Just when you think things are as inanely silly as they can be, they raise the stakes. It’s a game of double or nothing in the race to the bottom. The close common interests of three big government agencies is fragmenting and instead of skeptics launching the FOI’s, this time, the BBC is.
Just in case there is anyone who doesn’t know, the UK Met predicted a winter a couple of degrees above the usual. Then supertankers of snow turned up and dumped on the nation, surprising people, and making life difficult for everyone who hadn’t made arrangements for the return of the British Blizzard and the coldest December on record. The UK Met, having got it completely wrong, decided the best course of action was to announce post hoc that actually they did get it right, really, they predicted cold weather, but they didn’t tell the public, they just told the politicians. The politicians apparently asked them not to let on to the public, or so the story goes, and the plot thickens.
One way or another someone is using tactics with all the forward thinking you’d expect from a five year old. If the Met office is not incompetent then the implication is one of implacable dishonesty from either the BOM or the UK government (or possibly — both).
The BBC reported it, without asking too many hard questions, which makes them look a bit silly too. Now, instead of the Big Scare Campaign Team working together, three big formerly aligned groups are fighting for their own cred. The BBC versus the Met, versus The Government.
On January 6th the GWPF asked:
Did UK Government Keep Cold Winter Warning Secret In Run-Up To UN Climate Conference?
It would appear that the extreme weather warning was kept secret from the public.
According to media reports, the Cabinet Office has been unwilling to confirm whether or not it failed to pass on the Met Office warning to local and road authorities, airports and water companies.
“Not only is the lack of Government preparedness a cause for concern, but we wonder whether there may be another reason for keeping the cold warning under wraps, a motive that the Met Office and the Cabinet Office may have shared: Not to undermine the then forthcoming UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun,” said Dr Benny Peiser, the GWPF director.
The full GWPF press release is here.
Today Benny Pieser of the GWPF reports of the developing FOI’s described in an article in the Canada Free Press, 11 January 2011
John O’Sullivan
The BBC serves Freedom of Information request (FOIA) on UK Government over weather forecast failures secrecy in worst winter for 100 years.
In an almighty battle to salvage credibility, three British government institutions are embroiled in a new global warming scandal with the BBC mounting a legal challenge to force ministers to admit the truth. Sceptics ask: Is the UK government’s climate propaganda machine finally falling apart?
Last week the weather service caused a sensation by making the startling claim that it was gagged by government ministers from issuing a cold winter forecast. Instead, a milder than average prediction was made that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century that has been resoundingly ridiculed in one of the worst winters in a century.
With the BBC appearing to take the side of the Met Office by seeking to force the government to give honest answers, untold harm will likely befall Prime Minister Cameron’s global warming policies on energy, taxation and the environment.
Rift between BBC, Met Office and UK Government Grows
Mention of the ‘secret’ cold winter forecast appears in the Quarmby Report (Section 2.4) which states, “The Met Office gave ‘early indications of the onset of a cold spell from late November’ at the end of October.”
Giving a strong hint that a major rift appears to have opened up between Met Office chief executive, John Hirst and Climate Minister, Huhne, Harrabin further revealed, “The Beeb now has an FoI [freedom of information request] to Cabinet Office requesting verbatim info from [the] Met Office.”
Why did the BOM keep it’s cold prediction secret? The other possibility as mentioned by autonomous mind, is that they were quite hurt with the criticisms last year, and didn’t want any more put-downs if they got it wrong. Autonomous mind also has a good copy of the October predictions.
The real answers are of course obscured in public relations speak, which Bishop Hill dismantles well.
2 comments:
The global warming crowd is beginning to look more and more like the Keystone Cops. They've all told so many lies that they have lost track of just who is supposed to tell which lie and who is to keep their mouth shut about said lie. Now they're squabbling amondst themselves as to just who is the biggest liar. It is to laugh.
My father was a meteorologist working for the DOT and then the DOE.
He said that it was impossible to predict the weather more than 3 days into the future.
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