only thing he could possibly have been seeing was the blood vessels in his own eyes - if even that. Confabulation. It can also contribute to paranoia, when instead of taking occasional unpleasant experiences as just random events and shrugging them off emotionally, you start to discern an underlying pattern of evil agents and conspiracies.

Of course, being paranoid doesn't necessarily mean that someone isn't out to get you. But it makes it less likely, and implies the need for careful objective fact checking.

[General Pance]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

God?

[Kubla Cant]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

@Giles Jones: The weather in the whole world is getting more unpredictable and crazy.

Could you let us see your workings? I'm not disagreeing, just hoping to learn how the people who know do it.

[Marshalltown]

What "extreme" weather?

It isn't a matter of ignoring it. Whether you perceive extreme weather is a function 1) age, 2) memory quality, 3) where you were or are being raised. Age means that if you are as old as I am, and your memory works at least as well as mine, then you remember of wetter, hotter, colder, and drier weather, unless Alzheimers is setting in. The present doesn't stand out over 60 years in any way. If you were raised in an urban setting your perceptions are biased by that as well. Cities exist to shelter people from the slings and arrows of nature in the raw. It is also worth remembering that if you "have to adjust" data, before using it, what you really need is either better data or a better theory that doesn't demand adjustment.

If you really worship the words of "authority" and "expert" opinion, you want remember that neither of those words has any scientific merit whatsoever. An authority in science is someone who publishes a lot. That just makes them wordy, not necessarily reliable or believable. An "expert" is someone a lawyer wants on his side. Dueling "experts" are not employed for nothing in jury trials. "Experts" don't necessarily agree, so it is more than likely that for every expert you trust, there is another expert with a contrary opinion that someone else trusts just as much. Government agencies have lawyers who actually train scientists in how to be "expert witnesses." Essential points in the training including picking the stance you mostly prefer and treating that view like you are absolutely convinced that it is the only true reality. Don't qualify anything - qualifications "open the door."

For a really apposite example from climate science, read the comparatively sane discussions between the "team" members in Climate Gate 1 and 2 emails that recognize problems, issues and express the concern that skeptics may have legitimate issues. Compare that with the profound certainty expressed by the team in public. My personal view is that agency lawyers "trained" the "team" members on how to talk to the media and the public.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

@Giles Jones

How about just climate change - as per normal!

Do you really think that various parts of the world have never, ever had bad weather before? Was it man that caused the Sahara desert? Was it man that caused the ice cap to expand and cover a good proportion of the now habitable areas, then contract so that we could enjoy the countryside a little bit further North than the tropics (or South, I presume). Not on your nelly. Just climate change, or to be more precise elements of this earthly environment, which, as it has done for millenia (or is that eons?) is continually changing - before during and I am sure, long after man is gone.

The problem is that man, before he started getting too clever, has continually adapted to the environment. If some coast line eroded, he moved further inland. If it started receiving little or no rain - move on.

Now that we all have a vested financial interest our own little bit of property, we demand that the government do something about it before they lose it.

Personally I can't wait for a bit of elevated sea levels. I should have a prime waters-edge property - until it erodes of course, but hopefully I will have sold be then and made a handsome profit.

Or even more likely, I shall be long dead along with any offspring I may have unknowingly sired. And their offspring ad infinitum.

[LarsG]

Fish.........

"Earlier on today, apparently, a woman rang the BBC and said she heard there was a hurricane on the way; well, if you're watching, don't worry, there isn't, but having said that, actually, the weather will become very windy, but most of the strong winds, incidentally, will be down over Spain and across into France."

Nothing has changed has it?

[TkH11]

Re: Fish.........

I think if you're going to mention the incident with Fish, then you have to describe the cause. The cause was a lack of observational data back in that time. It's not appropriate to blame an individual forecaster for getting it wrong. Technology today means they gather a lot more observational data and feed that into the numerical weather prediction models (NWP).

[Dr_N]

Re: Fish.........

The Michael Fish hurricane "quote" for '87 storm is a total urban myth.

[Chet Mannly]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

"I believe there are dark (i.e. probably political) forces behind this."

I agree with the rest of your post, but not the "Dark Forces" part.

Anti-global warming [sic] policies means new taxes for governments, which are spent on subsidies for the renewable industry, and research by places like the Met to justify further policies.

All 3 parties are simply acting in their own self interest - I wouldn't call that "dark".

Its just a shame that Governments have started acting in their own interests, rather than ours as they are supposed to.

[Piro]

Re: Not the Met Office's fault.

I didn't even read your post, but I'll mark you up because of your username, which made me smile. I need cheering up on a dreary Monday.

[Sean Houlihane]

Good

Finally, the Met Office is caught out making statements about trends which it is unable to substantiate with statistical analysis. Sadly, it isn't as simple as saying that they are wrong, and there is no trend. All we can say is that they seem not to realise how easy it is to pick out a trend by eye which is in reality just random variation.

The Met Office has a duty to present their analysis of the data in a robust way. The dialogue linked in the article implies that their senior staff have no comprehension of what would be needed to achieve this.

We do, however have plenty of examples of their PR being interpreted to swallow the inaccurate interpretation so it seems reasonable to push them to issue a clear and unambiguous retraction of the idea that we have a rainfall trend that suggests ANYTHING. (other than a long term 1% per century increase, which could well correlate with the LIA, but is close to irrelevant in terms of panic-now)

[NomNomNom]

Re: Good

"Statistical analysis of rainfall records by the Met Office claimed to show days of heavy rainfall had become more common in England since 1960."

But note the above graph in the article is annual rainfall. It's not days of heavy rainfall. So it isn't even testing the Met Office claim, it's just put there to look like it does.

[NomNomNom]

Re: Good

What's this then?

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/17/Rainfall/UK.gif

Is that an uptrend in rainfall in the UK in recent decades? Ie could the Met Office be right? (shock!)

[Steve Davies 3]

Re: Good

Well, here in Jordan (where I'm working at the moment), the capital Amman has had 4in rain and 6in of snow in the past 9days. Apart from the whole place shutting down officially, no gritters or plows here the drainage systems are totally unable to cope. Roads flooded, a few homes literally washed away.

This is the rainy seaon but a whole months rain fell in one day.

As far as I'm concerned there is something strange going on with the weather.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Good

Well guess what? Jordan was much the same in the early 1990s - it had weeks of torrential rain followed by prolonged cold/snow. A local there told me it was worse than some year in the 1950s when the same sort of thing happened.

Bloody awful place in winter, not much better any other time of the year.

[TkH11]

Re: Good

>The Met Office has a duty to present their analysis of the data in a robust way.

As scientists they do have that duty and I am sure they do present it. There was simply one episode where scientists didn't disclose all the information they had and this has resulted in considerable damage to the reputation of climatologists.

But there is a difference in presenting empirical data and making interpretations, predictions based on that data. The average member of the public doesn't understand the complexities in climatology or meteorology and when a prediction is made they interpret it with absolutely certainty, but any scientist, mathematician or engineer, (any many other intelligent people) know that a prediction means there is some degree of uncertainty that goes along with it.

Weather and climate have many cyclical behaviours, some we understand and some we have only recently discovered. If the period of a cyclical behaviour is short enough compared to the lifetime of man then we have a chance to capture enough observational data to a) observe the behaviour and b) analyse what is causing it.

The problem is, we already know that a number of behaviours have periods in terms of thousands and tens of thousands of years so whilst it is ok presenting empirical data, we have to be extremely careful with making predictions based on prediction models which have been constructed based on observational data when we don't fully understand the behaviour.

[Sapient Fridge]

The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

The Met Office predictions are lower than previous predictions, but note that they are still rising.

The global heat content of the planet has continued to rise over the last 16 years and surface temperatures are also rising, but that is not a long enough period to be considered statistically significant (which means that it has a 95% probabilty of not being by chance). Climate is never statistically significant over such a short period of time:

Look at the excellent video on the page for a very clear graphical explanation what is going on:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/16_more_years_of_global_warming.html

Look at it this way, the freak warm El Nino year of 1998 has now become the new "normal" temperature. Does that suggest no warming to you? How about the fact that 4.3 trillion tons of ice has melted in last 8 years?

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2012-036

When will the Register start getting its news from real science rather than AGW denier blogs?

[I. Aproveofitspendingonspecificprojects]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

uk.sci.weather vigorously discusses the operation of the Met Office every day. There are very few who support either side of the argument wholeheartedly. I think this is because the majority of posters on there are adept and quite a few are expert.

Your assertion about warming is quite correct with one small caveat:

Earth's heat budget doesn't translate from hot to cold but from warm air to low pressure.

There is no balance for any equations for places with higher temperatures versus places with lower temperatures. When it gets warm it doesn't stay warm until it gets warmer, not as long as night follows day it doesn't.

Likewise when all that terrible, nutritious greenhouse gas gets warm, it rises and although a lot of it comes back down again some of it acts as a coolant, making its way out of the troposphere to place where it can divest itself of all that destructive warmth you worry so much about.

And guess what else can happen up there:

CH4 +2O3 = 2CO2 + 2H2O

Most of the ozone reaction are nice simple easily balanced chemical equations like that.

It's almost as if there is a god after all.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

I assume Andrew has also read this peer-reviewed paper (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0375960112010389) which demonstrates that over 90% of the Earth's heat imbalance is being stored in the oceans rather than going to warm the surface. Surface temperatures might be rising only very slightly, but the Earth as a whole is warming strongly.

[itzman]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

If global warming doesn't appear in surface temperatures why did the AGW boys make such a fuss about them, and essentially if the surface temperature doesn't change, what difference is it going to make to climate?

Really, warmists are the people who really like to have their cake and eat it..

