A week or two ago the media was full of stories of an exceptional heat wave that would take temperatures to new records. We were told that we should expect drought and intense heat. A few days on and temperatures slumped, with plenty of rain over the weekend. There has been little news reporting of the change of weather, and no pieces apologising for getting the forecasts wrong about new records by last week end. If as expected temperatures pick up again and there is no more rain we might hear about that.
I thought at the time of the forecasts  that the weather was more like the weather in dry hot summers I remember in the past, so I looked up some of the figures. According to the Met Office 30 year numbers the average summer temperature has been 14.3 C and the average rainfall 241 mm. Every summer in the last ten years save 2013 has been wetter than the 30 year average, with 2011, 2012 and 2015 cooler than the average. 1976 was clearly much drier and hotter than recent years, as were some summers prior to that.
After the recent hot spell the highest temperature records for 1976, 42 years ago, remain intact. 2003 also recorded a high temperature for Faversham in 2003 which some say was slightly higher than 1976 for England.
Many things influence the weather, making it difficult to come up with a reliable model which accurately predicts what might happen next. Wind speed and direction changes, water vapour content in the air alters, cloud cover is very variable, solar activity alters in intensity, the jet stream moves around.  Short term weather forecasting has got better because the experts have greater visibility of clouds on their way to us, and can calculate from wind speed and direction what is likely to happen. As any sailor can tell you, however, the wind is very variable minute by minute. altering the course and pace of clouds across our landscape. It is even more difficult making a long term forecast when the clouds which will dictate so much have yet to be formed.
August 2, 2018
Good morning
Our kind host forgot to add the Sun to his list of influences. Tut, tut.
Meteorologists, economists, BBC experts, Remainers and fortune tellers all have one thing in common ? Well two actually.
1. They claim to be able to foresee the future.
2. They are nearly always wrong.
Have a nice day.
August 2, 2018
Solar activity is in fact mentioned in JRs post.
August 2, 2018
If “renewables” actually worked they would not need Government subsidies.
If “renewables” actually worked “Evil” capitalists would be falling over themselves putting up wind farm and solar panels across the most beautiful parts on the countryside.
August 2, 2018
The weather tomorrow is influenced by the weather conditions today. They quite clearly cannot predict accurately the weather a week or two hence so how on earth can they do it for a hundred years? Given this.
They do not even have all the information needed, volcanic activity, populations, genetic changes in plants, the suns output, the feedback mechanisms ….. even it they did they still could not do it.
August 2, 2018
Furthermore the hugely expensive, intermittent “renewable” solutions they endlessly subsidise with tax payer grants do not make any significant difference anyway. They just render the UK/EU less competitive and thus export jobs (so the emissions just occur elsewhere anyway).
A little hotter and a little more atmospheric Co2 is actually, on balance, likely to be a good thing overall not bad. It greens the planet and increases crop yields. It makes people richer and thus more likely to be able to protect themselves from whatever the weather throws at them. As the weather will do and indeed always has done.
August 2, 2018
“genetic changes in plants” of which they know little or if they do, are unwilling to share
August 2, 2018
He did mention solar activity in his last paragraph.
August 2, 2018
Well said, Mark B! But you forgot one group – financial advisers.
August 2, 2018
Indeed. If they were that good they wouldn’t need their job!!
August 2, 2018
You have forgotten the insurers, and they are following forecasts to decide what might be best for safeguarding their big pots of money.
August 2, 2018
Well I am sure it wasn’t there when I posted.
But thanks anyway
đ
August 2, 2018
And a new forecast indicates that the usual suspect has been misleading sailors into believing they were heading for a maelstrom if their course was in a certain direction whereas the reality is that it would be very fair weather ahead indeed.
August 2, 2018
Nig 1
Are you referring to the news piece:
“WTO will turn the UK into an economic powerhouse”
Now that’s the kind of headline/talking piece our host and all other right thinking English people should be shouting about.
August 2, 2018
Well, anybody who is interested can read about that here:
https://www.economistsforfreetrade.com/
But while my general presumption is in favour of free trade I think it is wrong to exaggerate either the gains potentially available to us from further liberalisation of international trade or the losses which we could suffer from reinstatement of some previous impediments to trade.
I come back to the fact that since 1948 per capita GDP in the UK has risen by a factor of 4.3, an average compound rate of 2.1% a year, and very little of that growth is attributable to liberalisation of international trade:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/07/28/raising-productivity-a-policy-all-claim-to-like-in-general/#comment-950745
So to take that part of our trade which is tied up with the EU, the creation of the EU Single Market and the removal of obstacles to trade in goods within the EU has only been worth about 1% added to our per capita GDP, which is equivalent to natural growth over just six average months.
August 2, 2018
Are you also saying Neg l, that the earth is not flat?
I find that hard to believe đ
August 2, 2018
And that I can’t spell Nig l đ
August 2, 2018
The earth can be rendered flat by means of a stereographic projection.
It’s just a matter of perspective.
August 2, 2018
Talking about the weather is a quintessentially English trait though in John’s case I suspect it’s more a justifiable attack on the sanctity of experts in this field and the accuracy and veracity of many their forecasts.
The BBC proffer up Brian Cox as an expert alongside Einstein, Newton, Feynman and Clark-Maxwell. This is beyond parody. A slur on the almost divine greatness of such geniuses that they have to suffer the indignity and shame of being compared to a New Labour graduate with a ten-bob Phd
Experts? Conmen more like
August 2, 2018
There are real experts and other so called “experts”. One might well be an expert in engineering, science, physics, farming, construction, logistics, IT and the likes and providing they are also impartial and not motivated by your next fee or grant they provide a vital and important service.
There are other “experts” who are really no such think. Experts in fairy rings, experts to advised how good the ERM and EURO would be, experts on homeopathy or predicting the climate in 100 years time and the likes. And experts who just tell (government) exactly what they want to hear (perhaps to justify some new taxes or regulations or to win votes for them or to earn their next fee or research grant).
An expert advising say Prince Charles already knows what he wants to hear.
August 2, 2018
Perhaps when Mr Carney leaves the BoE he could transfer to the met office to teach them about forward guidance.
August 2, 2018
Not the met office, he should go to MeteoGroup, which now provides the weather forecasts for the BBC. The taxpayer-funded Met Office was dropped by the public-service BBC.
