Fact Checking The Met Office’s Fact Checks
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dennis Ambler
It seems the Met Office is getting worried that its one-sided reporting of climate change is becoming exposed, as people are beginning to check the facts for themselves:
A toolkit of information you can trust.
There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is affecting the health of the planet and the wellbeing of billions of people around the world. The impacts are affecting the lives and livelihoods of many, sometimes on a daily basis.
Despite the evidence and public concern about climate change – 82% of people in the UK are at least fairly concerned with 39% very concerned according to a recent survey by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – there is a proliferation of climate misinformation especially on social media. As one of the world’s leading weather and climate organisations we believe it is important we all have access to trusted, up to date information on climate change.
In this age where the flow of information is shared so quickly, we have developed a toolkit to provide information and clarity around topics on which misinformation is sometimes shared. This will enable individuals to form opinions from information based on peer-reviewed science. Much of our scientific research forms part of the national and international scientific evidence for climate change and climate change impacts. These pages include the latest climate science from our own research as well as the latest internationally agreed science collated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
There are certain areas that are regularly questioned and unfortunately some of this scepticism can deflect attention away from important issues such as the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. When we spot themes of climate misinformation, we will update the content on these pages to give you access to trusted information on what we believe is one of the greatest challenges to the future of our planet and society.
If you would like to find out more about what you can do to help tackle climate change, visit our Get Climate Ready webpages.
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/climate-change/tackling-climate-misinformation
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Well, if it comes down to misinformation, let’s take a closer look at this latest missive from the Met Office:
There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is affecting the health of the planet and the wellbeing of billions of people around the world. The impacts are affecting the lives and livelihoods of many, sometimes on a daily basis
This is an utterly absurd and baseless claim. Heaven knows what they mean about “health of the planet”, but what about the rest of the guff?
Billions of people around the world are better off than ever before. The idea that climate change is affecting their lives on a daily basis is the sort of lie that you expect from the BBC/Guardian, not from what is supposed to be a reputable scientific organisation.
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39% very concerned
I have no doubt that this is true. It is why they are “very concerned” that we should all be worried about, because it is an utterly irrational reaction, certainly for anybody living in Britain.
The blame for this sad state of affairs lies mainly with the BBC led media operation. But if the Met Office believe they are science-based, they should be doing all they can to add balance, and debunk all of the silly scare stories. Unfortunately they are all too keen to be part of that propaganda effort.
Peer-reviewed science
As most honest scientists admit, peer review is grossly overrated. Instead of appealing to authority, the Met Office should be prepared to debate on the basis of actual data.
internationally agreed science
If it is “agreed”, it is not science!
“We believe it is important we all have access to trusted, up to date information on climate change.
On the contrary, the Met Office make it extremely difficult to obtain up to date data, such as daily temperature stats. Their policy appears to be – don’t bother your little heads with facts, just believe what we tell you!
So that’s five pieces of misinformation in a very short statement. Not a very good look is it?
Their web-page includes some examples of the “misinformation” they have felt compelled to correct:
This is a strawman. As far as I am aware, nobody has accused the Met Office of doing this.
Rather, it is the BBC and some other media outlets who have been accused of changing their colour schemes.
Contrary to their denial, this is precisely what they have done, when they introduced Version 2 last year. The adjustments made had the effect of increasing the warming trend since the 1970s:
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.files.wordpress.com/2023/07/image-17.png
Their own data clearly shows that the warming trend in the 1990s has since fizzled out, and that there has effectively been little or no warming in the last two decades:
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadcet/data/download.html
The fact that it is warmer now than it was 360 years ago is irrelevant. Maybe temperatures will start increasing again sometime in the future. But the Met Office should be honest and openly admit that at the moment they have stopped rising, instead of trying to obscure the fact.
This particular sentence sums up the Met Office’s motivation:
There are certain areas that are regularly questioned and unfortunately some of this scepticism can deflect attention away from important issues such as the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
What they are in effect saying is that, in their minds, climate change is too important a topic to allow inconvenient facts to get in the way.