[Giles Jones]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

There's a lot of water on the planet and it is this which is warming more? this is why the ice is melting and it is raining more drastically? water evaporating tends to produce clouds?

[Chet Mannly]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

"90% of the Earth's heat imbalance is being stored in the oceans rather than going to warm the surface."

Firstly, its air temperature that is measured, not surface temperature.

Secondly the network of buoys recording sea temperatures is not actually recording any increase in sea temperature.

So the earth as a whole is NOT warming strongly.

[Tim Parker]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

"Secondly the network of buoys recording sea temperatures is not actually recording any increase in sea temperature."

Figures from folks such as the NOAA seem to indicate a rise in global upper ocean heat content, and a rise in sea-levels consistent with that (inter alia). Could you provide some links to the buoy records you're referring to please ?

[Reginald Gerard]

Re: Chet Mannly

Doh.. where do you get that from? Links?

20 years ago one could snorkel the house reefs around the islands in the Maldives, all teeming with coral and fish. Last year the surface water temperatures were so piss warm it is no wonder that everything down to 2 meters is now dead and void of life. Not only a consequence of heat but also due to the overall global increase of acidity caused by the absorption of CO2

http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-ocean-acidification/

http://www.nrdc.org/oceans/acidification/

http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/co2/story/Ocean+Acidification

[Marshalltown]

Re: Chet Mannly

DO you know what the change in marine pH was? Because, if you don't, you should probably look up some useful terms like "buffering," "acid" vs. "alkaline," find out about neutral pH, etc. The only legitimate fact is one you missed. The warmer water is the less gas it can hold in solution. That includes - wait for it - oxygen. Any change in sea life is far more likely to be due to lower oxygenation, not acidification - the oceans are alkaline and will stay that way for the foreseeable future.

[Marshalltown]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

That is a hypothesis rather than a fact. What is a fact is that Kevin Trenberth has complained about the "missing" energy. Since it _assumed_ that it has not yet left building, the obvious conclusion is that the oceans have it, though Trenberth actually said the data had to be wrong. Right now, globally the oceans are cooler than they have been for a considerable while. For example see this: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.1.14.2013.gif. Over half the marine surface shows a cool anomaly.

[Tim Parker]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

"Right now, globally the oceans are cooler than they have been for a considerable while. For example see this: http://www.osdpd.noaa.gov/data/sst/anomaly/2013/anomnight.1.14.2013.gif. Over half the marine surface shows a cool anomaly."

I thought the SST anomaly was the short term indicator (last day of the previous 2 week average) used for things like upwell anaylsis ?

Some of the long term indicators, such as global upper ocean temperature, can be found here (and related links on that page)

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/indicators/

[Bruce Hoult]

statistical significance

There is no such single thing as "considered statistically significant". It depends what your purpose is.

Among real scientists 2 sigma or 95% is considered to be the point at which you say "oh, that looks interesting, lets research it more to see if it's real" (i.e. try to add a few more sigma on to the probability.

The following article shows how physicists deal with such statistics, and don't consider something to be proven unless it reaches 5 sigma or 99.99994% probability that the observations didn't happen by chance.

http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=5248358123737529836

That discussion is largely in the context of deciding whether or not Higgs' boson is real, a subject of absolutely no practical importance to anyone not in that academic field.

That something as serious as hurting the world economy to the tune of trillions of dollars and condemning millions of the most vulnerable people to starvation and death via raising the prices of food and energy should be decided by mere 2 sigma evidence is utterly ludicrous.

[Tom 35]

Re: statistical significance

You say...

"There is no such single thing as "considered statistically significant". It depends what your purpose is."

Then go on to compare the existence of a particle that can only be yes/no and AGW that could be no it's getting colder / nothing happening / warmer but not significant / warmer but cost less to deal with then prevent / we are all going to die.

And since this is not all about the science you could add, warmer but I'll be dead by then so don't care / warmer but it will be better for ME / warmer but only unimportant people will be underwater. To add to the non science side you have people on both sides just out to make money, oil companies and car companies on one side, and stuff like carbon trading and subsidised green power on the other.

[Turtle]

@Bruce Hoult: An Antecedent

"That something as serious as hurting the world economy to the tune of trillions of dollars and condemning millions of the most vulnerable people to starvation and death via raising the prices of food and energy should be decided by mere 2 sigma evidence is utterly ludicrous."

Unless you consider that, uh, "reducing the earth's population" might be a goal of the global warming alarmist agenda - a goal which might be an antecedent to anthropogenic global warming alarmism. (cf that loathsome racist Paul Ehrlich.)

[Charles Manning]

There isn't a universal threshold for statistics in science.

Statistical significance for physics is very different than for "soft science" (biology, geology,....). The soft sciences are far less rigorous than physics.

Physics **hates** to use statistics at all. Any use of statistics in physics just reduces rigor. That's why, when it is used, they demand lots of 9s.

If 1000 bricks were thrown into the air and 999 of them fell to the ground but one hovered in the air, the physicist would have severe doubts about gravity. 99.9% is not enough.

Soft sciences will accept far lower thresholds. For example, we routinely accept that smoking causes cancer when many smokers die of other causes.

What is important is recognizing levels of confidence. Sigmas etc are routinely cut from reporting because the journalists and public just don't understand them.

[itzman]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

Yawn. Another post from the global cooling deniers.

[Chet Mannly]

Re: The meme that there has been no warming in 16 years is false

"The Met Office predictions are lower than previous predictions, but note that they are still rising."

The article is talking about RAINFALL, not temperature!!

FAIL was a great choice of avatar for your post...

[Steve Crook]

Good news and bad news

It's good news they built a better model, and bad news that they'd prefer us not to have seen the results. However, if, the new prediction is accurate, and we really have had a 20 year period without a significant rise in temperature, then climate scientists will have one important question to answer:

If natural cycles can completely mask the global warming signal for 20 years, is it not likely that they can *enhance* the global warming signal for a similar period?

My guess is that a significant portion of the warming of the 80s and 90s will turn out to have been caused by natural cycles, and that when they're accounted for we'll end up with a climate sensitivity of ~2c for a doubling of CO2 over pre-industrial levels.

[Pen-y-gors]

Re: Good news and bad news

Given a choice between 'your guess' and some well-researched models and forecasts by scientists who have studied the subject for many years, I think my money goes on the Met office scientists.

[itzman]

Re: Good news and bad news

That's what they said about phlogiston. And the Piltdown man.

[Turtle]

@itzman: Phlogiston And Piltdown Man

I think that comparing the "scientific research" used to support AGW, with the phlogiston theory and the Piltdown Man hoax is very appropriate, really. And although you did not mention it, phrenology especially, where random bumps on your head are taken to have real significance, rather like the Met Office takes random points on a chart to be meaningful in some way....

[Bruce Hoult]

natural cycles

The point that natural cycles, if they exist (as the Met Office is now agreeing with skeptics on), can both accelerate and stall temperature rises is an excellent one.

The alarmists are now saying "sure temperatures are stable now, but that just means they'll go up in a hurry later on".

That's likely to be correct, but misses the point.

The point is that what we care about is the possibility that warming is being caused by humans AND will be harmful AND that we could do something about it by decreasing our activities. If it turns out that the rapid warming in the 80s and 90s wasn't caused by us then there will be very little that we can do about any future rapid warming anyway, and we'll just have to learn to live with it.

Climate scientists work out all the natural things that they can think of that affect the climate, put them into mathematical models, and then just ASSUME that any temperature rise in excess of that was caused by us, and specifically by our CO2 emissions. This has in the past caused them to think that doubling CO2 from pre-industrial times could cause a temperature increased of 3 degrees or 4 degrees or even in some scary reports 6 degrees.

If you instead assume that there is an approximately 60 year natural cycle that is flattening temperatures now and caused them to rise faster in the 80s and 90s (and decrease in the 50s and 60s), and continue to assume that all the rest of the unaccounted-for change was caused by CO2, what you come up with is that a doubling of CO2 levels from pre-industrial times might cause a 1.5 degree temperature increase.

That's a lot less scary than 4 or 6 degrees. And we've already seen 0.8 C of that.

There is also the possibility that there are more yet longer cycles not yet accounted for in the models. Good temperature records only go back 150 years, but there is considerable anecdotal evidence of an approximately 1000 year cycle that we're in the rising part of.

[John Hughes]

Re: Good news and bad news

"If natural cycles can completely mask the global warming signal for 20 years, is it not likely that they can *enhance* the global warming signal for a similar "

Well, yes. but the problem is that the warming has been going on for rather longer than 20 years.

Remove the cycles and look at the underlying trend.

[Bruce Hoult]

the underlying trend

"Remove the cycles and look at the underlying trend."

The problem is we don't have enough hard data to know whether the underlying trend is accelerating, or just part of a longer cycle.

We do know that there have been some pretty amazingly big temperature extremes in the last 20 or 30 million years. And that the Earth has not raced off to become another Venus or another Mars in the process … it's corrected itself somehow and come back to what we have now.

20 or 30 million years seems like a very long time compared the couple of thousand years of recorded history, until you realize that mammals have been around for 200 million years and great apes (i.e. very like us) for 40 million years. They didn't have our technology to help them adapt to extremes, but they survived them.

[Leslie Graham]

Re: the underlying trend

Actualy we do.

If you remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI the rise in temperatures is almost perfectly linear.

There is no doubt that the underlying trend is warming steadily.

How can it possibly not be? It would mean that everything we understand about the basic laws of physics would have to be wrong.

By the way - can anyone explain how the Arctic Ice Volume has fallen by 70% in the last 25 years if the worled isn't warming?

Whatever the natural forcings and cycles that are masking the underlying trend they work both ways and will eventuraly accelerate the warming - obviously.

