From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.

Greensand's remedy is, I fear, no remedy at all.

Government should be and largely has become confined to areas where for every policy there must necessarily be an equal and opposite policy. Civil service organizations lacking such an objective should be and generally have been taken out of government.

Strong objective business managers perform well where there is a simple objective (make shareholders rich by ...) and are therefore seldom appropriate in civil service organizations. Where such persons have been imported their record has been notorious, rather than successful, almost certainly because they have reverted to type and pursued a single uncluttered objective (probably personally selected) rather than of the clutter of objectives that characterize civil service organizations. Then, the civil service is unlikely to attract top class strong objective business managers. Most such folk will know they are unsuited to the life because of the confusion of objectives and in the event few, I believe, stay for long.

Next, if Greensand's remedy, as it appears, leaves the organization a straight forward part of the civil service, it will remain an organization subordinate to political will. Accordingly, Greensand envisages a Met Office that uses strong, objective business management the better to perform its role of serving its political masters.

If that were to work, which I hope I have made clear I doubt, it would be fine if the political process has ensured that the policy is rational. But currently it is the politicians that have their knickers in a twist: they have their policy (CAGW), irrespective of lack of merit, and will pursue it so long as the consequences of so doing (future energy costs will be but a distant burden on the electorate) are less unwelcome than performing a U-turn. So in current circumstances Greensand's remedy, if it achieves anything, seems likely to make things worse, rather than better, for the sceptic.

In the end it is the politicians who have inflicted their flawed policy on us and it is they who have to be persuaded to change it. A Met Office that has long served its political masters and has as a result staffed itself with CAGW devotees is hardly going to assist in this process irrsepective of the sort of transformation envisaged by Greensand.

Martin A. I tend to agree with you, we have lost our weather forecasting service to activists, despite their good intentions they have shaped the weather forecasts to their own global warming agenda. To the extent that the Chief Scientist of an organisation that forecast one month of rain and eleven months of drought, when the one one month of rain turned out to have 50% of its average precipitation and the 11 months of drought gave us the wettest year on record, informed us that the rain was to be expected because of global warming. Leaving the question hanging, "Why didn't you expect it then?"

I have to say I wonder if we need the Met Office at all, there are plenty of universities who would take on the climate research role, and there are plenty of organisations willing to take on the weather forecasting role. I now use weather.com, which I have so far found to be very accurate in their 10 day forecasts. I used to use the Met Office 5 day forecasts from the BBC but they were pretty inaccurate. I note the Met Office has slagged Delingpole off for implying their 5 day forecasts were inaccurate, which he didn't. My own experience was that I would look on day 1 and day 5 would be forecast as "Hot and Sunny", on day 2, day 4 would be Sunny with showers, day 3, the third day out would be Cloudy with showers, day 4, day 2 would be pissing down rain, and heigh presto on day five we'd have pissing down rain, which five days ago was forecast as Hot and Sunny, but which the Met Office now claim as an accurate forecast because the day before they'd forecast PDR.

Uncle, I fear it's worse than you think, the politicos are worried about global warming because the scientist at the Met Office have made them worried about global warming, it is a deadly embrace, and no one can get out of it. The scientists, as we are witnessing with the warming hiatus, cannot possibly say, "We're not sure now", because they have committed the politicos to embark upon massive expenditure in providing, so called, renewable energy. The politicos can't change course because the best evidence they have comes from the scientists. It will end in tears, but not for some time.

"It doesn’t need replacing; it needs strong, professional, objective business management."

Totally agree with Greensand but the only way that it is going to be effective is to cut it's umbilical cord to mother government.

The MO has to go fully private and compete against the others for all of its contracts, no public funds.

From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.

Geronimo. Not worse than I think, just as bad as.

A truly deadly embrace and the politicians will have to be persuaded to do their U-turn against Met Office advice. Gird the loins for a long fight as the more savvy politicos limit energy price rises to amounts that do not cause protest and loose the extra costs the public will certainly have to pay for energy in chains of taxation and energy company subsidies, etc etc.

