From Jo:Nova: UK Met Office in December predicted a 15% chance of Jan-Feb-March being the wettest category

SUMMARY – PRECIPITATION:
Latest predictions for UK-precipitation show a slight signal for near or just above average rainfall during January-February-March
as a whole. The probability that UK precipitation for January-February-March will fall into the driest of our five categories is around 20% and the probability that it will fall into the wettest category is between 10 and 15% (the 1981-2010 probability for each of these categories is 20%).
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/02/uk-met-office-predicts-15-chance-of-heavy-rain-britian-gets-biblical-floods/

More proof that we can’t yet predict the climate just a few months in advance to add to the evidence the Met Office cannot predict climate one year or even a decade ahead, to add to the evidence that none of the climate models predicted even something as simple as the pause.
PS. I’m disabling comments as you can comment at Jo Nova and I’ve got other things to do at the moment.

After Mr Connolley’s outrageous behaviour I got a few emails in sympathy amongst which was this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJho5cHvjJY
Normally I wouldn’t have posted it. But why not? It is hilarious and it so neatly sums up all climate propaganda “science”. This is no eco activist “warrior”, but just another middle age balding man huffing and puffing on a toy pretending to himself he is achieving something but in reality going nowhere.
Correction
Following my post, it has just been pointed out to me that Connolley is not a climate scientist. And yes, as far as I can see has no scientific qualifications and so I apologise for all real scientists and have amended the article to reflect this.
Comments disabled
Given that Connolley has been allowed to say his piece, that he has a track record of provoking stupid and pointless discussions and I’ve got far more important things at the moment. I’m disabling comments.

I need to take some time away from blogging to prepare some material.
So, unfortunately, blogging and commenting will be light for the next few weeks.
I’ll be back!

I noticed this letter From Lord Monckton to Charlie on Tallbloke. Interestingly we had a discussion in the Scottish Climate & Energy Forum which divided between monarchists and republican tendencies or polite and not so, and finally decided not to respond. So I am glad to see Lord Monckton has:
Following HRH Prince Charles intemperate remarks about ‘headless chickens’ reported at the talkshop last week, Lord Monckton has written him an open letter, reproduced below

His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales,
Clarence House, London. Continue reading →

I was reading the evidence on the IPCC inqury and Peter Lilley made an excellent point worth repeating:

Q13 Mr Lilley: … The point I am trying to make is the point you make and particularly the points in the technical report are all good science, but what you entrust us, the policymakers, to know in the Summary for Policymakers is politicised. You think, “We won’t tell them that we have scaled down below the range given by the models”. Today the Chancellor is going to give the latest figures for GDP; if it were to emerge that the figures he was giving were not those given by the Treasury model but his expert judgment and he had not told us that, there would be trouble in Parliament.

Well said Peter! If any government body had misled parliament in the way the IPCC continues to misleed world governments, then there would be hell to pay. Ministers and/or civil servants would be forced to resign, the press would be furious. And for what? We all know that economic models are not exact. No one expects economic models to be better than approximations. In contrast “Science” (as in real science and not professors sitting in front a committee claiming to be scientists) claims to operate at a much higher standard.
It claims, but clearly in the area of climate it does not!
Instead, we have a group of public sector employees claiming their assertions are “science” who far from being scientific are in fact behaving in a way that makes most politicians look angelic.
Now, (yet again) these climate “scientists” have been caught out working not to the level of science, nor even to the standards of economics, but at a standard so appalling it would not be tolerated by any politician. Claiming to be “scientists”, getting public money to be “scientists” and then not behaving as “scientist” is totally dishonest. And when these people obtain public grants as “scientists” and they are not, such dishonesty must be fraud.
And these people are still employed?
If economists or politicians had lied about the origin of their figures and misled parliament in this way, the press, politicians and public would have torn them to shreds. If some minister had lied about the figures, if a civil servant, if anyone else had misled parliament there would be uproar. So, why aren’t these public servants, who say their standards are all the more higher than anyone else, not held to account for being worse than everyone else?
If the police mislead courts – we expect action. If doctors mislead patients – we expect action. If civil servants misled parliament – we expect action. For heaven’s sake if some lollypop lady fiddled her hours – we’d expect action.
But when this group, this group alone of public employees which has knowingly mislead not just our parliament but all world governments and when they have a clear personal financial benefit from grants because of this “problem” … when they mislead … what happens?
The politicians just let them get away with it – why?
It is a public scandal – all the more scandalous because I no longer believe anyone will ever be held to account for the serial dishonesty of climate academics or the IPCC.
[Committee name]

Two articles appeared in uClimate.com almost together:

• The infamy of John Cook
• Science can’t settle what should be done about climate change

Whilst Andrew Montford tends to be a moderate, in this case his comments did not seem appropriate for what appeared to be a good attempt to move the debate forward by Mike Hulme:

Mike Hulme is going to find himself given “the big cutoff” if he carries on like this. “Infamous” eh? Perhaps word is getting round that John Cook and his acolytes at Skeptical Science are a bit of a liability. With quote fabrication now added to the list of misdeeds of which he stands accused.

Whilst there must be more to this, I will focus on responding as well as I can to what was said:

“Science can’t settle what should be done about climate change” Continue reading →

The following are the top sites and articles according to the number of clicks they have received on uClimate.com.

Top 50 sites

Continue reading →

After reading about the likely relaunch of “Patterns Recognition in Physics” on Jo Nova (which I thoroughly endorse) I was reminded that there is a glaring hole in the list of journals, which is stopping many good papers from getting published, not because they are not first class, but because there is a “Not Invented Here” attitude in much of academia which unfortunately has resulted in much work from non-academics being sidelined, ignored and only ever seeing the light of day on blogs.
Many have tried to get work published, many have failed or just given up because as the episode of Patterns Recognition in Physics shows, even academics can’t get certain science published if it falls foul of the “Not Wanted Here” attitude of many academics.
I do not think the solution is to continue flogging the dead horse and try to get non-academic work into academic journals, instead I think the solution is to take the bull by the horns and do a better job ourselves.
So, I’m floating the idea of a new journal which can be seen in embryonic form at:
TheCitizenScientist.org
If we go ahead we will need reviewers and articles. There are so many excellent articles already on-line which would only need tidying up and reformatting to a more “formal” style (e.g. references). Reviewers could be a bigger problem – any volunteers?
That’s the basic idea.
What do you think? Is it worth trying and if so, can you suggest articles that should go in?

According to a new translated Cuneiform tablet, Noah’s Ark was round. Reading the Daily Mail Comments I read :
Cardiff supporter:

Noah was a farmer who built a larger version of the locally used coracle. An earlier earth quake warned him that the natural dam holding back the Mediterranean would likely breach and flood the lower land [I assume this is the Black Sea Hypothesis]. As the story says a large round boat was built, similar to a round inflatable lifeboat but instead of rubber rings reeds. As Thor Heyerdahl created in his second adventure Ra 2 large reed like ropes bound together. He took 2 of each of his farming stock and his family and survived to make history. What’s the problem?

The problem is that the very fact that this is such a well known story after three and half thousand years, suggests that there is something unique about this story that rings a particular resonance with people. That strongly suggests the story will have been moulded over time to represent what we want to hear rather than any actual historical event. Continue reading →