Comments are closed.
NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Hardly surprising if the only people actually asked are alarmists
>>82% of people in the UK are at least fairly concerned
“There is overwhelming evidence…”
If true, then no more need be said…
“Are you not overwhelmed?”
I keep looking for this evidence but find nothing more than observations. And I see a great deal of evidence that such observations have been seen in the past when there was no additional CO2.
‘Despite the evidence and public concern about climate change – 82% of people in the UK are at least fairly concerned with 39% very concerned’
I think they get good marks on their propaganda. They have, allegedly, ‘39% very concerned.’ Anything over 20% could be considered a success.
Though it means FA how many are concerned.
“How many fools does it take to make up a public?” — Chamfort
I bet the cost of my next pint that the person who wrote this is from some spurious information department with an arts degree. Too much flowery language. Let me guess, an English Lit graduate or is it with an “education” in another dubious marxist arts subject like the BBC’s hapless Georgina Rannard, the modern history degreed regurgitator of gibberish about klymutt and cyense.
As for the weasel word “misinformation”, that means, anything that disagrees with what those trying to control your lives and your money say.
Talking of peer review …
Peer Review is suffocating Science
I trust the Met Office almost exactly as I trust the BBC, i.e, not at all. Everything both organisations say needs independently checking against genuine data.
‘there is a proliferation of climate misinformation especially on social media’ — Met Office translation: that’s our job.
Yes I know too, but the problem is that so many folk have “their own take” on weather & climate. It’s the way we as individuals respond / reply to the nonsense. Effectively it all just ADDS to the spin. Like politics, there are so many sides to the dyke. Unfortunately the weather is not a political event: It is Physics in action: but how you go about understanding & teaching it to masses who are pre-programmed outside the Physics Classroom, is beyond my AGri-Engineer’s Paygrade. ( Great cop-out, eh? ), yet WE in my general industry are supposed to be responsible for so much? what utter rubbish.
The question for me is why do they spout this guff? What’s in it for them? Is it a dictat from the top and if so why? Surely the met orifice will get funding either way.
The elite have bought into the UN Agenda to change the world:
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the industrial revolution. That will not happen overnight and it will not happen at a single conference on climate change, be it COP 15, 21, 40 – you choose the number. It just does not occur like that. It is a process, because of the depth of the transformation.”
Christiana Figueres (former UN Climate Envoy)
“on what we believe is one of the greatest challenges to the future of our planet and society.”
Thats why. They have convinced themselves they are saving us all. Such beliefs are the hardest to counter and are almost impossible to change.
That they can somehow see in their “science” problems that their science does not show, illustrates the delusion.
They probably want another supercomputer 🙂
Keep up the good work Paul. We need to hear a balancing view to all the dangerous propaganda out there.
Even the IPCC admits it is simply not possible to predict the future climate:
“”The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
IPCC Third Assessment Report 2001
Clearly, the Met Office. BBC…. et al with the increasing alarmism are worried that the silent majority are not buying into the great CC scam.
A robust scientific theory should withstand and possibly benefit from robust peer review.
It’s almost as if the believers do not want their belief to be peer reviewed.
No, that’s not the purpose of peer review. Hypotheses are proven by replication and reproduction after publication, and by their demonstrable usefulness in forecasting the future. That takes years usually. Peer review is merely to assess whether a paper is interesting/original and shows something has been done that merits publication. Nowadays, peer review doesn’t even correct basic errors, as many have shown. Many, if not most, papers are false, as Ioannidis and others have conclusively demonstrated, and as Retraction Watch continues to show. Thats fine but unfortunately we have organisations such as the Met Office falsely claiming that peer reviewed science is “the science” when it is not.
” No, that’s not the purpose of peer review ”
Is there a universally agreed purpose for peer review? Or perhaps your opinion of the purpose of peer review is different to my opinion?
