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The Met Office, like the BBC is past its sell by date

Tom Winnifrith
Monday 7 January 2013

The Met Office was one of those bodies that, like the BBC, one used to trust. Back in the old days when weathermen were hired for having some sort of brain power ( Giles, Fish, etc) rather than for having big tits, you accepted that they might miss the odd hurricane but accepted that they were doing their best to keep you informed. How that changed. Like the Biased BBC the Met Office has been in the grip of global warming nutters for some years and this has produced ever more bizarre behaviour. Let us discuss rain.

I start with a quote from 23 March 2012 from the Met: “The forecast for average UK rainfall slightly favours drier-than-average conditions for April-May-June as a whole, and also slightly favours April being the driest of the 3 months. With this forecast, the water resources situation in southern, eastern and central England is likely to deteriorate further during the April-May-June period… This forecast is based on information from observations, several numerical models and expert judgement.

By 16th April we were warned that 32 million Britons faced drought until after Christmas: “Seventeen counties in South West England and the Midlands have moved into official drought status, after two dry winters have left rivers and ground waters depleted. The news comes as the Environment Agency warned that the drought could last beyond Christmas. While rain over the spring and summer will help to water crops and gardens, it is unlikely to improve the underlying drought situation

This was directly attributed by the Met ( and by other global warming nutters) to manmade climate change. More CO2 emissions = a hotter planet = droughts.

Except that, as we all know – and the Met conceded in October in a press release snuck out so that no-one would notice – the world has been getting cooler for 16 years.

And now I bring you a quote from the BBC from January 3rd 2013:

The frequency of extreme rainfall in the UK may be increasing, according to analysis by the Met Office. Statistics show that days of particularly heavy rainfall have become more common since 1960. The analysis is still preliminary, but the apparent trend mirrors increases in extreme rain seen in other parts of the world.

This begs three questions:

a) The BBC used this as clear proof that carbon emissions were causing climate change, i.e. more extreme rain. So if there is a drought it is down to man made climate change. Or if there is no drought but flooding it is down to …er, man made climate change. Go figure. As it happens the data is far from linear which is what you would expect if there was a correlation between C02 emissions and any form of man made climate change. As we now know, with the world having got cooler 1940-76, hotter 1976 to 1996, cooler 1997-2012 while all the time CO2 emissions rose at the fastest rate in history, there is clearly NO proven causal connection between climate change and C02 emissions, indeed the data suggests that there is no link at all.

b) If the Met cannot forecast weather three months out why the hell should we spend billions combating changes to the climate which it forecasts 30 year out? All the models produced by global warming nutters like the UEA for the period 2000-2012 have been just plain wrong so far. So why should we bet the bank on them being right in future?

c) The data for rainfall 1960 to April 2012 was available in April 2012. So why did the Met not refer to that data? It appears to have ignored it completely instead basing its 100% inaccurate drought forecasts on “observations, several numerical models and expert judgement.” What are those numerical models? Who are the experts whose judgement was just plain wrong?

It is taxpayer’s cash that funds the Met. As such who is going to submit a FOI request to establish the names of those experts and the details of the numerical models used? And also to establish why the Met chose to ignore the long term data until now? I sense that the answers might be rather revealing.

I do not expect the Met to change its tune. Its website still blathers on about man made climate change as does the BBC. It is just that as a taxpayer I resent paying for this tripe. Both venerable institutions have lost my trust completely.

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About Tom Winnifrith
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Tom Winnifrith is the editor of TomWinnifrith.com. When he is not harvesting olives in Greece, he is (planning to) raise goats in Wales.
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