After a year of damaging revelations about the state of the Met Office’s temperature measuring network, the Green Blob-funded ‘fact-checker’ Science Feedback has sprung to the defence of the state-funded U.K. weather service. It has published a long ‘fact check’ seeking to exonerate practices that have recently come to light including the locating of stations with huge heat corrupted ‘uncertainties’ and the publication of invented data from 103 non-existent sites. Inept is a word that springs to mind. At one point, Science Feedback justifies the estimation of data at the non-existent stations by referring to the hastily changed Met Office explanation for station/location long-term averages. The original and now deleted Met Office webpage referenced station names and provided single location coordinates including one improbable siting next to the sea on Dover beach. This would appear to be a new low in the world of so-called fact-checking – designating copy as ‘misleading’ based on an explanation changed after the article was published.
The first Daily Sceptic article reporting on the existence of 103 non-existent stations can be read here. The second appeared last month here and detailed the unannounced web changes and the obvious cover-up intended to deflect criticism from the invented station data.
Under the verdict “misleading” Science Feedback claims that the average data going back 60 years for stations is not “fabricated” but estimated using “well-correlated related neighbouring stations”. This is said to be a scientific method that is published in peer-reviewed literature. The Met Office discloses it has “relatively few” stations with 30-year data from which long-term averages can be calculated. The distinction between estimated and fabricated is moot. A pundit calling the winner of a sports match before it has taken place is an estimation of the result, and the opinion is no less a fabrication or invention however distinguished the pundit and however well-regarded any peers signalling agreement might be.
Let us examine the claim of “well-correlated neighbouring stations” by taking an example from the Met Office’s now renamed “location-specific long-term averages” climate database. Cawood in the West Riding of Yorkshire is a pristine Class 1 site designated by the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO) as providing uncorrupted data over a large surrounding area. It also has an immaculate record of temperature recordings from the same site stretching back to 1959. But no rolling 30-year average for Cawood is provided. Instead the Met Office flags data for five other sites between two and 27 miles distant. Unlike Cawood, all of these have average data despite the fact that four no longer exist and the fifth, High Mowthorpe, is 27 miles away and at a 163 metres higher elevation.
Again we are obliged to the super sleuthing of Ray Sanders for bringing the Cawood data to light. He is not inclined to be charitable and notes:
The Met Office has opted not to perform a simple long-term averaging representation from just one Class 1 site’s readings (with no other inputs required) and in preference has supplied no fewer than five alternative much inferior sites with all manner of adjusted, amended, modified and likely corrupted so-called ‘data’ to confuse the public. The term ’smoke and mirrors’ comes to mind.
Why is the Met Office not showing the data for the long-running Class 1 Cawood site, he asks, adding: “What are you trying to hide?”
The Science Feedback puff for the Met Office takes aim at both the investigative work conducted by the Daily Sceptic and Ray Sanders who publishes on the Tallbloke’s Talkshop blog. It has all the hallmarks of being written in collaboration with the Met Office since its long and detailed explanations have mostly come from the latter.
Science Feedback is a partner with Meta where it acts to “verify the credibility of viral content” on Facebook and Instagram. In 2020 it was given seed funding from the Google News Initiative, “to build a database of fact-checked content, allowing to identify sources that repeatedly spread misinformation”. Regular readers will recall that Google has past form in trying to disadvantage inconvenient temperature information on the internet. In 2022, Dr. Roy Spencer’s page detailing accurate satellite temperature data, showing less long-term warming than that claimed by surface measurements, was kicked off Google AdSense for publishing “unreliable and harmful claims”. The decision looks more stupid by the day with Spencer’s UAH measurements confirming the recent short-lived spike in the global temperature. Regular readers will also recall that at a 2022 World Economic Forum ‘disinformation’ seminar, the UN’s global communication chief Melissa Fleming noted that her organisation had partnered with Google to ensure that only UN-approved climate research results appeared at the top of search inquiries. “We are becoming more proactive, we own the science and we think the world should know it,” she boasted.
Last March, the Daily Sceptic shocked the climate science world by revealing via a Freedom of Information (FOI) request that nearly eight in 10 Met Office sites across the U.K. were so poorly sited in junk Class 4 and super junk Class 5 that they had WMO ‘uncertainties’ of 2°C and 5°C respectively. Yet these measurements, used to calculate data to one hundredth of a degree centigrade, are a key climate indication backing the Net Zero fantasy.
Science Feedback states that the Met Office “clearly explains” on its website that many of its stations are of higher classes 3 and 4. Looking at the block graph above, a more accurate and clearer explanation would be that most, indeed almost all, of its stations are in Classes 4 and 5. The Met Office notes that WMO guidelines do not state that Class 5 sites cannot be used for climate reporting. In fact the WMO guidance states that a Class 1 location can be considered as a reference site, while a Class 5 site is a “inappropriate environment for a meteorological measurement that is intended to be representative of a wide area”. What this means is that ‘record’ temperatures collected besides airport runways swept by jet exhaust are useful for pilots operating in the immediate environment but are a bit of an ask when it comes to pumping the Net Zero climate emergency narrative.