“What an Audacious Hoax Reveals About Academia”
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/new-sokal-hoax/572212/
As every scientists should know and should acknowledge, peer review is simply a means of getting published. It emphatically DOES NOT MEAN the paper is correct or even free from basic error. As Ioannidis, the Replication Crisis and various projects have shown, a large proportion of published papers are wrong – probably a majority, possibly most. Science is what is replicated and/or reproduced and what can be used to make reliable forecasts about future events or experiments. I have never seen replication/reproduction in climate science that confirms any of the main claims, only a small number of papers that have been shown to be wrong, usually by non-climate scientists. If what we know about peer review is right then at least 50% of the Met Office’s papers are wrong and so should not be relied upon in any way. To say that they represent “fact” is absolutely false.
Another mechanism that I suspect dominates the much celebrated “self correcting” tendency in science is just plain old forgetfulness. Findings hailed by their authors as ground-breaking or paradigm-shifting just never get taken up by colleagues to be incorporated into their world model. If they stop to think about it at all colleagues doubtless recognise their own hyperbolising. It’s just part of the game to please bosses and PR departments so the organisation can boast about being “world-class” which those high-ups know no-one is ever going to fact-check (for fear that someone might then be prompted to do it for their own organisation).
So, it’s just an ineluctable process of fading away, not to be heard of again. No need for specific rebuttal.
“The Conceptual Penis as a Social Construct” was peer reviewed and published.
The fact that it was deliberately intended to be genuinely and completely meaningless (indeed a joke) still didn’t stop it getting published.
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
p.s. it’s also quite funny!
Thanks for that Ray!
Incredibly, the authors brought climate change into it!
The common people know that the Met cannot even get tomorrows weather right, and do not believe it can predict the future. The Met is a member of the WMO, and one can assume this UN body is corrupt and pushing an ideological agenda, just like the WHO which is controlled by China. There is a historic body of weather data, however, even with super computers and numerous “models” past weather cannot be reconciled or replicated, and the inconvenient truths revealed by past data are ignored, smoothed, and even “disappeared”. Given the vastness of the oceans and the small collective area of countries which have been measuring data, the idea of world temperatures and weather being predicted accurately in the near term is wishful thinking. Long term weather predictions are impossible and this makes climate prognostications futile and dangerous.
‘There is overwhelming evidence that climate change is affecting the health of the planet’
“We use volume to make up for our lack of quality of evidence.”
And what’s this planet worshiping schtick? Are they primitives, scared by an eclipse?
As George Carlin pointed out 50 years ago, this big old dirt ball will keep flying around the sun NO MATTER what Man does.
The first time I saw George Carlin he gave his “Farting in Public” sketch. I literally thought I was going to die laughing as it really messed up my breathing.
‘As one of the world’s leading weather and climate organisations’
That’s misinformation right there. The Met Orifice IS one of the world’s leading weather and climate ACTIVIST organisations.
‘can deflect attention away from important issues such as the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions’
OMFG . . . throw away all the science by recommending a specific – political – policy. Many things can be done. Nothing can be done (best policy).
Argumentum ad vericundiam.
The Met Office is qualified to make authoritative statements on weather; they are NOT qualified to make political statements. They are false authorities.
Some “peer reviewed”evidence of the causes of “Climate Change”
“Toxic hypermasculinity derives its significance directly from the conceptual penis and applies itself to supporting neocapitalist materialism, which is a fundamental driver of climate change, especially in the rampant use of carbon-emitting fossil fuel technologies and careless domination of virgin natural environments. We need not delve deeply into criticisms of dialectic objectivism, or their relationships with masculine tropes like the conceptual penis to make effective criticism of (exclusionary) dialectic objectivism. All perspectives matter.”
“Conceptual Penis”?…..total bollocks more like – which is exactly what it was intended to be. But it was peer reviewed!