August 2, 2018
Cox is about the only physicist I know who seems to take catastrophic climate alarmism and CO2 as a magical World thermostat seriously. I cannot believe Feynman who have done so. A few others pretend to for research grant purposes and career advancement I suppose.
I assume that is one of the reasons the BBC chose Brian Cox.
It is hard to take Manchester University very seriously after they appointed one G Osborne as an Honorary Professor of Economics! Then again even Cambridge were discussing stopping investing in fossil fuel related businesses! So there are clearly lots of plonkers there too. Not stop using them them themselves though!
August 2, 2018
For livestock farmers this drought is no joke. The grass has stopped growing, they are already ripping through fodder cut for the winter, no second cut has been possible, and because the drought is nationwide no supplies can be bought in from elsewhere.
On top of that wells and boreholes are drying up.
A farmer with 200-plus dairy cattle to feed and water is staring disaster in the face. I hope government will do all it can to help this vital national industry through a uniquely difficult year.
August 2, 2018
@eeyore
Rest assured, the DEFRA minister will find someone or something to blame. Probably Brexit.
August 2, 2018
You expect govt to help??? – – Any money goes on govt priorities – free everything lives for our new no-work, no input, no contribution population increase. Everything else our taxes are supposed to go towards is clearly of no consequence.
August 2, 2018
For info, the German agriculture minister announced yesterday that there would be state aid for dairy farmers, to help with their feed costs.
This came in for a critical piece by a Frankfurter Allgemeine journalist, pointing out that German farmers receive more than âŹ6 billion annually ‘via Brussels’, while ‘the public sector [in Germany] finances approx 40% of farmers’ incomes’, and a further âŹ4 billion each year (and other support) goes to farmers in social security.
German agriculture produced gross value added in 2015 of âŹ13 bn.
Perhaps German farmers could do with breaking free from the CAP.
August 2, 2018
My own temperature has risen as I read this morning in the F.T. that Michael Gove is angling to bring the UK post-Brexit into line with Norway. It seems that those of us who voted Leave have been comprehensively undermined, Mr Redwood. Please explain
August 2, 2018
Well, I hope the Tory MPs take note of this headline to the ConsHome email sent out today:
“Our Cabinet League Table. The Chequers effect blitzes everyone. Theyâre all down. And May dives to her lowest rating ever.”
I agree with you Brian about Gove. I have never trusted him and have always thought that he was not a Leaver, and that what he was really angling for was to undermine Leavers. That is one of the reasons that I think he knifed Boris because Boris was a real threat to him and also might actually prove to be a Brexiter who could actually effect Brexit. I think it is all about power with Michael Gove, plus scheming and plotting against adversaries.
August 2, 2018
Mr Redwood, is there any truth in this?
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/997914/brexit-news-theresa-may-sajid-javid-free-movement-migrants-eu-workers
“BREXIT BETRAYAL: May considering ALLOWING free movement after Brexit ‘to reduce admin’
THERESA May could keep free movement in a no-deal Brexit scenario in order to minimise chaos, it has been claimed.”
August 2, 2018
I think it is still difficult for any Tory MP to openly admit that we should never have gone along with the EU Single Market ideology in the first place, not least because their greatest heroine was instrumental in pushing for it.
That is how we have ended up with the interests and convenience of the 6% of UK businesses that export 12% of our GDP to the EU routinely being given top priority, and now of course the present government has agreed to magnify that chronic stupidity a hundred-fold by giving paramount priority to the 0.1% of our GDP which is exported across the land border with the Irish Republic.
I have tried to raised this here many times, with varying degrees of success, and in fact back in March I even asked our host if he knew whether or not this stupidity was there right from the start:
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2018/03/19/governing-ourselves/#comment-925726
“I have read elsewhere that this was not always the case, instead the original agreement was that the EEC regulations would only apply to our exports to the EEC and not to the rest of the UK economy, and that position only changed with the advent of the EU Single Market. However I havenât yet found any confirmation of that questionable assertion, and I wonder if you know from your experience whether it is true.”
Today Sadiq Khan is in City AM arguing that we should stay in the EU Single Market for the sake of services, which he points out make up 92% of London’s economy. And oh how easily he then slips in the unspoken assumption that all of these service businesses are somehow involved in exporting to the EU and so they need to stay in the EU Single Market so their trade is frictionless …
Reply I have often set out the damage the single market did to the UK, especially industry for the first ten years and to agriculture and fishing, and the inherent contradictions in what became a power grab rather than a pro market set of policies.
August 3, 2018
JR, I still wonder if you agree with the claim that originally EEC regulations were intended to apply only to those companies which exported across the national borders, not to the entire economies.
August 3, 2018
Denis Cooper, If you mean Margaret Thatcher then yes, she wanted a single market. But a “single market” based on mutual recognition, absolutely not one based on centralised, top down, micro-control, which the EU went for.
Here is the relevant extract from Thatcher’s 1988 Bruges speech:
“It is ironic that just when those countries, such as the Soviet Union, which have tried to run everything from the centre, are learning that success depends on dispersing power and decisions away from the centre, some in the Community seem to want to move in the opposite direction.We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to see them re-imposed at a European level, with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”
August 2, 2018
Gove is a snake in the grass/ he’ll go whichever way the wind is blowing and for his own best personal career advantage/ Remember the famous Gove lines- it’ll all work out provided we take the right decisions?- Norway style- I presume?
Now some of the Daily Newspapers are also talking about how the EU should bend to give us a deal, as if we voted for a deal.. we did not vote for a deal, we voted to leave
August 2, 2018
Capita’s just announced that they will allow the election of two staff members to their board this year.
This is another brilliant idea by this socialist fool Theresa May to turn the Tories into blue-tinged socialists.
And of course this policy will be hijacked by the hard-left and Marxist union activists masquerading as responsible employees
This PM is a moron, a gold plated moron
Does she not understand nor see how her policies are being hijacked by groups who are pernicious, determined and revolutionary?
You do not capitulate to the left. Once they smell that weakness you’re dead meat
Please ditch this PM and please stop pandering to the unions and the left. We will pay a heavy price for such cowardice
August 2, 2018
@Duncan
She is a Quisling, and if the party doesn’t remove her soon they they are Quislings too.
