Y2Kyoto: UK Met Office Drops Seasonal Forecasting

http://m.washingtontimes.com//news/2010/mar/05/scientists-plot-to-hit-back-at-critics/

Looks like US Settled Science scientists are going to fight back!

Because hundreds of millions in taxpayer funded research funding and advocacy aren't enough to make their case!

Real scientists give a hypothesis credibility by trying to *disprove* it and failing. Where did all these people who practice science by fiddling with numbers until they come up with a graph which supports their predetermined conclusion even come from?

// the predictive capacity of all computer modeling rests: that "accuracy increases with the distance from the target". //

Funny. But true nonetheless.
You can find out the average min/max/ temp nest July just about anywhere to a greater accuracy than you can predict next Tuesday's equivalent.

I have no idea where you are going tonight but I can tell you where you will be going in 100 years.

"Where did all these people who practice science by fiddling with numbers until they come up with a graph which supports their predetermined conclusion even come from?"

From our socialist universities whose professors,in true communist style, preach "the end justifies the means".

Has anyone noticed a recurring theme in TV documentaries over the past few weeks - that of the 'five great extinctions'? It looks as if the greenies have found a new source of mass panic, now that global warming is being thoroughly discredited.
Like 'The Twelve Days of Christmas', will we soon be hearing about the newest aspect of their religion 'The Five Great Extinctions'. So far nobody seems to have attempted to use computer modeling to predict the date of the upcoming Sixth Extinction, but I don't think we'll have to wait much longer for it to become the major MSM obsession.

Interesting that Kate can link to past sda posts to make a point. She can do that because time is proving her integrity.

The MSM avoids their past because it would high light their position out in left field. (yes, both cases of.)

(A lot of John Cross in Kate's May 2007 post comments - where did he go? Anyone know who he is? Affiliated with?)

Real scientists give a hypothesis credibility by trying to *disprove* it and failing. Where did all these people who practice science by fiddling with numbers until they come up with a graph which supports their predetermined conclusion even come from?
Posted by: K Stricker at March 5, 2010 12:13 PM

And, this is exactly why I have distrusted "Global Warming" from the get go. It is also why I have marveled at close friends and associates, people I know, trust, and respect, have taken the AGW bait.

AGW science bears the following dubious traits:

1. It has been a closed shop -- underlying data and models are routinely withheld from scrutiny.
2. It is not falsifiable -- after 15 years of no statistically significant warming, and contrary to all AGW models, the theory is still advanced as "settled science."
3. Empirical evidence is secondary -- man-made models are given greater credence over actual, real-world, observations.
4. Unwillingness to hear/respect contrary views -- the "Denier" term says it all.

It is not science in any sense. There may have once been a time when AGW had at least a thin veneer of scientific credibility; however, that has long since vanished. AGW is no longer science...it bears all of the hallmarks of organized religion.

alberta clipper
its called the Nemesis theory.

the five great extinctions and multiple smaller (not minor) occur regularly over geological time. the theory is that the sun has a companion star ,possibly a neutron star that is on an elongated orbit. as it comes close to the sun it causes a disturbance in the Oort cloud and increases the chance of the earth being bombarded by comets or debris.

cal2 - fascinating. I'd never heard that theory before. Found this 2001 article, for those who might be interested:

http://tinyurl.com/3ph5s

Glad to know that I can now score a 10 out in the white @ 90m rather than having to hit that pissy little gold thing in the middle!

liberally thinking, this quote

we're in a street fight against well-funded, merciless enemies who play by entirely different rules," Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University researcher, said

is especially telling. Except that Mr. Ehrlich is a bit confused as to who is well funded and merciless. Obviously, no one likes to think of themselves in that manner.

liberally thinking says "Looks like US Settled Science scientists are going to fight back!"

Except one wonders why scientist would feel the need to "fight back"...unless, of course, they are more advocates than scientists. True scientists would welcome sceptical analysis of their work. Advocates, on the other hand....not so much.

liberally thinking, is your name intended to be the perfect oxymoron that it is, or was that an accident?

A little context would be interesting, I'm sure.

The UK metoffice has had two rather visible off-target seasonal forecasts in terms of their summer 2009 and winter 2009-10 outlooks. (Nobody really cares about autumn and spring but they had outlooks for those as well).

Now I've got to say, the UK metoffice had done fairly well from about 2005 to 2008 in these forecasts, which I monitored as part of my own interest in the field of climate prediction and long-range forecasting.

Their forecast for winter 2008-09 was not very specific and was widely seen as a hedged bet in advance of what many private forecasters were saying might be a colder than normal UK winter (which it was).

Then for the summer of 2009 they came out with a "warm, dry" outlook and called it a possible "bar-be-que summer" in their press release and news conference (sometime around May 2009). To be fair, the summer was perceived this way in southeast England, but the further west and north you went in the UK, the wetter the summer turned out. Ireland (not covered in their forecast) had a record wet summer. So the public tended to get restless about that outlook especially if they didn't live in Kent.

The winter forecast was a deer-caught-in-the-headlights disaster. The people who make the UK metoffice forecasts are clearly "warmists" and just could not bring themselves to state the rather obvious facts that the dice were loaded for a cold winter. Every private forecaster of any reputation in the UK was saying either cold or very cold. The signs were fairly clear and yet the official forecast came out with some gobbly-de-gook cover-ass statements about "it could be mild, could be near average, or could be cold" that really said nothing of any use to anybody.

