Further alarming disclosures have come to light about the Met Office’s U.K. temperature measuring network following a recent freedom of information (FOI) request seeking details of its internal rating system for its 383 station-strong operation. Denial is the word that springs immediately to mind. According to World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) international standards, almost eight in 10 Met Office stations are in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 with possible errors of 2°C and 5°C respectively. But it turns out that over nine in 10 stations are internally rated by the Met Office as ‘Excellent, ‘Good’ and ‘Satisfactory’. Just 27 stations are considered ‘Unsatisfactory’.
It might be hoped that the Met Office is rushing to upgrade these unsatisfactory stations not least because they produce numerous ‘record’ highs, or ‘extremes’ as they are now termed, that litter the database. It is not a good look to be caught promoting all-time ‘extremes’ from recordings that you consider internally to be unsatisfactory. Nevertheless, two of the four national temperatures records were produced by this small band of unsatisfactory stations – on July 18th, 2020, Hawarden Airport in Wales recorded 37.1°C, while on July 21st, 2021 a temperature was recorded of 31.3°C in Castlederg, Northern Ireland.
The WMO applies strict standards on temperature stations and rates them from Class 1-5. Corruptions of natural air temperature from any source determine a rating. Class 1 and 2 are pristine, Class 3 has ‘uncertainties’ of 1°C followed by classes 4 and 5. Super junk 5 has no requirements for siting, meaning it can be based anywhere. Let us refresh our memories of how the Met Office sites rate under rigorous WMO standards.
Now look what happens when the Met Office marks its own homework.
According to information released under an FOI request to the investigative journalist Paul Homewood, the Met Office will only quote records from WMO Classes 1-4. Also known as CIMO ratings, the Met Office states categorically that the records “must” be between 1 and 4. “CIMO 5 will mean data from the site will be flagged and not quoted in national records,” adds the Met Office.
Presumably the instruction is not fully understood across the entire organisation. For instance, in a week analysed last June by the Daily Sceptic the Scottish Class 5 station Leuchars provided an area ‘extreme’ on four out of the seven days examined. In England, the Class 5 station at Killowen also featured four times, while Usk No.2 and Durham made the top spot on three occasions. From the Met Office’s own tiny ‘Unsatisfactory’ list we get Kinlochewe, which provided the highest January temperature ever recorded in Scotland at 19.6°C, and London St James’s Park, which holds the record for England SE and Central S. In fact, this record of 40.2°C on July 19th, 2022 was only pipped for 60 seconds near the runway at RAF Coningsby where 40.3°C was achieved at around the time three typhoon jets were attempting to land. Seemingly besides itself with excitement, the Met Office lauded the breaking of the 40°C barrier as “a milestone in climate history”.
The Met Office appears to be in denial about its temperature network. It notes that WMO Class 5 is not the same as its own ‘Unsatisfactory’ inspection, “which ultimately determines the ongoing use of a site”. The internal system is said to tell the Met Office how much confidence it can have in the data. Rather a lot, cynics might observe, given the continued presence of ‘Unsatisfactory’ stations producing well-publicised and frequently politicised ‘extremes’.
Is it legitimate to ask how much confidence we can have in the Met Office data used to spread alarm and promote the Net Zero fantasy? The BBC’s green activist-in-chief Justin Rowlatt noted in July that the Met Office had “confirmed” that climate change “is dramatically increasing the frequency of extreme high temperatures in the U.K.” In a period of gentle warming it might be expected that temperatures would rise a little, with unnatural urban heat corruptions warming both day and night-time measurements. But as we can see from an analysis of the source Met Office data, the alleged confirmation of soaring high extremes is an imaginative interpretation somewhat challenged by the underlying scientific work.
We might have more confidence in the Met Office’s ability or wish to provide uncorrupted figures if we did not recently learn that over eight in 10 of the 113 temperature measuring stations opened in the last 30 years were deliberately or carelessly sited in Class 4 and 5 locations. Shockingly, the situation was just as bad over the last 10 years, where 81.5% are rated Class 4 and 5, and it beggars belief that in the last five years, eight of the 13 newly-opened stations are at similar junk sites. Both Iver W. Wks and Stowe are to be found on the Met’s own small naughty step despite opening in 2016 and 2012 respectively.