August 2, 2018
It’s a complete and utter mystery Duncan why John and his colleagues haven’t ditched May yet. Hopefully it’s just a case of biding their time and picking the right moment as they only get one shot per year at it because if they fail to remove her, we are stuck with her for at least another year.
It seems the Tories are on a death wish if they don’t act soon to get rid of her and her Chancellor.
August 2, 2018
I can only assume that it is a matter of the correct timing, to ensure any Chequers-style Withdrawal Agreement she OKs is killed off.
August 2, 2018
Indeed. How about appointing people on……….merit! Not pc gender, race, sexuality or any other sort of minority socialist bs!
August 2, 2018
We had a loud early morning thunderstorm here last week. Rain has a curious odour after a long dry spell but the storm passed quickly and was wonderfully refreshing. The downside is that my gardener now complains that the lawns are growing again!
The Met Office has been at the cutting edge of supercomputing for several decades. The third and final phase of their Cray XC40 supercomputer was successfully installed in December 2016; this was a hugely complex Government IT project which for once was delivered early and on budget.
Weather forecasting is a hugely complex discipline requiring the computation of a enormous number of variables, involving a global data gathering effort. It’s very hard to get forecasts right even one week in advance – but I think the forecasts are much more accurate than when Michael Fish infamously declared on live TV that there would be no storm on the night of 15th October 1987:)
August 2, 2018
It doesn’t matter how good the computer is: garbage in equals garbage out.
August 2, 2018
Even with all that technology, don’t expect forecast beyond two or three days. They can’t forecast the intensity of the sun and its impact on the jet stream, before all the other variables come into play!
August 2, 2018
But hasn’t it been lovely on non working days?
Pity the poor commuter, until we get back to the long hot summers of our youth (did they really exist or are our memories selective?) transport companies will not upgrade their stock to make it comfortable. The Central line is due to be upgraded by 2030. Most mainline trains are boiling sardine cans and mostly buses can be used as impromptu saunas.
August 2, 2018
NS – which is why self-employed work that does not involve commuting or toiling in the sun is highly recommended.
August 2, 2018
Don’t worry about the weather NS – -the new arrivals who are doing nothing but living off your taxes are VERY happy with the weather – -it reminds them of home.
August 2, 2018
Meteorologists have a much better track record, especially recently, than Economists in getting it right! No -one takes much notice of Economists’ forecasts anyway, and certainly by the time they can be checked out they have largely been forgotten about.
It is true that the level of general concern on the question of global warming rises when we have heatwaves and wild fires break out in certain regions. It’s difficult to sell newspaper stories on the subject when we’re in the middle of a cold snap in winter. It doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be equally concerned – whatever the weather. That we aren’t is just an indication we aren’t thinking scientifically.
NASA is always a good place to start for anyone who is genuinely, and scientifically, interested:
https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/global-temperature/
August 2, 2018
Economists should be the richest people on the planet.
August 2, 2018
I can assure you that over the last nineteen years, I have been genuinely and scientifically interested in the study of climate and the claims that we, by our use of fossil fuels, are driving up global temperatures.
Unfortunately NASA is not the most objective place to start, having abandoned much of their space research for advocacy about global warming, initially via former head of GISS James Hansen, who started the ball rolling with an address to Congress in 1988, during a heat wave.
He is succeeded by briton, Gavin Schmidt, who runs the advocacy site, RealClimate, in addition to his day job with NASA-GISS.
Currently NASA is showing that the temperature “anomaly” from before the industrial revolution, which they date as 1880, is 0.99 deg C. By anomaly, they mean compared to a pre-selected baseline temperature, such as 1960-91, one of the coldest periods of the 20th century. Raw data has been consistently been “homogenised” to take out warming spikes from the 1930’s and produce a constantly rising graph.
Their portrayal of combined land and ocean temperatures consistently rising, does not find agreement with the satellite record of atmospheric temperatures, which do not show rapidly increasing temperatures.
Much fossil fuel use occurred before their arbitrary date of 1880, and somewhat before the 19th century Industrial Revolution, including by Sir Clement Clerke and others from 1678, using coal furnaces known as cupolas.
The steam engine invented by James Watt and patented in 1775 was initially mainly used for pumping out mines, but from the 1780s was applied to power machines. This enabled rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale in places where waterpower was not available. (Info from Wikipedia).
In the Iron industry, coke was applied to all stages of iron smelting, replacing charcoal. Fossil fuels were used in iron foundry work in the 1690s and followed by Abraham Darby, with his coke-fired blast furnaces at Coalbrookdale in 1709.
We are told that CO2 levels were stable at 280 ppm for thousands of years before 1880 and yet this earlier industrialisation made no impact. That was also the period of the Little Ice Age, from which we have been recovering ever since.
If temperatures have only increased by 0.99C in 138 years, 0.07C per decade, this is not the stuff of nightmares and highly destructive energy policies, and is well within the limits of natural variation.
Were the temperatures of 1880, the “correct” temperature of the earth, coming out of the Little Ice Age? Who gets to decide? CO2 is not a planetary control knob, which can be turned up or down by controlling our emissions, the Paris Agreement is a farce and a vehicle for transferring wealth from industrialised nations to developing nations to satisfy the UN Agenda 21.
Computer modelling is not science and the projections into the future are now treated as factual predictions, even though they have repeatedly been proven wrong over the last four decades.
August 2, 2018
Weather has always been a part of my none business life, be it in the mountains, at sea, or in the air. You learn to respect it and avoid it’s extremes if possible. Under the catch all phrase of “Climate Change” it has become the religion of the 21st century. It’s most ardent followers being those who know least about it. Just for the record it has been changing at various rates for millions of years and will continue to do so. Both government and a privileged few have made a fat wad out of it while managing to let our energy industry deteriorate into a parlous state. When will we ever get a government that acts in the national interest. Until we do, one of the greater pleasures to be had from weather is watching Lucy Verasamy explain it to us.
August 2, 2018
Only socialism can bring climate change to an end. (Replete with a hypocritical elite in private jets.)
August 2, 2018
Yup. Whenever you get a hot or dry spell it is used to promote anti-global warming policies favoured by the green blob such as more wind farms. We never of course hear the reverse – that cold weather is âinconsistentâ with the climate models. Global warming theory presumably has some truth in it, though a review of past projections and actual outturn shows it has been greatly exaggerated. The public seems increasingly unconcerned by official hysteria. Hopefully therefore it will be possible to get sensible energy policies going such as shale gas fracking. This will also be good for growth, as President Trump is demonstrating in the US.