And past climate change and the causes are not relevant to todays AGW. And screw 'surviving' - I want to stay rich, fat and comfortable thank you. Climate change is going to wreck the world's economy before anything else.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the underlying trend

@Leslie Graham: you sound very confident of something which only cultists are confident about. You say remove ENSO, volcanoes and TSI but have you? Which planet did you manage this? Or are you assuming that climate scientists know everything about climate (or even enough)? And that is the assumption which trips every cultist up. You like them know nothing.

I am not saying deniers are right, they are just as blind. The only ones who know the truth can certainly say we know little and can predict less. The certainty of any of this climate science is limited and does not produce a working model. This is proven because nobody yet has a working model. Not even close.

Would you believe someone who claims to understand quantum mechanics? Or do you demand proof? So far MMCC scientists have proven that there is a lot going on and a lot of variables. The climate refuses to bend to simple rules which predict we all die from overheating the earth.

You say its either warming or the laws of physics must be wrong. Creationists made an attempt at proving god made man because a step in evolution was missing. Science found the missing link and proved the creationist wrong. Just as you make claims that you are right or physics is wrong (its your lack of knowledge which is wrong), you really need to wait for scientists to do the real work and find the truth.

"Whatever the natural forcings and cycles that are masking the underlying trend they work both ways and will eventuraly accelerate the warming - obviously."

I like this line. It says that whatever (the unknown) forcings and cycles. If you dont know what they are, and based on so many wrong predictions and models you dont know what they do either- how do you know? You say these are masking the trend, but that means you cant find the trend and blame these whatevers you dont understand. You claim it will accelerate the warming - obviously. But you obviously dont know anything about the mechanics nor results so cant predict anything. So how are you certain?

I am sorry to rip your comment apart but the fact is if we know nothing we could do harm by trying to do good. An extreme example is what if global temperatures suddenly change in any direction? We wont know anything to solve the problem because climate science is currently religious cult. The perversion of science and the ruined reputation of the title scientist all because people wanted to make money flogging windfarms can easily cause us harm, not good. Think dark ages

[NomNomNom]

Re: the underlying trend

Graham is right. Not only is ocean heat content rising but so is sea level. Surface temperature is influenced on short timescales by enso and the 11 year solar cycle. Accounting for these factors global warming appears to be continuous since the 70s.

BTW the idea scientists in the 70s were all predicting global cooling is a myth. Most were predicting warming even back then and the consensus has strengthened since.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Nom

Sorry but you believe he is right. Just as you believe that a theory sold on a lie (blatant lies) with no working model and a consistent downward revising to be a fact. The goalposts to prove MMCC wrong move all the time. Anything that happens is claimed as proof but if the few measurable expectations dont happen then the theory is assumed correct but something is masking the results.

Here is a neat trick- find out what is masking (changing) the result then you can start talking in facts. Otherwise we can claim there is an ice age coming because if you remove the sun, which is masking the effects, we will be an ice rock in space.

There are many myths in this debate, from both sides. This is the same problem as disproving god. What happened before the big bang? Science doesnt know. Science disproved a huge amount of 'gods' domain so the goal posts moved again.

Please enter the world of science. Have the theory, make measurable predictions, measure those predictions against the real world. If they fail (as with current MMCC theories so far) then they are wrong. Not masked results, nor in need of data fudging or a PR stunt but wrong. Go away and figure out why your theory is wrong and try again. When you get a working theory it can then be used to find something called truth. Truth is when the model matches the real world and so can be applied.

So far Nom you have belief. But none of the scientific section above. When a consensus is 97% made up of less than 100 of 1000's of respondents from an even larger group it is not a consensus. When the consensus requires bribes it is not a consensus. The redefining of science and consensus should not be necessary if MMCC is a good theory.

There is plenty real polution and waste in this world which needs to be resolved. But instead we throw money at god botherers offering to save us from the impending doom from their limited knowledge and belief. And once the predictions of doom are made the science then works on it. And then we have another disproven 'fact' of MMCC. And then your goal posts move again

[Chet Mannly]

Re: Good news and bad news

"Well, yes. but the problem is that the warming has been going on for rather longer than 20 years."

The global warming hypothesis was based on 17 years of temperature increase. Remember in the 70's climate scientists were screaming "beware the impending ice age".

I love how alarmists make such ridiculous statements then accuse skeptics of ignoring the science!!!

[Pen-y-gors]

Another ignorant MP

>"By putting out the information on Christmas Eve they were just burying bad news – that they have got their climate change forecast wrong," said Stringer.

Wrong. We don't yet know if they got the old forecast wrong or if the new forecast will be right or wrong - and we won't know until the period forecasted for has passed and can be compared with the actual observed values. They have changed their forecast in the light of further research. Seems reasonable.

[John Smith 19]

Re: Another ignorant MP

"We don't yet know if they got the old forecast wrong or if the new forecast will be right or wrong "

It's not the model. It's the way the results were announced.

Press conference to announce "Global temperatures rising. We're doomed" Vs (emailed in) "We're changing the climate models a bit as they may have been a bit high."

[Dodgy Geezer]

Re: Another ignorant MP

...They have changed their forecast in the light of further research. Seems reasonable...

Not exactly.

They have pushed out a new lower forecast BUT STILL KEPT THE OLD ONE.

This way, whatever the temperature does, they can claim to have predicted it. That doesn't sound reasonable - it sounds like heads I win, tails you lose...

[TkH11]

Re: Another ignorant MP

No they haven't.

If you create a forecast for a particular date and time, if you revise that forecast and republish it, then the previous forecast is invalidated, it is superceded ! It has to be, there is no other logical viewpoint.

You can't have two or more different forecasts for a point in time which are 'current'.

The idea they still kept the old one is rubbish.

The Met.Office forecasters understand this, they're very proceduralised (if that is a word) : they have to be, they produce daily forecasts for the aviation business, both civil and military. You can not cause confusion by having multiple current forecasts, there must be NO ambiguity. Airlines, airports, the military have to make decisions based on those forecasts, as time passes to towards a particular prediction point in the future, the Met. Office will issue revised forecasts as they rerun the NWP models several times per day and it's incumbent upon the airlines, the military and other users of the forecasts to use those newer (and hopefully more accurate) forecasts. That's business as usual.

Every forecast that is made by the Met.Office has a TOI : Time of Issue to prevent the sort of confusion you are talking about.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Another ignorant MP

re: "By putting out the information on Christmas Eve they were just burying bad news"

From the Met Office website:

"Since 2007, the Met Office Hadley Centre has prepared a decadal forecast every year, out for the next 5 to 10 years, as part of its deliverables to DECC and Defra. To ensure that the forecast starts from the most recent state of the climate system, it is run during December and posted on the Met Office Research pages by the end of the year. Because this is still at the cutting edge of research, the forecast is not publicized, but in the spirit of openness and transparency, it is available to anyone who wishes to view it. "

[Andrew Moore]

Global warming...

The problem is weather is an exceptionally complex system. Most predictions of globall warming tend to focus only on a few of the million possible variables. Also, it doesn't help that various organisations are pushing their model while denigrating the models of other organisations in what I think can only be because of the grant money being made available.

My fear is that the whole event will turn out to be cyclic but in the meantime a 'solution' will be put in force that will leave us worse off in the long run. I call this the Australian Cane Toad Effect.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Global warming...

Well put, bravo Sir.

[Burb]

Re: Global warming...

You are correct that weather is very difficult to predict but climate is less difficult. This might seem paradoxical but, roughly speaking, there are more opportunities for integration over time and space.

You make some rather vague assertions about 'other models' being denigrated. What are you referring to here?

[Anonymous Coward]

But, but, but...

The Met Office has hit back at claims that it conceded there is no evidence for global warming and that its weather forecasts are inaccurate.

The forecaster has published a blog detailing an alleged "series of factual inaccuracies about the Met Office and its science" made in a Daily Mail article written by James Delingpole.

The blog provides a point by point rebuttal of the Mail story, headlined "The crazy climate change obsession that's made the Met Office a menace".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: But, but, but...

Not THE James Delingpole, the one who studied English Literature at Oxford? The one who makes a living out of trying to convince the gullible that he knows better than just about every climatologist in the world?

Yup, that's him, and in the Daily Mail, too.

Must be true then.

[TkH11]

Re: But, but, but...

I have been known on occasion (I keep it secret) to read Daily Mail online articles, (but I claim not to be purchaser of the newspaper). DM journalists are entirely clueless about anything scientific or technical. It's truly shocking. I think I only found one article that was 100% technically correct out of many, and I'm quite sure the journalist didn't write it, it must have been prepared text that was given to him. The article was so detailed about DNA I am quite sure that many of the DM's readership were left baffled by it.

Anything that can put the DM in their place, and correct their sloppiness is welcome in my opinion,

[Dodgy Geezer]

Re: But, but, but...

...The blog provides a point by point rebuttal of the Mail story, headlined "The crazy climate change obsession that's made the Met Office a menace".,,,

Unfortunately, if you read the rebuttal, you will find that it doesn't rebut anything. The main response the Met Office rebuttal puts out is that: "Our 5-day forecasts are better". Which is, of course, nothing to do with the underlying issue - that the Met Office is predicting LONG-TERM weather changes based on a flawed activist-driven theory, has got them all wrong and is now lying in an attempt to cover this up.

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly I think it's time that they admitted that they really don't have a clue how the climate works and refund our tax money and the overinflated gas and electricity prices we've had to pay and then jail a few people but that's never going to happen:(.

[Anonymous Coward]

talking of don't have a clue

do you really understand science and the very nature of complex models necessary to *predict* such patterns? Evidently you don't, nor do you explain the link you make between a prediction of climate and gas/electric bills. The Met Office don't charge you for your gas/electric, they simply build climate models to attempt to give people a superficial estimation of what will happen in the near future. Over time these predictions get better, and over time these predictions allow longer term forecasting ... to within error bands. What jail has to do with that I dunno

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: talking of don't have a clue

do you really understand science and the very nature of complex models necessary to *predict* such patterns?