We are obliged to citizen sleuth Ray Sanders for this latest FOI request to the Met Office that confirms the level of internal denial about the state of its temperature network. Noting that the Met Office says its own standards form the “official benchmarks” for assessing the suitability of temperature sites, and hence the data for the long-term climate record, he observed: “Screw international standards ISO 19289:2014 (E). We are going to use our own standards that we decided on; you cannot question them, and we will not allow any independent assessment of… What do you mean we helped arrange the ISO standard with the WMO… Who cares? So what you gonna do about it, eh?”
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Devastating Covid Jab Harms – latest leaflet to print at home, deliver to neighbours, forward to your bad MP & friends online. Start a local campaign. Deliver 100 leaflets a week (5200 a year). Over 300 leaflet ideas on the link on the leaflet.
Ukraine could be carved up ‘like Germany after World War Two
‘The Times article misrepresents what I said. I was speaking of a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty.
In discussions of partitioning, I was referencing areas or zones of responsibility for an allied force (without US troops).
I was NOT referring to a partitioning of Ukraine.’
General Keith Kellogg
‘I think Ukraine-Russia might be going OK, and you’re going to be finding out pretty soon’
President Trump 13 April
Why?
‘Mr. Trump’s trade measures could inadvertently do more to damage Russia’s ability to fund its war against Ukraine than the West’s systematic imposition of the most comprehensive package of sanctions in modern history…….The price of oil, the lifeline of Russia’s economy and war machine, has fallen nearly 15 percent since Mr. Trump announced the tariffs on April 2′
‘The global markets are “extremely turbulent, tense and emotionally overloaded’
Dmitri S. Peskov
Head of Russia’s central bank, Elvira Nabiullina……the main effect on Russia from Mr. Trump’s policies would be falling oil prices. “There are risks here,”
Why is the outstanding Ukrainian army not yet on the offensive?
“Hardly any large German equipment [provided to Ukraine] was fully suitable for war.”
‘Mars II rocket launchers….were….not compatible with US supplied cluster munitions………modified to only allow missiles fitted with unitary warheads to be fired after Germany joined the cluster munition ban in 2010…….German Leopard 2A6s…….impossible to maintain in the field……Pzh-2000 self-propelled howitzer…….technically so “vulnerable” difficult to maintain that they questioned its suitability for combat.’
Hmmm……..
‘If Ukraine receives $100 billion more this year, Ukraine could probably win the war.’
“You are aware Madame that telling me to go and solve a real crime is a hate crime”
“‘A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?”
Even The Guardian now into wishy-washy recanting. “Covid is an amazing case study in groupthink and the effects of partisan bias” – specialist subject the b. obvious.
“Globalism. Warmism. We fell for them both” – In the Mail, Peter Hitchens says that China must laugh at us…
…Peter Hitchens spells out more of the b. obvious, albeit in a newspaper which wishy-washys don’t read.
“Total CfD Subsidies Hit £10 billion”
Another £10 billion wishy-washied away on the medieval solution to 21st-century energy supply.
Suffer little billpayers and ye shall appease the wind gods.
“Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future” – The focus is moving away from the ‘slim’ female fixture of the classical repertoire…
…Stand by for a revival of Tchaikovsky’s long-lost “Dance of the Sugar-Pig Fairies.”
Woops – posted mine without reading yours. Great minds… There’s a whole hidden repertoire out there.
The Stagecracker?
The Stage-breaker?!
With a supporting company of fairy elephants. Jumbo in a tutu will be a sight for sore eyes.
A case study in groupthink’: were liberals wrong about the pandemic?
Correct…..because, as the new Head of the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Jay Bhattacharya, points out:
‘When I saw the World Health Organization in 2020 say that we have a 3% mortality rate…..They meant that three out of 100 people that had been identified with COVID died from it…….(but) It spreads very, very easily, obviously. It seems likely that many more people have had it than had been identified. Our testing resources weren’t all that good at the time……(in fact) we don’t know the (correct) mortality rate ’cause we don’t know how many people actually had been infected.’
We did one (serial prevalence study) in Los Angeles County and we did one in Santa Clara County…..the numbers we got were that it was 0.2%. So two out of 1,000 mortality rate……’
The key point…….Up to that point, the strategy, the idea was that if we could find all of the cases of it, test enough, isolate the people that have it so they don’t pass the disease on, then we’ll suppress the disease down to zero. That worked, I think, with SARS one, it worked with Ebola……The problem is that if you have a situation in mid April, 2020, where 3, 4% of large Metro centers had evidence of the disease already, you know the disease is very, very infectious, that’s a strategy that cannot work.