August 2, 2018
It is not difficult to make long term forecasts if they are long enough you will not be proved wrong in you life time. Prince Charles gave us “Just 96 months to save world” back in 2009 so he was a bit out there.
It is however impossible to make accurate forecast that have any validity what so ever. Far too many variables, complexities and unknowns. One volcano or meteor impact could change everything. Predicting lottery balls from knowing their state positions would be a far simpler task and they cannot do that.
August 2, 2018
“start positions and velocities” I meant.
August 2, 2018
Anyway, as you should know, perfectly knowing positions and velocities at the same instant is contrary to QM.
August 3, 2018
Indeed. Predicting future weather (or indeed Climate which is average weather) beyond a rather short period with any degree of accuracy is simply not possible. This even if you did have all the relevant data – which you can never possibly have.
August 2, 2018
Obviously you seem to have never heard of (or understood) the concept of Ensemble Forecasting System, now operational in practically all weather forecast Centres (US, UK, Japan, S.Korean, Brazil, most European countries). Instead of running their 5-, 7-, 10-day forecast from one set of initial conditions obtained from observations (radiosoundings, synoptic stations, various satellites, radars, lidars, ship and aircraft observations), those Centres run some tens of forecasts starting from slightly different sets of initial conditions representing the uncertainties in the measurements, in the way physical processes are represented, etc … The final products (as criticized elsewhere on this blog) are usually given in terms of probabilities of temperatures, winds, precipitations being below or above such and such thresholds.
That might not please everybody (obviously not) but it is a much more scientifically based way to present results of forecasts.
Maybe economists (Patrick Minford?) could learn a thing or two from meteorologists, as well as the usual pundits in various newspapers.
August 2, 2018
Another I interesting bye product of the extended high pressure. During the hottest days wind was supplying 1.5% of power on a peak demand of only 38gw. The zealots answer is to double the number of useless windmills so they can generate 3%.
The same people who are messing up Brexit.
August 2, 2018
Indeed put a decent engineer in charge instead of politicians infected with the climate alarmism religion and with degrees in History, Law, PPE, English ……
August 2, 2018
Although NW Europe had its hottest ever Summer in 1976, globally it was cooler than average.
What makes me very suspicious of the claims made by the “warmists”, is the manipulation of temperature data by the NOAA where temperatures have been lowered in earlier years and increased in recent years. (allegation left out ed) I also remember seeing on the news in 2012 that the first 3 months of the year were the 4th warmest on record. In that particular period Europe was cold, Eastern Asia had its coldest Winter in 60 years, however North America was remarkably mild. Examination of the data showed that the data was faithfully recorded in Europe and America but in Asia they used the average for the last 10 years – another example of fraud. Incidentally, the warmest decade in the 20th century was the 1930s and not the 1990s as they would have you believe.
As we are all aware, the BBC has a warmist agenda and any scientists who stray from this propaganda are persona non grata. When did you last see David Bellamy on the TV?
August 2, 2018
It would seem short term weather prediction has improved a little, but long term is still a guesstimate, with the usual errors.
Good job OUR weather forecasters got it right during the early part of June 74 years ago with rather more basic equipment at home, and simple reports from ships and planes which were crossing the Atlantic.
August 2, 2018
That was only a couple of days ahead of what became D-Day, and it was forecasting where the centre of a known storm would pass. To claim they did better than todayâs forecasters, who have a much better handle on where storms go, is frankly ludicrous. I sometimes wonder if this fits us attracting anti-expert, anti-science characters who reject anything different to the past.
August 2, 2018
The point is Gareth, they weren’t any worse than today despite the banks of computers and so called expert modelling which todays Met office has.
August 3, 2018
Remember the Thames estuary flooding of 1953? A brilliant weather forecast?
What about recognizing at least the positive impact that satellite imagery has brought to the realism of short-range forecasts?
August 2, 2018
Gareth
I did not say they did better, I just simply said they got it right.
Given the extraordinary pressure on the forecasters at the time, without computers and digital monitoring equipment, they proved up to the task
August 2, 2018
As a regular offshore sailor, the surprise is just how accurate the weather forecasts are these days. There is even a network of buoys around our island which record wave heights to aid predictions for sea conditions.
Onshore, Accuweather provides hourly predictions of weather conditions that are also usually very reliable at least a day ahead. Our only problem is the actual weather itself. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some certainty that we could have that family BBQ next weekend ?
However, a friend in Florida, who usually does have that luxury, messaged me yesterday to say it was 91 degrees and 85% humidity. So perhaps we shouldn’t be too unhappy.
Oh, and by the way, he holds his BBQs around his beautiful pool but it has to be surrounded by a huge cage to keep the bugs at bay.
August 2, 2018
Still the water companies are getting away with regularly leaving the public without water supply. They need to feel some real pain to encourage them to provision better supplies.
August 2, 2018
Proof that privatised utilities are about optimising profits, not supply.
Clearly some things are just too big to be left in the hands of business.
August 2, 2018
They like to play fast and loose with definitions, its just weather when it doesn’t support their Climate Change agenda, but significant proof when it does.
August 2, 2018
Strange timing to write this piece given the weather in the South is actually heating up and a return to the previous 30C + temperatures is forecast.
I expect youâll be out cutting your lush green grass this weekend? Whereas mine continues to be rather more straw coloured.
Letâs hope you are rather better at economic forecasts.
A good proportion of the staff at the European Medium Range Weather Forecast Centre live in your constituency – perhaps if you are genuinely interested in the subject you could ask them. They are the best there is anywhere in their field.
Reply I point out temperatures in the south are rising again. The point of the piece was to ask what happened to the confident predictions of new records last week? I do look at the European Centre site you mention as well as look at the Met Office and BBC forecasts.
August 2, 2018
Question to JR: Is it true that the European Centre’s next big computer will be housed not in Reading as it had been for 40+ years but somewhere in Northern Italy? And if true, is their decision to move such an essential part of their operations out of your constituency Brexit-related?
Reply The E Weather Centre is not an EU body but a wider group of countries
August 2, 2018
John
Could there be an agenda behind all this propaganda?
