Discussion > A New Hockeystick - No Pause Detected
Martin A
That is a nice bit of sleuthing indeed. Mr B has always tried to portray himself as a nice guy until people start asking him hard questions and then he becomes somewhat hard to pin down. You may have made sure he never returns to BH simply by reporting the truth here.
Dung
I imagine Richard will be back in due course. I'm sure he is a genuinely pleasant fellow to meet and interact with. His lack of response to many questions is simply that he is following the fundamental rule for the employees of large organisations - you don't admit wrongdoing or failure on the part of your employer.
In his 'outreach' activities for the Met Office, he has a difficult balance to strike between being open and communicative while following the rule I mentioned.
Richard's strategy for achieving that is clearly to stick to discussing scientific matters. So questions like "When is the MO going to stop _______ ?" are unlikely to get a response from him.
The Met Office really has painted itself into a corner. In the past it has stated very openly that its climate models are the only thing that tells us about future climate. Telling the govt about future climate is its principle reason for existing (apart from forecasting weather). Yet it is rapidly becoming all too apparent that its models have completely failed, which leaves it up a creak without a paddle.
It seems to be hoping that the current embarrassment will soon be forgotten and it is apparently attempting a rebranding along the lines "we just do science and consultancy". However, it is manacled to the DECC and the legacy of the CCA, which the Met Office helped bring about, so the rebranding is not going to be easy for it.
Martin A
Martin A
I understand your point but I can not agree. The consequences of the advice being given to government by the MO are catastrophic (unlike the effects of CO2 ^.^), they are so bad that at some point someone has to stand up and tell the truth whatever the cost. There are plenty of examples of what happens when people just do as they are told and ask no questions.
Dung
Dung,
Which point of mine do you not agree with? I have not understood. Please help me understand what you mean.
My position is that:
- The MO is the prime culprit to blame for the CCA and the harm the CCA has caused and will continue to cause.
- The MO should be closed down or privatised starting tomorrow morning, with a small team of competent meteorologists in a new organisation to produce weather forecasts only.
Martin A
Martin A
This bit ^.^
His lack of response to many questions is simply that he is following the fundamental rule for the employees of large organisations - you don't admit wrongdoing or failure on the part of your employer.In his 'outreach' activities for the Met Office, he has a difficult balance to strike between being open and communicative while following the rule I mentioned.
Dung
When I was working for Goodyear Tyres our US CEO opened a massive new warehouse which was attended by customers and press. The CEO announced that we were moving from Jurassic Park to Star Wars.
The management of the warehouse was so bad that we ended up supplying all our customers with wrong tyres at the wrong price and sending tyres to the wrong customer. I was a lowly Business Development Manager at the bottom of the sales ladder but I wrote to him and told him that rather than Star Wars it was Lost in Space.
I also wrote to the Distribution Director and told him that if I was as bad at selling tyres as he was at running a distribution Centre, I would be sacked ^.^
Dung
Gosh. Had you just been reading Dale Carnegie?
Martin A
Martin A
HaHa ^.^
Dung
I still didn't quite get the point you were making.
Is it:
- Met Office researchers should get a proper job?
- RB should reply to questions on BH (eg) pointing out the harm done by the Met Office (eg by telling politicians scare stories and what they wanted to hear, despite the only evidence for it being unvlaidated models, programmed by people who believe that the release of fossil fuel CO2 is dangerous)?
- RB should tell the Met Office management to stop peddling bullshit and get on with real scientific research?
- None of the above?
Martin A
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
Most people would feel that if you take an employer's wage you should do what he wants. Would not covertly doing something else while taking the employer's money not be a breach of trust?
RB will, one supposes, be so constrained by such obligations that he will not waste over-much effort examining what he does for his crust to see if there is conflict with another good. An activity best avoided except in the most extreme circumstances.
(Been there, done that.)
And, after all, the CAGW mess is not his responsibility, or the Met Office's; it's the (pen-) ultimate source of his wage: the government at political level. It's they that have the horse before the cart - the policy before the facts (science for the cognoscenti here) on which the policy relies. It's they that believed the false prophets in the first place and ordered their subsidiary bodies - the Met Office, the UEA and so on - to produce the IPCC, the Climate Change Act and all the CAGW garbage in advance of finding out that their warm cuddlesome green feelings would turn out to be uncomfortable for the man in the street. And you cannot blame the IPCC, MetOffice etc for exerting themselves to produce the best results they can for their paymasters. Would you expect anything less from someone you paid?
So lay off the bureaucrats who do the honourable thing and keep faith with their employers by doing what they are paid to do. Blame the cabinet level politicians who steer the ship.
Or yourselves for allowing the politicians to set up a system where self interest does not necessarily align with the interests of the public that elects them.
Fools -both us and them! We have what we deserve.
Ecclesiastical Uncle
Uncle
When a man takes an employer's wages I am sure he dearly wishes not to bite the hand that feeds him. However it is a much more complicated situation than that as I am sure you know.
As an employee you take orders from a manager who is often not the employer.
As an employee you may be asked to do something illegal and/or unethical.
As an employee I managed to work through to retirement without breaking my own standards. I have been told to do many things illegal and unethical and I always found a way to avoid doing them.
None of the things I was told to do got within shouting distance of what the Met Office are doing.
