This is a big story which will be ignored by the BBC
Excerpt from Bishop Hill (plus a cartoon from Josh) showing that the claim of a statistically significant temperature rise can’t be supported, and the Met office is ducking parliamentary questions: (h/t Randy Hughes)
Met Office admits claims of significant temperature rise untenable
This is a guest post by Doug Keenan.
It has been widely claimed that the increase in global temperatures since the late 1800s is too large to be reasonably attributed to natural random variation. Moreover, that claim is arguably the biggest reason for concern about global warming. The basis for the claim has recently been discussed in the UK Parliament. It turns out that the claim has no basis, and scientists at the Met Office have been trying to cover that up.
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Tallbloke's Talkshop 
Ian W says:
May 27, 2013 at 8:18 am
From the Bishop Hill post:
A Parliamentary Question that has been tabled in the House of Lords is formally answered by HM Government as a whole. In practice, HM Government assigns the Question to a relevant ministry or department. In our case, the Questions have been assigned to the Department of Energy and Climate Change
So a Parliamentary Question requesting an answer that showed there was NO statistically significant temperature change was put to the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC).
The PQ was effectively: “Is there a valid reason for half of your headcount and funding?”
I think we can all see why there was a reluctance to answer.
As they have been forced into answering: “No valid reason”. Where do things go from here? The UK DECC is currently subsidizing inefficient energy production at £18 Billion a year ($28 Billion) for no valid reason and in doing so hugely inflating the costs of energy. Just in the first two weeks of March 2013 2000 people died of cold in energy poverty and since 2003 more than 250,000 UK citizens have died of cold in energy poverty..
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/elderhealth/9959856/Its-the-cold-not-global-warming-that-we-should-be-worried-about.html
This is NOT an academic argument more people died of cold in UK in the last 10 years than military and civilian deaths in the Iraq war!
While I understand people wanting to protect their budgets, headcounts and tenure, they have to realize the lethal effects of the decisions made by politicians based on the reported figures. It is time for a VERY public inquiry with no attempts to hide data or obfuscate reasoning.
The original article by Doug Keenan at Bishop Hill
http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2013/5/27/met-office-admits-claims-of-significant-temperature-rise-unt.html
Climate McCarthyism is crumbling – like ‘the last days of the Soviet Union’. The Bishop Hill post shows how the conspiracy strives to keep the public away from the truth.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2013/05/the-apotheosis-of-climate-mccarthyism.php
I am an AGW sceptic dating back as far as I can remember hearing the first grave forebodings being aired in a news report. My instinctive scepticism has been repeatedly reinforced over the decades. This recent grudging disclosure from the met office is more than I expected and very pleasing to see at last.
However it is a grotesque stretch for you try to blame the MO for sowing misinformation leading to actual deaths. If people are dying in excess numbers it is more likely down to a failure to improve the housing stock in exactly the ways CO2-reduction strategies ask, which is ironic. The main reason my own mother struggles to heat her home is not excise and green taxes, it is money-printing strategies that suppress interest on her savings, bank mis-regulation that wiped out a large chunk of her portfolio, a 14.3% increase in VAT and tax on her pathetic remaining income.
Lament the intellectual failings at the met office as much as you like, but they are only self-deluded and self-serving, not evil. There is wickedness aplenty in government but this ain’t it, not really. (Just wait till we’re all queing for our toilet-paper ration and our sugar ration and the lights are on for only six hours a day. This time last year Cyprus couldn’t imagine it either…)
oldspanky:
there seem to be quite a lot of people from the UK moving to Australia recently. Perhaps you should recommend?
Especially as the Russians have just driven to Canada via the North Pole http://chiefio.wordpress.com/
They plan to drive back across the Bering Strait. Even the arctic ice sheet isn’t helping the believers in AGW.
http://www.yemelya.ru/index_en.php
Managed to find some pictures http://yemelya-yemelya.blogspot.co.uk/
Resolute bay have posted a transcipt of some of the radio traffic translated into English, includes 6th May at 90N http://www.resolutebayexpeditionservice.com/
“Uh oh, the Met Office has set the cat amongst the pigeons.”
We’ll see. I’m kind of with Tallbloke on this one, almost certain to be ignored by the mainstream news media. Mr. Keenan’s article suggests that at least three people should already have been forced to tender their resignations: Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Baroness Verma; Met Office Chief Executive Officer, John Hirst; and Met Office Chief Scientist, Julia Slingo. It doesn’t take much to predict that nothing will happen and that these three will continue to do what ever they want regardless of legality for as long as they wish. There doesn’t seem to be any force of accountability with the Met Office at all, too bad for us all, not just in the UK. Crooks far and wide are emboldened by these types of outcomes. I hope to be surprised with some prosecutions or resignations.
I put in the post below https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/doug-proctor-the-rough-and-smooth-of-data-as-seen-from-afar/ the comment
” A linear regression gives an estimated line (which is the equivalent of a line between two points) through a scatter of points between two variables.(eg measured temperature and time). Such an estimated line should always come with a regression coefficient which should be tested for significance. If the regression coefficient is not stated, the person(s) presenting the information are either incompetent or have something to hide.”
It is now clear that the Met Office, UEA, GISS IPCC plus a few others (such as BOM & CSIRO in Australia) and their outspoken representatives have had something to hide as surely they all can not be incompetent.
Even more than the changes in temperature and its significance, is the poor analyses in the changes in measured CO2 (omission of measurements, use of doubtful proxies, smoothing of measured results to hide variations etc). There has to be considerable doubt about the significance of changes in the latter (measurements indicate similarly CO2 levels in the early 1940’s as at present)
Then trying to find a correlation between two variables, which may or may not be related but both having little,no significant trend over time.should be a fruitless exercise which no competent person would not attempt.
Perhaps this would be a good subject for an HMgovernment e-petiton. A link between climate legislation and this answer from the Met Office could be a game changer.
For those non-statisticians, like me, who are a little confused as to the terminology used in the Met Offices answer, I found the following reply by Mailman, on the BH blog useful…
“The 0.001 refers to the likelihood ratio between two rival statistical models.
One is a linear trend model with first-order autoregressive noise, the other is a driftless third-order autoregressive integrated model.
The first model (which the Met Office had been using) is a thousand times less likely than the 2nd model (1/1000 = 0.001). Therefore the most appropriate model to use in looking for trends is the 2nd model.
Using the 1st model there appears to be statistically significant warming 1850 – 2012. But this model is less appropriate than the 2nd.
Using the 2nd model there has been no statistically significant change in global temperature over that time.
Clearly there has been an increase in global temperature, but this cannot so far be explained, other than by random variability. If CO2 is playing a role it is still within this random variation. Of course this could change…”