Yes. I've programmed some fairly complex models in my time as a software developer. WTF that has to do with my point I don't know.

Evidently you don't, nor do you explain the link you make between a prediction of climate and gas/electric bills.

Erm, well, these bullshit models are being used as evidence that we need to tackle a problem that hasn't been proven to a reasonable standard of evidence to exist and are directly responsible for putting my effing lecky bill up.

The Met Office don't charge you for your gas/electric, they simply build climate models to attempt to give people a superficial estimation of what will happen in the near future.

No, the Met Office are a bunch of charlatans who have helped convince our politicians to waste billions on the off-chance that there is a humanity threatening problem which needs urgent attention. The "evidence" is lamentable and based on their and other "models". Just how much more implicated do they need to be?

Over time these predictions get better, and over time these predictions allow longer term forecasting ... to within error bands.

Not until they understand WTF they are talking about and there doesn't seem to be any danger of them understanding anything so long as they are making feeble excuses for why the climate refuses to act in the way they predicted.

What jail has to do with that I dunno

It's where people who commit fraud belong. AGW is a fraud perpetrated by far left leaning, ecomentalist academics who knew perfectly well that their theory was so left field that it was self-evident garbage. They belong in jail as does any other "scientist" tempted to play such politics.

[TkH11]

Re: talking of don't have a clue

As someone that has had close association to the world of meteorology, AC is right.

The best models the Met.Office have got are the short term forecast models (chemical vapour dispersal model (what used to be called NAME) and hurricane track prediction models), but all of these are easily verifiable, they can run the model, make the prediction and then compare reality to the prediction, so they know how accurate these models are (or not).

The behaviour of these meteorological phenomena last over a time period of days, so by gathering observation data the models can be verified, modified to improve their accuracy.

But climate, over hundreds, thousands of years is an all together very different story.

And the output of these models is being used by government to make long term strategic decisions.

The accuracy of the model is going to decrease over the run time of the model. The short term forecast models out to 3 days, 5 days become significantly inaccurate beyond the 5 days.

The Met. Office know this (and have known it for a long time) but only recently started trying to communicate to the public in the form of 'uncertainty' expressing percentages.

Anything beyond 5 days, take it with a pinch of salt.

So asking, requiring the Met.Office to produce accurate forecasts for years ahead (albeit it is an entirely different model, not just running the short term forecast model for a longer run time) and then basis an entire strategy which affects tens of millions of people is somewhat tenuous and questionable!

[TkH11]

They don't have a clue, but why should they refund the tax money that has been spent?

That tax money has been used to try to improve mankind's understanding.

Are you incurring a financial loss because mankind doesn't understand how our climate works?

[Anonymous Coward]

That tax money has been used to try to improve mankind's understanding.

A small fraction of it is going into pure research, the rest of it is going into tax breaks for green technologies which would never be viable without them and, frankly, never will be viable on a large scale in this century or the next.

Are you incurring a financial loss because mankind doesn't understand how our climate works?

Well, yes, see above. I'm being arse raped for taxes for no good reason and then they want me to pay through the nose for my electricity AND give them a cuddle after.

[TkH11]

You are being arse raped for electricity costs because of the so called free-market economy, the commodities markets! That's the problem, not the cost of running the Met. Office or money being spent by the government in wanting to enourage in green technologies.

[Chet Mannly]

"Are you incurring a financial loss because mankind doesn't understand how our climate works?"

Yes - on what planet could you possibly claim otherwise?

Inflated energy prices alone feed into every good and service provided in the UK, and that's not including the billions (trillions?) in extra taxes/debt that all citizens have to pay/repay.

Seriously, I agree with spending money to expand human understanding, but your ignorance is breathtaking...

[Anonymous Coward]

Renwables and other alternative power sources aren't just being developed because of CO2, there is a limited amount of fossil fuels around y'know. Hence why we get our gas from the Russians now.

[Anonymous Coward]

What a surprise...

Researchers giving their paymasters the results they paid for and hiding the results when it cannot make them meet what's expected.

I'm not a climate change "denyist", any idiot can see that man's activities effect our environment, it's the degree to which it affects our climate I disagree with.

I also remember one piece on the Beeb with an interview with someone from the met office back in november saying heavy rain is normal for the time of year and wasn't an indication of global warming. Hope he didn't get a P45 for going against the party line...

[John Smith 19]

Re: What a surprise...

"Researchers giving their paymasters the results they paid for and hiding the results when it cannot make them meet what's expected."

Then they are not "researchers." They are doing PR for their employers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: What a surprise...

You're probably right. In which case the tax payers should require a refund for the research that hasn't been carried out. And while we're at it, we should demand our money back for their consistent failure to predict the weather. Would be cheaper and just as acqurate to employ Mystic Meg...

[itzman]

Re: What a surprise...

Research to supply confirmation bias is still research....

Its just not balanced neutral and scientific.

But then not much AGW research is..

[Kwac]

Re: What a surprise...

Amazing how the vast majority of climate change professionals have held out againt the temptation to go to an oil/coal company and let the truth out for vast amounts of money, just so they can keep the lie alive and go to work everyday, isn't it?

[Dodgy Geezer]

Re: What a surprise...

Who would give them vast amounts of money for collapsing a multi-billion pound industry?

Honestly, I can't think of anyone who might. They wouldn't get any awards either - all the awards committees have already signed up to AL Gore and the like. All they would get is no grant.

Perhaps that explains why there is a shortage of such people...

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it ever end?

I think it's time they admitted that they really don't have a clue how the climate works and throw out all the anti co2 rubbish until such times as they do have proof or otherwise. Then it'd be nice for the tax payer to have refunds for the rip off petrol, gas and electricity prices we've been forced to pay not to mention the subsidies to rich folk for bloody windmills. Then it might be nice to see a few so-called scientists do time for fraud.

Unfortunately I'm dreaming though:(.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will it ever end?

What have windmills got to do with it?

Just because businessmen managed to find a way to make money out of the scientific consensus, and politicians managed to jump on (and then off) the bandwaggon why do you assume that the totally unconnected scientific evidence is faulty?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will it ever end?

Just because businessmen managed to find a way to make money out of the scientific consensus, and politicians managed to jump on (and then off) the bandwaggon why do you assume that the totally unconnected scientific evidence is faulty?

It's quite simple: the "businessmen" wouldn't be doing it if the government weren't subsidising them. Businessmen, even these "businessmen", don't invest money they're going to lose and these "businessmen" knew they were on to a sure thing because their mates in the last government told them that they could rely on the subsidies - well, until they reneged on the feed-in tariffs for solar. Shame! LOL.

The economic case for windmills is based on the science and both are bullshit. Simples.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will it ever end?

"until such times as they do have proof or otherwise"

Demonstrates that you have no idea of the methodology of the scientific fraternity; but for some strange reason you decide you know better than them.

Why's that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will it ever end?

Demonstrates that you have no idea of the methodology of the scientific fraternity; but for some strange reason you decide you know better than them.

It does, does it? It's relatively straightforward for them to prove their case: produce a climate model that can predict the global temperature to within reasonable error margins over a period of, say 15 years.

You seem to be happy with having our economy and personal finances thrown into chaos on the basis of models which don't work. Why is that? Is it cos you is a moron?

[Burb]

Re: Will it ever end?

"It's relatively straightforward for them to prove their case: produce a climate model that can predict the global temperature to within reasonable error margins over a period of, say 15 years."

So how does one go about predicting such factors such as volcanoes, short term variations due to ENSO, changes in solar output, changes in aerosol concentration over the next 15 years?

Predictions of ENSO activity can't be made more than about a year in advance - if that - and yet it can dominate temperature variation in the short term (witness 1998 and recent La Nina years). However, because it is essentially energy sloshing back and forth between the sea and atmosphere, over the longer term it averages out.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Will it ever end?

Are you saying it cant be proved then? Because so much happens which causes changes. If you cant account for other variables then you cant analyse the one you want. We have limited data to prove change which means you have disqualified it because what is long enough?

[Burb]

Re: Will it ever end?

Strictly speaking, nothing in science can be proved. But leaving that aside, the matter of accounting for variability and extracting a trend from a noisy signal is not exactly uncharted territory. Standard statistical techniques can be used, just as they are used in many branches of science that you presumably don't complain about. What you can't expect to do is to perform a single run, or a few runs, of a *physical* model and expect to get an exact prediction from it. You can get rough trends which are subject to assumptions made about conditions that will apply in the future (such as volcanoes, solar output, ENSO activity etc.).

There are different approaches to statistical analysis. If you want to analyse the data as pure data without trying to understand the variations, you are going to need a longer time interval. On the other hand, if you look at the work that Forster and Rahmstorf have done, they use multiple regression to remove the known factors and are able to demonstrate an underlying trend now that is unchanged from before this supposed period of stalled temperatures.

Another fairly straightforward way to look at this is given by http://blog.chron.com/climateabyss/2012/04/about-the-lack-of-warming I would strongly recommend that you read this if you are genuinely interested in the questions you are asking. This is mainly considering the El Nino/La Nina effects, but the basic thing it shows is that the La Nina troughs are on an upward trend which is the same as the upward trend of El Nino peaks, which is the same as the upward trend of average temperatures. The reason things look like they have stalled in recent years is that La Ninas have dominated and there was a massive El Nino in 1998. You ask how long is long enough? Well, assuming these trends continue, at some point we are going to see El Nino years and those are going to be well above the 1998 peak and the troughs of future La Ninas are also generally going to be above that 1998 peak and still rising.