At that point what folks should have realized, including folks like Fauci and the CDC should have realized, is that a strategy to stop the disease from spreading down to zero was not possible.’
‘There’s now a whole bunch of these seroprevalence studies have been done that replicate from around the world what we found. The typical finding……is that for people that are under the age of 70, there’s…..99.95% survival after infection.
Jay Bhattacharya Oct 2021
So:
‘Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, moved to re-open physical schools quickly, which progressives characterized as irresponsible……Yet in the end there was “no meaningful difference” in Covid mortality rates between Democratic and Republican states in the pre-vaccine period, according to CDC data cited in the book, despite Republican states’ more lenient policies.
Macedo and Lee also favorably compare Sweden, which controversially avoided mass lockdowns but ultimately had a lower mortality rate than many other European countries.’
‘We need to make sure these institutions are in the best possible working order to face the challenges ahead. And we think that’s by being honest, not by covering over mistakes or being unwilling to face up to hard questions’
“Our testing resources weren’t all that good at the time…”
There is still no effective test for the C1984 so Bhattacharya needs to update his knowledge. In reality the C1984 was just re-badged ‘flu.
‘….we’d had a lot of independent labs that checked the validity of the test kit, and we found… I think it was a small error, 0.5%, in the false-positive rate, but we have these statistical methods to adjust for this, right? It’s an interesting statistical question, but it’s not something that was gonna invalidate the results of our study, which were published, by the way, in the “International Journal of Epidemiology.”
We have 3,000 people that we sampled in Santa Clara County. 50 of them were positive. Now, we had to do some waiting because there were too many people coming from richer parts than the poorer parts. That’s how we got the 2.8% prevalence. But anyways, we had 50 out of 3,000 positive. Okay, Stanford made us bring those 50 people back into the lab, even though that was part of our original protocol, and test them; that means draw blood from them; and have them tested using the pathologist test kit rather than the test kit we used, on the premise that the pathologist test kit was completely accurate and ours was crap. He found that, of those 50, 35 out of those 50 were positive on his test kit. Now, let’s say his test kit is 100% accurate. Well, what that means is that we have 15 people that we identified as positive that he identified as negative. False positives, right?…..Which is a 0.5% error rate…….’
Jay Bhattacharya May 2023
‘The SARS‑CoV‑2 & Flu A/B Rapid Antigen Test is a rapid chromatographic immunoassay for the simultaneous qualitative detection and differentiation of the nucleocapsid protein antigens of SARS‑CoV‑2, Influenza virus A, and Influenza virus B in human nasopharyngeal swab samples. This test is intended as an aid in the differential diagnosis of SARS‑CoV‑2, Influenza virus A, and Influenza virus B infections in individuals suspected of respiratory viral infections consistent with COVID‑19 or Influenza by their healthcare provider within the first 6 days of symptom onset. This product is intended for professional use in laboratory and near‑patient testing environments.’
‘Methods: The performance of the InstaView COVID-19/Flu Ag Combo Test, which was designed to simultaneously detect the SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and influenza B viruses, was analytically and clinically evaluated. Results: The InstaView COVID-19/Flu Ag Combo Test exhibited robust detection capabilities, accurately identifying SARS-CoV-2, influenza A, and influenza B viruses over a wide concentration range (1.41 × 103 to 7.05 × 104 TCID50/mL). Extensive testing against potential cross-reactants and interferences yielded no false-positive results, indicating the high specificity of the test. Clinical evaluation further confirmed the kit’s reliability, with sensitivity ranging from 95.1% to 98.2% for SARS-CoV-2, 88.9%-95.2% for influenza A, and 91.7%-100% for influenza B depending on the sample type. The specificity was consistently 100% for all of the targeted viruses.’
Performance evaluation of a SARS-CoV-2 and influenza A/B combo rapid antigen test May 2024
“These officers are no better than the Gestapo” – Nick Buckley on X is horrified by footage of police officers telling a man that asking someone to ‘speak English’ is a ‘hate crime’.
Monty Python alive and ill down the nick.
Are plods given any training these days or just simply stuffed into a uniform? The principal character was a scruffy, over weight, uneducated idiot. Britain’s finest
.
