Sunday 10 January 2010

Shock! Consternation! the Met Office announces it'll be a barbeque summer... again

The fact that the Met Office is less accurate at predicting weather trends with £150 million than I am with a ten pence piece, using the 'heads it'll be a good summer, tails it won't' method does not deter them.

So, in the middle of winter, Doug Smith, one of their climate schmexperts, warns that 2010 will most likely be the 'hottest on record'. That may well be, especially if the Met Office is compiling the record, and won't let anyone else look at the data. He goes on to explain the influence of 'El Nino', to which the temperature spike of 1998 is attributed, and how the same thing could happen this year. Fine. So it's not the carbon dioxide then? Oh, it's the carbon dioxide as well? Okay.

I'm reminded of the story of the boy who cried 'wolf'. If the Met Office cries 'wolf' every year, no doubt they'll be right sooner or later. We'll get a warm year and they'll pretend they were right all along. As Warren Oates says in 'Bring me the head of Alfredo Garcia'; "nobody loses all the time."

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