Final point related to this: the effects of La Nina, declining solar output, higher than expected aerosols all should be pointing towards *declining* energy input. I'm still waiting for an explanation as to why we aren't seeing that rather than seeing surface temperatures remaining at high levels, increasing ocean heat content, melting ice caps, etc.

[Anonymous Coward]

@Burb

Thank you for your reply. I dislike the statement that nothing in science can be proved because they dont assume the existence of a god because they cant figure out what is actually happening. That is left to religion.

I appreciate the information you posted but I want to know what facts can be relied on. We are told that MMCC is real but we are regularly told that the expectation didnt happen. Often strongly didnt happen. I also agree that the ice caps seem to suggest there is a shift, but we dont understand why. I like that as an answer and I like the effort applied to figure it out. But when someone cops out saying its co2 and we have graphs to prove it, even after this has been done multiple times and shown to be fraud I lose interest.

I would hold vastly more respect for the climate science if the produced a theory, tested it, then either accept it is wrong (which is the case so far) or that it seems to apply currently so work on its application. Yet so far the only fact we have is that all the theories are so far wrong. We have what looks like an important climate shift, this could be very important to understand. But massaged results and blatant lies do not tell us anything.

I also get irritated when multiple sources of data say totally different things. I blame both the cult of the MMCC and the cult of the nothing happening. I hear lies on both sides and yet the truth seems lost in the noise.

I am very unhappy with climate science because it has become politics. The term scientist is tarnished and harmed by this climate politics. And I would prefer money was not wasted on wrong theories when the right one may require the money for an actual solution.

Your statements on needing a long enough interval make sense, but that is not the line toed by the climate politics. We have x days to save the earth is a regular feature. Or some irreversible tipping point will be hit in x amount of time. But we also have the actual temperatures and observations doing less than the predictions. The harm isnt arriving. We keep being told to go to france and stand on a hill to be saved from the doom by a UFO that never happens.

Seen in context I dont think anyone could reasonably understand what is going on until the politics is destroyed and the science is all that is left.

[Burb]

Re: @Burb

@AC "Your statements on needing a long enough interval make sense, but that is not the line toed by the climate politics. We have x days to save the earth is a regular feature."

You need a long enough interval if you want to see an unequivocal trend in temperatures that is obvious to the man in the street. There is plenty of other scientific evidence to indicate that something is happening now but the problem is that it is less accessible to most people. The reason for the 'x days' sort of thing is that the longer that action is delayed, the harder it is going to be to do something if and when the problem is finally accepted. Maybe you are right and it's all a giant scientific conspiracy - I'd be happy if it were! But my sceptical nature suggests to me that enough scientists know what they are talking about and are not making things up. I guess all we can do is wait and see.

BTW as far as politics is concerned, there is plenty of evidence of political funding of the 'sceptic' viewpoints and in general there is a history of interference by political think tanks in areas of scientific research that have a potential for giving rise to regulations on business activities.

[Turtle]

Re: Will it ever end?

"Demonstrates that you have no idea of the methodology of the scientific fraternity; but for some strange reason you decide you know better than them."

You do realize, I hope, that "science" is one thing, and "scientists" are a different thing entirely.

[g e]

Forecasting is notoriously difficult

What? The IPCC's crystal ball of doom might actually not be right?

Golly. Yet they tout themselves as the ultimate gospel of apocalypse (unless you give generously, dear lobbing targets)

[loopy lou]

Completely lost

I can't make sense of this argument. In para 8: the met said "days of heavy rainfall had become more common" and the rest of the article is about annual or monthly averages. As far as I can see, the met said in effect that the variance of the daily rainfall figure had increased, or at least that there were more days above a particular threshold. As long as there are also more dry days, then this doesn't have any bearing on the total rainfall. So how does looking at the monthly or annual totals help confirm or refute this?

[MNB]

Re: Completely lost

Me too... it's perfectly feasible for heavy rain to be more common and leave the annual total unchanged. That is if you get your annual rainfall in half a dozen deluges rather than 200 instances of drizzle, heavy rainfall has become more common. If you are going to attack the Met Office for "getting it wrong" please use a better argument than that.

Frankly I think the money spent on the Met Office is well spent. Remember climate science is not all they do. Their short range forecasts are very good and allow me to cycle to work most days in confidence that I won't get rained on the way home nine or ten hours later.

I expect most of the commenters here would have the Met Office burned as witches if they were spot on anyway.

[G Murphy]

Re: Completely lost

Hooray

I thought I was the only one thinking this. The tinfoil hat brigade seem to be out above though, 'it's all the corporate paymasters fault', 'it's just a political front' etc etc etc.

If you can't tell the difference between an article that's comparing annual amounts to daily variations then I would doubt you have the statistical ability to analyse this data in any way worthwhile.

The data still shows warming over the last 30 years, regardless of cause, and it's only the forecast which has moved. Why do people assume that if global warming is occurring (i.e. man made global warming) it means that the temperature should go up each and every year anyway?

[TkH11]

Re: Completely lost

Let me tell you something about Met. Office staff; I've met some.

They are decent honest people. I've worked in many different sectors, meteorology being one, defence being another, telecommunications, investment banking being others.

Met Office scientists are very humble, very decent honest people, very trustworthy with far higher integrity than many other people I've have the pleasure of meeting over my career.

The idea Met.. Office staff are manipulating data, pursuing personal agenda's, creating conspiracies is complete nonsense. For their level of intelligence, for the sheer hard work, the skill involved, for their academic qualifications, most are paid peanuts, they're not in it for the money, they're in meteorology because they find it interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Completely lost

I don't doubt that the majority are very clever, decent, hard working, etc., etc. Their bosses, however, are slime balls who're prepared to defend the indefensible despite clearly having the knowledge and intellect to know better. Frankly, if they don't have the intellectual honesty to admit that their models are wrong then the calibre of the rest of their staff is irrelevant. Personally, I couldn't do a job where my work is misrepresented to the degree climate science is and anyone who is is automatically suspect.

[RICHTO]

Re: Completely lost

Basically it just says the future rate of temperature rise might be slightly slower than the last prediction. The new rise predicted is still potentially catastrophic over the long term - it is not in anyway saying global warming isnt happening. Rainfall would be expected to rise in some areas as a warmer atmosphere can hold more water.

It is not saying that global warming stopped over ther last 20 years - only that the rate of increase has slowed - which is not exceptional for such a short period. The long term graph still clearly shows tha the trend is steadily upwards....

[NomNomNom]

Re: Completely lost

Also notice that the Met Office claim of more rainfall in recent decades was about the UK.

But the scatter graph given above (inexplicably without any attempt to put some kind of running mean through it) is England and Wales only.

For why this matters you can plot the two options here:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climate/uk/actualmonthly/

(basically the bulk of the rainfall increase in recent decades has been in Scotland)

There are some people VERY desperate to bash the Met Office out there.

[TkH11]

Re: Completely lost

Two points: 1) You're making an assumption (which I can't even say if it is true or not), that the increase in rainfall is equally offset by longer dry periods so that the yearly rainfall amount remains the same.

Only the passage of time will show if that assumption is true or not.

2) What the Met.Office person said is quite valid, the variance is increasing. We are experiencing rainfall rates which are higher (expressed in millimetres per hour) then we typically experience, and for longer periods of time, which results in a higher rainfall accumulation figure (in millimetres).

It is appropriate to examine the monthly rainfall figures and the greater rainfall will seen from those figures. However, it is possible that the yearly average remains the same, but see point 1 above.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Re: Completely lost

...So how does looking at the monthly or annual totals help confirm or refute this?...

You are not meant to question this, you're meant to BELIEVE it.

If you don't, you are a heretic, a denier. So we don't have to listen to you...

[/sarc]

[s. pam]

Get over the Met Dear

The Met is no different that the Bullshit Blasting Corp and their so-called forecasts can be replaced in seconds and save us gazillions:

1) Rock on string dry, it's dry outside

2) Rock on string wet, it's raining outside

3) Rock on string white, it's snowing outside

4) Rock on string @ 90 degrees, it's breezy outside

Frankly, it's time to sack the lot and pass the savings back to more worthy causes, like feeding OAP's, heating OAP's homes, or buying crack -n- hookers for our MP's and their second homes!

[K]

Its nothing personal, I know that forecasting is an art and very difficult. but it just seems they can't get much right. Yet we've got a lot of tax money being ploughed into this research and a lot of political and economical decisions being made off the back of it. But they can't seem to get it right.

I can't help but feel, we should continue to pay these scientists, but rather than giving them super-computers they get a choice of an abacus or a walking billboard to wear (with the "End is nigh" written on it!). The money saved from non having to fund the super-computers etc can then be used on Flood defences.

[TkH11]

You obviously don't understand the full scope of what the Met. Office does.

Forecasts aren't primarily for the benefit of the public, the Met.office's primary customer is the military.

They're owned by the Ministry of Defence. They have a number of primary customers including air traffic control organisations, airlines, Army, Royal Air Force, environment agency, water companies, local councils, even supermarkets.

The idea that you could simply give them abacuses is naive to say the least - and by implication cease the provision of forecasting services.

The Met.Office's mathematical numerical weather prediction models are some of the best in the world, you are right, often they do get it wrong, that can be down to many factors, but you fail to understand the impact of chaos theory, in that the weather can fall into a chaotic state and not be predictable.

[SkippyBing]

'often they do get it wrong,'

It's worse than that, statistically you have an 80% chance of being right if you say the weather tomorrow will be the same as today, the Met Office aren't that accurate.

[TkH11]

I am aware of that argument, but I actually thought the figure was a fair bit lower. But, may being of a certain age, the recollection is failing.