Blackbelt Barrister:
https://youtu.be/rrH1_Q3VUHU?si=jQKpVZh5OLJdTsEG
The man probably did say “speak English” but had to lie about it like a little boy not to get into trouble.
i’ve never actually heard police speak in this way, referring to “hate crimes” – I’ve read about it, but never actually seen it with my own eyes – but it’s really chilling. We’ve entered Orwell’s dystopia and there is no exaggeration in that.
A hate crime is nothing but a totalitarian thought control device.
“Royal Ballet School chief: plus-sized dancers are the future”
At last! A performance of Tchaikovsky’s forgotten ballet Dumbocella!
“Rayner calls in Army to tackle Birmingham bin crisis” – Military personnel will take up office-based roles to help during strike”
Shift a lot off bin bags from behind a desk do they? Ffs get the army clearing up the mess!
No, don’t get the Army doing it. Why should the troops come in and sort out this shit show? Why not use the pension pots of senior council officials to pay waste contractors instead?
An eminently sensible suggestion.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if 2TK and his deputy are currently looking at emulating Turdeau when he froze the bank accounts of the ‘dissident’ truckers and supporters, saying they were disrupting vital services.
Keir Starmer steels himself for the real battle: Labour v Reform
The voters made up their minds about the PM when he cut winter fuel payments while electricity prices were (still are) through the roof.
Voters probably made their minds up about Mr Farage during the UKIP years.
‘Farage’s income from media appearances, especially Russia Today, increased massively in the period from 2012 to 2018. He set up a limited company “Thorn in the Side” which had an income recorded at £9,737 in 2012. By May 2018, its income had increased to £548,573.’
‘Crypto’ Cotters isn’t helping…….
‘public documents suggest the 31-year-old resides in Montenegro, where he has been accused of laundering cryptocurrency to fund a political party – allegations his lawyers have strongly denied. But he remains active in British politics. Cottrell is seemingly still an unpaid aide to the Reform leader, whose side he is regularly seen at during party events….’
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/george-cottrell-nigel-farage-reform-geostrategy-international-unlimited-company-donations/
“The coalition treaty put together by the CDU and SPD parties is decidedly non-committal and unimaginative, writes Katja Hoyer in the Spectator.”
As with almost every article linked to in DS, I can’t read it so can only go by the headline. What did she expect? Isn’t the main point of the coalition to keep the “far right” out of power and continue the Uniparty policies of Nut Zero, the Great Replacement etc?
Look on the bright side, think of all the time you save by only reading headlines.
Very true! Probably most of the time the content is what one would expect, but I am a bit wary of commenting on things without having read the whole thing. Perhaps I should subscribe to some legacy media but I prefer to give my money to places like DS. Perhaps DS should link more often to the BBC and The Guardian
The good thing about reading such as BBC and Grauniad articles is that we know they are either lies or outright propoganda. Not that my opinion of these outlets is predetermined you understand. Definitely not.
Yes. The News Round-up is hardly a Round-up more a “here are some links to other subscription sites,” which is pointless.
You can usually read it by using the ‘show reader’ function in your browser, or there are other archives available. Not sure how quickly they are updated though, prob 24 hours
Thanks
I totally agree with Aimee Lou Wood here, just because something is supposed to be funny doesn’t mean it is funny, doesn’t mean it isn’t mean.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5yr7yy40j3o
Mean, funny, punching up, punching down all very much in the eye of the beholder. She sounds like one of the professionally offended. “Punching down” is a concept based on some idea that there is a fixed order of things it’s OK to take the piss out of. I don’t subscribe to that idea, because it leads to censorship and the definition of specific “victim” categories that cannot be made fun of.
Some things are objectively mean, by any decent standards, it’s not always merely in the eye of the beholder. For example, there definitely exists clear incidences of bullying, verbal bullying, which are not merely in the eye of the beholder. Nobody is saying SNL should be censored. It should be possible to condemn nasty and unintelligent ‘comedy’ without having to deal with suggestions that your condemnation leads to censorship. Nasty is nasty.
I think it’s pretty easy to slide from your position to cancelling people. You won’t slide, but others will. I simply do not have the energy to worry about what other people think or say about me – at least not this kind of stuff. If I think I have behaved badly I will try to reflect and be better, but I think I should try to refuse to be “offended” – and so should everybody else. Words are words.
A bit like Eddie Izzard – boring is the most complimentary accolade I can offer.