Roger
August 2, 2018
An agenda? You think that is a possibility?
August 2, 2018
Financial & weather predictions are guesses. Those who observe after the event know better.
August 2, 2018
Or propaganda for political or financial benefit purposes. Lots of money to be made in scaring people!
August 2, 2018
Adam, If you were to get a chimney pot falling on your head because of some very strong wind would you not want to know it beforehand?
August 3, 2018
To hefner
Yes. Knowing a future adverse outcome with certainty could certainly negate the prediction.
August 2, 2018
In recent years the Met Office have adjusted their forecasts so they are never wrong, so they will say â20% chance of rainâ so if it rains or doesnât rain it is hard to say they were wrong.
In some ways the present heatwave is similar to the famous one of 1911 more than 100 years ago. I wonder what caused that ?
Plenty of Twitter comments saying the current high temperatures are due to global warming, the same people who tell us low temperatures in winter are due to climate change. Are they the same ? Maybe Andy can tell us if Bristol Council have done any research into this.
August 2, 2018
The very words “Climate Change” are a total fraud. These allow the alarmists to use any weather event as “proof” of their agenda. The climate has always changed and always will. What these people really mean is:- “man made, catastrophic, irreversible climate change” – there is no real solid science behind this at all. We are probably better off on balance with slightly more CO2 in the atmosphere and a slightly warmer climate (if that does come) anyway.
In my experience belief in Climate Alarmism seems to be inversely correlated to any understanding of physics, maths, engineering, logic and science. Amber Rudd wrote some drivel on the subject in the Telegraph the other day. Prince (homeopathy and multi-faith loving) Charles even has a Ladybird Book out on the subject.
âGive me a child until he is 7 and I will indoctrinate his mind with religions & other drivel” as Aristotle might have said.
August 2, 2018
Maybe Andy can tell us if we are to have a white Christmas.
August 2, 2018
I guess they could be the exact same people as the change in the distribution of temperatures between low tropical latitudes and high latitudes in the Arctic (a reduction of the so-called temperature gradient due to more relative warming in the Northern polar areas than in the tropics) has an impact on both the strength, the temporal variability and the meandering patterns of the jet stream, therefore bringing the possibility of both very cold “Siberian” temperatures in winter and prolonged hot temperatures in summer.
August 2, 2018
That’s like M Gove might say, being pragmatic is what counts…20% chance of rain but only if you bring your umbrella. If on the other hand you bring your raincoat then there is a good chance of rain but only if the rain comes with a 1911 style heatwave warning, you see it is all inversly proportional to the chances of twitter style reports on wind speed increase or decrease leading to a fall or rise in the air pressure- but depending on the latitude of the jet stream- thus we have weather fronts and squeezed isobars not forgetting reduced visibility in some areas. Sole Lundy Fastnet and a smiley face
August 2, 2018
‘There has been little news reporting of the change of weather, and no pieces apologising for getting the forecasts wrong about new records by last week end.’
That, of course would not suit the ‘Climate Change’ consensus. A school contemporary (astro physicist and climate scientist) says that consensus is not science, which must constantly challenge its own theories and conclusions to maintain integrity. Interestingly, he also says that all existing climate change computer models use made up data!
August 2, 2018
Oh, for God’s sake. Can’t we have a good summer without the BBC or the media telling us we’re all doomed? I know it’s bad for farmers at the moment but for most it’s been a lovely summer to enjoy. The media like to think that everything revolves around the SE of England. Let me tell them it doesn’t. Here in Scotland we are back to dreary, wet, miserable, cold weather. Normal summer for us. Last year was wet,wet,wet. Some of my flowers didn’t even bother to bloom. This year up until last week has been wonderful with what I would call normal temperatures for the UK. 22 – 25 is lovely. The useless wind turbines have hardly turned at all – hurray. Everything today is ‘a record’. What will they say next year when things turn cooler and dreary? I am sure Al Gore is still living and enjoying his condo by the sea, all the climate change luvvies are still jetting around the world and heating their enormous mansions and politicians still have their noses in the trough where they is a quick buck to make from the renewables companies. The weather will do what it wants and nothing we do will make a jot’s worth of difference.
August 2, 2018
So why did they used to call it Flaming June ?
August 2, 2018
Another thing that is getting out of hand is recycling. We now have a green bin for general waste which will only get emptied every 3 weeks. The council don’t realise how much rubbish still goes into this bin because so much of what we buy in our local supermarket is not recyclable. We have two brown bins for garden waste and ours gets filled all year because we are surrounded by beech trees. We have a blue bin for plastics and now we are to have a pink and grey one to separate all our glass and card etc. Just where do they think people in terraced houses are going to put all these bins? Plastic is being sent to other countries where legislation is non existent. Do we really know where it all ends up? If it’s burnt then we could do that here. Sending it abroad does not solve a problem for the world. Much of it just gets thrown into rivers to end up in the oceans. Everything has gone mad today. We are being preached to about all and sundry but at the end of the day it’s not really making anything any better. We have a responsibility to process our own rubbish and not just send it elsewhere and think we’ve done a good job.
August 2, 2018
I grew up in a country which still had a vestige of the old Script, the bedrock of centuries. That is why the King called the nation to prayer, when our armies were threatened with extinction at Dunkirk, in May/June 1940, and the ensuing aerial assault of the Battler of Britain.
Now we have a ‘New Script’, that seeks to justify itself through its own fickle sophistry. So, the media and the Met Office are blighted with whimsical, trendy opinion, instead of straight reporting of facts (as believe it or not, used to be the case).
I’ve often thought our country had the perfect climate, rather similar to that described in Deuteronomy 11:8ff:
“â…a land flowing with milk and honey.â For the land which you go to possess is not like the land of Egypt from which you have come, where you sowed your seed and watered it by foot, as a vegetable garden; but the land which you cross over to possess is a land of hills and valleys, which drinks water from the rain of heaven, a land for which the Lord your God cares; the eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the very end of the year.”
There were of course provisos attached to that idyllic prescription, which I feel are no less relevant to our own beautiful land, given we have had (thanks to the likes of Wycliffe and Tyndale) the same book in our hand for centuries past.
