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As newspapers publish headlines about this being the coldest winter in donkeys years, an interesting piece in the Sunday Telegraph by Christopher Booker (an admitted hard-line AGW (man-made Global warming) sceptic.)) Whether he’s right or wrong on the "man-made" angle, I’ll leave up to cleverer people than me. But he does highlight the worrying aspect of the hijacking of the independence of scientific and state funded bodies by the "politically" motivated. Sadly, as he concludes, David Cameron seems an unlikely candidate to redress the propaganda.
The UK’s official weather forecasters are determined that winters should be mild, in the face of the frozen facts, says Christopher Booker
Shortly after midnight on Friday morning, as 200,000 merrymakers were departing from the Thames after enjoying a spectacular fireworks show in sub-zero temperatures, flakes of snow began to fall on Whitehall. In light of the Met Office’s prediction that this would be a "mild" winter, with temperatures above average, it seemed an apt way to start the New Year. But hasn’t the time come for us to stop treating the serial inaccuracy of Met Office forecasts as just a joke and see it for what it is – a national scandal?
The reason the Met Office so persistently gets its seasonal forecasts wrong is that it has been hi-jacked from the role for which we pay it nearly £200 million a year, to become one of the world’s major propaganda engines for the belief in man-made global warming. Over the past three years, it has become a laughing stock for forecasts which are invariably wrong in the same direction.
The year 2007, it predicted, would be "the warmest ever" – just before global tempratures plunged by more than the entire net warming of the 20th century, Three years running it predicted warmer than average winters – as large parts of the northern hemisphere endured record cold and snowfalls. Last year’s "barbecue summer" was the third time running that predictions of a summer drier and warmer than average prefaced weeks of rain and cold. Last week the Met Office was again predicting that…2010 will be the "warmest year" on record, while Europe and the US look to be facing further weeks of intense cold.
What is not generally realised is that the UK Met Office has been, since 1990, at the very centre of the campaign to convince the world that it faces catastrophe through global warming. (Its website now proclaims it to be "the Met Office for Weather and Climate Change".) Its then-director, Dr John Houghton, was the single most influential figure in setting up the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as the chief driver of climate alarmism. Its Hadley Centre for Climate Change, along with the East Anglia Climatic Research Unit (CRU), was put in charge of the most prestigious of the four official global temperature records. In line with IPCC theory, its computers were programmed to predict that, as CO2 levels rose, temperatures would inevitably follow. From 1990 to 2007, the Department of the Environment gave the Met Office no less than £146 million for its "climate predictions programme".
But in the past three years, with the Met Office chaired by Robert Napier, a former global warming activist and previously head of WWF UK, its pretensions have been exposed as never before. The "Climategate" leak of documents from the CRU, along with further revelations from Russian scientists, have shown the CRU/Met Office alliance systematically manipulating temperature data, past and present, to show the world growing warmer than the evidence justified. And those same computers used to predict temperatures 100 years ahead for the IPCC have also been used to produce those weather forecasts that prove so consistently wrong.
Scientific method has gone out of the window, to support a theory that looks more questionable than ever. The whole set-up – Met Office, Hadley Centre, the CRU, the IPCC – looks hopelessly compromised. It is a state of affairs so bizarre that it cries out for political intervention. Yet our politicians, from Gordon Brown and David Cameron down, are so in thrall to this new religion that they cannot see evidence staring them in the face – that the show has gone off the rails. How many more winters and summers will it take before sanity finally breaks in to put an end to this scandal?Perhaps this Booker chap can explain why the Lobilia in my garden was still flowering two weeks ago – and if it hadn’t been covered in 6" of snow possible would still be now….
Forget all this **** from wankers like him and the Met office and use your eyes….
Booker is an AGW sceptic (as I said).
He states that a number of the big nobs in the Met office hold opposite views to him.
One of his (Bookers) main points is that those responsible for the scientific analysis of weather/climate should not tool around with scientific data to prove their particular view point. ESPECIALLY when the organisation producing the doctored figures is TAXPAYER funded.
Regardless of ones views on climate change, that’s surely an opinion that is correct is it not?A totally selfish viewpoint I freely admit – but I don’t really care if global warming exists or not, or if it does, whether is man made or part of the cycle of nature.
I will be long gone before any serious impact, if any, is felt.
As for taxpayers money being "wasted" quite frankly £200m a year is an insignificant drop in the ocean when compared with what is being wasted elsewhere by this government.
Whilst on a micro level it may be considered a scandalous waste of taxpayers money – in the bigger picture there are far more pressing concerns to get worked up about.
Insomniac, here’s the problem as I see it.
To start, people like Booker will never be happy with any conclusions from any organisation or group however independent, however funded. As imv they are not really interested in the debate but rather are only interested in being right and will frankly rubbish all evidence to the contrary. You can walk into any pub in the country and you can find his like sat on a stool (their stool) at the end of the bar talking crap to any poor soul unfortunate enough to be within earshot.
The larger problem however only imv of course, is our misunderstanding as to what is and isn’t scientific and also how this misunderstanding, continually reinforced by the lazy media, has led us to this twilight world where one side can be played off against the other. I would suggest at the very best research into Meteorological Forecasting could be referred to as quasi-scientific but personally I view it more as an art than science. In this respect Booker would have a point however it is clear he is as big a part of the problem as anyone else by his claim ‘Scientific method has gone out of the window’. So, although Booker and the Met Office may hold differing views they are essentially two cheeks on the same ass. It’s all one big merry-go-round.
Sadly Pompete, I’m inclined to agree with you.
(Although I would add that Booker provides a useful service by putting over a contrary opinion to the experts – and, as I’ve found over the years, most "experts" are tossers.)Something very big is going down in 2008<br> It’s a recurring thought pattern<br> Problem is I have absolutely no idea what it is<br> just that its big.<br> I haven’t ruled out something in my life
Possibly meet you then Dave on cloud 9 <br>
* Aerosols that mask dog leg produce CO2 and have<br> no effect on global dimming as I stated earlier.
I have dredged up the very last thread to highlight my prediction
Might it have been the world financial crisis. I kept this concern in my mind for a couple of years and felt there was a big shift coming and sold my surplus property in 2007 and contacts were exchanged just before queues starting forming outside Northern Rock so I did act on it. Whether Zoz also hauled her ass outta Norfolk we can only speculate.
I certainly do not lay claim to predicting 9/11 despite my feeling I may have picked up some sense of the planning of it. It was planned in London apart from other places according to reports and certainly on the internet – probably in some sort of codes. My four tramps posting was posted at exactly the same time of day to the minute that the first plane hit the tower. Actually finding the exact time involved a lot of work and verification but it was another strange coincidence. I do not have the posting – well I may have it in the loft – but it is on an old broken computer which needs repair.
This morning I felt particularly energised as I wrote me long piece in horseracing. I had not read Ricky Lake’s three tramps thread when I wrote of four tramps. I edited out some words about Cybermum and Nev in my post thinking it a bit too off point and sentimental – and I see Diamond refers to cyber Monday and also has posted up Black Friday in his recent post which I referred to. These are strange occurrences all three but more particularly the three tramps. It used to happen to me a lot when I was writing years ago – sometimes writing an extreme ten hours a day then. Whether there is some common mind one can tap into who knows ? Probably better to put it all down to coincidence otherwise we will awaken the slumbering giant of Grimes.
p.s….edited same time to …same time of day
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