Weather forecasts 'will get better'
THE Westcountry-based Met Office has secured a momentous agreement from weather groups around the world to change the way they gather climate change information to ward off criticism from sceptics over recent data scandals.
It is also planning to re-examine more than 150 years of temperature data in a bid to regain public trust in climate science following reports about alleged errors and suppression of data.
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The latest move by the under-fire Met Office, which has faced criticism after predicting a mild winter, hard on the heels of forecasts for a "barbecue summer" that never was, hopes to regain public trust in climate change research.
The Exeter-based weather centre says the re-analysis, which was approved at a conference in Turkey earlier this week, is timely and it does not expect it to reach a hugely different conclusion about the impact of global warming.
However, the reassessment by an international group of experts could raise questions over its previous reports which became embroiled in controversy because of the Met Office's association with the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit, which has been at the centre of the data storm.
A Met Office spokesman said: "This effort will ensure that the data-sets are completely robust and that all methods are transparent."
It added that "any such analysis does not undermine the existing independent data-sets that all reflect a warming trend."
The Met organisation is spearheading the move to clean up the science which monitors global warming, by calling for its international counterparts to take on the "grand challenge" of measuring land surface temperatures as often as several times a day, and allow independent scrutiny of the data, making it more transparent.
It comes after the climate change movement became embroiled in a barrage of criticism over claims that scientists tried to cover up historical data which did not fit in with theories that the world is getting consistently warmer.
The latest move to measure land surface would go some way towards answering demands by sceptics for access to the raw figures used to predict climate change.
Last night, MEP Giles Chichester, who has been among critics of the Met Office, said: "It all sounds a bit like closing ranks against the sceptics, but if it leads to better science, then I have to welcome it."
The proposal was approved in principle by some 150 delegates meeting under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organisation in Antalya, Turkey. It comes after e-mails stolen from a British university and several mistakes made in a 2007 report issued by the UN-affiliated Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change prompted public debate over the reliability of climate change predictions.
Sceptics claim scientists have secretly manipulated climate data and suppressed contrary views – allegations that have been denied by researchers and the climate change panel.
But the Met Office said current measurements were "fundamentally ill-conditioned to answer 21st century questions such as how extremes are changing and therefore what adaptation and mitigation decisions should be taken."
Earlier this month, the Met Office's own Professor John Mitchell found himself in the spotlight after he approved a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which failed to take into account a "Medieval warm period", in about 1000AD, when some believe the Earth's temperatures equalled those of today.
But the Met Office insisted the issues had been properly handled, and said Prof Mitchell's role was to co-ordinate the compilation of the report.
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by TimV, Pz
Monday, March 01 2010, 12:19PM
“This blog only goes to prove that without the weather, the British would be lost for words!”
by Freethinker, Cornwall
Friday, February 26 2010, 10:35PM
“@ Max
No worries. It's often best to go straight to the source documents when dealing with issues like this. Not many people in the population would spend a couple of hrs reading UN documents. The Club Of Rome documents are often a superb read. The information is out there, for now at least. Max, when you've got time, try finding on the internet Zbigniew Brazezinski's The Grand Chessboard America Primacy And It's Geostrategic Imperatives on PDF. You should be able to download the full 'rare' book . You need to read it. Brzezinski is a servant of the Global Elite. And helped establish the Trilateral Commission with David Rockerfeller. There is no other man on earth who knows how these individuals work than the Big Z himself. Check it out. Best Freethinker”
by max power, st austell
Friday, February 26 2010, 10:20PM
“But here's a quote not needing further citation-
Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men."”
by max power, st austell
Friday, February 26 2010, 9:02PM
“@Theo
Sorry, hands up! I must not blog in my dinner hour x 100.
It should have read UN and not (UN) IPCC.
You've obviously googled the 1990 Maurice Strong quote " Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsibility to bring that about?" and think I've unfairly shortened it or taken it out of context?
Perhaps you agree that will be the eventual result or agree with my sentiment?
Are you not concerned about the transfer of power to this organisation?
Do you broadly agree with my 2 earlier posts?
If you think 'pre-industrial age' is not apt perhaps we can equate the CO2 emissions of an existing country to what we have to attain by a certain date as regards CO2 emissions as being a more helpful illustration.
We'll talk about that later!