Certainly, in my part of the country, we’ve had little recent rain, and are long since back to watering by hand – and the farmers and growers are desperate. Without a prolonged spell of rain, the effects will soon come home to all (Brexit or no Brexit!) Perhaps we are not so smart, after all.
August 2, 2018
Old folk hereabouts in Snowdonia pay no heed whatsoever to weather forecasts from any source. On one side of the mountains it will be blowing a gale and on the other brilliant sunshine…at least for 10 minutes or more. Why the BBC and other channels spend so much on giving us useless and vague information is beyond me.
August 2, 2018
I can [just !] remember the summers of the late 30’s .
Running around in the Saunton sandhills with a pair of knitted swimming trunks and the occasional wooly- pully ,with sea swimming made you appreciate quite fine temperature changes .
The summers of the 30’s used to recorded as the hottest but then they did not conform to the hockey stick curve and were ‘smoothed ‘ by the Met Office to exaggerate more recent temperatures .
Please check you are looking at the unadjusted temperature records !
August 2, 2018
I felt that a headline on The Sun last week i.e. “The World is on Fire!” was irresponsible. I overheard a mother in a supermarket trying to reassure her upset child that we are not doomed. Evidently the current area of wildfires around the globe is about average for a summer, it’s just that this time they are closer to inhabited areas.
August 2, 2018
I’ll throw a spanner in the works.
Edinburgh is further north than Moscow, but our climate is temperate because of the effects of the Gulf Stream current. That flows north from (unsurprisingly) the Gulf of Mexico and is then subducted as it reaches the North Pole to go south again, and provide a continuous loop.
Some members of the scientific community point out that as Greenland glaciers melt, fresh water is entering the sea. As fresh water is less heavy than salt water, it will no longer sink, thus slowing the conveyor belt that is the Gulf Stream and may even stop it altogether as happened countless times in the past and long before the industrial revolution (the slow-down was fleetingly made reference to on the news a few days ago but was so brief, if you sneezed you would have missed it.)
If that happens, rather than becoming a hot dry desert, britain will in all likelihood experience a mini Ice Age similar to the ones experienced in the 1600s (you know, the period that some global warming alarmists conveniently omit from their statistics).
So I pose the question, could it be that the climate is therefore self-regulatory?
Tad Davison
Cambridge
August 2, 2018
Inescapable logic.
August 3, 2018
On what timescales? 100 years? 1000 years? 10000 years? more?
August 3, 2018
That’s one for the scientists I’m afraid, but there is a good documentary on YouTube called Horizon – The Big Chill from 2003 that might be worth a look (not to be confused with the Hollywood BS of the same name).
Tad
August 2, 2018
Let us be honest, there is much the Met Office do not know about the weather (including climate and temperature).
Last week the Met Officeâs chief scientist, Professor Stephen Belcher, explained on BBC Newsnight that the causes behind the recent heatwave are a combination of short-term weather and long-term climate factors. Asked if current summer temperatures were the ânew normalâ, he said: âThe heatwave that weâve got is probably part of natural cycles in the weather, but itâs superimposed on this background of global warming, and thatâs whatâs elevating our temperatures.â
The important wording is – NATURAL CYCLES IN THE WEATHER. On this occasion the temperature just failed to eclipse (much to the BBC’s chagrin) that of 42 years ago (short term?).
Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, a member of the Committee on Climate Change, also acknowledged some scientific uncertainties about the role of climate change in the recent heatwave, saying: âWe have seen sustained warm and dry patterns. What we donât understand at the moment is whether climate change makes these patterns more likely.â
So the High Priests of global warming (climate change) admit it is beyond their knowledge.
On the bright side of global warming, that is if we want a greater aging population.
Some of Britainâs leading medical experts have calculated that a rise in the average temperature by a further one degree Celsius over the next 40 years would increase heat-related deaths in Britain by about 2,000 â but would reduce cold-related deaths by nearly 20,000, ten times as many. And of course we can adapt to warmer summers. In countries such as Spain and the US, where the use of air conditioning has become the norm, heat-related deaths have dropped substantially in recent decades despite global warming. We can do the same, enjoy warmer summers and take the benefit of warmer winters too.
All depending of course on whether we have and can afford the electricity for air-conditioning.
August 2, 2018
Andy won’t want pensioners to live longer thanks to climate change …
August 2, 2018
Selfishly we pensioners welcome warming and to hell with the children and grandchildren, especially Andy’s.
/s
August 3, 2018
Not a worthy post, weâd be better of without stuff like that thanks.
August 2, 2018
The ‘experts’ predict outcomes, and the media publishes faithfully and widely, when it fits their ‘message’, and bury the report when it doesn’t fit ‘the message’.
Soon the ‘experts’ learn the system and only release messages that will be broadcast. Garbage is the result. No wonder public distrust for the State Broadcaster is now at an all time low.
August 2, 2018
John, if I may.
There is a very good summation on the Chequers plan from ROSS THOMSON MP. It might be interesting for your readers.
‘THE FACTS ABOUT CHEQUERS’
THE THOUGHTS OF SCOTTISH CONSERVATIVE, ROSS THOMSON MP
http://facts4eu.org/news.shtml
He sums up the utter disgrace that is Theresa May’s attempt at negating a full Brexit!
August 3, 2018
Dennis Zoff, Indeed, Theresa May is an utter disgrace. She has tainted the whole Conservative party with her lies and deceptions. This is a crisis of the Tory party, by the Tory party, for the Tory party to solve. But it is almost too late – the damage is nearly complete. They have successfully snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It is beyond belief how comprehensively Leave has been trashed.
August 2, 2018
What John is forgetting to factor in is St Swithins Day, (July 15th) which this year was hot and sunny. Legend decrees that whatever the whether on St Swithins Day will continue for 40 days… and by and large it follows that and is doing this year. For the last umpty tumpt years it has rained on 15th July and so it has after.
This is obviously based on old folk law, and I suspect it arose because it isn’t far off the mark.
August 2, 2018
Why don’t we ever talk about crime on this site ? Is it because of the Government’s abject failure to deal with it ?
Even if there were no Brexit issue I’d be asking just what the point of the Conservatives is – indeed, what the point of government is.
Britain is on a dangerous slide. We even hear of communities hiring in security patrols and those I’ve seen look dangerously like mafia types to me and that’s. It really is only a matter of time before protection rackets come in if they haven’t already.