Martin A
At some point someone at the MO must stand up and blow the whistle for the sake of the country and its population, just to keep taking the money under the current circumstances is unspeakable.
Dung
Dung, maybe it thinks if it believed in itself, it'll be absolved of the responsibility you speak of.
shub
At some point someone at the MO must stand up and blow the whistle for the sake of the country and its population, just to keep taking the money under the current circumstances is unspeakable.
Jul 26, 2013 at 8:50 PM Dung
I can't see it happening. The MO will continue proclaiming "CO2 traps heat" until the bitter end.
Notwithstanding the Eccl Unc's excuses for the MO, it is just not credible that the Climate Change Act would have been passed without its lending the title "science" to fomenting the mania.
Had the MO said something like: "Look, let's not get carried away. This 'CO2 will cause dangerous climate change' idea is nothing more than a hypothesis at present. We need to look at all sides of the question and get a better understanding of the fundamentals by doing some measurements before we can say if the idea makes sense" things would not have got out of hand.
But Houghton et al had been selected as beleivers in the hypothesis and were commissioned to put CO2 in the frame. CO2 was duly convicted and sentenced, kangaroo court fashion - primary witness for the prosecution, the Met Office. (There were no witnesses nor lawyers for the defence.)
It is simply not credible that the Climate Change Act would have been passed had the Met Office cautioned against it. So its culpability is pretty clear.
For it to continue the charade, despite the failure of their modelling work, on which it was all based, now magnifies their guilt.
If I have understood shub right, he seems to be saying that the Met Office should plead corporate insanity when the whole thing falls apart?
Martin A
From the Ecclesiastical Uncle, an old retired bureaucrat in a field only remotely related to climate with minimal qualifications and only half a mind.
It is clearly correct that people in the Met Office strove (and strive) to advance CAGW nonsense, but if so they would be zealots masquerading as bureaucrats. And of course, the government ensured that institutions like the DECC (?) and the Met Office packed themselves with such people very early in the piece to ensure progress with their agenda. The established old office professionals - the true bureaucrats - would not have been consulted. I also would expect them now to hold such zealots in low esteem - at best as supremely capable manipulators motivated by self interest, too clever by half, and best avoided.
So please limit criticisms of Met Office staff to those appointed to serve CAGW and spare those who, in adverse circumstances, serve Blighty in the way everybody who takes the government's pay cheque should.
Ecclesiastical Uncle
Well I am slightly surprised that the MO have decided to double down on the 'CO2 is the source of all evil' meme. A few weeks ago we had the 'summit', the result of which seemed to be 'we don't really know, but we are working on it.'
Now we have the 3 papers telling us the missing heat is in the deep oceans with constant references to the unstinting power of CO2 to drive the climate. That there is missing heat seems to be something the MO are as certain of as they were when they predicted (sic) in 2007 that by 2014 the world would be .3C warmer than 2007. It is still possible but I wouldn't bet on it. Moreover, the MO's latest decadal forecast (which covers half a decade?) predicts no change. So in effect the MO are predicting that there models will be completely invalidated within 5 years. This all seems a bit muddled to me.
If the heat really is hiding in the deep ocean what conclusions can be drawn:
1. the models did not predict this so they are not quite as 'useful' as the modellers believe
2. heat in the deep ocean does not seem threatening to me as I rarely go below a metre or so
3. ain't no way it's going to get out and cook the grandchildren
It is also slightly re-assuring from purely a personal perspective that I have long been predicting (sic) that as soon as the surface temperature metric no longer supported the cause the alarmists would change the metric.
As a citizen of this country I pay my subscriptions for the national meteorological office to do science not propaganda. I feel I am entitled to a refund of my subscriptions but I cannot find the relevant box to tick on my tax return?
OneTrophyWin
ain't no way it's going to get out and cook the grandchildrenOn the other hand there could well come a point where it will seep out and prevent them having to live through another Little Ice Age or worse.
Is this perhaps a facet of the earth's 'thermostat', I wonder?
And is anybody bothering to research that possibility? Since they seem to think that Magic Heat can disappear into the depths is there any reason why it can't equally emerge when needed?
Mike Jackson
OneTrophyWin
What you pay for the Met Office is a minute fraction of what you will pay for the costs of the Climate Change Act, so don't fret about the cost of the Met Office.
splitpin
Science should be done in universities, the Met Office should divest all of its scientific research and get on with trying to get the weather forecasts right. That's what it was set up to do and it's not doing it preferring to act as a scientific environmentalist activist organisation.
geronimo
A Met Office manager said
If the trend illustrated below continues, his wish may be realised before too long, even if he considers that his bonuses to date have not been generous.
Reported Met Office Staff Bonus Total
2009 £1,100,000 ***********
2010 £1,300,000 *************
2011 £2,600,000 **************************
2012 £3,400,000 **********************************
Average bonus per staff member (assuming 1700 staff)
2009 £647
2010 £765
2011 £1,529
2012 £2,000
2010: "Julia Slingo, chief scientist, was paid £165,000 including a £20,000 bonus."
__________________________________________
Sources:
2009: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/5999189/Met-Office-pays-staff-1.1m-bonuses-despite-barbecue-summer-bungle.html
2010:
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/189142/Met-Office-duffers-get-1-4m-bonus
2011, 2012:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2085748/Blundering-Met-Office-weathermen-handed-bigger-bonuses.html#ixzz2ZyqnGUPu