1,700 British Scientists Can’t Be Wrong

Hilary

"This statement constitutes the personal views of the signatories only"

Yes, I noticed it. I assume they wanted to be able to deny, if necessary, that it was the Met Office's (or the Govt's, since the Met Office is accountable to the Govt) official statement. Or maybe it was included so that signatories would not feel obliged to get the approval of their institutions before signing it.

I also noticed the inclusion of "students" as "professional scientists". Reminiscent of the Climategate email where someone said not to worry about only including PhD's for a petition, as nobody would be checking.

To estimate the number of students you could simply count the non "Dr", Prof" signatories, assuming that the majority of "climate scientists" have PhD's. Assuming that your "888" count is correct, that would give an estimate of 1700 - 888 ≃ 812 students. So it is possible that only about half of the 1700 signatories were actually "professional scientists" in the sense of being professionally qualified and earning their living as salaried professionals in the field.

On your blog somebody mentioned a Met Office statement that *did* mention "consensus".

Peter Cahusac (@decaux)
February 7, 2012 at 6:02 am

Of course there was also the UK’s MetOffice “consensus” statement that was signed by many scientists, see: http://info.ma002.com/anony/newsletters/C4/C4_0557.asp?str=*3235313330383933302C31383336

“The widespread consensus among UK scientists on climate change has been clearly demonstrated after more than 1,700 scientists from more than 100 institutes signed up to a statement on the issue. The signatories agree climate change is happening, is primarily due to human activities, and the science that proves this is extensive, robust and reliable.”

The link given by Peter Cahusac no longer works. Any chance of tracking down that Met Office statement?

Perhaps HaroldW could locate it?

HaroldW - thank you. Hilary said (a few years back) "notably, the word “consensus” is conspicuously absent from the actual text"

I may be a bit confused - I had probably thought that Peter was pointing to something significant and containing the following text.

“The widespread consensus among UK scientists on climate change has been clearly demonstrated after more than 1,700 scientists from more than 100 institutes signed up to a statement on the issue. The signatories agree climate change is happening, is primarily due to human activities, and the science that proves this is extensive, robust and reliable.”

geronimo - Vicky Pope's actual words were quite specific "For 2014 we're predicting that it will be point three degrees warmer than 2004. To put that into context, the warming over the past century and a half has only been point seven degrees globally".

Likewise, the press release said "Over the 10-year period as a whole, climate continues to warm and 2014 is likely to be 0.3 °C warmer than 2004. At least half of the years after 2009 are predicted to exceed the warmest year currently on record"

Nothing about possible error ranges. In my book if an error range is not specified, there is an implication that the value is accurate to the number of figures given.

Their honesty is comparable with a car dealer who tells you the car will give you 30mpg and, when you find it actually gives 9mpg, tries to get off the hook by saying that the accuracy of the mpg figure is qualified in the small print as being ± 70%, so in fact there is nothing wrong with the figure given.

geronimo "God knows what their code looks like"
Like 1M lines of Fortran written by people not trained as software engineers?

From ~2008: Engineering the Software for Understanding Climate Change, Steve M. Easterbrook, Timothy C. Johns

Organisations cannot help but be consistent. (eg if the shop floor workers bog in a company is disgusting, so will be the quality of the company's products).

"Separate the weather forecasters from the soothsayers and we might get somewhere."

Let's get this straight. There is no reason in principle why quality control methods should not be applied to weather forecasting.

But predicting future climate with unvalidated models is an exercise in self-delusion, a field where quality methods are irrelevant. Climate prediction models are inherently incapable of being validated, if only because the data needed to test against is unavailable. (Let's not get into the fallacy of "it reproduces the training data, therefore we know it works" embraced by the Met Office.)

If an organisation sees no problem and is willing to produce and deliver a product from a production line where it has never once been checked that the product actually works, then talking to them about 'stringent quality control systems' is going to get nowhere at all.

Anyone reading this thread may have inferred that I am not a complete fan of the Met Office.

I chanced on a thread I kicked off a while back, asking the question: What should replace the Met Office?

I'm not sure that I would stand by my suggestions today but I think my summary of the Met Office's problems is still valid:

So now we have an organisation that is bloated, costing around £½M per day, and unfit for purpose. The weather forecasting function is overstaffed by a large factor. The Hadley Centre is hopelessly permeated by groupthink, oblivious of the distinction between physical reality and the output of unvalidated computer models. The self-delusion extends to a firm conviction that their computer models have in fact been validated, logic and evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no realistic prospect of changing the mindset of an organisation of around 1500 where, for decades, staff have been selected and rewarded for their active belief in the CO² threat.

He finds that prediction to be 'rubbish' for this year. But how many planners have taken it seriously. And if it were to be 'rubbish' say for more years than not, what losses might result?
(...)
Aug 15, 2015 at 10:10 AM John Shade

"what losses might result?" Yes. Good question..

On a previous discussion thread about the Met Office, I mentioned the 2007 report that the Met Office itself commissioned: Met Office The Public Weather Service’s contributionto the UK economy

It is unrealistic to expect people to audit themselves, above all in a propaganda organisation which, by its nature, has to believe its own propaganda. The Met Office has commissioned consultants to estimate the value of its services but with the obvious fallacy of not including the costs and losses incurred through errors and inaccuracies in its forecasts. And without even a mention of the hideous present and future costs consequent on the Climate Change Act, which would not have been proposed, let alone passed into law, without the advocacy of the Met Office.

The foreword to the Met Office's report starts with the vainglorious words...

"The Met Office is critical to the efficient and effective running of the UK. Its services are wide and numerous including: keeping the nation safe by providing severe weather warnings; modelling climate change; contributing to flood prediction; ensuring safe and efficient transport links; supporting military operations; advising on government policy; predicting and limiting the damaging effects of disease and pollution; and a great deal more."

As John Shade (Aug 15, 2015 at 10:10 AM) asked, "When was Peak Alarmism in the Met Office?"

A couple of years back, I posted a comment saying ( ... muted panic.. ):

There can be no doubt that the Met Office is/are "disjointed" at present. The rapidly changing tone of their output and the disappearing of older climate change publications confirms that...

There seems to be some turbulence behind the closed doors at the Met Office. (...)

There is certain to be an interesting inside story behind the BBC/Met Office split, nothing to do with costs. No longer alarmist enough? Too many barbeque winters?