Junk Science Alert: Met Office Set to Ditch Actual Temperature Data in Favour of Model Predictions

by C. Morrison, Dec 23, 2023 in WUWT


The alternative climate reality that the U.K. Met Office seeks to occupy has moved a step nearer with news that a group of its top scientists has proposed adopting a radical new method of calculating climate change. The scientific method of calculating temperature trends over at least 30 years should be ditched, and replaced with 10 years of actual data merged with model projections for the next decade. The Met Office undoubtedly hopes that it can point to the passing of the 1.5°C ‘guard-rail’ in short order. This is junk science-on-stilts, and is undoubtedly driven by the desire to push the Net Zero collectivist agenda.

In a paper led by Professor Richard Betts, the Head of Climate Impacts at the Met Office, it is noted that the target of 1.5°C warming from pre-industrial levels is written into the 2016 Paris climate agreement and breaching it “will trigger questions on what needs to be done to meet the agreement’s goal”. Under current science-based understandings, the breaching of 1.5°C during anomalous warm spells of a month or two, as happened in 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020 and 2023, does not count. Even going above 1.5°C for a year in the next five years would not count. A new trend indicator is obviously needed. The Met Office proposes adding just 10 years’ past data to forecasts from a climate model programmed to produce temperature rises of up to 3.2°C during the next 80 years. By declaring an average 20-year temperature based around the current year, this ‘blend’ will provide ”an instantaneous indicator of current warming”.

It will do no such thing. In the supplementary notes to the paper, the authors disclose that they have used a computer model ‘pathway’, RCP4.5, that allows for a possible rise in temperatures of up to 3.2°C within 80 years. Given that global warming has barely risen by much more than 0.2°C over the last 25 years, this is a ludicrous stretch of the imagination. Declaring the threshold of 1.5°C, a political target set for politicians, has been passed based on these figures and using this highly politicised method would indicate that reality is rapidly departing from the Met Office station.

Hottest In 125,000 Years?

by P. Homewood, Dec 26, 2023 in WUWT


https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/this-year-virtually-certain-be-warmest-125000-years-eu-scientists-say-2023-11-08/

Just about all of the media have been peddling the “Hottest for 125,000 years” claim, which suggests a very concerted effort by the climate establishment in the run up to COP28.

The claim is self evident and baseless nonsense for a number of good reasons:

  • There is no such thing as “a global average temperature”
  • Even now we have very sparse coverage of temperature measurements. Prior to satellites, we had virtually no data  outside of the US, Europe and a few other built up areas
  • The temperature record we do have is thoroughly corrupted by UHI, and only dates back to the late 19thC
  • Natural variations, including ENSO, volcanic activity etc, can easily cause temperature swings of a degree Celsius from year to year, and decade to decade. But historical proxies don’t have the fine resolution to pick these up, they merely give an idea of average temperatures over decades and even centuries. Consequently you cannot compare one year now with the general climate of, say, 2000 years ago.

But forget about all of these theoretical objections, because the climatic evidence we do have is overwhelming, and it tells us that the climate has been much warmer than now for most of the last 10000 years, since the end of the ice age.

Here are ten powerful, incontrovertible pieces of evidence:

1) Greenland

 

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