In fact I once saw the prediction accuracy figures for the Met. Office NWP models and it was up in the 90's percent, so you sir, are talking BS.

[Anonymous Coward]

@TkH11 Ministry of defence no longer

I agree with most of the things you are saying, but...

The Met office is no longer a part of the MoD. I can't remember how long ago it was (in the order of a year) but they are now part of the department of Business, Information and Skills (BIS).

The MoD is still a very important 'customer', but for some time now, the Met Office has been attracting funding by selling forecasts and their models through commercial contracts with people like other weather organisations, the aviation industry, media companies, councils, retail companies, and any number of organisations where advanced weather indications can be useful.

I find the negative attitude towards the Met Office baffling on this forum. You cannot find out how well you can produce models for both weather and climate prediction without actually creating them. For any complex system with a myriad of controlling inputs, you will never get a completely accurate model. What you will find is that the more effort you put in, the better the model will become. You can argue against the politics, but not the research itself.

Even if it were to be decided that it is not possible to produce a model that is more accurate than the one we currently have, the resources spent so far can in no way be described as wasted. We have a knowledge based society, and research that generates knowledge can never be describes as wasted. The new understanding on air movement, boundary conditions, ice formation and many other factors that I do not understand must be worth some of the resources.

And another thing the Met Office do that is tangible is to gather and correlate weather observations from around the world. This is nothing to do with the writing of either the weather or climate forecasts, but still must be funded.

But one thing that the critics ignore is that a significant amount of the money that is used to produce the Unified Model is paid by real customers of the Met Office who value the model so much that they are prepared to pay for it's maintenance and development and the data that is collected. It is possibly the best model that there is anywhere in the world at the current time, and it's not all government funded.

When you consider the climate model, things are a little different. Without a good weather model, the climate model would not be possible at all. But the complexities of a climate model make the problems of the weather model pale into insignificance. What will come out will only be an informed guess at best, and everyone who has a clue knows this already.

When I look at the MO press release, it is quite clear that what they are saying is that they were refining the model. Whenever you are working on a computer model, you run it, then compare the output with reality. For things that occur quickly, this is not a problem, and you can rinse, wash and repeat, and get a good model quite quickly. For things that are slower....

With climate forecasting, this means that the number of iterations that can be run is small. What they do to compensate is to take the model, load it with the input from a number years ago, run it, and then compare the results with more recent observations of what really happened. The closer it agrees with observed data, the more accurate the model, at least in theory.

What I understand from what has been said is that the model was altered to take into account a number of new (for the model) input data types with changes to make the results better match the observed period. This is normal when developing a numerical model.

Having decide that the changed model was a better match to what had already been observed, they then ran the model forward with current data, and generated a new, hopefully more accurate prediction. They then announced the new results in a regular report.

Just what did they do that was wrong? It sounds to me like they were just doing what you would expect them to do to get as accurate a model as possible.

[John Smith 19]

Improving the models Good. Announcing the results Good. Way they were given. Bad.

So perhaps they might be recovering a bit more IDK "objectivity."

Just a thought.

[Anonymous Coward]

I am not a scientist, so here's my summary, based on my observations

Climate

- The climate is a very complex thing indeed and rarely behaves in the way we model it.

- Climate models are simpler than the climate. We don't know how much simpler.

- We're on a small island, surrounded by a lot of other stuff. This makes the weather variable.

- Bits of this winter have been warmer and rainier than usual; bits of the last three winters have been colder than usual.

- We may or may not get snow in the next two weeks. This proves nothing.

- Some people say polar ice is melting, some say it isn't. I've never been, so all I can say that on two arbitrary points in time, the amount of ice present is likely to be different.

People

- A lot of people believe and regurgitate everything negative they read or hear from others with wildly differing levels of accuracy, without pausing to think or add any intelligence at all. The general assumption is the more often something is repeated, the more worthwhile and solid it becomes. Memes suffer from entropy too.

- Most reporters have no understanding of what they write about, yet are still given credence.

- A lot of people aren't very clever, and this includes reporters, opinion formers and other self-certified experts. Fewer people are very clever, and a tiny handful are both very clever and balanced. I know which band I reside in, and make allowances for it.

- When two people disagree, they can both be wrong, and usually are.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I am not a scientist, so here's my summary, based on my observations

Sensible comments, I'll comment on one of your statements "Some people say polar ice is melting, some say it isn't."

Some people indeed say polar ice isn't melting, but the people that DO say polar ice IS melting are the people who are studying it.

The area of Antarctic ice is increasing but the thickness of ice is decreasing. Meanwhile the area of Arctic ice is increasing at 3 times the rate that Antarctic ice is decreasing.

[TkH11]

Right to down play

The Met.Office doesn't fully understand our weather or our climate. It can't do, and it probably never will.

We can only to a reasonable degree of reliability predict the weather in the UK out to 5 days in to the future, a number of years ago, around year 2002, that was only 3 days. We haven't made that much improvement in gathering the data, in understanding the subject enough to create accurate forecast models.

So they get it wrong, big deal. It happens. It's time to accept that the Met.Office doesn't fully understand it. It's work-in-progress. In my opinion, the Met.Office is right to down play their predictions, they know there is a significant amount of inaccuracy, unreliability and that is not the Met.Office's fault: it represents where science, the subject of meteorology is today. We evolve, we learn, we develop. That's life.

[Turtle]

@TkH11: Re: Right to down play

"So they get it wrong, big deal. It happens. It's time to accept that the Met.Office doesn't fully understand it. It's work-in-progress. In my opinion, the Met.Office is right to down play their predictions, they know there is a significant amount of inaccuracy, unreliability and that is not the Met.Office's fault: it represents where science, the subject of meteorology is today. We evolve, we learn, we develop. That's life."

And that's how you're going to excuse for them for manufacturing "research" used to support the crippling of the world's economy to the tune of trillions of dollars, and condemning vast swathes of the world's population to perpetual poverty? That's it? That's an acceptable rationale?

Maybe it's time FOR THE MET OFFICE ITSELF to accept that it "doesn't fully understand it" and they need to "play down their predictions" whenever they hear their own, or anyone else's similar predictions, being used to choke the life out of the economy in a way that disproportionately harms the poor both at home and abroad. And in fact maybe they should have realized this a long, long time ago.

[NomNomNom]

Re: @TkH11: Right to down play

The Met Office have been reporting the science all along. The science said, and still says that human activity is likely the main driver of global warming and to expect more warming. The Met Office prediction for example is predicting warming. There's a reason for that. And it isn't the Sun.

[TkH11]

Re: @TkH11: Right to down play

The MetOffice does not provide false figures. How people use the information provided by the Met.Office is down to the users of that information. If the users don't understand that predictions (and more so longer term predictions) carry uncertainty, then that's down to the users, you can't blame the Met.Office for that.

You can't blame the Met.Office for actions users take, users have to be responsible for their own actions.

The climate models that were in existence around the year of 2000 or so, their output only gave close agreement to reality (observational data was then showing an increase in global temperature) is if a manmade element of CO2 was added. This was a clear sign that manmade CO2 was a key factor in the global climate change. That's what the meteorological community knew at that point in time.

You make decisions based on the available knowledge you have at the time. What you can't do is 10 years later go back and say "They messed up, it's their fault, they got it wrong", which is what you are trying to do.

[John Savard]

Re: @TkH11: Right to down play

Who needs to cripple the economy? They've invented nuclear power, after all, so abandoning fossil fuels doesn't have to mean going begging for energy.

[Dodgy Geezer]

..A twenty year period without statistically significant warming doesn't falsify the theory that manmade industrial emissions are the key driver in climate change...

Odd that it doesn't. I believe it was Keith Trenberth who originally said that 10 years without a rise would raise serious questions, back in 2002?

By 2008, when we had about 10 years, I think the Met Office announced that 10 years was possible, but 15 years would be outside the statistical range of possibilities.

Now we have around 15 years. I wonder who is saying that even 20 years won't necessarily disprove it? And, if there is no way that it can be disproved, is it really science any more?

[itzman]

It never was very good science in the first place.

And that's about all you can say about it.

Unless you area liberal

http://www.battlefield315.com/2011/02/global-warming-panic-explained.html

[Anonymous Coward]

@Dodgy Geezer

Its because the science gets better and it shows that 20yrs means nothing. Just as they would increase it again if that limit is passed. Social manipulation is still science. And when you can play on the god gonna end the world trick (like the recent laugh we had) it is amazing to see how many will go up a hill and wait for the end.

The limited understanding and desire for an end of the world is what drives people. How many fear death? And how many rituals (not actual medicine) exist to keep people alive for longer?

Bow to the new religion in charge of the country. I wonder how long until this country changes from church of england to church of MMCC.

[Primus Secundus Tertius]

Scattered showers

Thank you, Reg, for that wonderful graph showing the variability of British rainfall.

[Anonymous Coward]

yawn

[Philipsz]

So far I have survived global cooling, Y2K, global warming, the LHC and the Mayan apocalypse. I am not scared by "climate change" or the next hysteria that will inevitably follow if people can't be scared/taxed by/for that anymore. I wonder what it will be, tho.

[FrankAlphaXII]

Genetic Engineering, especially in regard to food.

[itzman]

Next scare? FUD that for a game of marketing men..

Peak oil

Population explosion

Global pandemic

Dartmoor more radioactive than Chernobyl

GM foods.

Internet Trolls

Cyberwarfare

Deep Pizza inspection.

Obesity

Bulimia

Hell there's plenty more waiting in the wings, to help change the climate to a Climate of Fear.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Next scare? FUD that for a game of marketing men..

"Dartmoor more radioactive than Chernobyl"

Actually, that should read "Chernobyl less radioactive than Dartmoor".

FTFY.

[Destroy All Monsters]

Re: Next scare? FUD that for a game of marketing men..

