The Met Office is refusing to retract a claim made by a senior meteorologist on BBC Radio 5 Live that storms in the U.K. are becoming “more intense” due to climate change. This is despite admitting in Freedom of Information (FOI) documents that it had no evidence to back up the claim. The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) noted the “false” claim seriously misled the public and demanded a retraction. The Daily Sceptic covered the story last Thursday and has since contacted the Met Office on three occasions seeking a response. “False information of this kind does much to induce climate anxiety in the population and I am sure you would agree such errors should be corrected by any reputable organisation,” it was noted. No reply was received – no retraction has been forthcoming.
The storm claim was made by Met Office spokesman Clare Nasir on January 22nd and led to an FOI request for an explanation by the investigative journalist Paul Homewood. The Met Office replied that it was unable to answer the request due to the fact that the information “is not held”. Interestingly, the Met Office’s own 2022 climate report noted that the last two decades have seen fewer occurrences of maximum wind speeds in the 40, 50, 60 knot bands than previous decades. The Daily Sceptic report went viral on social media with almost 3,000 retweets on X, while GWPF’s demand for retraction was covered by the Scottish Daily Express.
The lack of action by the state-funded Met Office is very interesting. Extreme weather is now the major go-to explanation for the opinion that humans largely control the climate, despite a general lack of scientific evidence. Backing away from this ‘settled’ narrative risks damaging a potent tool nudging populations across the world towards the collectivist Net Zero political project. Mainstream media usually take care to fudge their reporting of any direct link, using phrases such as ‘scientists say’ and sprinkling words ‘could’ and ‘might’ in the copy. The mistake Nasir made was to forget this basic requirement of broadcast fearmongering.
There appears to be an arrogance around the Met Office, an arrogance it shares with many other organisations and scientists promoting Net Zero. At the heart of this assumed superiority is the ludicrous claim that the science around human-caused climate change is ‘settled’. As a result of this, it seems many have lost the ability to debate their work with anyone taking an inquiring position. The scientific process has largely broken down in the climate science world. Secure in the knowledge that it will not be challenged, almost anything can be said on legacy media from a ‘consensus’ narrative point of view to promote the supra-national aims of Net Zero. On the legal front, this arrogance was in evidence in the summing up in the recent Mann v Steyn defamation trial in Washington D.C. The jury should award punitive damages to Michael Mann, inventor of the temperature ‘hockey stick’ graph, “so that in future no one will dare engage in climate denialism”, said Mann’s defending lawyer.
It is possible that if the Met Office is obliged to explain or retract what was after all just a routine scare broadcast on a tame state-reliant media outlet, it might be forced into more substantial scientific debate. How it abolished the global temperature pause from 2000-2014 by adding 30% extra warming on a retrospective basis to its HadCRUT5 record, and why it insists on promoting temperature records from busy U.K. airbases, are two subjects that spring immediately to mind.
Ineffable superiority was certainly on display when the Daily Sceptic recently reported that the Met Office was considered ditching the measurement of changes in temperature using data from the past 30 years in favour of a measurement compiled with 10 years’ past data and 10 years’ future modelled estimates. This was designed to promote a possible earlier breach of the political 1.5°C threshold. Lead author Professor Richard Betts, Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, tweeted a ‘rebuttal’ on X, noting we had taken three weeks to review the paper. “Or are they just very slow readers? I suppose our paper does use big words like ‘temperature’ so maybe they had to get grown-ups to help,” he added.
Why is the Met Office struggling to come up with any evidence to back up its claim that bad weather is caused by climate change? Because there is precious little of it. “People are going absolutely nuts these days about extreme weather,” writes the distinguished academic and science writer Roger Pielke Jr. “Every event, anywhere, is now readily associated with climate change and a portent of a climate out of control, apocalyptic even. I’ve long given up hope that the actual science of climate and extreme weather will be fairly reported or discussed in policy – nowadays, climate change is just too seductive and politically expedient,” he notes.
In its latest ‘Sixth Assessment Report‘, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that attempts to discern human involvement in severe storms outside natural variation remain of “low confidence”. In fact, it is unable to find human involvement in a wide range of weather-related events, not just in the past but out to the turn of this century.
Beyond natural variability, the IPCC, much to the disappointment of alarmists, has concluded there is little or no evidence that the following events (table above) are or will be affected by human-caused climate change: river floods, heavy rain and pluvial floods, landslides, drought (all types), fire ‘weather’, severe wind storms (Met Office please note), tropical cyclones, sand and dust storms, heavy snowfall and ice storms, hail, snow avalanche, coastal flooding and erosion, and marine heatwaves.
Perhaps the Met Office doesn’t want to apologise for misleading the public over winter storms – it might put down an unwelcome marker for mea culpas becoming general across the entire media and climate front.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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That is the response of a public official to a question from the public.
Just let that sink in.
