“Implausible” Met Office UK Climate Projections Still Whipping up Unjustified Net Zero-Convenient Fear

Five months after the IPCC ruled that the infamous RCP8.5 computer scenario responsible for most mainstream climate doomsday copy over the last 15 years was “implausible”, what news can I bring you of the Met Office’s UK Climate Projection 2018 report (UKCP18) that based its predictions on the now cancelled modelling nonsense? Good news: the Met Office immediately withdrew UKCP18 with a fulsome apology for all the harm caused. Everything from the compromised geography A level syllabus to numerous Net Zero rules and regulations that relied on its claims have been withdrawn pending future alteration. Sorry, I must have dropped off for a moment and started dreaming. Of course, the report has not been withdrawn; of course, no apology has been forthcoming, and of course, UKCP18 is still up to all its old tricks.

On June 23rd, the Met Office produced a weather forecast for 2055 showing how the summer temperature in England under a “plausible” computer model scenario could hit 45°C along with nine consecutive days where 40°C was recorded somewhere in the country. Not bad going in 30 years, given that the UK temperature ’record’ of 40.3°C produced on July 19th 2022 by the runway at RAF Coningsby was somewhat challenged in its veracity by the fact that Typhoon jets were attempting to land at the time. The claimed record was a 60-second 0.6°C spike and over a five-minute average – recommended by the World Meteorological Organisation to reduce ‘noise’ – the temperature fell below the magic, headline-grabbing 40°C.

The Met Office did not specifically identify which “plausible” scenario it used but the figures were remarkably similar – in fact slightly hotter – than claims in UKCP18 that summer temperatures could rise by 5.1°C by 2070. Furthermore, Chief Scientist Professor Stephen Belcher, who called the illustration “scientifically plausible”, noted: “By using data from Met Office projections, we can glimpse into what an event like the 1976 summer would look like in the 2050s. It is a stark realisation to see the maximum temperature reach 45°C.”

The ‘maximum invented temperature’ would have been a more accurate statement, but such a reasonable scientific qualification was not made by Belcher, who is on record as stating that Net Zero will “stabilise” the climate.

The less charitable might suggest that the Met Office used implausible forecasts to whip up BS climate fearmongering during a glorious summer (albeit a tad inconvenient at times for those without the joys of air conditioning) in its relentless political drive to boost climate psychosis in the general population and promote the Net Zero fantasy.

Now take a look at this pack of panic-inducing poppycock published last June by Comic Cuts, or as it is sometimes called, the Guardian.

The Guardian story was based on a report from the British Geological Survey (BGS), which is designed to help town planners, property developers and financial companies assess future climate risks. Maps of the UK are produced using geological information with the highest-resolution climate change data from the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, “which is derived from and builds upon Met Office UKCP18 climate projections”. By 2070, the BGS noted that over four million homes could be affected by subsidence under the high-emission scenario RCP8.5. This pathway was the only one used by the Met Office in UKCP18 and its findings are highlighted in bold type in the report. Due to computer cost considerations, other lower emission scenarios were said to be statistically derived from RCP8.5.

Oh dear, the BGS published alarming subsidence conclusions in June using fanciful Met Office projection that had been stinking up the science joint since April’s ‘Implausible Day’. Did nobody see fit to tell the BGS before it published its geological garbage? Was Comic Cuts unaware that its story about housing foundations being dragged down beneath the soil was a load of climate-catastrophising conkers? Nevertheless, we must have sympathy and understanding for the Guardian at a difficult time. The Greenland ice sheet is in net balance this year so the newspaper cannot run its regular and ever popular ‘London houses beneath the waves’ routine.

Subsidence has always been a problem in the London area where old brick buildings sit on a heavy clay soil that shrinks and expands as water levels change. The BGS is supposed to give future guidance to help mitigate this problem. It might be better off in future making realistic projections based on accumulated evidence and observations, rather than raising fear based on duff computer modelled climate guesses.

Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor. Follow him on X.

OCTOBER PUBLICATION: new book by Chris Morrison with a foreword by Toby Young: IMPLAUSIBLE: How scientists, activist politicians and journalists invented a climate crisis, weaponised junk computer model findings and claimed a fake consensus to promote the collectivist Net Zero fantasy.