I think they are truly spooked by the downturn in European temperatures since mid-2007, because back in 2006 (a warm year) and through the winter of 2006-07 (a very mild winter) they were pooh-poohing anybody who dared to suggest natural variability was still alive and kicking, and that the quiet sun episode was a golden opportunity for cold to win some battles in the near future.

This is the context of the decision -- they just can't bring themselves to do seasonal forecasting the way other, more objective, scientists do it. So rather than actually learn something or contract out to more advanced workers in the field, they just took their ball and went home.

Typical of the warmist crowd, you either agree with them, or you're cut off from further discussion. Except in this case, the public thought they were paying for a service and are asking where's the refund?

Seasonal forecasts will continue to be available in the UK from private sources and these are bound to receive more publicity now than they did before this fiasco, so they have only succeeded in weakening the case for funding in general.

Burt Rutan's article (http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm)
on AGW and other pending disasters is worth reading. He concludes
that great big fast rocks are the principal things
that we have to be concerned about - and we can do
something about them.

Rutan probably underestimates the damage potential
of large-scale vulcanism. Nonetheless his point
is well taken. Even major earthquakes are not very dangerous
if buildings are constructed to be earthquake resistant, and if a tsunami warning system is in place and is used.

By "we" I mean informed conservative technologically-oriented people, who think that
deep-space radars are a good thing, and don't shrivel up and die at the
thought of a few nuclear-armed rocket interceptors being available.
As for the typical leftist, well - for them an asteroid will be an act of the God they don't believe in.

K Stricker asks,"Where did all these people who practice science by fiddling with numbers until they come up with
a graph which supports their predetermined conclusion even come from?"
Well, the practice justifies mediocrities. And the money they spend on computers.
And "truth", as is taught in the modern Arts,
is an artifact, while "reality" is a construct of discourse.

Newton didn't think that way, of course, and his
attack on Descarte's model of the solar system was
to the effect that it couldn't be quantitatively
correct. Again, after two centuries of very hard
work on celestial mechanics, the physicists and
astronomers of the late 19th century were not
about to parametrise away the minute discrepancy
between the observed and the predicted precession
rates of Mercury's orbit. They took it seriously,
much to their credit because the calculations are
not easy.

There are many other examples.

Romans 1:22 pretty much sums it up. "professing themselves to be wise, they became fools."

mike

CanData in question? But, .....
...-

"Swedes call out Jones on data availability

Climate scientist delivers false statement in parliament enquiry

It has come to our attention, that last Monday (March 1), Dr. Phil Jones, head of the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (CRU), in a hearing with the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee made a statement in regards to the alleged non-availability for disclosure of Swedish climate data.

Dr. Jones asserted that the weather services of several countries, including Sweden, Canada and Poland, had refused to allow their data to be released, to explain his reluctance to comply with Freedom of Information requests.

This statement is false and misleading in regards to the Swedish data." (more)

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/05/swedes-call-out-jones-on-data-availability/

Cal2 - I've heard numerous times about the spacing of the extinction level events, but thought that the current prevailing wisdom was that it had to do with the "turbulence" within the galaxy. That is, that our solar system's passage up and down across the plane of the galactic ecliptic brought us into and out of areas that are more densely packed with matter. It would be like the likelihood of a comet having a high-relative speed encounter with a meteoroid in the Oort cloud (while travelling at low speed on the leisurely part of their orbit) compared with a high-speed impact within the orbit of Mars (where the comets travel fast). Long odds in both cases, but we are talking very long gaps between fast and large strikes on earth.

Ive heard the theory that the solar system passes up and down through the galactic plane although its a little difficult to figure why it would be following a waveform up and down. I think more probably we are traveling in a circular and planer orbit around the centre of the galaxy and passing through denser and less dense areas in the galactic arms which are of course a form of density wave.

I would hazard the guess that few, if any, real scientists (including those that are proponents of AGW) would "not" agree that the science is flawed...

I would also guess that the Alternative Energy Policy is likewise flawed.... Windmills & Solar are promoted to over extend State Budgets (same as poring tax money down a gopher hole)

The goal of the UN/EU is not Science, or Energy; both will be thrown under the Bus after the goal of Global Governance is achieved...

The US health care is likewise a policy to over extend State “Medicaid” when unemployment reaches 45%, which it will with Cap & trade.

The real fight is right ahead.....

Reply to Colin at 12:51 PM

Cargo Cult Science

"Cargo cult science is a term used by physicist Richard Feynman during his commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, United States, in 1974 to describe work that has the semblance of being scientific, but is missing "a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty".

Since not many people at SDA cannot read (but I didn't want to leave anyone out and seem elitist), here's a YouTube video called, "Richard Feynman on "Social Sciences".

I have recently read two books by Robert W. Felix........."Magnetic Reversals and Evolutionary Leaps" and "Not by Fire but by ICE".
My conclusion is that much like reading Aquinas...you may not be convinced but you will certainly be inspired to think.

And another take on the same story...

http://newsarse.com/2010/03/05/met-office-to-stop-pretending-it-has-any-clue-what-the-weather-will-be-like-next-month/

If a weather forecast for tomorrow is iffy, it's intuitively obvious that computer modeling projections are exponentially less reliable. For god's sake, man, just open the window, look at the thermometer and make educated guesses re cloud formations. The only difference will be increased accuracy.