As explained to Science Feedback by a Met Office spokesman, continued the curious fact check, “data will only be quoted in climate records if the weather station it comes from meets inspection standards”. Well it seems that that this depends on who is conducting the “inspections” – not the WMO, that is for sure. According to information released under a FOI request to Paul Homewood, the Met Office states it will only quote records from classes 1 to 4. Data from Class 5 “will be flagged and not quoted in national records”, it adds.
In reality, the Met Office barely pauses for breath in its rush to declare recent Class 5 site records. These include the highest daily maximum temperature in Northern Ireland set in 2021 at Castlederg. The highest January monthly temperature was set last year at Achfary and this Class 5 site also holds the record set in December 2019. Three U.K. area records have also been set at Class 5 locations including England NW, East Anglia and England SE and Central S. This latter record was provided by St. James’s Park, which was one of five sites that were said to top 40°C on July 19th, 2022. This particular event was lauded at the time by the Met Office as a “milestone in climate history”. The record 40.3°C was a 60-second spike of 0.6°C recorded around the same time as three Typhoon jets were landing at RAF Coningsby, while another 40°C site was Northolt airport, also designated Class 5. In total, all but two claimed records since 2000 arise from Class 4 and 5 locations.
The Met Office explains to Science Feedback that it continues to use its higher class stations because it has its own “long-standing inspections standards”. In other words, it marks its own homework as the block graph below, again the result of an FOI request, shows.
Clearly a big improvement since the Met Offices rates over nine out of 10 of its stations as ‘Excellent’, ‘Good’ and ‘Satisfactory’. Those of a cynical nature might riff on the warning from an earlier age that self-regulation, like self-stimulation, leads to blindness. Just 27 ‘Unsatisfactory’ stations, presumably real shockers, are to be found on the naughty step. The in-house inspections are said to “ensure data quality and minimise uncertainty”. If a site falls below the acceptable inspection standards it will be either closed or its measurements will not be used in climate records, promises the Met Office. Possibly an outbreak of extremely short sight explains why the highest recorded ‘record’ temperature in Wales was recorded at the ‘Unsatisfactory’ site of Hawarden Airport in 2022.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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“Democracy is the worst form of government………………………apart from all the rest”– Churchill. ———But ofcourse we put a cover over his statue now and a blanket over that democracy.
True varmit.. but Churchill wasn’t all that he was cracked up to be either.. he had his owners/controllers who pointed him in the
rightdirection he was required to go..Oh..look.. the Churchillians are out in force today. -6 red ones at the moment for Will L telling a few home truths about their hero. Get your heads out of your school history books and you might learn something instead of being led by the nose for the rest of your lives..
Incredible how people yearn for a saviour (past or present), isn’t it, Will?
I am a big fan of Maggie T, but I know she screwed up on several things. Just another flawed human being…
It sure is MAK.. the blind being led by the compromised and blackmailed..
Jeez.. its -14 now.. definite bullseye for Will.. ‘-)
I don’t have political hero’s mate. I gave a quote a politician (Churchill) made and you get yourself into a bit of a tizzy. So it isn’t really the case that I am pro Churchill is it? But it is certainly the case you are ANTI Churchill. ———-Bu are there any statues you wouldn’t put a blanket over? Maybe Mao or Corbyn or Stalin, or maybe Sturgeon or how about Gordon Brown or Tony (Iraq) Blair.
I’m in no tizzy and I’m not your mate.
Didn’t you note I started my post “True varmit” You obviously didn’t pick up on the nuance.
As for the rest of the unnecessary insulting tripe you’ve just thrown at me.. I’ll treat it with the contempt it deserves..
You also said the “Churchillians are out in force today”—–Indulge in your free speech if you want but don’t expect I won’t do the same “mate”. ————–I also have in my time quoted Hitler, Stalin, Thatcher Reagan, Eisenhower and a whole host of people. ——Quoting Stalin, does not make me a Stallininian.
Churchill quoting Aristotle actually.
You clearly do not understand US politics, laws, and their Constitution.
And the Conservative Party will quietly support this as their only means of survival while publicly expressing detailed concerns over timing, names and procedures.
Representative democracy only works when our elected “representatives” serve US.
That stopped with the ceaseless attempts to scupper Brexit by the House. Now Covid, and the slavish adherence of almost all MPs to the “Safe and effective” lie”, the hounding of Bridgen, coupled with the same worship of “Climate Change” shows clearly that whoever the House does represent, it is not we, the people.
Really, really DO NOT VOTE. You are voting for Davos, whoever is elected.
Yes.. Charmer Starmer even admitted he works for Davos on the BBC, and that parliament was just a talking shop. If that’s not in your face telling you how it is, I don’t know what is!
You mean you had to wait for Starmer to tell you what most of us already knew 30 years ago. —–Wakey wakey.
Democracy was always a sham, even more so when people are ‘comfortable’ and don’t feel threatened. Parliament and its occupants can pass whatever it wants with little hindrance.