Currently we are at "rich people not being taxed enough"

[PhilBuk]

You forgot the Nuclear Winter - around the same time as Global Cooling.

Phil.

[NomNomNom]

What about the scare that existed in the 90s (and today) of the possibility of a large scale terrorist attack? I notice that isn't on the list.

I am guessing it's not on the list because 9/11 happened and that the method of compiling this list is to exclude the threats that actually happened and therefore give the illusion that all scares never materialize in reality.

So Global Pandemic on the list simply because it hasn't happened yet. It's a credible threat, or scare, if you will. Same with climate change. Yet you belittle it. If bird flu jumps next year and kills 10 million worldwide will that falsify the list? or will Global Pandemic be quietly removed?

You can keep all the ones that were time limited and didn't happen (eg Y2K), but it seems pretty foolish to me to argue that because a lot of scares didn't happen, therefore scares in general don't happen.

[Anonymous Coward]

@NomNomNom

As a result I hope you never go outside because some of the scary things are real and may even happen. But dont stay in just a house because scary things can happen (like a plane landing on it) so you want to be underground. Dont eat or drink either because you could get a life threatening bug. And stay away from the computer! It may kill you in the rise of the machines!

Did you stand on a hill in france recently in case a UFO arrived to save you?

I guess the answer is no because realistic risk assessment is important. We know that climate science = unknown and it cant be predicted very well. So dont hide in the bunker yet or sit on the hill in the cold, how about waiting for fact.

Not the facts the priests tell you because the next priest will tell you something different. Wait for real facts. The ones that are fact. You will see the difference when they come out. Because they will be right.

[Anonymous Coward]

Met Office predicts volcanic eruption

That graph suggests the Met Office were able to predict the fall in temperatures after the Mt Pinatubo eruption, and that fall could only have come from the eruption it therefore follows that the Met Office can predict volcanic eruptions.

[TkH11]

attitude

I'm surprised at the attitude on here of supposedly intelligent people: so we don't fully understand the weather and our climate and we can't construct 100% models, so let's not even try? Let's not spend the money doing it?

Fortunately, mankind has never adopted that attitude,

[SkippyBing]

Re: attitude

'we can't construct 100% models, so let's not even try? Let's not spend the money doing it?'

Feel free to spend your money doing it, I'd rather my taxes were spent on colonising Mars or something else less akin to astrology.

[Dreams]

Tabloid BBC

"Met didn't predict, as the BBC erroneously (purposely) reported, a 0.43C increase in global temperature over the next five years."

[nsld]

A common theme is emerging

And its not a pretty one.

It started with the abhorrent behaviour of the "scientists" at UEA (and I use the word scientist in the loosest sense given what they did) and continues with the Met Office trying to hide information which is not in the government interest.

The same thing happened with the government funded research into DNA retention by the "Jill Dando Institute of made up rubbish" trying to justify something the science simply did not support.

It basically boils down to a simple case of not rocking the taxation boat.

At the moment, most of the recent 9 to 10% increase in gas and electricity bills is down to the governments climate levy on suppliers to pay for unaffordable, innefficient and unworkable alternative energy sources, each year this has increased and you are paying for it.

Anything, however minor which could provide ammunition to work against the taxation policies will always be swept away, covered up or released at a time when few will notice, the agenda is pretty obvious and that is to protect the central government taxation policies at all costs, if you don't then your funding is down the toilet.

Whilst we should not ignore the perils of pollution or a reliance on fossil fuels we should not be hanging our hat on some wind turbines and a bit of carbon credit trading, unfortunately, if you want to maintain the current energy hungry lifestyle the only way to do that with current technology will be by going nuclear.

[NomNomNom]

Re: A common theme is emerging

Your conspriacy theory is a bit UK-centric. Man-made global warming is accepted by climate researchers around the world not just in the UK. I highly doubt the UK government has sufficient influence to maintain such a conspiracy as you propose. For example how do they ensure japanese climate scientists working on japanese climate models do not produce results that conflict with the taxation policies of the UK government?

Isn't it just a lot more simpler that the reason climate scientists around the world accept man-made global warming is because...that's what the evidence points too. Crazy idea I know!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A common theme is emerging

No they agree because there is a developing multi million dollar industry, paid for by the taxes of the working. These politicians and brokers want to develop an industry that has no output or input and simply cycles money out of taxes into businesses ran by themselves, or by their lobbying friends (for whom they will work for as consultants).

Imagine an industry purely based on exchanging things that do not actually exist in anyway whatsoever, that you actually have the ability to manipulate with government based research. An industry where there is literally an unlimited amount of money available (you just keep adding new taxes). It makes things like the stock markets look simply backwards in money generation terms.

So I buy some "carbon credits" now from Indonesia, and sell them to you the UK for x + some charges for administration. I then buy some carbon credits at a current price of Y dollars, for the next ten years. However today I get some research produced that shows that in ten years time the amount of CO2 being produced in Indonesia is going to go up, therefore the value of those carbon credits has suddenly increased! I sell them onto you for Z dollars making a tidy profit. I have never bought anything, sold anything, made anything.

However the only people who will get my research money are people who show the figures I want. The science community then begins to produce data, that whilst it may be true, might be less representative. So for example they put out a report that says that the evidence shows over the next three years, for a particular region, or specific set of data it matches the "required output". They get a big grant, even though they know the data set is not complete..

Its the way it is going

[nsld]

Re: A common theme is emerging

Who mentioned a conspiracy? Much of the research coming out is showing that temperatures are not rising as dramatically as had been suggested and that we have seen little to no change in the last twenty years, the current plat du jour is that the sea's are a massive heatsink to explain it all.

The reality is the home office under Wacky Jacky Smith commissioned a study and manipulated the end result, fortunately the scientific community quickly saw through it and the researchers themselves had to admit the whole thing was a sham, well documented on this site and others, but then when your institute is funded by the home office to the tune of several million a year when they say "jump"....... Our government has a great track record of making stuff up to justify its positions (DNA retention, WMD, etc etc)

As for the whole issue of climate change, AGW and the whole alternative energy industry you are confusing several things. Firstly climate change is not neccessarily warming, it can equally go the other way and has done for many years and many cycles, we are after all nowhere near the peak temperatures seen after the last ice age when there was no man made CO2 emmissions being pumped out.

The grim reality is that policies are driven by vested interests as they always have been, hence why we have lobbyists working on our democratically elected representatives to help them make the "right" decision.

In the UK the green lobby has gone from strength to strength, fuelled primarily by middle class consumers with a guilty conscience and as a key voting group if they want windmills then the current government will give them windmills to secure votes. But they can only give them windmills and justify taxing the majority if they can keep everyone fearful of the human created doom around the corner, its no different to the "think of the children" mentality we see in the Daily Mail every day.

Its actually good news that the rate of any warming is less, and that the models used are more stringent and more accurate, this should be trumpeted as a good thing showing that our countries investment in the Met Office work is helping the government make the "right" decision, except, to make the right decision they need us to be hanging over the fiery precipice of doom waiting to be immolated as the current "right" decision revolves around bonkers strategies on carbon credit trading and windmills that are next to useless.

The irony is that the modern day green evangelists are the root cause of this problem, if we as a society lived simpler, less consumer orientated lives our energy needs would decrease, our emmissions would also decrease and we would deliver the goals on "climate change", but this will never happen as those same green evangelists want cars, nice flat screen tv's. the latest igadget etc etc etc. Its all very well blathering on about how terrible the pollution is whilst at the same time demanding the lifestyle that can only be sustained by the consumption that fuels the pollution.

[Anonymous Coward]

Green Leotards? Evolution or manipulation of reporting of the facts?

Is there anyone out there remember the "extreme floods and storms of 1951/2/3"? The harsh winters of 1942 and 1947?

Ask any environmentalist or climate change "expert"(?) about the effect of the Sun's activity. They'll tell you it has no effect. Too small. Funny, life wouldn't exist without it. No - its all man, co2, cars, pooh etc.

Even NASA have finally woken up to some of the crap that's being disseminated by "climate lobbyists". See http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2013/08jan_sunclimate/

Just how much has this perpetual BBC whingeing on and on about climate change, driven both through the Met Office data being manipulated and by people who see fluffy creatures populations rise and fall over the years (oh it must be climate change - it's raining - must be climate change ad nauseum), COST BRITAIN - in jobs, business, energy prices, taxpayer funds haemorrhaging via solar panel subsidies?

Look how many businesses have gone bust due to skyrocketing energy costs, cos "oil and coal is bad for the planet" - did nobody realise if we have a clean atmosphere, more sunlight means more vegetation growth, higher ocean temperatures (and concrete in the cities) and burnt bums on the Costas?

Clean clear skies means colder nights, clean atmosphere often means supersaturated with water vapour - torrential rainfall when skies do break.

One can't help but wonder if Mr Harrabin and his endless reports for the BBC, which generally tend to lean towards the extreme end of the doomsday scenario's for Climate change, have cost us all dearly and for the elderly, some their lives - those vulnerable who perished in the cold cos they couldn't afford the green subsidies so beloved of "climate change" cult members.

Because Mr Harrabin works for the BBC as a Climate Change Analyst (does he have a valid scientific research background anyone?), his reports carry immense 'clout' when introduced as FACT, when in fact they are but PREDICTIONS, often based on COMPUTER MODELLING (manipulation of data by software) and RARELY on statistical analysis of the "complete data set" - rather in this case "the most extreme since 1960"

Perhaps now the met office have started to "cough" to better facts of the matter, those who were wrongly slated by messrs G Monbiot (zoologist degree) as being as bad as "holocaust deniers" for being sceptical about climate change AND its causes, could now have an apology from the woolly sock brigade en masse?