This is the issue which proves to people that Corbyn wouldn’t be any worse. So why don’t you ever talk about it ?
How on earth can we be in this state after eight years of Tory rule ?
What happened to The Party of Law and Order ?
August 3, 2018
The police, in my direct experience, seem to have virtually given up on nearly all crime. Though they are very inventive in thinking of reasons not to record crime or to do nothing about it. It’s a mental health issue not our department mate being quite a favourite.
The chance of being caught is very low indeed and the change of being prosecuting and getting an appropriate sentence virtually nil for most crimes. There is therefore almost zero deterrent to crime. They even announced that shoplifting under ÂŁ100 would be ignored so you can do several of those each day I suppose!
August 2, 2018
I agree with you John, the climatologists have a habit of selecting the data to suit their agenda. It is not that many years ago that the next oncoming Ice-Age was what was getting people into a tizzy.
August 3, 2018
Dan Hyde, in the Telegraph on 11/07/2015 was reporting on a presentation by Dr Zherkova whose model of the Sun was forecasting a 60% drop in solar activity by 2030. Interestingly enough she did not say much herself about a potential impact on weather/climate, but her paper was subsequently linked by people with rather limited scientific background to an incoming 5C drop in temperature.
So who to believe, a scientist presenting results from their research, a journalist drawing conclusions from it based on what might be a limited understanding of it, or a well-known “think”-tank, which jumped on the results on the research paper to skew them and present “information” based on their ideology?
August 2, 2018
I’m sure we have all noticed that on just about every report by the broadcast media on the subject of the lovely hot temperatures they make sure that interviewees and reporters mention ‘climate change’ the clear cause being human activity and existence.
The policy is clearly to mention the phrase as frequently as possible but not to provide balance from those who dispute or doubt it. Anyone who holds an opposite view is of course a ‘denier’. When will we be subject to legal penalty for holding such views I wonder. Persecution of freedom of speech is just about everywhere. It’s getting dangerous.
August 2, 2018
What’s this? a day off.. great
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew..Oliver Goldsmith circa 1750
August 2, 2018
Temperatures must be getting to M Gove’s head..now saying some deal, any deal, is better than a no deal..could be the barographic high in lieu of a full moon getting in the way
August 2, 2018
Off-topic, a Tory MP poses an interesting question:
https://brexitcentral.com/theresa-may-nailed-lancaster-house-end-disastrous-chequers-plan/
“Theresa May nailed it at Lancaster House, so how did we end up with the disastrous Chequers plan?”
I can’t be precise about the date, but in the autumn of 2017 it began to emerge that the new Irish government had decided to be obstructive, refusing to tolerate any changes at all at the land border between the Republic and Northern Ireland, and unfortunately the UK government was too fixed in its ideas to respond as it should do have done, effectively stealing a march by saying:
“In that case we won’t make any changes at all on our side of the border, as far as we’re concerned people and goods can carry on crossing into Northern Ireland just as freely as they have been for the past quarter of a century; and to help remove any need for changes on the Irish side we are prepared to legislate for export controls to prevent any unwanted goods being taken across into the Republic and the EU Single Market.”
Instead Theresa May allowed herself to be dragged into supporting a crackpot
“After we’ve left the EU let’s try and carry on as if we hadn’t left, it will feel better”
scheme devised by her favourite euromaniac civil servant Olly Robbins, whereby even after we had left the EU we would carry on collecting the present customs duties at the EU’s rates on all our imports from outside of the EU, and then reimburse importers for any differences if they could prove that the goods were intended for consumption in the UK and so should have been charged at the UK’s rate not the EU’s rate …
And in early May this year I had this printed in the Maidenhead Advertiser:
âDear Sir
I was staggered to read this in a Sunday newspaper, referring to Theresa Mayâs preferred plan for a crazy âcustoms partnershipâ with the EU:
âMrs Mayâs No 10 Brexit adviser, Olly Robbins, has told her that the âpartnershipâ is the only idea which will allow the UK to cut new trade deals while avoiding the need for a hard border in Ireland âŠâ
I suggest Mrs May should get herself a new Brexit adviser who will not talk such nonsense.
At present the UK collects the EUâs customs dues on imports into the UK â we are allowed to keep 20% to cover our collection costs â which makes sense while we are in the EU. But Mr Robbins wants us to carry on doing it forever, almost as though we were not leaving the EU. It truly is a crazy scheme, as the EU itself has already said.
Moreover it is not the only idea for avoiding a so-called âhard borderâ in Ireland; in fact by itself it would not even achieve that end.
Here is a simple alternative idea, which unlike Mrs Mayâs preferred scheme would not require years for its complex implementation. Just make a declaration along these lines:
âFor our part we will do nothing new at the Irish border for the foreseeable future. The present free flow of goods and people can continue exactly as now.
If there are UK tariffs to be levied on the imports we will do that away from the border, and if that leads to some evasion we will accept that minor financial loss.
If the EU is worried that the open border may become a back door for contraband to enter its Single Market then we pledge to take all effective legal and practical measures to help minimise that problem for them, continuing with the existing full and sincere co-operation we already have with the EU and Irish customs authorities.
What the EU and Irish authorities do on their side of the border will be entirely up to them.â
Yours etcâ
Unfortunately she chose to ignore my advice and keep her adviser, and so here we are now with Michel Barnier not only rejecting this daft scheme but also questioning whether we could even be trusted to operate it properly without the continued supervision of the EU Commission backed up by the EU’s Court of Justice, as I have pointed out in my letter printed in this week’s edition of the Advertiser …
August 2, 2018
BoE statement.
There would be no shame in admitting it got it wrong pre-referendum ongoing. Continuance is equally shameless.
A whole political ideology and, financial- system comrades are drilled too deep to withdraw.
Personal and company reputations. No-one puts their money in Mistake.
So Remoaneyology sung by MPs must go on. Counting on we not having served an apprenticeship in Economics…
They won’t resign. They think we don’t know.
August 2, 2018
Hot off the press:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/aug/02/uks-brexit-proposals-threaten-future-of-eu-says-barnier
“UK’s Brexit proposals threaten future of EU, says Barnier”
This is amusing:
“The UK knows well the benefits of the single market.”
Well, we certainly know what he said about its benefits in 2012, when he was the member of the European Commission in charge of Internal Market and Services.
