Wither the weather?

No one else seems to be making this possibly fatuous point, so I think I will. If the Met Office can’t predict with better than 65% accuracy the weather – the very vague big-picture weather, too – more than three months in advance, then how in hell can they predict the effect and impact of global warming? If indeed there is such a beastie?

This might seem an opportunistic point to make, and I dare say I’ll be taken to task for mixing up “weather” and “climate”, but the point I make is that both types of forecast are made with the help of computer models – in the case of GW predictions, they’re entirely based on models. And this “revision” of the forecast indicates that even with the Met Office’s vast experience and hundreds of millions of pounds spent, their models can’t actually do what they are intended to do. They’re just not that good.

No shit eh? I’m involved with a modeling project at the moment; the IT side is piss-easy, but the starting *model*, the actual approximation of reality *as it stands* is proving difficult to settle on. This is in a pretty simple scenario too – not global climate. Would I trust the model I built to be 100% accurate? Not a chance. 90%? I doubt it. 80%? Maybe; after revision and post-event tuning, maybe. Would I trust my life to it? Never happen.

Yet the climate change hysterics want just that. Now, I’m not saying global warming certainly isn’t happening, I’m not even saying we’re certainly not causing it – but so far the only evidence that we are, comes from the models, essentially played backwards. A model is only as good as the data you plug in – this is the real inconvenient truth. This summer’s “revised” forecast is evidence enough that the Met’s models do not hold water.

Remember when the weatherman confined himself to predicting tomorrow’s weather, and didn’t deliver a sermon every other night? What does it say about this increasingly batty country, when even weather forecasts have become politicised? When even the Met Office has spin doctors?

Well, here’s my own forecast – some day a hard rain is gonna fall. Hopefully some day soon.