@Freethinker
Thanks, you're a mine of information.”
by Freethinker, Cornwall
Friday, February 26 2010, 6:08PM
“@ Max
Theo is partly correct about Ted Turner. Turner has never involved or funded the UN IPCC. But, what I find rather disturbing is Turner's interview with Charlie Rose on PBS back in 2008. Ted Turner passed this comment about global warming. "Failure to address global warming will have us all dead or eating each other by mid - century". In a matter of fact, the entire interview is an eye opener to the way business elites view the world and us. It's true to say Max that Ted Turner has promoted eugenics driven policies like the one and two-child policy for many years and has consistently touted the virtues of global government through the UN. Turner has met with members of the UNIPCC from the past. The proposed solution to solve the phony problem of global warming or man made climate change by the elites has always been the implementation of a global carbon tax. The carbon tax will simply serve as a way to extract wealth from the poor, middle and upper middle class of the western world and straight into the hands of the central banking families and business elite. Turner has taken an active central role in donating $1 billion to an organization known as the UN foundation. The general goals set out for the foundation in four UN documents I have are....
Population control
Condom distrubution
promotion of abortion
Bill and Melinda Gates have donated large amounts of money to Turner's much respected UN foundation.
Freethinker”
by Luke, Helston
Friday, February 26 2010, 4:25PM
“GE, it's not realism to make decisions based on short term weather patterns. It's just being ignorant.
Whilst we've been having ¿'unprecedented' cold weather, other parts of the world have been having 'unprecedentedly' mild winters. The Winter Olympics had remarkably mild weather that almost spoilt the games, flooding in Madeira, sea level rise ¿-how's that for realism for you?
All the UEA sager has showed is how scientist are being more defensive about their work - considering the criticism they come under these days, who can blame them. It's also showed the levels 'sceptics' will go to, to disrupt, what is now, a scientific consensus against them.
If you'd bother to actually read the emails you'd realise there was very little clandestine elements to them too, instead of just jumping on a bandwagon driven by ignorant scientific illiterates”
by Charles Henry 1945-(diuturnity), Somersetshire
Friday, February 26 2010, 4:13PM
“:) I'm glad I'm keeping you amused and on your toes Tim. . You can take your hands down now by the way. . I think they must have counted you about seventeen times already! . Best Charles. .
PS. But I did agree with your thoughts on teenage pregnancy etc. . . That's troubling. . I must try and get more sleep.”
by TimV, Pz
Friday, February 26 2010, 3:08PM
“@ Charles Henry "Nothing at all with any intellectual vigour, just pure conjecture and politicking, as it seems is the modus operandi of all those in climate research."
Don't you mean "Rigour"? Those in glass houses and all that.... he he.”
by Theo H, Lifton
Friday, February 26 2010, 2:28PM
“@ Max Power
" Ted Turner, billion dollar donor to the IPCC has aspirations of a population a tenth of today's level, Maurice Strong, UN environmental leader (and oil for food scandal) states their objective as bringing down industrialised civilisations."
Ted Turner is not a "billion dollar doner to the IPCC" The IPCC is funded by individual governments and also funding of the central secretariat. Someone like Phil Jones is paid by his university a regular salary, and his expenses when traveling to IPCC conferences, and so on.
Ted Turner, has, however, funded small US environmental groups, the type that is the equivalent to Friends of the Earth in the UK, and some direct action groups, such as the type in the UK that do symbolic "occupations" of the like of coal-powered power stations. He has not funded the seriously radical groups such as EF! (Earth First!). I lived in the USA and "I have the tee-shirt" for EF!.
I do wish people could decide which "age" they think environmentalists " wish to return us"
WWII times? Victorian Times? Medieval Times? The Iron Age? The Bronze Age?The Stone Age? I have heard all of these. ; -)
Here is a challenge for you, Max. Find me the speech or article where Maurice Strong talks about "bringing down industrialised civilisations" - and then reply here with the paragraph in which Strong said this, the para before and the para after. Such quotes are going round the internet, but as "a quote-mined" quote.”
by max power, st austell
Friday, February 26 2010, 1:46PM
“@Dave @Chris
We have been 'around the houses' on the extent of temp. change. Whilst we have scientists shouting 'ACT NOW' and others shouting 'ALARMISM' we are unlikely to crack that particular nut here. My opinion concerns the position of the decimal point.
If we look at the movers and shakers we find the green extremes who are not interested in CO2 reduction but want a removal to the pre-industrial era, they do not even accept nuclear power. Hardly viable, like it or not there are too many people alive for that to work.
Then as Chris points out, a world govt via the UN. Govt will cite the alleged peacekeeping role. They had overseen the most disgraceful episode of our time in Rwanda. Dallaire's cables informing the UN about the genocide were ignored.
Well they've certainly got a handle on the population problem like the banning of DDT. Ted Turner, billion dollar donor to the IPCC has aspirations of a population a tenth of todays level, Maurice Strong, UN environmental leader (and oil for food scandal) states their objective as bringing down industrialised civilisations.
These are not nice Christian people that you'd invite around to babysit are they?”