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/conceptual-penis-social-contruct-sokal-style-hoax-on-gender-studies/
Seriously (and at the risk of invoking Godwin’s Law) this climate change BS is/has turned into the rise stage of the Third Reich.
It is surprising that so many people (18%) are not brainwashed given the daily junk science / fear-campaign that we are all being exposed to (without balanced scientific comment from the Met office of course). Of course if you ask anyone if they would like less emissions they will answer yes: if you then ask how much they will pay for that a different answer is obtained. If the people were properly informed about the cost / benefits to the UK, or even the world, of Net-zero (£ trillions for net-zero benefit) the reaction would be very different indeed.
The MO has sold itself to its political masters – it is nothing more than a propaganda unit now that increasing numbers just laugh at – if I need weather news, I use more reputable, unbiased sources now, or look outside
I’ve enjoyed adding inconvenient truths to the comments on their daily YouTube bulletins.
“Despite the evidence and public concern about climate change – 82% of people in the UK are at least fairly concerned with 39% very concerned according to a recent survey by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero –”
If you are not prepared to publish alternative viewpoints to vote on as the Met Office, the BBC and the MSM will not allow, then how can the wider public give their balanced viewpoint voting on the subject ? So Met Office percentage figures are meaningless.
The worm is turning.
Globally, ever-decreasing numbers believe climate change is a serious problem, now down to less than half:
Concern about climate change shrinks globally as threat grows, survey shows
Fewer than half of those questioned in global poll believe climate change poses a ‘very serious threat’
Concerns about climate change shrank across the world last year, with fewer than half of those questioned in a new survey believing it posed a “very serious threat” to their countries over the next 20 years.
Only 20% of people in China, the world’s biggest polluter, said they believed that climate change was a very serious threat, down 3 percentage points from the last survey by Gallup World Risk Poll in 2019.
Globally, the figure fell by 1.5 percentage points to 48.7% in 2021. The survey was based on more than 125,000 interviews in 121 countries.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/19/concern-about-climate-change-shrinks-globally-as-threat-grows-survey-shows
Hopefully, people have started thinking for themselves again instead of succumbing to the brainwashing by politicians, the MSM and the so-called “education system”.
>>Globally, ever-decreasing numbers believe climate change is a serious problem, now down to less than half:
Talking of the Graun/Observer there is this amazing piece of dual standard hypocrisy today.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/aug/27/mi6-richard-dearlove-covid-artificial-intelligence-misunderstands-science
So our Doctor Grimes opines “Science is not an arcane collection of dogma but an active and systematic method of inquiry. Science pivots on making testable predictions, which are updated as new findings emerge, to reflect the totality of evidence. Scientific positions are always transient, subject to revision when stronger evidence emerges. All scientific knowledge is provisional, therefore scientific advice is prone to change and can evolve at dizzying speeds during periods of intense discovery.”
But then at the end he states “Despite the incontrovertible evidence of a human-mediated climate crisis,”
So it’s not science now it is “incontrovertible” as in “not able to be denied or disputed.”
” So it’s not science now it is “incontrovertible” as in “not able to be denied or disputed.” ”
= religion
“All scientific knowledge is provisional…”
Except “climate science”…
Buffoon!
My second post on this issue.
What is written here by whichever faceless numpty is antithetical to the very definition of science”. Science is not opinion. Anyone can put forward a thesis. What is important is the weight of evidence in the form of statistically significant empirical data obtained by falsifiable methodology claimed to support that thesis. Doors are shut by the people putting forward a thesis which then fails to satisfy the scientific method and demonstrate emphatic empirical support. Those doors are not, I repeat NOT shut by individuals, group or algorithms because what is then delivered is nothing more than the view of whichever minority group( and they are a minority) pulling the strings from the shadows. Such activities should never be allowed even the pretence of representing scientifically based conclusions.
Do not underestimate the thought fascists. They want power and that means one “official opinion” be that more akin to social or political science than physics.
More theological than scientific!
They use the word ‘science,’ not because they believe in it, but because you do.