Mike

I still think that the >5 day prediction can be improved dramatically to match others in the private sector. There is no reason why weather forecasting should be a public institution inherent with the inefficiencies of scale that go with it. Cut it loose, make it lean, force it to compete for survival, the validation of forecasting, sink or swim, will reap benefits in general for weather forecasting industry. Climate will then become as it should be, an accademic endeavour for those who dedicate their time to it without the constraints of producing weather forecasts.

Martin, staffing your research centre with climate science neophytes seems naive. This stems from the fallacy, common here, that because you are an engineer, you necessarily have something useful to say about climate change; engineers of course don't need many years of training in climate science to understand its intricacies. But it is like expecting a chemist to rewrite the book on bridge design because he knows something about the chemistry of concrete, or a programmer to have a valuable perspective on engine design because he knows how to write a CAD system.

What would be the first thing your neophytes would do? They would get some training from the people who do know climate science in universities and they would read the literature. You imagine they would then come to different conclusions, but why should they? If the science is so wrong that 20 or 30 new hands can demolish it, then why hasn't that already happened? There must be hundreds of clever people entering the field each year who would love to make a name for themselves in that way.

No contradiction. I imagine you misread it...

Jan 20, 2013 at 10:46 AM | Paul Matthews
Exactly Paul, and close the climate part today. It would be another HMV in the private sector, wrong business model and unable to change. It is an organisation which hasn't improved since Michael Fish's "there is no hurricane" moment. As geronimo says the 5 day forecasts are only good for the next day the other four can be ignored, and not always at that, most reasonably educated/well read people could make a similar guess by looking at the weather charts and radar.

It's a hard world out there, the workers at HMV, Jessops, Honda, and Renault here in France don't have the luxury the shub wants to give the MO staff, sorry shub can't agree with a slow closure. "If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well It were done quickly" MacBeth.

Sandy

Mike Jackson
Re Climate Scientists and qualifications; the no formal training in what they were good at list includes:
Fred Hoyle
Pierre Curie
Michael Faraday
Pierre de Fermat
Ada Lovelace
Blaise Pascal
Joseph Priestley
Thomas Edison (although some might debate his inclusion)

I'm sure you can think of a few more.

When people are trained in a discipline then they all tend to think the same way, a bit of original thought from outside is good. CO2 being the death of us was original thought, and like so many original good ideas it proved to be wrong the problem is, as always, the adherents cling to the wreckage long after in is sensible to get into a lifeboat.

MJ as you know "climate science" is an umbrella term encompassing many disciplines. Call it climate-relates sciences if it rings your bell, but attacking it because you don't like its name is lame. On not researching a "chaotic" system because it is difficult, well that is equally inane. Martin suggested such research (by his dirty-double-dozen) so argue with him.

SandyS, nice list. But rather dated, coming from an age when a well educated gentleman might reasonably aspire to understanding all of the sciences. I think you'll find it is rather different now.

Reposted from another thread:

"The banks are pushed to separate ordinary everyday banking from their more speculative activities. The Met Office should be pushed to do the same. Then, the Met Office weather forecasting function could remain under the MOD and the climate modelling stuff could transfer to DECC. Then, DECC could be split into a Dept. of Energy and a whole new Dept. of Climate Modelling could be founded. Then, we could just get rid of it when they proved themselves to be incapable of forecasting their way out of a paper bag..."

May be relevant to this thread, but not sure. Just got back from the pub, having been stuck there for several hours due to global warming white stuff that I thiought was a thing of the past. Hic!

Roger, as a good skeptic, I'm sure you were keen to point out during the last year or so that extreme weather events are not evidence of climate change; they are just weather. I guess it was just a beer induced aberration to suggest that snow in winter in some way disproves climate change... Cheers!

MJ, you said, "...how do you carry out any sort of scientific study on a chaotic system such as climate?" If that doesn't imply that such study is difficult then I'm a Chinaman. You impossibility was 50 year forecasts, not research itself. You like word games, don't you.