It reveals very clearly the depths to which the relationship of the state and its institutions with the public has descended.
There is no attempt to hide their attitude. To them we are ignorant, stupid scum that need to be told what is what. And when we have the audacity to question them they address us as if we were annoying moronic children that need to be slapped back into place.
Here is the bad news. Unless people like this are slapped back themselves and put in THEIR place, this is only going to get worse and worse.
Reply to me from Michael Wendling of the BBC:
“Of course those who believe in conspiracy theories are not going to call their beliefs conspiracy theories, and are going to call themselves mainstream, moderate people.
We viewed footage of the speakers and spoke to people who were there.
We have no obligation to give a platform to erroneous ideas. We don’t, to take an extreme example, broadcast the manifestos of mass murderers alongside police statements so that people can “make up their own minds”.
I’m not saying the people there were violent. Some of them were (as the story reflected) were drawn by legitimate concerns. But the speakers (Mr Icke and others) were not expressing mainstream views that would benefit from airing and debate.“
He thinks he knows better than we do about everything. He used to work with the enemy of truth Marianna Spring. Now some kind of BBC correspondent and apparently an expert on the US “far right” (= people who don’t agree that he knows better than we do about everything). But surely impartial… From his X feed:
Mike Wendling
@mwendling
·
Oct 25, 2023
I’m very pleased to say my new book DAY OF RECKONING will be published by
@PlutoPress
in May 2024 … an expose of the increasingly mainstream American far-right. Huge thanks to my editor
@_David_Castle_
and agent
@SarahSuch
They non argument that everyone who questions climate alarmism or absurd energy policies is an extremist or a pseudo David Icke is pathetic. ———Are the IPCC also “climate deniers”? Because they say there is no evidence of increases in weather extremes such as storms floods and droughts despite more CO2 going into the atmosphere. ——In science you question everything. Scepticism is the highest calling and blind faith the one unpardonable sin. —–Unpardonable sins committed by BBC and other mainstream media that panders to globalist ideology need exposing for what they really are. —-Propaganda masquerading as science or “Official Science” in support of Political Agenda’s that seek to create a world run by unaccountable technocrats controlling every aspect of our lives with the phony “climate crisis” as the excuse.
Might as well put Richard Betts on the “to do” list.
Come on ‘downticker’ have the balls to explain your response. Coward.
You can always comment on their blog…
https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2024/02/05/our-changing-weather-patterns-a-tale-of-abrupt-transitions/
Thanks Chris. The propaganda works. Ill-informed people often say that the weather is getting worse.
They saw it on the BBC so it must be true ——-NOPE
Where are OFCOM and BBC VERIFY?
Absent and uninterested. If it fits the official narrative its unalloyed truth and beyond reproach.
Welcome to the Post Truth World.
Fat dumb and happy?
What with the ONS re-arranging their data and the MET Office telling outrageous porkies one could conclude that a pattern was developing, except it isn’t, the pattern is already set.
wink——–Lies spread half way around the globe while truth is still tying its shoelaces.
“False information of this kind does much to induce climate anxiety in the population and I am sure you would agree such errors should be corrected by any reputable organisation,”—————–Except these are NOT ERRORS.—- Propaganda is a very powerful tool and that is why governments, NGO’s and Activist groups love it so much. ——–Climate Politics is all about scaring people into submission with endless tales of climatic breakdown all based on models churned out by government funded data adjusters masquerading as science. Even the IPCC admit they see no human signal in the climate data. Yet mainstream news tells us there is a clear signal and that “all scientists agree” ———-How are they getting away with this? —-They get away with it because there is a huge Climate Industrial Complex supported by a bought and paid for media realising that most people are too busy with work and family life to investigate issues for themselves. They think Investigative journalists are doing that for them already so happily tune into their 6 O’Clock news thinking they are seeing impartial reporting. ——–I am sorry but Chris Morrison and other investigative journalists would not be allowed on BBC or SKY because they are not pandering to globalist agenda’s. On the issue of climate there is no impartial reporting. You are either a paid stooge or a paid stooge exposer.
I have a practical suggestion to solve the ongoing influence of climate activists, and that is to send them all to India for two weeks (we have just returned) so they can imagine the devastation they will be caused by the banning of oil based technologies such as transport (every truck and tuk tuk, most farm vehicles). Drinking water is largely supplied in plastic bottles so there will be epidemics of cholera and the like. Air conditioning consumes vast quantities of electricity and heats the outside air, so would have to be banned.
Let our protesters try to survive without all those things (current nighttime temperature 28C) and then ask themselves whether they really want to inflict such hardship on the less developed world, let alone the developed West. Maybe they will then shut up.
That’s not to say there isn’t climate change, as everyone from waiters to subsistence fishermen would agree there is, but one must balance natural and human components as well as the economic impacts. We should maybe pray for another Krakatoa style eruption, of simply wait for the sunspot cycle to move on.