I remember distinctly many years ago an old man (WW2 vet) telling me that you won’t see change until people don’t have food in their bellies. I was fifteen, he was about to retire. He also told me that by the time I was his age the country would be strangled by regulations. I thought he was just a miserable old sod.. what did he know after all..
He was right of course. Slow strangulation is the name of the game, but the pace and lies definitely quickened somewhat when Blair came to power. The slide downhill into the abyss and the populations ignorance of it go hand in hand.
Parliament should be the servant of the people, but relatively comfortable people like to be taken care of.. FATAL!
Indeed they should be, and paid by us via the Treasury. But in reality, it doesn’t look all that democratic. Back to basics via articles like this one: https://www.britannica.com/topic/democracy
In recent times, Parliament gave up and let bureaucracy go mad, and get away with it in a panic, e.g. In the modern world, we are all influenced by organisations that are not governed by “democracy” to the extent that some would like us to believe.
Good article that.. thanks for posting.
Democracy is sovereignty of the individual with no Earthly power above them, being governed by a common law, shared morals, values, manners and the interdependence of its members that specialisation and division of labour brings.
Democracy essentially is the equal distribution of power to each individual in society, so none has more than the other, none can impose his will on another.
Democracy prevents concentration of power in the hands of one or a groups to stop tyranny.
Democracy therefore prevents Government – which is the concentration of power to one or a group and therefore tyranny – from forming. The will of the majority is a tyranny of the majority which is no better than a tyranny of one.
Democratic Government is oxymoronic.
Representative Government by its nature will inevitably be corrupt and will corrupt, and bribery will be its modus operandi.
Voting your sovereignty to others to hold power over you is voting for your enslavement.
So indeed DO NOT VOTE – it makes no difference anyway.
I agree entirely.. good post..
So, the Free are always running to Freedom… and running free.
Freedom.. what’s that? Didn’t Kris Kristofferson define it once as “nothing left to lose” in his Me and Bobby McGee song..
I will give you the 20 pence version of your ramble. ———“The best government is the government that governs the least”.
The left will destroy everything because of its conviction that nobody else should be permitted to govern.,
I think you need the past instead of the future tense in that sentence.
We have never had a Parliamentary democracy, not since 1689. GK Chesterton said it best, the House of Parliament is really the House of Lords. I would say it is the House of Tyranny and now the House of Pharma-ment. So now we have the House of Faceless Bureaucracy now usurping the House of Tyranny and Pharmament. Not a surprise.
These changes will just make it easier to impose the next LD and scamdemic. The former House of Tyranny (Pharmament) can simply blame the new House of Tyranny ($cientocracy).
Sadly, the Blairite era created a European-style political class – a technocratic one that considers itself a shepherd and ordinary citizens sheep. As herd animals, we can be penned up, quarantined and forced to have any medical injections they want us to and there’s no answering back: de-banking and unpersonning is easy in response. More than anything, individual agency is to be feared. They are absolutely the sort of people Ayn Rand wrote about as threatening our freedoms. This is Frankfurt School ideology reaching the conclusion of its century-long conquest of our institutions.
Ah yes.. the Frankfurt School and their ‘critical theory’. The destroyers of anything good/joyous and proud of it..
Parliamentary sovereignty?
May I refer you to the British Constitution dated 1215 and Bill of Rights 1689.
The people are sovereign, the King isn’t, Parliament isn’t.
Seriously?
What connection do elections have to democracy, given that the Mongol Horde was exemplary in this regard? No Mongol warrior of my acquaintance has ever thought he was thus living in a ‘democracy’.
What connection does an all-powerful, unaccountable body of professional liars have to do with being democratic? They’re frontmen for the Great Nobles they replaced, freeing them from any semblance of responsibility for the peasantry.
That’s beautiful. But our parliament disappeared during the covid panic and handed all the levers of power to a bunch of technocrats and bureaucrats.
I don’t know about Gordon Brown’s constitution, but I want a constitution that enshrines my fundamental right to freedom, and nothing else.
Without it I am at the mercy of a parliament that has proven itself not just incapable of protecting my rights but prepared to trample all over them or, in the case of the WHO treaty, likely to give them away to foreign technocrats and oligarchs.
The US Bill of Rights looks pretty good to me:
The Bill of Rights: A Transcription | National Archives
I am quite prepared to sign, but I will not give my phone number, and I don’t see why it is necessary to give full address details.
I gave my address but invented a phone number.
Blair/Brown started the process with their flawed devolution settlement. And the Not-a-Conservative-Government has done what about it? Precisely nothing.
They refuse to countenance any kind of Constitutional reform, so by default leave it to Labour to mangle whenever the sheeple are stupid enough to vote them into power.
And that’s what’s going to happen again because there is absolutely no point voting for the cowards, idiots and incompetents which make up the CON Party.
There had to be a reason why the Tories were repeatedly working towards their own destruction but to be honest I could not get my head round it, this supplies the answer.
Bliar and Brown with a sprinkling of Kneel – the treasonous triumvirate.
Why does a petition need my telephone number and full address. Name , email and postcode is all that is needed. Sorry won’t sign.