Finally by whose authority, did Mr Harrabin impose his will on the BBC climate change reporting, by choosing to suppress information or views that run against the 'views of the climate lobby' and in doing so, manipulating the global dissemination of environmental news and FACTS - in an organisation that is paid for by the UK license fee payer ?

Does he think he is a "green god/goddess"?

The thought of green leotards just creases me, as does the climate change reporting that at times lack scientific, let alone FACTUAL credibility.

We need people to speak up, speak the truth and question those who forget life existed on Earth before the advent of the computer and the internet in the late 1980's early 1990's!

yes the climate is changing, the planet is, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe - it always will - its called EVOLUTION (and no, its not driven by petrol)

[NomNomNom]

Re: Green Leotards? Evolution or manipulation of reporting of the facts?

The NASA link you post says the recent global warming hasn't been caused by the Sun

[Leslie Graham]

It's just a breathing space

At the end of the day (or century) it doesn't make a whit of difference if the warming slows down for a few years due to natural forcings all being currently in the negative or not.

Sooner or later the warming will obviously return to trend or above trend. That much is the inevitable result of the laws of physics and the passage of time.

Whether this happens in 2017 or 2027 or even 2037 is irrelevant to all except perhaps people in their 70's and 80's.

Climate change is still going to trash the economy and probably set our civilisation back centuries. And that's if we're lucky.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Met office responds ..

"Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit". metofficenews.wordpress.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: The Met office responds ..

Oh dear

University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit

So have they hidden some more emails then ?

[WatAWorld]

Climate change gurus are part of a religion, not a science

To win their case they use repetition, faith and unquestioning trust in authority, rather than the scientific principles of sharing raw data and critical peer review.

[Jason Buckley]

The difference between being true and being truthful

Let me draw an analogy to show how statistics are being used deceitfully in this debate.

"It's an unlucky 13 for anyone who has been investing in the stock market. 13 years into the 21st century, anyone who held shares in the FTSE 100 in January 2000 would have seen a 3% FALL in their present value."

"Despite the perception that shares are a risky investment, over the long term their returns usually exceed other investments. Over 10 years from January 2003 to the present day, despite the recession, the FTSE 100 has risen 70%. That's without allowing for the reinvestment of dividends."

Both those are true, but neither is truthful. That is because, of all the comparisons that could be made, each selects and extreme starting point that is favourable to the argument it wishes to make. Stock markets fluctuate rather more extremely than global temperatures, but the same abuse of the facts is possible.

Current headlines that global warming has stopped use the same statistical sleight of hand. They take 1998, an expectional "El Nino" year when there was a specific, explicable, spike in mean surface temperatures, as a start. True, but not truthful.

I do wonder sometimes whether there is any evidence that would led people who don't think climate change is happening at an unnatural rate, and that it is overwhelming probable that this is the result of human activity, to change their minds. Lots of things that were predicted have already happened. Consequences are being felt in the lives of lots of people and species. The US govt's own report says this is a present problem, not a future one. Is there any sequence of events that could lead you to change your minds, or is it an item of quasi-religious belief that is immune to the facts?

For my part, if sea ice made a comeback, species stopped being forced away from their historic ranges by climate change, extreme weather events returned to their long term average, mean temperatures fell back to their long term average, and this continued to happen despite rising levels of CO2, I'd be in the market to change my mind (unless Yellowstone had erupted, for example). Any sets of data that would make you change yours - say, Australia frying, flooding increasing... or will you just put it down to an unlucky coincidence that those changes just happen to match up with a blink in geological time during which the world has industrialised and started burning millions of years worth of accumulated fossil fuels in a matter of decades.

[Kevin Johnston]

Re: The difference between being true and being truthful

Colour me a Pedant, but surely the new Century started on 1st Jan 2001.

Try as I might I can find no record of a Year 0AD suggesting that as with most people you are confusing the change in major digit(s) with a number of years passed since a marker.

And yes, I am ignoring the Gregorian/Julian calendar changeover which caused no end of confusion with the populace.

[RonWheeler]

OK, so

Why did it snow HEAVILY every single year up till the late 80s. Now it is barely a couple of days of fluff. Year after year.

Now i get the blah blah blah statistical variance. Blah blah blah no data pre 1950s. BUT Year after year of 'random' low snow years over a 20 year stretch. Anything like that in the 1800s? 1900s? Early C20? You'd think a few essays from the periods might have mentioned 'bugger me, no snow for 10 years in a stretch Mr Kipling - pass the maid's chastity belt, there's a good chap'. Or somesuch. I know it isn't proof to a mathematician, but when you smell a dead rat under the floorboards, it usually is.

The problem with the naysayer sceptic agenda is there is an unsaid logical conclusion that it is safe for 7 billion of us to keep breeding like rabbits and doing pollutey type stuff. Willful negligence is fun when then worst of the damage gets felt by wildlife and your grandkids.

[nsld]

Re: OK, so

Snowfall is not a great predictor of climate change as it generally tends to fall within a limited range of temperatures and according to the Met office we get most of our snow between zero and plus two degrees celcius http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/snow/how-is-snow-formed

You also need moisture in the air so its possible to have extremely cold, dry weather and have no snow.

I live relatively central to the UK and we had snow on the ground for 2 weeks last winter and about the same the winter before but less the year before that, it really varies by where you are located.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: OK, so

"During the Great Frost of 1683–84, the worst frost recorded in England, the Thames was completely frozen for two months, with the ice reaching a thickness of 11 inches (28 cm) in London. Solid ice was reported extending for miles off the coasts of the southern North Sea (England, France and the Low Countries), causing severe problems for shipping and preventing the use of many harbours. Near Manchester, the ground was frozen to 27 inches; in Somerset, to more than four feet". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs

"Evidence has been accumulating in many fields of investigation pointing to a notably warm climate in many parts of the world, that lasted a few centuries around A.D. 1000–1200, and was followed by a decline of temperature levels till between 1500 and 1700 the coldest phase since the last ice age occurred." (Hubert Lamb) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Based on those two sets of facts, can we assume that people in late 17th century England were bewailing the onset of global cooling? If not, why not?

[RonWheeler]

Re: OK, so

A quick wikipedia shows a whole bunch of other factors which contributed to why it happened. See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Thames_frost_fairs

To be honest I feel climate change is a bit of a straw man for both the pro and anti green brigade. Destruction of natural habitats by overpopulation and old fashioned pollutiion are worse, but have somehow become a bit boring.

[Turtle]

@RonWheeler: Re: OK, so

Well, like this then?:

"The problem with the naysayer sceptic agenda is there is an unsaid logical conclusion that it is safe for 7 billion of us to keep breeding like rabbits and doing pollutey type stuff. Willful negligence is fun when then worst of the damage gets felt by wildlife and your grandkids but if the burden of ameliorating a problem that might not even exist means condemning large numbers of people in other parts of the world to extermination or at least perpetual poverty while my grandkids get to live just like I do, then that's a bargain I'll take every day."

I am sure that you could not possibly disagree with the slight amendment which I've added there, right?

IF global warming was to occur, there would of course be enormous costs associated with it. What alarmists resolutely fail to address, is the fact that attempting to stave off global warming, irrespective of the warming actually occurring or not, also has enormous costs associated with it. And the costs of abating global warming might well be greater than the cost of global warming itself.

But then again, the whole discussion about what to do about global warming takes place in the developed West, among people whose only concern is the impact that global warming will have on them and no one else, and who are willing to sacrifice any number of people elsewhere to perpetual poverty, or simply mass eradication (like that racist Paul Ehrlich has recommended.)

Note that I am not even addressing RonWheeler's very stupid assertion that "the naysayer sceptic agenda [leads to] an unsaid logical conclusion that it is safe for 7 billion of us to keep breeding like rabbits and doing pollutey type stuff." (Hey, Ron, I bet with just a wee bit more effort, you could have found a logical connection between pedophilia and global warming skepticism. Well it's not too late; why not give it a try?)

[RonWheeler]

Re: @RonWheeler: OK, so

Human pollution formula.

Average pollution per person X number of people.

[John Savard]

No Trend?

It certainly seemed to me that there is a definite gradual upwards trend in rainfall shown by the data on the graph given, despite the scatter of the data points, of 100 mm about every hundred years. It's odd, though, that the trend seems to have remained uniform and linear for such a long time if the effect is man-made.

[Grease Monkey]

The diminutive Mr Hudson is right about the Met Office's annual temperature predictions. However, one thing that is of more concern to me is the way they flip flop over drought/rain predictions. If we have a wet year like 2012 then they tell us we are going to get more of the same. If we have a dry year then they tell us we are going to have to expect more of the same. The Met office, of all people, should not be confusing weather with climate.

I suspect that this latter problem is down to their wanting to pander to the media, just as their insistence on scare mongering on global warming is down to pandering to government. Maybe they need to decide who they want to pander to.

[teebie]

Why are you using a graph of total rainfall to rebut an (apparent) claim that there is 'more frequent extreme rainfall'?

[Zaphod.Beeblebrox]

When the data is examined, statistician Doug Keenan finds, anything but a clear trend is apparent:

I think a clear trend is apparent: It will rain in Britain, sometimes a lot.

[Blatantly Obvious]

I'm no MET expert, but has the author of this article failed to do their research? What a change that would make eh.

I read again fairly recently that the global warming estimates may have been underplayed, not overplayed. It was stated that a large amount of heat is currently being offset due to greatly increased ice melt. We seem to get cycles of melt and gain, but the current cycle is worse by far than usual. The expectation is that global warming will therefore step up a beat further down the line.

In regards to changing weather patterns, surely anyone would expect that. Look at the effects of El Ninio for a prime example. As pockets of temperatures change in different areas, current and airflow will be affected in turn.

Pointless rant article imo