On page 13 here:
https://publications.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/c505dbb4-64f1-40a6-8062-ebdea6240bd4
“EU27 GDP in 2008 was 2.13% or âŹ233 billion higher than it would have been if the Single Market had not been launched in 1992.”
As for UK GDP, rather than EU27 GDP, it appears from another study that our gain has been below that average, more like a one-off enhancement of about 1%.
And that, of course, is only an estimate of the gross benefits of the Single Market, without any attempt to take into account its costs.
http://johnredwoodsdiary.com/2016/06/06/how-many-more-industries-does-the-eu-intend-to-damage-in-the-uk/#comment-816616
From 2006:
âGĂŒnter Verheugen … recently announced that EU regulations were costing the European economy some âŹ600 bn a year.”
“… In 2003 the Commission published its assessment that EU GDP in 2002 was around âŹ165 bn higher than it would have been without the Single Market”
(That would be from this report:
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/top_layer/historical_overview/docs/workingdoc_en.pdf
“EU GDP in 2002 is 1.8 percentage points or âŹ164.5 billion higher thanks to the Internal
Market.”)
“Even after allowing for the extra GDP growth since 2002, this means that the benefits are less than a third of the costs.â
August 2, 2018
Sorry, this is off this topic – but I am curious and don’t know the answer.
I read that our exports to the EU comprise 15% of our GDP.
As I understand it the EU exports twice as much to us as we do to them.
When calculating GDP I believe you add in the value of your exports and subtract the value of your imports. Is this true?
If this is true, what happens when we leave the EU. The fearmongers seem to think all trade will stop overnight. But, let’s pretend it does go down a bit – for some unexplained reason.
If our exports to the EU went down, say, 5% and their exports to us went down in the same proportion as the trade between us – i.e. they export twice as much to us as we do to them – so their exports to us went down 10% – as I see it, our GDP would go up 5%.
Am I wrong?
The weather is lovely. I think global warming might have something to do with it. It might not. I don’t care in as much as burning fossil fuels is dirty and we ought to be cleverer than that and use clean, renewable energy.
August 2, 2018
The jet stream controls the weather, but they can’t predict it’s movement. I’m in Arcachon and the forecast on Tuesday was 22deg C for today, 2 days later. It’s 33 and too hot to go out. The jet stream has formed a plume over France, Spain and southern UK.
The French have been lucky as thunderstorms and other rain have kept the grass green. Farmers are irrigating because they are allowed to build reservoirs.
August 2, 2018
There is a difference between weather and climate.
Weather forecasts are now actually pretty good. You are highly unlikely to be surprised by a major weather event any more. That was not true even 20 years ago.
Climate is different. It is about long terms trends – and there is absolutely zero doubt that the climate is changing, and changing quickly.
The question, therefore, is what is causing the change and what – if anything – can we do about it?
Sensible people errr on the side of caution and say there is a very strong chance man has played a significant role and that – as we only have one planet – we should do what we can to mitigate any impact.
Reckless pensioners like Lord Lawson say because there is a small possibility man is not to blame we should play Russian Roulette with our childrenâs futures. We should, literally, risk their lives by ignoring evidence. You can be sure that if Lawson was personally at risk in anyway he would quickly change his tune. Like he did by applying for French residency over Brexit.
August 2, 2018
You forget to say how well the UK has done in reducing CO2
Over 40% down since 2000 despite economic growth and a large increase in population.
The USA has achieved a similar reduction.
August 3, 2018
“There is a difference between weather and climate” indeed climate is average
weather.
“and there is absolutely zero doubt that the climate is changing” indeed always has always will.
“The question, therefore, is what is causing the change and what â if anything â can we do about it?” Millions of things affect the climate if you do something about it it might well make thinks worse not better as we do not know what will happen even next year.
“Sensible people err on the side of caution” Well how can you know what side that is we might be heading for a new ice age? Anyways a little warmer on balance is probably better on balance.
Lawson’s applying for French residency is not changing his tune at all.
August 3, 2018
You can’t sqare that with mass immigration.
How are we to reduce our carbon footprint ?
August 3, 2018
Lawson does not deny climate change. He recognised that warming was occurring more slowly than forecast by alarmist and this has now been recognised by them. Lawson is saying that economic damage caused by taking wrong decisions and putting up costs will affect people badly and that it would be better to spend money on measures to adapt to the likely climate change.
August 2, 2018
.
August 3, 2018
I can’t disagree with you there, Blake.
August 2, 2018
BoE hikes rates, increasing the basic income paid by the government to people with a lot of money.
Higher rates = higher inflation. Interest costs are factored into prices, raise interest rates to 10,000% overnight and watch the inflation rate go to ~10,000%!
BoE bank rate should be 0% forever, this means stable prices and, while it is deflationary, all the government needs to do to hit 15% annual GDP growth is cut payroll taxes massively.
The people working for a living should be able to consume more of their own output, instead of having the output given to already wealthy people for free by the government, which is what a positive overnight rate does.
August 2, 2018
.
August 2, 2018
I think Dr Redwood’s previous posts on provisioning for droughts are more relevant. If the UK repeated the clusters of dry winters of the late nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, one does wonder whether we could cope given the current population levels. Perhaps we can hope that the climate has changed to make this less likely, but I would prefer planning and execution to hope.
August 2, 2018
To produce its forecasts, the met office very sensibly runs its model many times with slightly different initial conditions to produce an ensemble of forecasts, each of which is equally likely. Their verbal forecasts are simply based on what this exercise suggests is the most likely general scenario, but somewhere or other they do have a value for the probability that this scenario will actually occur. The interesting thing is whether or not what actually occurred is represented in their ensemble of predictions and with what probability.
Their most famous forecasting error was the storm of 1987 which was back when they used to base their forecast on only one run of the computer model. Had they been using today’s procedure they would indeed have said that there was some chance of what actually occurred.
Climatic change is easier to predict, for essentially the same reason that very long computer runs with weather forecasting models do indeed predict that July will be warmer than January.
August 2, 2018
JR. However bizarre some of my comments, I guess they seem so, I guess you have access over and above the usual, to Czech what I say , that they could have some validity. I promise they do. Opravdu.
August 3, 2018
Hope your post Brexit forecast scenario is more accurate than your weather forecast!
Reply What I wrote about weather was spot on!